Myrdinn

Weds August 31st Exercise: rest day Food: peanut butter on toast for breakfast, tuna salad for lunch, vietnamese for dinner - summer rolls, fried squid and a chicken noodle bowl with salad. Had some yogurt and fruit/nuts in the evening too. Fun: Lovely dinner out with my wife and the cultural phenomenon that is the Great British Bake Off on the TV!

I have just started working my way through these from Prog 1 onwards, I'm on the third volume of the collected works. I am not such a fan of the Stallone Dredd movie but I guess it's got a kind of cheesy hackneyed charm to it. Have you watched The Raid? It's an Indonesian martial arts flick that is extremely similar to Dredd. Apparently the latter isn't actually a rip-off, as they were in production at the same time, but you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a remake.

Cheers @Butternut. Having a better week so far. I think I missed my water target yesterday but not by too much. Still tracking my meals, have worked out twice this week so far and might go for a run this evening. I am behind again on the stretching, so should try and do something about that today. And I've checked the bank balance once so far this week. I think having set the goal of three times a week I might actually find that twice feels like enough, if I'm actually looking at the transactions that have gone through and making sure that I'm really on top of what's going on. Re stretching: can anyone tell me if it's safe to stretch without warming up first?

Tuesday August 30th Exercise: Bodyweight. 3 x 8 beginner shrimp squats - form is gradually improving on these. I am just using a hand to balance myself, although as I've now hit three sets of 8 I am going to go back to the beginning with no supporting hand and try to get through at least one set of 4 without any additional support. 8,8,6 diamond push-ups. Getting there. Aiming for 3x8 or maybe 3x10 before I progress to the next thing. 3x8 bodyweight rows, bent knees. Have moved my workout to a close location to home but the rail there is much lower, so I am going backwards slightly before I move forwards onto straight legs. My back is still the muscle group that's progressing most slowly, but I'm keeping going. 1 min plank Food: Toast and two poached eggs for breakfast. Avocado and salmon wrap with a crayfish and salmon "protein pot" thing from Pret a Manger for lunch. Burrito bowl for dinner, followed by yoghurt, walnuts and dried fruit as I was under my calorie count for the day. Doing well on calories still, less so on macros (still too much fat). Fun: Workout was good. Also spent some time reading up on guitar rigs - a friend and I are looking at getting back into playing some music.

The following does not make for pretty reading, but I am going to log it just the same. Probably my worst week since I started posting, including only working out once, but the difference here is that while in previous goes at sorting my health/fitness/life out this would have been the end of it all and I'd have been back to no exercise and a beer and cheeseburger diet, this time I am not going to let this throw me off and am going to keep on trucking. However, for posterity: Wednesday August 24th Exercise: Day off. Food: Bircher Muesli for breakfast, tuna salad for lunch. Sadly things went downhill from there: met friends in the evening so had a chicken burger en route to meet them (they're big drinkers, so didn't want to turn up with an empty stomach, a cheeseburger and fries in the pub and five pints of ale. That's 1000 calories just of beer. No wonder the advice on losing weight always including giving up alcohol. Had a bowl of yoghurt, raspberries, walnuts and raisins when I got home because, y'know, I really needed the extra calories. Fun: Was good seeing friends. Thursday August 25th Actually one of the good days in the past week. Exercise: Nope. Cleaned the house in preparation for Mrs M's return home on Friday morning instead. Food: Bircher for breakfast. Tuna salad for lunch. Turkey mince and sweet potato chilli for dinner. Pretty much bang on all my calories and macros. Fun: Nothing specific. Friday August 26th Strange day for all sorts of reasons, largely because I got up at 5:30am to meet Mrs M at the airport and she left her phone, full of really important information and recordings, in the cab on the way home, so we spent most of the day on the phone to Uber, Apple and our network provider trying to get it back/recover the data (successfully on both counts in the end) Exercise: None Food: Starbucks latte en route to the airport, Goats cheese and mixed veggie sandwich for late breakfast, pork belly sandwich from a street vendor when we went out for an afternoon walk, chicken kievs with baked sweet potato, broccoli and asparagus for dinner. Fun: Awesome having Mrs M home. Saturday August 27th Had friends round for a barbecue. This always ends badly, from a health perspective. Exercise: None Food: 3 egg omlette with chorizo, pepper, olives, red onion and a little bit of goats cheese for breakfast (seriously tasty). BBQ-wise I think I had 2 burgers in buns, a couple of sausages, one cob of corn and a pork rib. The killer was drinking about ten bottles of spanish lager. 1700 calories. Eek. Fun: BBQ was fun. Sunday August 28th Exercise: Bodyweight workout. I did this in the house so it was slightly half-assed but better than nothing. No warmup, 3 x 8 bulgarian split squats, 7,5,5 diamond push-ups, 1 x 60 second and 1 x 55 second plank, 2 x dead hangs. Food: Sausage sandwiches for breakfast. Skipped lunch, ate an ice cream in the sunshine in the afternoon, then had a curry for dinner - a roti, some chicken dhansak, saag paneer and a samosa. Bit too much fat but on target for calories. Fun: Lovely long walk in the sunshine. Monday August 29th Exercise: None Food: Skipped breakfast. Went out with the in-laws for lunch and I made bad choices. Plan was no starter, a salad and no alcohol, but no plan survives contact with the enemy. So I ended up having a prawn cocktail, a chicken burger and sweet potato fries and a couple of beers, followed by a couple more beers in a bar over the road with my father in law while my wife and her mum went shopping for an hour. Sausage and beans on toast for dinner. Fun: Nice to catch up with the in laws. So there you go, that's the sordid tale of my last week or so. Back in the saddle today though - I've just eaten two poached eggs on toast for breakfast and I am planning my workout for tonight. Also, small bonus - I weighed myself at the end of last week and I'm down about four pounds since I started posting. Winner.

Apologies for the radio silence on here, with thanks to @NY153 and @PollyannaAgain for checking in. I have (probably not coincidentally) just had the worst week for food and exercise since I started posting on here, which coincided with a pretty bad week at work and my wife coming back from a trip away really stressed out. Quick update on week 1. I think I'm on track with water. Haven't been quite as good at the weekends, but since the challenge was all about the working week I think I'm doing OK. Have tracked all my meals since the start of the challenge. It hasn't always made for easy reading, but I've been paying attention and doing the work. And on a related note I've lost about 3lbs since I started posting on here, so it's all going in the right direction. Only one workout last week. Poor - actually the worst week on that front in a couple of months. I've already done the first one for week 2 and planning another tonight though, so I haven't let that derail me too badly. I think I did 3/5 stretching sessions, which given how bad the week was overall doesn't seem too bad. 2/3 goes at the bank balance. Although I was quite proud of myself for checking the situation on the day before payday last week, where previously I would just have tried to bury my head in the sand until I'd been paid and I could pretend all was perfectly OK!

Tuesday August 23rd Exercise: Rest day (did consider going for a run, but it was swelteringly hot so I left it). I did do a bit of work in the garden which must have burned a few calories. Food: Bircher muesli with raspberries, chicken salad, tray-baked fish with couscous, sweet potato and roast veggies for dinner. And the inevitable ice-cream. Fun: Rewatched The Matrix. I was actually slightly disappointed, having not seen it for years - I remember it being completely mesmerising as a teenager but felt a bit flat in everything but the big set-piece action scenes this time around. The big action sequence at the end is still amazing though.

Nice one. Great set of goals too, and a well thought-out structure. A little late to the party but I'll be following along.

Hey man Good that you've thought about your overall goals as well as the short-term ones, these all sound sensible and achievable. Hope it's going well so far.

Nice set of goals. What exercise are you planning on doing?

That's a good solid set of goals and a great way of scoring yourself. Mine's quite basic by comparison to that, just a single point every time I do the thing I set out to do with no bonuses and equal weighting to everything.

Excellent set of goals - it's all about habit forming, and these are good habits!

Glad to hear it - sounds like you're smashing the goals. Nice work!

This is the thing I've struggled with the most over the last couple of months too. There are a load of different approaches to this and everyone has their own - I've started drinking a glass per hour of the working day, which is the time I'm most likely to fall behind on water intake. Other people swear by drinking 2/3 bottles per day, and there are a few apps designed to help with this. Otherwise that's a really great set of goals and I'm glad you're so excited about the job, even if the commute does sound pretty epic. If you enjoyed the article @NY153 linked to Mari Kondo's book - The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up - is worth checking out too.

Short sweet and to the point. Nice to meet you too! What do you use for your yoga practice? I know a lot of people on here do it from YouTube.