DrFeelgood

😮 Too bad your reach doesn't extend to OK, where some of us have wood shops.

Yup, this happens in my house, too. I wouldn't mind, but our bedroom shares a wall with the kitchen cabinets, so I am awakened on my one sleep-in day by a bunch of hungry teenagers who can't close cabinets quietly.

Week 1 Check-in: weight is still heading in the right direction, and that next belt notch is on the cusp of being completely comfortable. I'm using it far more often than not, so I anticipate being able to call that milestone smashed by next week already. Good times! Scale reading this morning was 242.6 for 0.9 pounds lost in W1. I strongly suspect that number would've been around 50% better if not for a recent bout of FIFO. Generally everything (except the neck) is looking and feeling much better. That's "Food In, (no) Food Out" This week was pretty much a carbon copy of Week Zero, which isn't a bad thing at all. I made the same mistakes in the same places but to a slightly lesser degree, and that absolutely counts as improvement. There's room in my life for flexibility. For Week 2 I'll adjust calorie targets down slightly to account for weight loss and keep running the program. I'm in a solid groove right now, and I'm perfectly content to keep marching here.

No, it does help, and I recognized and appreciated that in the midst of the week. That's always been one of my favorite things about NF--the accountability of my rebel friends to help stay on course when my attitude isn't cooperating. Thanks! _______________________________________ W1D7 - All green to end the week, I'll take it. Eat was decent: I began the day with a bowl of corn flakes in milk with a banana. I don't normally eat in the mornings, but I was planning a big day in the shop and thought it best to start with some good nutrition and energy to keep from getting light headed. While working I snacked on a small helping of cashews. In the afternoon I pan-seared some leftover mixed vegetables (mostly broccoli) and ate that with a couple of fried eggs for lunch, and then I was obligated to sample (twice) MFG's nachos from Qdoba. Dinner was my signature dish (more below) and by the time the meal was over I was still ~200 kcal shy of target for the day. I added a can of lemon-lime soda and a small portion of Rice Krispies treat to bring the total up to 1951. Move was great: I made good progress on my project for two hours in the workshop, then I paused to do a more thorough clean-up of the whole garage before lunch. After lunch I did a few more hours (intermittently) of work on the guitar project, then I spent the rest of the day cooking, eating, and relaxing. This was one of the rare Saturday nights where I could blank my Sleep goal since I didn't have to play in the band or run sound at church the following morning, so I happily took advantage of that to stay up a little later and play some Rocket League 2v2s with my brother. Guitar project is still making strides: yesterday's work involved flattening the sides of the neck and fretboard, attending to some of the other minor wood-shaping, then preparing the fretboard and installing the fretwire. I had some issues with my usual method--this man-made fretboard material is a lot harder than the typical woods I'm used to, and my fret hammer wasn't quite up to the task--but I persevered and did as much as I could. I'm recalibrating some of my original design elements to make it a little easier to finish the build on time and, honestly, to make the guitar a little more fun for me to play, which is the ultimate goal after all. Unfortunately Low feelings I think have stemmed from some minor setbacks with my neck. I had been feeling like things were on the mend, and I'd been doing a lot of deliberate stretches and strengthening along with the felt-improvements. But around mid-week I started to feel like things were moving backward, and that conspired with global news to further depress an already sour mood. I'm coping a little better now. My Signature Dish = Pulled Pork Tikka Masala: 25 hours to glory. I owe a debt of gratitude to my friendship with Deffy for inspiring me to try the national dish of England several years ago, and that was the foundation for my American take on it. Well, that and an unused jar of "Curry Powder" from Trader Joe's back in like 2016. It's actually pretty "diet" friendly, so I'll do a write-up and post it in the NF recipes subforum (that still exists, right?).

Gotta play a little catch-up... W1D3 - Eat was good; Sleep was late owing to a big push on my guitar project that ate up most of the evening. 1/2 W1D4 - Eat was okay, but I took a loan from D5; Move was good; Sleep was even later due to a DDP in the morning. 2/3 W1D5 - Eat was good, all debts paid with enough room for proper nutrition on the day; Sleep was early due to exhaustion, but I had a fitful night probably because of 2 days in a row of starting the morning with a DDP. 2/2 W1D6 - Eat was good; Move goal pushed to D7; no Sleep goal for Friday. 1/1 A couple of misses but nothing catastrophic. Despite a few days of low feelings I'm still plowing ahead, and it feels like I may be snapping out of it soon. I always feel better after eating, maybe I shouldn't space my meals out quite so much.

When my kids are all grown up and out of the house I will probably be batch cooking by default since all of my meals have been developed for feeding a bunch of hungry teens. I'll be surprised if MFG and I will need to cook more than once a week.

After I'm done with my current guitar project I'll be moving on to improving all the storage and organization, principally by building a shed. I'll definitely be taking inspiration from your thread.

I generally prefer this anyway since I enjoy using my kitchen knives. Speaking of which I need to do another sharpening soon.

I love type-c so much that I actively despise all my old devices that still use micro-b. Fortunately that doesn't amount to too much at this point, just an old Fire tablet and the DS4 I use for PC gaming. There are still more in the household, but I consider them illegitimate.

Uh oh, it's starting to look like a guitar. I may just pull this thing off!

I'm glad to be back, and it was easy to treat Week 0 like an old school Week 1 (from back when challenges were 6 weeks long). Dinner turned out great, though I feel a little disingenuous calling it Mother's Day dinner since I claimed all of the leftovers for work lunches. Speaking thereof... _____________________________ W1D2 - All green. Eat: Solid day on target and with a pretty decent mid-day treat, too. I started with an early lunch of leftover chicken and veggies, then later in the afternoon I drove over to the quickie mart to gas up the Rad Dad Mobile, air up the tires, and find myself a snack. I was looking for a singleton pack of peanut-butter m&m's, but all they had was King size; so I donned my royal garments and treated myself over the rest of my workday. For dinner MFG made a beef-and-broccoli stir fry with Jasmine rice that was excellent, nutritious, and easy to tally. Move: A couple of hours in the shop, but that consisted of slightly more thinking than doing. Even so I'm sure I satisfied the 30-min activity requirement. I was nice and sweaty by the time I called it quits. Sleep: Dead simple evening ended with powering everything down right at 11, performing my rituals, and climbing in to bed with MFG. And I woke before my alarm again. GGBO2021: Yesterday I used my new drill press to bore the holes for the tuning machines, then I thicknessed the headstock portion of the neck blank on my router table. With those done I clamped it on edge in my workbench vise and proceeded to flatten and taper the sides to final dimension in preparation for gluing on the fingerboard. Lots of careful measuring and aligning and whathaveyou, but it's coming along nicely.

Thanks, I'm pretty happy with it. Hopefully easing back in to things will help me get up to speed again without getting trounced back out by some kind of goofy injury or illness this time. _______________________ W1D1 - All green to start this week. Eating was good enough. I got up early for church band duties and didn't have anything for breakfast. That proved to be a mistake since I was ravenous by the time I got home for lunch and there wasn't really anything for me to eat--it was all leftover pizza, pasta, sandwiches,...that kind of thing. That led to a conversation with MFG about maybe keeping some easy wheat-less foodstuffs on hand for me. I need her help to both shop for those items and keep the kids from eating my stuff. Instead I grabbed a bag of corn chips and grated a bunch of cheese to make the world's saddest nachos in the microwave. Adequate, but not worth the calories. While watching a movie with the kids in the afternoon I had a trail mix snack and a few too many of the remaining truffles. That led me to a nap until around 5, then I got up off the couch to make MFG's Mother's Day dinner. I chopped up enough onions, peppers, Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, and Russet potatoes to cover two large sheet pans, then tossed them with olive oil, salt, and pepper before dividing them into even layers. On top of those I set a dozen skin-on chicken thighs which were seasoned with just salt and pepper. I roasted the whole kaboodle for an hour, rotating as needed; then I removed the chicken to a skillet to crisp the skins while I hit the veggies with a blast from the broiler to caramelize them. Everything was ready at the same time, so we had a nice family dinner before presenting MFG with her gift and card. The nutrition power-bomb at dinner hopefully compensated for that tragedy of a lunch. No move; I took it easy and governed the younglings so MFG could do as she pleased. No guitar work either, my brain needed a break. Sleep was on time--I spent the rest of the evening after dinner deep-cleaning the kitchen, then I did some home-office computing before playing a couple of games prior to lights out. And I was slowly waking up naturally this morning a few minutes before my alarm went off, so it looks like I'm getting my clock times dialed in well.

W0D7 - All green, a very good day. Eating was good, despite needing to do it on the fly. When I can plan my meals ahead sticking to targets is dead simple, but when I'm out and about and going with the flow it's a little tougher. Since this was the first of hopefully many golf-get-togethers with my Texas brother I started the day with a Sausage McMuffin with Egg™ and a DDP from McD's on the way out of town for a 2-hour roadtrip. We played 18 holes in a little less than four hours, during which I had a trail mix snack and a bunch of waters. After golf we found a Mexican food place in the nearest town where I ordered the enchiladas platter with rice and stuck to only water, but while waiting for the plate I also annihilated half a basket of chips with various tasty salsas. Hard to count with any real precision, but I pegged the whole lunch at around 1200 kcal. Certainly I didn't want much else to eat for the rest of the day. For dinner at home I made a nice garden salad (no dressing), and that let me eat a couple of the cocoa truffles again to hit 1941. No move goal, but golf was a ton of bonus exercise. I only wish I'd played better. After driving home I spent an hour or so in the shop working on my guitar neck, which has now been mostly profiled to final shape. Getting close to gluing the fingerboard on, which is a significant milestone in the build. Sleep was on time since I had to be up early for church-band duties. _______________________________ Week Zero Check-in - 14 out of 16 for goals this week, and I lost 1-1/2 pounds to weigh-in at 243.5 lbs which is the lightest I've been in almost 2 years. I will absolutely take that as a rolling start in to the proper challenge. Eat: I'm getting the hang of counting again, and I'm rediscovering the virtue of planning ahead. A couple days worth of calorie debts weren't too difficult to pay back, but I really don't want to make a habit of that. I need to have more good options in my fridge at home for when the kids are having pizza and such--MFG and I had a conversation about that earlier this evening, and she's going to add some things to the weekly grocery supply for my benefit. I haven't really been taking full advantage of the zig-zag yet, but better fore-planning will help with that. Move: Staying active far more than just the 3x30 in my weekly plan. Shop time isn't full exertion, but it isn't sitting on my butt either. Add in a couple of brisk walks and a solid day of golf and I'm well ahead of where I hoped to be at this point. As my weight continues down I'll be able to do more deliberate exercise-y things. Who knows, if I drop enough early on I may even be willing to get back in a gym before this challenge ends. Not likely though. Sleep: A couple of tantrums that kept me from a perfect week, but those gave enough negative feedback that I'm strongly (currently) disinclined to repeat them. The bedtime goal is definitely working better than my initial sleep-hours goal as far as metrics are concerned. GGBO2021: I accomplished quite a bit this week and didn't make any mistakes--that in itself is a mega win! I also got plenty of good video of the build process for my eventual contest entry and posted a couple of good updates on my Instagram. All good things happening here. Maybe I'll dust off the old mirror and resume my progress-photo series to help my brain stay on the rails.

It's a good time to be back. 👍

Gush away! It's nice for you to get to experience, and it's fun for those of us on down the path a ways to relive those early days through y'all.

Thanks, she is feeling much better today. That's a huge relief for me after a long scary night, then apart from work she pretty much slept all day yesterday, too. My super-elite OT sister-in-law is going to help me out with some active recovery stuff (strengthening and stretching) for neck bones in addition to the traction, so I'm really optimistic about my chances for improvement without surgery. ______________________________ W0D6 - All green, and we're streaking! Eating was solid. I had leftover meatballs in tomato sauce for lunch at work. Later in the afternoon I needed a snack, so I went to the quickie mart and got a pack of trail mix. Dinner was tacos (I had four) with the leftover ground beef from Wednesday, then for a small, slightly indulgent dessert I ate three of the cocoa truffles I bought at Trader Joe's as my reward for helping out MFG with her distant shopping list. Move was accomplished in two phases. Phase 1 was a 15 minute walk during the latter half of my lunch break at work: partly to get some exercise, partly to get some sun (and a bit of Vitamin D), and partly to get the blood flowing again so I wouldn't fall asleep at my desk. Phase 2 was an hour or so in the garage-shop working on my guitar project's neck. It was a lot of hand tool work, so I got plenty sweaty. Easy pass. I've blocked out the Sleep goal for Fridays since I can usually sleep late on Saturday, but I went ahead and cashed it early last night since I had to be up this morning for golf day with my brother. Fun stuff, friends! It feels good to be making strides toward self care again.

Thanks! Weekend might be a skosh tougher to keep buttoned down, but I think I'll work it out. __________________________ W0D5 - All green again. Eating was good enough even though it wasn't entirely according to plan. I was on the road all day since I had to be up in The City for the neurosurgery consultation. While I was in the city I did some business with Guitar Center and converted two electric guitars I don't play anymore in to a single acoustic-electric plus a couple hundred bucks cash. But that meant I now had an acoustic guitar in my car on a hot OK day, so I wasn't about to park it anywhere for a proper meal. Instead I drove thru Raising Cane's, which is a favorite, and I ordered the smallest of the available meals which still clocked in at a whopping 1,256 kcal. No wonder I'd gotten so big again: my usual order from that place is at least 30% larger. After that I made a quick trip by Trader Joe's to pick up some stuff for MFG then headed back home. For dinner the family was having spaghetti and meatballs, but I'm dodging pasta now so I opted for a decent garden salad (no dressing) and a simple bowl of meatballs in tomato sauce with some grated parmesan. After that I added a string cheese to close out the day well under target--I actually forgot it was a zig day and didn't get anywhere near it, but I was satisfied. Bedtime was good, and last night proved the utility of switching to a clock-based goal instead of a sleep-hours goal. I powered everything down at 11 sharp and did my rituals before hopping in to bed and dozing off. Around 2:30 am I was awakened by a noise in the master bath (en suite) and rose to find MFG suffering from some kind of illness that was causing her a lot of pain and distress. I immediately went in to caregiver mode and started checking her over. It took some time, but after an OTC painkiller and a lot of comforting (in between prepping a go bag in case we needed to head to the hospital) her symptoms let up and her condition improved. I kept an eye on her blood pressure, and it eventually started coming back down to normal, so I was content to respect her wishes and not drag her to the ER. She finally drifted off to sleep again around 4:30, and when I could tell she was breathing okay and resting comfortably I was able to get back to sleep myself. All that to say, a sleep-hours goal would not have met the standard, and that would've been totally beyond my control. The bedtime goal works much better, even when curveballs subvert my efforts. My visit with the neurosurgeon was, I suspect, as close as you can get to a nothingburger in the context of neurosurgery. MRI shows a small disc bulge that is entirely consistent with my symptoms, and doc wants me to try 6-8 weeks of cervical traction at home then come back for another visit. He seems like he knows his stuff, and I appreciate that he doesn't want to jump right in with a surgery. I hope he's right and that the traction will help the disc to heal. Pretty much since the Wolverine pic (Fall 2015) I feel like I've been surfing from one orthopedic degradation (or injury) to the next, and since none of them are fully recovering the pile is starting to get a little high. I'll manage, and dropping body mass while increasing strength and flexibility will have to help somewhat, even it's only to slow the march of time.

Thanks! I enjoy it, and I'm glad they're getting better. So far I've only built one from scratch, and that's my daily player. The current build is for the competition, but it's one that I've wanted for a long time so I'll probably keep it unless someone makes an insane offer on it. The other projects you've seen were rehabs and kits. A couple of those were for my son, and one of them I gave to my brother. The dragon mermaid guitar was part of a trade deal this morning in exchange for a brand new acoustic guitar. The other two are still on my rack waiting for more upgrades. _______________________________ W0D4 - That's more like it--all three green with all calorie debts paid off. Now I can do D5 straight up in peace. Eating was good. "Breakfast" was the bumped snack from the night before. Lunch at work was leftover chicken peanut curry over rice. Dinner was homemade tacos. I eschewed all snacking and calorie-laden beverages to close out the day at 1948 kcal. I'm not completely convinced that's accurate because I'm eyeballing portions, but it felt like a good day. Move was accomplished in the workshop again, this time for 90 minutes while I continued shaping the guitar body. Things are coming along nicely with this build. I did a little gaming after the kids were in bed, then I shut everything down and did my rituals. Bedtime was a little bit after 11pm, but I'm counting it because this morning I got to sleep later, and I woke up before my alarm anyway.

Nah, the movie didn't mess up my goals, I threw a tantrum because I didn't want to go to bed. It's not even that kind of bad. Terrible movies are a guilty pleasure because they can be off-axis entertaining. This one just blows. It's great to be seen! I hope y'all get to see both more and less of me soon, whenever I get back to doing progress photos. ___________________________ W0D3 - Basically a copy of D2. Going back to full-time in the office is a harder adjustment than I anticipated, but I'm getting there. I'd gotten a little slack about personal hygiene and bedtime stuff at night because working from home a lot meant I could just take a break and knock it out the following day, and that let me burn the midnight oil pretty frequently. Can't do that anymore. Eh, this is what Week Zero is for anyway. Eating was a little less enthusiastic, but I basically took a push on the D2 Passterisk™ calories by doing the same thing again late on D3. "Breakfast" was the snacks from the night before. Lunch was leftover steak with mixed veggies and a small baked potato with butter. The afternoon wanted a snack, but the snack drawer in the office has been closed due to pandemic, and the quickie mart didn't have much that was useful. I ended up grabbing a set of Little Debbie cupcakes that proved to be a terrible mistake in terms of both numbers and gut tolerance. For dinner MFG made tortellini soup which was tasty, nutritious, and helpful with my numbers. But it conspired with the snacky cakes to destroy me. After recovering from Angry Tummy and working in my shop for a few hours I was hungry again (imagine that) so I repeated the nachos and nuts with raisins snack. That will count toward D4 breakfast (today has been right back on track, but that update will happen tomorrow) to eek out another Passterisk™ for D3's eating. No move goal, but I was busy in the shop all evening. Guitar project is coming along, helped in no small part by a herd of new power tools. I'm sure I could've bought two guitars already with what I've spent on tools, but I think it'll be worth it. After finishing up and coming in to relax with my snack I stayed up way too late again binge-watching Dead Like Me and playing some late-night Rocket League. At least I didn't oversleep, so it's not a win but not exactly a loss either. It seems the bumps were justified enough, and now I'm back on track. Tomorrow's update should be all green, just gotta get to bed on time tonight.

Thirding Tank from a different perspective: wedding-planning sites weren't a thing when I got married back in 2004, but the weddings I've been invited to in the past few years have used The Knot and it was very helpful as a guest/participant to be able to pull all the salient info up on my screen at any given moment.

Congrats!

Only all too well.

Excellent goals! I hope the weather cooperates for you.

Following

I haven't done a single burpee since basic training (1996), and I won't ever do another one. There's plenty of better ways to spend my time and energy. It works okay as a sleep goal, but it doesn't work so well as a pass/fail metric since I'll hardly ever actually "pass" it. A full night's sleep that's less than 8 hours is a good thing, whereas getting 8+ but yanked out early by an alarm (not likely, but possible) is counter-productive yet technically a pass. I also can't really measure or control the amount of sleep I get, which makes it less S.M.A.R.T. than a simple bedtime goal. 11pm seems like a good finish line except for Fridays since I can generally sleep in on Saturdays. Spreadsheet updated accordingly. Neither bother me, but that's because I don't do them. __________________________ W0D2 - Eating was a bit enthusiastic--I'm tracking in MFP, but I'm not being super precise with my portions yet so everything is getting the "eyeball" treatment. I had a dentist appointment at 10am so I didn't eat prior to, and afterward I didn't trust my numb face to not bite through my lip so I held off on lunch for an extra hour. Even then I didn't want to eat anything that required work, and I didn't think I'd really get to enjoy anything good, so I punted and drove thru McDonalds for a couple of cheeseburgers. That wouldn't have been so bad, but I added a large Fanta and took the lunch total over 1000 kcal. That's way too much for a single meal that I didn't even want in the first place. For dinner MFG made peanut chicken curry and rice, so I ate a sensible portion of that and closed the day just under target. But then we rented WW84 (oof, what a waste of an evening) and I mixed some nuts and raisins for a movie snack. When that was gone I made a bowl of nachos. Both of those got counted toward the following day's breakfast to try and keep my streak going with a Passterisk™. I did manage to spend 30 minutes after work in my garage shop knocking out a couple of repairs, and even though it wasn't gym-active I felt good about counting it toward my Move goal. By the time the movie ended it was already 10pm, and after getting kids squared away for the night I was down to just 30 minutes of Me time. That wasn't enough, so I Me'd until just before midnight, and even after I was in bed I was restless until nearly 1am. Six hours of sleep was barely adequate, and my alarm was very rude this morning. Lesson learned--don't waste weeknight hours on craptastic movies, especially ones with 150-minute run times.