EricMN - 2021 Rough Draft

[EricMN]

 

I would say "I'm late posting this thread", but...

 

Even magic space wizards.

 

That said, I'm long overdue to come back home to the NF boards and let this place be the healthy, supportive part of my overall health - physical and emotional - that it was for over five years between 2013 and 2018.

2020 was at least as much a dumpster fire for me as it was for so many others. I have a ton of respect for people who were able to roll with the changes, be productive, and stay healthy over the past year. I'm not one of those people. As of today, I weigh 216 pounds. This is the heaviest I have been since 2013, when I changed my lifestyle (at 45 years old and around 238lbs, down from my 2011 high of 260). I was active, I kept to a schedule, and I had a lifestyle eating change. It was NOT a diet. I got my weight down to 193 by June of 2013, and stayed at or around that weight for five years while becoming the best version of myself.

 

Over the past three years, I've had a couple significant issues come up that have changed my life, permanently. The most significant was the passing of my ex-wife in 2019, which led to my teenagers moving in with me full-time. I've also been dealing with arthritis. Combine those things with a global pandemic and social uprisings against a systemically racist and corrupt police state, and my anxiety levels spiked to occasionally un-manageable levels on a regular basis over the last year.

 

I know how I got here. I also know what I need to do to get back where I belong, which is active and healthy.

Goal: Re-establish Healthy Active Habits

As recently as last year, pre-pandemic, I was working out at my gym a minimum of three times per week. Prior to that I would also run three to four times per week. I had changed my life from couch-bound in 2012 to perpetual motion when I was not at work. That's not my life now. Now, I work from home and the lack of disconnect has left me sedentary and unhealthy. I'm going to do something, every day. Walk, run, work out, doesn't matter. Do something every day. Log it and report it here. Every day.
 

Goal: Re-establish Healthy Eating Habits

For five years, I tracked my nutrition almost daily, and managed to maintain my weight while increasing strength, endurance, and without it affecting my mental health. I learned to track macros and identify good food choices. I need to lose weight - a lot of weight, honestly - but I'm not going to over-correct and try to lose two years of weight gain in just a few weeks. I'm going to set a reasonable goal for calories and macros and track - and report - my nutrition every day. I still won't call it a diet, because I hate that word and its connotations. This will probably be the easiest habit to re-establish.

 

Goal: Re-establish Healthy Emotional Habits

After my divorce in 2010 I spent a LOT of time in therapy. This dovetailed with my physical health changes. I established a lot of healthy emotional habits, which helped me cope with the daily stress of life which included an IT job, a volunteer leadership position with my church, and my family (a fiancee, five kids - three adults in various states of independence and two teenagers, a grandson, and two ex-wives). I always have a lot on my plate and stress is constant. Running and exercise were really my outlet. But the pandemic and the resulting isolation has done a number on my emotional well-being. I've fallen out of almost every healthy self-care habit that I had. This will be my hardest habit to pick up because it's a "soft" skill and my brain works best with concrete "I did a thing" goals.

 

I picked up Obstacle Course Racing along the way and I used to have big, main "I'm going to compete in a race" or "I'm going to complete a race" or "I'm going to qualify for" goals. I'm not sure those things are important to me anymore as my life has changed, although I would like to get back to a point where I could do these things again. I know I'm not there now. But the world is round, if I keep moving forward, I could get back there again.

 

[EricMN]

As I suspected, getting my food and nutrition under control has been the easiest so far. I started food and macro tracking on Monday and until I get active, I've set a low calorie threshold of 1750kCal/day to jump-start weight loss. I should be able to hold here for quite a while as I honestly needed to lose weight even when I was at 193 because I still had a belly and a bit of a roll around the middle. I'm only 5ft10in. BMI is a terrible measurement of health, but BMI thinks I should be at 175 or below, and that's probably not far off.

 

Tuesday was a good day. Right around 11am, before lunchtime, I was in the middle of a meeting. Because my workstation is 20 miles away and I connect remotely, using the Teams audio over a remote desktop connection is laggy and crappy and I typically have the app dial my phone for audio. This means if we're having a meeting discussion, I can walk around the house - and usually do so that I'm not disturbing my teenagers who are distance learning six feet away.

Spoiler

And they're SUPER happy about this situation.

This also means I have been bored snacking when I wander around the house, especially over the past couple months as my fiance has taken up baking. Yesterday, I was mindful of what I was doing, and I skipped the snacks and drank water instead, and then had a reasonable lunch. Tuesday's food intake was pretty much what I would normally have on a given day:

Breakfast: 3 Scrambled Eggs, 4 small slices of bacon, a slice of pumpernickel bread with butter, and a bottle of highly-caffeinated Kombucha (<700 calories)
Lunch: 3oz chicken breast, ~3cups steamed vegetables, and a can of Kombucha (<350 calories)

Snack: Package of raw mixed nuts (<200 calories)

Dinner: 3oz chicken breast and ~3cups steamed vegetables (<250 calories )

Snack: Dark-chocolate-dipped frozen banana (<150 calories )

Total for the day: ~1600 KCal, 86g protein, 22g fiber, 117g carbs, 80g fat, <2000mG sodium

 

I finished off the day by decompressing while watching a few Clone Wars episodes with my fiancé. She enjoys The Mandalorian - mostly bc she is a huge Baby Yoda fan, but she's enjoying the story as well. She had a bunch of questions as characters appeared this season, so instead of me trying to explain things and potentially leaving out parts I already assume she might know, we're watching everything, from the beginning, together. So far we have watched Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, and we're now on Season 4 of The Clone Wars animated series. 

Wednesday started off well. Nutrition was on point again - I changed up my dinner side and had a sweet potato instead of a bag of steamed veggies, which added about 300 calories, but this only brought me to my daily target of about 1750 for the day.

Around noon my Internet provider had a major outage that prevented me from logging back on to work for the rest of the day and also kept my kids from connecting to school. I made the mistake of pulling out my phone to find that fascists, white supremacists and associated dangerous conspiracy theorists, egged on my a wannabe dictator, staged a terrorist attack on Congress with the aid of "law enforcement." 

 

 

Whatever gains in mental health I made over the Christmas holiday by taking an actual vacation went right out the door. My daughter got me to disconnect by asking me to take her out for driving practice. She just received her instructional permit on Tuesday afternoon and was crawling out of her skin wanting a chance to be behind the wheel. We went to an empty parking lot and spent about 20 minutes getting her used to things like adjusting her mirrors, understanding braking and easing onto the accelerator, and figuring out the mechanics of turning a corner. I don't think we ever got over 7mph. 

 

I'm working on overcoming my exercise intertia and getting going. Winter has become progressively harder as I get older. As my arthritis progresses (slowly), cold just ~hurts~. At some point I just need to get over it, realize it's going to hurt whether I'm fat or less fat, and do what it takes to become less-fat until I feel safe going back to a gym with a treadmill.

 

I'm hoping today will be a better day.

 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Welcome back to the boards. We all need each other, now more than ever. 2020 was it's thing, and 2021 seems to have told someone to hold it's beer.

And yet, we stand. We will not yield. We will not fail. We are Rangers, and no Ranger Stands Alone.

 

I love you brother, and I'm glad to walk this journey with you.

[Everstorm]

Eric, good to see you again!  I am also doing the respawn thing, having fallen off in 2018.  We can do this!

[DarK_RaideR]

Ah, long overdue to discover this thread. Glad you're around again, hope you don't turn into a force ghost before the end of the challenge

[EricMN]

On 1/8/2021 at 9:05 PM, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

And yet, we stand. We will not yield. We will not fail. We are Rangers, and no Ranger Stands Alone.

 

I love you brother, and I'm glad to walk this journey with you.

Thank you, my friend. I know I'm not super-active here, but I hope you know you and a select few others here are my extended family.

 

On 1/10/2021 at 10:33 AM, DarK_RaideR said:

Ah, long overdue to discover this thread. Glad you're around again, hope you don't turn into a force ghost before the end of the challenge

Glad to see you, Mr. Part Of the Select Few. I'm trying hard to maintain corporeal form (on a virtual message board). 

 

On 1/9/2021 at 5:03 PM, Everstorm said:

Eric, good to see you again!  I am also doing the respawn thing, having fallen off in 2018.  We can do this!

Thank you! My fall-off started back then, too, even though it dragged out for at least a year. We can definitely do it!

[EricMN]

Nutritional changes are still going swimmingly. Even this weekend, when I was a bit less vigilant about tracking, my slip-ups were a cup of Veggie Straws and some PuffCorn while watching Sportsball. Otherwise, I'm continuing to follow my plan. So far I've yet to exceed my 1750kCal/day goal. I'm down 5lb of initial bloat over the first week. I knew this part would be easy. Now it's time to follow through on my goals.

 

 

Weekends do get busy, though. Last week, my son and his baby mama decided to change custody from a Sun-Thur split that coincides with my son's work schedule (he works three 12-hour shifts Fri-Sat-Sun overnight) to one-week-on, one-week-off.  This will be great for the boy - it's consistent and it will allow enough time for a routine to be established at both homes. However, this also means that every other weekend, we will need to help him with childcare because his job is 6pm to 6am and the boy is only going to let him sleep for so long since he just turned four last week. This means that the rest of the family here at home - mostly myself, my fiancé and my teenage daughter, who is Red Cross Babysittter certified - do the childcare for a couple days. The boy is in super-toddler mode, which involves a high degree of establishing agency and testing boundaries, so he spends a lot of time questioning authority and facing the consequences. He's also been reading for six months (he was reading my email one afternoon) and he just had his 4th birthday last week. He's super smart and a bit defiant. The next few months of weekends should be fun.

Also, since Pandemic Shutdowns began nine months ago(!), our church has gone virtual. We believe that faith and science are 100% compatible and we also identified before shutdowns occurred at least 45% of the congregation that fell into "at-risk" categories and acted appropriately to protect the health of the people we care for. It's been a lot of work to go from "flip the broadcast switch on Sunday" to "edit and publish up to 10 pre-recorded liturgy and music pieces per week, and then flip the broadcast switch on Sunday to multiple simultaneous platforms that intentionally do not work well together". Most of that work - every week for nine months - has been done on a volunteer basis by me and one other guy. Yesterday, in a surprise at the end of the service, one of our elders went off-script to surprise us with a gift of appreciation from the congregation. They had taken donations. It was humbling and uplifting and appreciated.

 

Plus a personal gift from my amazing friend. 100% accurate, except for the "If"

 

I'm fighting through the emotional issues caused by last week's attempted coup. @DarK_RaideR, thanks for hanging out and talking last week, it was badly needed. 

 

This morning I scheduled some self-care time for myself daily. We'll see how that goes.

 

 

Peace and love, my friends.

[DarK_RaideR]

12 hours ago, EricMN said:

I'm fighting through the emotional issues caused by last week's attempted coup. @DarK_RaideR, thanks for hanging out and talking last week, it was badly needed. 

Anytime. To be honest, it felt like a simple exchange of a few lines, not a proper hanging out, so I'm somewhat amazed it had such a profound impact. (I'm also implying I'm down for longer conversations if you'd like)

 

12 hours ago, EricMN said:

Last week, my son and his baby mama decided to change custody from a Sun-Thur split that coincides with my son's work schedule (he works three 12-hour shifts Fri-Sat-Sun overnight) to one-week-on, one-week-off.  This will be great for the boy - it's consistent and it will allow enough time for a routine to be established at both homes. However, this also means that every other weekend, we will need to help him with childcare because his job is 6pm to 6am and the boy is only going to let him sleep for so long since he just turned four last week. This means that the rest of the family here at home - mostly myself, my fiancé and my teenage daughter, who is Red Cross Babysittter certified - do the childcare for a couple days. The boy is in super-toddler mode, which involves a high degree of establishing agency and testing boundaries, so he spends a lot of time questioning authority and facing the consequences. He's also been reading for six months (he was reading my email one afternoon) and he just had his 4th birthday last week. He's super smart and a bit defiant. The next few months of weekends should be fun.

Surely I'm not the only one who sees the analogy here...

[Teros]

On 1/7/2021 at 1:09 PM, EricMN said:

I'm only 5ft10in

Hey don't knock the height - you got an inch on me. 😛

 

On 1/7/2021 at 1:09 PM, EricMN said:

Whatever gains in mental health I made over the Christmas holiday by taking an actual vacation went right out the door. My daughter got me to disconnect by asking me to take her out for driving practice.

 

Real talk - I don't even look at news anymore.  I don't go on facebook. I don't have internet stories and crap tied to my phone.  It's not a matter of not wanting to deal with the outside world: it's self-preservation.  All I can do is be the best I can with the time/resources that I have. Would knowing there are legless children dying in a 3rd world country and sniffing glue to stop their starvation pains change my life?  No.  But does knowing something like that fuck with my mental health and thereby jeopardize my self-betterment which would have then been able to help others?  YES.  I see it more as emotional strategy: I'm picking my fights/crusades to engage in, since I can't possible do all of them.

 

Also, glad to see you back here and rooting for you.

 

[EricMN]

Well, last week was kind of a mess. Between work - which is now almost impossible to disconnect from, since I work 10 feet from my bedroom - and ALL THE OTHER STUFF, I managed to not make it back here to update. Fail.

 

"Do, or do not" for the totalitarian oligarch.

 

On the positive side, I got to WRITE CODE LAST WEEK. This shouldn't be such a big deal except I'm a Sr. Software Engineer and the last time I had written any code was (checks Source Control) December 18. Instead I spend most of my time performing primary Systems Analyst duties for our major retail management platform supporting 600 stores; developing and managing project requirements for all new development work;  managing SCRUM across at least three concurrent projects at any given time;  acting as primary project manager for all of this; performing duties as the secondary SQL DBA, and conducting first-line support for any retail system that reports an incident.

 

Live look at my boss, reporting our team's project status while we are permanently down two positions that will not be backfilled.

 

Writing code is like speaking a second language: getting good at it (and staying good at it) requires repetition. The sporadic nature of my programming tasks has been going on for a year. I feel it's a wonder I remember how to write any code at all, but my stuff is the tightest, most readable, best-documented, most maintainable code in our shop. To brave a quote from a legend of my childhood, Muhammad Ali, "It's not bragging if you can back it up."

 

In the midst of this, I managed to maintain my nutritional habits. This has been as easy to fall back into as I expected. Daily averages - weighed on a kitchen scale and logged:

 

KCal: 1,616

Protein: 94g

Carbs: 129g

Fiber: 15g

Sodium: 2561mG

 

Down another three pounds since last Monday. Now the hard parts start.

 

I spent a lot of time last week when I was decompressing from another 60-hour work week thinking about how to change my current schedule and re-institute my old healthy habits. My exercise schedule from pre-Pandemic life was scheduled around my commute: leave the house, drive the kids to school, arrive at work, break for lunch (including a run in warm weather), head directly to the gym after leaving work at a set time to that I could make it to the gym. As my youngest, The Pink Princess - a high school sophomore - is immunocompromised, I am not willing to attend in-person gym classes until we as a society are no longer living in a pandemic AND both she and I have been reliably vaccinated, and this isn't likely to change soon. This means I am left to my own devices, and my environment is not currently set up for exercise, my garage is not heated, and with my arthritis, cold HURTS. 

 

 

Enough excuses. It's time to improvise - to do what I can until I can do what I am used to.

First of all:

 

 

That's right, it's a whiteboard, just like the good old days.

 

 

Right now it's blank. By the end of the day, it better not be.

 

Even if I am as busy as I am - and I am pretty busy - to protect my physical and mental health until we get to a point where I can responsibly exercise with others, I will intentionally break up my day, every hour, to do a couple sets of SOMETHING. I have a fitness tracker with an activity alarm. Once per hour it will go off. Once per hour I will do 20 squats, or 20 push-ups, or 20 lunges, or SOMETHING. I will record those SOMETHING on the whiteboard. I will take a photo of the whiteboard at the end of the day and I will post it here (probably the next morning, or Monday on a weekend).

 

It's hard for me to overcome inertia, but with a tangible reminder, this is a concrete goal I can accomplish.

 

On 1/12/2021 at 3:02 AM, DarK_RaideR said:

Anytime. To be honest, it felt like a simple exchange of a few lines, not a proper hanging out, so I'm somewhat amazed it had such a profound impact.

I get this. I've been on the other end enough times to finally understand that just being present for someone can make a big impact. Also, it's a big jarring when I think about how isolating pandemic protocols have been. I've really bunkered down. Thanks again.

 

On 1/15/2021 at 9:52 AM, Teros said:

Real talk - I don't even look at news anymore.  I don't go on facebook. I don't have internet stories and crap tied to my phone.  It's not a matter of not wanting to deal with the outside world: it's self-preservation.  All I can do is be the best I can with the time/resources that I have. Would knowing there are legless children dying in a 3rd world country and sniffing glue to stop their starvation pains change my life?  No.  But does knowing something like that fuck with my mental health and thereby jeopardize my self-betterment which would have then been able to help others?  YES.  I see it more as emotional strategy: I'm picking my fights/crusades to engage in, since I can't possible do all of them.

This is wise and I know these things, but after spending much of my summer actively supporting people who were displaced and abandoned in Minneapolis - I coordinated clothing, food and personal supply drives in our suburban community and personally sorted and delivered multiple combined tons to Minneapolis agencies and camps of displaced people - I allowed myself to get very connected. I need to find a balance between being informed and being overwhelmed. Thank you for this reminder.

 

I'm looking forward to a good week.

 

[DarK_RaideR]

3 hours ago, EricMN said:

Even if I am as busy as I am - and I am pretty busy - to protect my physical and mental health until we get to a point where I can responsibly exercise with others, I will intentionally break up my day, every hour, to do a couple sets of SOMETHING. I have a fitness tracker with an activity alarm. Once per hour it will go off. Once per hour I will do 20 squats, or 20 push-ups, or 20 lunges, or SOMETHING. I will record those SOMETHING on the whiteboard. I will take a photo of the whiteboard at the end of the day and I will post it here (probably the next morning, or Monday on a weekend).

I'm having similar issues with being unable to exercise outside the house and lacking any proper space to do much at home. It's taken me a while (read: a few months) but for this challenge I'm doing Darebee's Advanced 30 Days of HIIT. There's other programs too on the site, but I find that having a 30 day plan works better than cherry-picking random daily ones. There's also filters by focus, difficulty etc. I went for zero equipment and 4/5 difficulty, my plan in general is 4' sets (2 on, 2 rest) and the 3 available levels mean 3/5/7 sets so I know a workout will take me about 20' and can arrange some time for it throughout the day. It doesn't feel like much, but doing it every day adds up. Look it up and think about it, I believe it might be of assistance in your situation as well.

[EricMN]

Monday

 

Monday was a Good Day^TM. I was able to write more code (two working days in a row? Awesome, and confusing). I went to the Chiropractor and relaxed while watching Clone Wars with my fiancé in the evening. She's even getting into it. I was consistent with my nutrition. And we have a whiteboard for the first time in months.

 

 

Monday Nutrition Tracker:

 

KCal: 1756

Protein: 81g

Carbs: 129g

Fiber: 15g

Sodium: 3075mG

 

Spoiler

Revenge of the Whiteboard

 

This checks off the boxes for each of my daily Challenge Goals for the first time since... don't ask me when:

 

Healthy Active Habits: see whiteboard. It's a start.

Healthy Eating Habits: Right on my calorie goal. A little light on protein but otherwise pretty dang solid.

Healthy Emotional Habits: Was able to do work I liked. Saw the chiropractor. Did personal things I enjoyed with someone whose company I enjoyed in the evening. Did not obsess over the "It totally wasn't racism, bro" protests held across the country on the holiday honoring of of one of this country's most prominent civil rights pioneers.

 

Yep. It's a good start.

 

17 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

I'm having similar issues with being unable to exercise outside the house and lacking any proper space to do much at home. It's taken me a while (read: a few months) but for this challenge I'm doing Darebee's Advanced 30 Days of HIIT. There's other programs too on the site, but I find that having a 30 day plan works better than cherry-picking random daily ones. There's also filters by focus, difficulty etc. I went for zero equipment and 4/5 difficulty, my plan in general is 4' sets (2 on, 2 rest) and the 3 available levels mean 3/5/7 sets so I know a workout will take me about 20' and can arrange some time for it throughout the day. It doesn't feel like much, but doing it every day adds up. Look it up and think about it, I believe it might be of assistance in your situation as well.

 

That's a solid suggestion. Right now I'm starting with stationary stuff I can do in a 4ft by 6ft box, which is the area behind my desk. With a week to get up to speed, I should be able to find Prison Cell workouts that I won't avoid. 

 

[EricMN]

Tuesday

Tuesday was a Good Day^TM. I wrote more code, I filled up another whiteboard, I killed another day of nutrition, I had an intentionally relaxing evening. Let's see how it went, below.

 

 

Tuesday Nutrition Tracker:

 

KCal: 1627

Protein: 89g

Carbs: 126g

Fiber: 14g

Sodium: 2450mG

 

Whiteboard:

Spoiler

A bit light. I was busier and push-ups go slower than squats.

 

Healthy Active Habits: Whiteboard, Day 2.

Healthy Eating Habits: Need to work on more protein, but I'm happy.

Healthy Emotional Habits: I had another productive but not overly-long day at work. My high schoolers were productive and are caught up in school. I helped my fiancé install laundry and cleaning organizers in the laundry room. We watched more Clone Wars. I did not have to doom-scroll through endless true accounts of dystopian-level bullshit in order to catch up on the day's news. Take that, anxiety that sometimes keeps me up at night.

 

 

That's two Good Days^TM in a row.  Working to maintain the trend.

[EricMN]

Wednesday

Frequent updates. Focusing on daily goals. ~Meeting~ those goals. Trend? Let's examine and find out.

 

Wednesday Nutrition Tracker:

 

KCal: 1745

Protein: 89g

Carbs: 145g

Fiber: 20g

Sodium: 3283mG

 

Whiteboard:

Spoiler

One rep = both legs. I hate lunges.

 

Healthy Active Habits: Whiteboard, Day 3.

Healthy Eating Habits: Yesterday was sandwich-heavy (NF pulled pork sandwich for lunch and a double spicy Black Bean burger for dinner), but they were both on multi-grain breads, so at least there was some nutritional value to the carb overload.

Healthy Emotional Habits: Actually not bad. Didn't get bogged down over political crap during Inauguration Day - I'm happy to see someone that's not a Reality TV person who surrounds himself with fascists, white supremacists, and other grifters in the Whitehouse, but starting today, people need to hold this administration's feet to the fire on Truth and actual policy. Didn't get in a fight with my fiancé over stuff The Pink Princess does or does not do. Watched more Clone Wars. Generally had a good evening.

 

One day is an action. Two in a row could be a coincidence. Three appears to be a trend.

[EricMN]

Thursday

Thursday was busy and significantly less-conducive to positive results.  My adult son was called into work for additional unscheduled overnight shifts beginning Wednesday and we are his current childcare "solution". And while my Grandboy is generally awesome and demonstrably smarter than I am right now, he also doesn't sleep well when his schedule is disrupted (no dad at bedtime) and also talks in his sleep, thrashes like a fish on the floor of a bass boat, and tends to fall out of bed at night, so I had to put him to bed - which took forever Wednesday - and I evidently didn't sleep well on standby. This meant it was kind of a low-energy kind of day. Not a bad day, just off. I'm actively trying to ensure the weekend doesn't follow suit.

 

 

Still, lots of things went well.

 

Wednesday Nutrition Tracker:

 

KCal: 1642

Protein: 99g

Carbs: 104g

Fiber: 18g

Sodium: 2235mG

 

Whiteboard:

Spoiler

Man, that's light compared to the rest of the week.

 

Healthy Active Habits: Whiteboard, Day 4. Work was busy and I wasn't able to break every hour.

Healthy Eating Habits: Much closer to what I want to do every day. I want the protein numbers to get up over 100g daily but this was generally the right path.

Healthy Emotional Habits: School conferences were held yesterday. Teachers had Zoom links, parents joined the waiting room, and we were let in in the order in which we arrived. I had very, very positive school conferences for The Boy. His Senior Year is going very well - he'll probably never be an honor student, but he's really overcoming a lot of his own personal challenges as a high schooler with ASD living in a dystopian pandemic world. His teachers all say positive things about him. He's on track to graduate as long as he keeps up his current work ethic.
The Pink Princess has continued to excel this school year and I didn't even attend her conferences; I didn't think I needed to talk to them about a kid who has nearly all High A grades.
This made for a positive end to my workday.

I was overly-tired due to sleeping on Grandboy Patrol, and went to bed early.

 

This weekend looks promising. I'm going to get my resistance bands out and pick a mix of bodyweight Prison Cell workouts combined with some stationary resistance training and get workouts planned for next week. I'll also see if I can't get my office re-organized so there's less clutter to deal with.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Glad to hear the conferences went well and or were unneeded.

[T2sarahconnor]

Nice to see I am not the only one who has decided to return.  I am here to support your reboot to your Ninja Warrior greatness.  

[Jarric]

Good work this week man - everything's so much harder when you're lacking sleep, but you've managed to do well despite that.

[EricMN]

Weekend Update

 

We were super productive on Saturday with errands. It snowed - we got about five inches total, but fluffy, not the heavy wet stuff - and I had to shovel what the plow left at the end of my driveway Sunday.  

 

I felt VERY snacky on Sunday and resisted going off the rails by drinking water and chewing gum. For a treat dinner, I had fish tacos delivered from a local joint. No real fitnessing except for snow shoveling and the obligatory "I didn't work out for six years to not be able to bring in all the groceries at once" moment. I didn't get my office re-organized, but I did buy another display cabinet and once it's put in place tonight I'll take pictures so y'all can see what I'm doing here.

 

Nutrition stayed on point. I'm down nearly another three pounds. I'm pretty happy with how this is going.

 

Daily averages:

KCal: 1632

Protein: 83g

Carbs: 135g

 

Friday's whiteboard:

Spoiler

 

We made it to Season 6 of Clone wars. My fiancé is invested. She was pretty surprised by the turn of events.

Pretty not okay with this.

We had a HUGE technical malfunction in our broadcasting software due to the latest Windows update from this past week that wiped out some of our custom virtual audio drivers. We recovered with less than three minutes before we were due to go live. We had an alternate plan in place if things didn't work out and everything would have been fine. I didn't even stress. This is the best I've felt emotionally in a while.

 

 

On 1/22/2021 at 11:20 AM, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Glad to hear the conferences went well and or were unneeded.

Thanks. This year has been light-years different than the past. We hired tutors for the kids this year. I know most parents can't afford this kind of thing and ARE the tutors. I know this is really stressful for everyone and we know we're blessed. We wouldn't be able to do this, either, if the kids weren't receiving survivor benefits from their mom's passing.

 

On 1/22/2021 at 12:00 PM, T2sarahconnor said:

Nice to see I am not the only one who has decided to return.  I am here to support your reboot to your Ninja Warrior greatness.  

Nice to see you. We'll see how much Ninja Warrior-ing I do as we go forward. Arthritis is not my friend and most of that requires more grip strength than I may be able to maintain. I'm just glad I have this place to help me stay accountable and healthy.

 

On 1/23/2021 at 3:07 AM, Jarric said:

Good work this week man - everything's so much harder when you're lacking sleep, but you've managed to do well despite that.

Thanks. We know it's going to be an adjustment; hopefully the boy will start getting used to the change in schedule. When he climbs in bed with us it's like sleeping with a fish, thrashing on the deck of a boat.

 

[DarK_RaideR]

1 hour ago, EricMN said:

I didn't even stress. This is the best I've felt emotionally in a while.

Huge win right there. So happy for you.

[Teros]

 

On 1/25/2021 at 3:24 PM, DarK_RaideR said:

Huge win right there. So happy for you.

/agreed   That's awesome to hear, man.