First Mate Davy

Thanks!! (I'm late with my weekly update because I didn't feel like it 😕 I may post two weeks at once next week)

I've broken my previous records (from spring 2019, the last time I worked out regularly) and I'm heckin' excited. The difference from a few weeks of this is subtle, but if I keep up with it I might look substantially different by the time I go back to the office.

When I need to thicken a sauce, sometimes I cook red lentils until they start falling apart - since it's higher protein than flour. The red ones are very thin and don't have skins. Do you know what kind your mother in law used? (A lot of my recipes would benefit from more creaminess without actual cream.)

If you're looking for picnic ideas, maybe veggies with hummus or but butter, or sandwich wraps with lettuce or cabbage instead of bread?

On the weekend I like to make protein pancakes (store brand version of Kodiak cakes). I'm not big on breakfast food, so during the week I usually have apples with peanut butter and/or protein bars. One of my lifestyle changes lately is delaying breakfast until mid-morning or later, because I'm equally hungry whether I eat or not until 11 or so.

Finding what foods make me feel good, and healthy foods that I look forward to having, has helped me with avoiding the foods I'm trying not to eat (simple carbohydrates). I suspect that healthy comfort food is a highly individual thing, but for me it's been protein bars (which don't fully follow the rules but the protein seems to offset the sugar) and beans + rice with good sauces, often Indian or ones with teriyaki.

Hi, welcome! Those sound like good lifestyle goals. What sorts of foods do you like to eat for breakfast?

Congratulations on your good exit exam score! Building up savings can also be a way to make sure you're able to lower your living expenses some. (If you're looking for something to help show your wife that you can make it work.) If you're putting away a chunk of income each month, you're proving you can get by spending that much less *and* you'll have it later if you end up needing it. Keeping the job until the brewery can pay you a "salary" for your expenses also sounds like a good strategy.

Happy birthday! Looks like you're doing great, especially with your dance and meal planning goals, keep up the good work!

Week 2 update Loose Fat: ✖️ I was invited to a family cookout on Saturday and knew that tracking food would be difficult. I decided to consider it a cheat day and focus on having fun with family. I tried to add up what I ate after the fact, and I was definitely over my calorie limit for that day. (On the other hand, I had some simple-carbs cravings the next day but was generally less hungry than usual, which I hope is a sign that my metabolism is healthy.) I am okay with this. I also want to bring more healthy food along to share next time (both a snack and a bean dish for the main meal, ideally), because having more of the food I'm used to for dinner would probably have helped. Also, I stuck to my diet plan every other day of the challenge. 19/20 successful days (roughly) is pretty good. Work Out: ✔️ I worked out twice this week. I did fewer sets of rows the second time because I didn't have as much time to spend working out. My squat is increasing steadily - 5 more pounds and I'll be back to my old max weight. My form for overhead press and rows is getting good enough to increase the weight next workout. Make a Snack: ✔️ I made caramelized onion and lentil "hummus" for the 4th of July cookout. There's no tahini, just red lentils, onions and the oil the onions were fried in. I also made another batch of the protien bars from last week. Cut Hair: ✅ This is not a haircut week. Measurements This looks really bad. The last time I weighed myself was right after I'd ate breakfast and drank a bunch of water the day after the cookout, so I suspect a lot of it is water weight. (I weigh myself when I have another reason to open the dock box where the scale is kept, not when it makes sense to weigh myself. I am lazy.) If my weight doesn't go back down during week 3, then I'll consider it a problem.

I can eat eggs, but prefer not to most of the time. Similar to meat, cooking with them is stressful (food poisoning paranoia + weird goopy texture) and they don't seem much more ethical than meat. I can see how nutritionally it's a good suggestion, though. Nuts might work, when I have room in the calorie budget for that. I've been eating peanut butter and sometimes almonds.

Good job!!

Week 1 update Loose Fat: ✔️ I met my calorie goals every day. I also made this chart of my macros. I've been feeling hungrier this week than last week. I'm ready to start having beans more than once/day, though, and I'm hoping that will help. (I think the problem may have been that low fiber + vegetarian doesn't leave many filling food options.) Work Out: ✔️ I've settled on doing goblet squat, overhead press, and bent-over rows. This is loosely Strong Lifts inspired, but I'm sticking to just what I can do with my adjustable dumbbells. This graph shows weight multiplied by the number of reps in the shortest set. I'm sticking with the same weight on rows and only increasing reps until my form is decent. On other exercises I'm increasing weight when possible, and increasing reps if I can't. I was able to increase my squat weight. Overhead Press actually went down, because I failed one set early. Reps of rows are increasing. Make a Snack: ✔️ I made protein bars with 1/2 cup protein powder, 1/2 cup oats and 1/3 cup peanut butter. They're sort of utilitarian but definitely edible, and cheaper than store-bought bars. Cut Hair: ✔️ I cut my hair. It came out okay. Measurements My weight is still dropping fast. I don't think I look 20 pounds different, though. I hope this isn't just the battery in my scale slowly dying, or some other mechanical gremlin. My measurements appear to mostly be going down, except hips increased for some reason? (Possibly the squats, although my lower body has more fat than muscle.) Shoulders increased by 0.5" but it didn't fit in the screenshot. I expect my measurements to be a little noisy due to user error. Loosing a whole inch from the thigh measurement is a good sign if it's real, though.

Thanks for thinking of me Yeti, everything's good.

Woohoo, good job!

It'd probably go well with chicken thighs. Years ago I made something similar with chicken thighs instead of beans, and turnip instead of rutabaga. Lots of pepper for seasoning, sort of an Irish style flavor.

There probably is. I think I've seen bars with no added sugar, and I remember Quest bars seemed to act like low GI for me (as in I didn't tend to get carbs-hungry later). I want to make my own because eating a bar or two each day gets expensive fast. The vegetable stew came out pretty good. I think this is the first time I've attempted a vegan entree that wasn't mostly beans. It has rutabaga, potatoes, barley, beans, carrots, mushrooms, white northern beans, garlic and cabbage. Someday when my digestion is better I'd like to try it with onions, and lentils instead of flour as thickener. I like the texture of cabbage but it tastes bitter. It seems good for mixing into other things. Not sure if I'll keep buying it.

It's awesome that you're calling it loot.

How's your fast going?

I am HERE for Avatar gifs. (And also the actual challenge.) It's awesome that you can hike non-painfully again and I hope you get to go on some good ones.

Accurate.

Your encouragement is definitely noticed. I just wandered across your challenge topic today - it's been a good read. I'm so glad your parent visit went alright, and it's awesome that you've been able to keep up such ambitious exercise goals. What sort of decorating are you doing in your room? Is yoga vs. stretching a difference in how complex the movements are, or is there more to it?

For what it's worth, that space was originally a roughly-queen size bed, but a previous owner let the mattress mildew, so we removed it. I bought a camping pad and was going to proactively sleep on it + a "couch" cushion on the floor til my digestion improved, but my husband didn't want me to be on the floor. Ideally I'd like to have a low-GI protein snack that I could have for dessert when I need to bump up my numbers for the day. Gotta keep trying to make something decent.

Thanks, Yeti. My digestion finally mostly-behaved itself for one night. No onions or beans, light dinner + peppermint extract before bed. (Peppermint extract from the baking aisle is my cheapskate alternative to spirit of peppermint. It breaks up gas bubbles so you burp a lot for a few minutes but are less gassy after.) I also used a spare memory foam topper to make a roughly twin size quarter berth in the aft cabin. That space is mostly my husband's closet, but we'd been talking about putting some kind of padding down in the empty space. So now the captain has a place to escape from me if necessary, though we both really hope it won't be needed. Fun fact: an electric meat-carving knife is great for cutting memory foam into custom shapes. I think I might need to eat a little more than I have been. I feel fine, but coming in under 1300 calories worries me. I've been saving more "room in the budget" for dinner than needed. I'm going to try going back to my "second breakfast" habit, but keep avoiding simple carbs.

Those "stickers" in your post are amazing. I like how you're responding to the injury - taking care of it but still doing everything you can safely do exercise-wise. That's a great attitude to have.