[The Most Loathed] learns....slowly

[mightstone2k]

 

I'm always astonished when people are freaked out that I can eat 5 eggs in a sitting easily (~500-600 calories).  Likewise, I'm always amazed people consider 2 eggs and 2 pieces of toast (~350 calories) a complete breakfast.

Truth. So many people are astonished by the sheer amount of food I eat. The half chicken is the only one that I could justifiably see raising some eyebrows, but I am somewhat biased in the matter. #beastmode

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[The Most Loathed]

12 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

That's part of  the reason I track even when I'm on maintenance. I end up undereating, and then suddenly am starved and just eat whatever food I can find.  I am o

I think you're on to something. I'm too lazy to want to do that but I think there's value in it.

 

Tuesday I taught TRX class. I made them finish with burpees. I don't like to bring burpees to class but I figured it was time

Wednesday I also made them finish with burpees. I had two new ladies, both overweight but one with a bigger frame and one with a smaller frame. They both referenced playing sports in college, the larger framed one was tall so I assume basketball but don't know. The larger framed one hung in real well, the smaller one was struggling throughout class.

I told one of my regulars that I'm leaving and he said he might leave the gym too. On one hand I'd prefer if he didn't leave on my account, on the other, he's not getting what he wants from a gym there. He wants to lift and do challenging circuits. That's not really their thing.

Today I put my food into MFP and am 82 calories over. I'll live with it. Big hitters for the day were that I remembered to include some sausage in my breakfast and we're having lamb steaks tonight which at surprisingly calorically dense. I had thought about stopping by the liquor store to buy a four pack of beer, to have one each night but it no longer fits in my food plans for the the next couple days so maybe I'll buy one for the weekend or something. We'll see. 

 

Cleaned up my phone a bit, removing any games. I'm trying to spend less time just looking at it because I don't have other specific plans.

 

I had pretty much no work I could do yesterday so I spent most of my work day learning Python. Time well spent. 

 

Today is an off day for training

[Elastigirl]

How much longer are you teaching at the gym? I don't worry about hitting it exactly with MFP, some days I"m a bit over, some a bit under.

 

I've been doing these mobility feet exercises from GMB, and thought they might help your feet https://gmb.io/feet/

[The Most Loathed]

15 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

How much longer are you teaching at the gym? I don't worry about hitting it exactly with MFP, some days I"m a bit over, some a bit under.

 

I've been doing these mobility feet exercises from GMB, and thought they might help your feet https://gmb.io/feet/

Next week should be it. I asked one of the full time trainers how they are doing on finding someone to cover my classes and she said that they think that they have a lead. I'm undecided what to do if I get to the end of next week and they have nothing. 1/2 of me and all of Laura says  that it's their problem and just walk but half of me says that it wouldn't kill me to give them two more weeks just to be a good sport about it.

 

I like the mobility set. I do and have my classes do a few ankle circles before each workout but nothing some detailed as all that. I'm planning on working out tonight and was going to get some kind of mobility work in there. Maybe it'll be the Starrett prescription, maybe it'll be this.

 

Food yesterday was a couple hundred calories over MFPs guideline but I was quite hungry at a couple different times so I figure real hunger is a sign I'm in a deficit. Laura didn't feel like having our planned lab steaks for supper so I made her an egg sandwich but went ahead with my 3/4 lb of a lamb steak. It was delicious.

 

Today I tried something I've been thinking about for my breakfasts. My smoothies have always had lemon, ginger, some vitamins, a probiotic, protein powder and usually MCT powder in them. I kept the protein and MCT primarily for consistency. Today I dropped the powders and did all the other stuff and man did that change the game. It was thinner, more of a water with some chunks in it. The lemon and ginger came through strongly as tart and spicy respectively, It was intense. I'm undecided on whether I will stick with this formula or not.

 

Today I agreed to go to lunch with coworkers. I'm taking my lunch too and just planning to grab something small with them. I'm kind of hoping to make good on Sloth's taco truck

 

Tonight I plan to workout (as mentioned above). 

 

PSA: for my challenge doing friends, I know it's rollover time, make sure you post a link in your old challenge. EG did this and I'm already following her. I think I lost a couple people rolling to this last challenge so I'm going to go seek you guys out in the coming days. 

[The Most Loathed]

Friday

 

I haven't worn a heart rate monitor wile I lift kettlebells in  a long time but I thought I'd try it out. What I learned is that my heart rate climbs much higher, much faster than I thought but I do seem to recover pretty well. Looking at this makes me thing that I really need to focus on cardio over the next few months and flatten it out. It also suggests that I deal wit the discomfort of being close to my max better than I thought I did.

What you see above

the first climb from 110 - 130 is my warm up, swing and presses with 20kg and 24 kg. The first two shorter humps (right around 10:00) are my warm up sets of LC (long cycle) with 20 kg and 24 kg for ten reps each. The next four humps are my four sets of 25 LC with 20 kg. That last plateau, the one almost entirely in the 90% range, is One Arm LC with a 24 kg bell, 10 RPM, switch hands every minute.

I wrapped up working through the ankle mobility video that @Elastigirl shared from GMB.

Friday I wrote my first toy program in Python. All it does is ask for a user to put in two integers and find all the primes between them. I shared it with the internet and was surprised but reminded how my brain just doesn't work like many of my peers. They immediately hopped on my admittedly crude solution to the prime number problem. They proposed increased efficiencies that, frankly, don't care about. I was more just trying to get the basics of writing a program down. Being someone who has tried to deal with end users I was way more worried about making sure the user didn't enter garbage and if they did, that I cleaned it up for them. I got a little helpful feedback but a lot was unhelpful or just plain incorrect. It was a good exercise regardless. I need to pick a new toy program to create for next week.

Also, I voted early on Friday. I have cast my ballot for the presidential election and I'm happy about that. Minnesota law actually allows me to revote between now andthe election with my subsequent ballot(s) replacing previous.

 

Saturday was TRX class. I had one of the students approach me about doing personal training. I passed because I'm leaving the studio. We talked a further regardless and she asked for my "philosophy" on strength training, which could literally fill a small book if I cared to pontificate. I to a blind shot at what I thought she meant and said that I think the average person should strength train half an hour three times a week. It's a low bar that most people can achieve and see good results. It won't make them super strong but it's enough to limit strength loss with age and bone density loss. She went on to show that she had that covered because she does TRX once a week and Pilates twice. I had to stop her there with "Pilates is not strength training". That stopped her cold. She really disagreed.

We went on to discuss it and I pointed out that I like and respect Pilates but that doesn't mean it's strength. She pointed out that Pilates has some movements that are really hard and I agreed. I explained that if you're not exerting more force on your body that you can just by standing and walking, it's not strength training to me. You need resistance in the form of band an weights, I'd even allow jumping or sprinting as part of a strength program but others could fairly quibble. She really did not agree. Maybe it's for the best that I had already turned her down for training.

 

Today is Sunday and I'm thinking I'll try and get downstairs and row for the first time in a long time. Time to get started on that cardio. I'll likely do a little kettlebell work after my cardio work but maybe more in a fitness style than competition style. 

 

Tomorrow is Monday. I had planned on watching the presidential debates but my old boardgaming partner and I are going to meet for fish and beer at Sea Salt instead. I'll catch the debates on YouTube later. We're both hoping to get back to gaming this month. Probably only once every couple weeks but still.

 

My Saturday classes are done. I'm still on the hook for Tuesday and Wednesday this week. I'd like this week to be the last one but as I mentioned before, if they haven't found anyone yet I'm tempted to give them two more weeks then a hard cut off. I feel like six weeks is very generous. 

 

My book project is going really well. I finished another chapter last night. I'm still in the books I've read before and I know what's coming and I'm half excited half wishing I could skip it. A couple of the major characters become avatars of gods and are super bad ass while one who is super heroic gets completely double crossed and gets a fate worse than (but including) death. This section of the book(s) is super confusing because a bunch of new characters are picked up that in my mind end up overlapping with characters from the first book , only some of whom are in this one. Also, as much as it seems like there is a lot going on in the first book, a lot of that is laying the groundwork for a whole new level of whaaaaaa in this book. People suddenly start hopping from dimension to dimension, there's two huge running battles, one is mostly magical and one is mostly martial. Just  a lot of stuff. Still a good book and as I recall, the next book is way more fluid, this is the uphill climb though.

[The Most Loathed]

Cardio the first

30 minutes of rower keeping my HR in the green zone on my HR monitor, which is basically 70% to 80% , for almost all of it. Then I did some swings with the 16 bell, then some wall kick ups.

After turning the HR monitor off I worked through some of the foot stuff in desk bound and played around with Prescription 1, which didn't really do a lot for me. Finally I busted out Headspace for the first time in ages and did a ten minute session. Hopefully I can get back to more of that. 

Food prep for today is ongoing but I have 200 g of sweet potatoes and latter I will be shredding some pork to, should be several hundred grams as well. 

[Elastigirl]

Is the rower a home machine or a gym one? We are thinking of buyig one for home. Problem is we don't want to spend a ton of money.  Mainly because  both me and my husband think a rowing machine sounds like a super cool workout, we've never really done one consistently. So we don't want to spend $$$. Anyway I saw some  on Amazon for $400 and less and am thinking of that option. Then, if we like it, we would upgrade to one of the better ones. What is your opinion?

[The Most Loathed]

1 hour ago, Elastigirl said:

Is the rower a home machine or a gym one? We are thinking of buyig one for home. Problem is we don't want to spend a ton of money.  Mainly because  both me and my husband think a rowing machine sounds like a super cool workout, we've never really done one consistently. So we don't want to spend $$$. Anyway I saw some  on Amazon for $400 and less and am thinking of that option. Then, if we like it, we would upgrade to one of the better ones. What is your opinion?

It's our home one. I have never found a good second-best to Concept II.  We bought ours new, for $1,200 which I believe is what you are trying to avoid. I will say I don't regret spending that money, we've gotten kilometers upon kilometers out of our with no maintenance. 

 

My parents got one on Craigslist that is a generation or two older than ours and works just as well. I think the spent $400. If you aren't in urgent need that is probably your best arrangement.

 

I started using a concept 2 back in Baltimore just for warm ups and active recovery because they had three at one of the gyms I went to and the other option was treadmills. For me it gives me a lot of options for different paces of low impact work. It can be kind of hard on the hands but the legs and back seem to take no beating. The sliding on the seat can chafe which gets better with time but it's like running, Kettlebell swings and do on, it sucks at first.

 

Im planning to use it more this winter than I have the last couple. I've historically tried to do a kilometer or two as fast as I can. I will try to stick to cardio and get at least a couple hours a week. I want to do a test this week or next to see how fast I can do 10 km sticking below 80% HR and see if I could improve that time by the end of the winter.

[Elastigirl]

Thanks. I may try Craigslist and see what I can find. We'd kind of like it  before the weather gets bad though. 

[LouCarJo]

Slightly jealous of the rower too!  I have a good set-up at home for weights and KBs but no cardio stuff.  I have a bike and really ought to get it out more often than I do to get some LSD cardio in.  I don't have the excuse of super cold weather!  And I also have miles of an off-road bike/pedestrian track right on my doorstep.  I'm now resolving to use it on Wednesday morning this week when I'm working from home and hence will save time otherwise used for commuting!

[The Most Loathed]

On 9/26/2016 at 5:04 AM, LouCarJo said:

Slightly jealous of the rower too!  I have a good set-up at home for weights and KBs but no cardio stuff.  I have a bike and really ought to get it out more often than I do to get some LSD cardio in.  I don't have the excuse of super cold weather!  And I also have miles of an off-road bike/pedestrian track right on my doorstep.  I'm now resolving to use it on Wednesday morning this week when I'm working from home and hence will save time otherwise used for commuting!

I totally feel you on not taking advantage of all the tools at my disposal. The Twin Cities has a paved walking/running/biking loop that is visible from my front yard and circles a major portion of the city, a really attractive portion. I don't get out on it nearly enough. 

 

Monday

no training, back to Sea Salt for what may be my last trip of 2016.

 

As I assumed would happen, I got an email from the gym, they don't have anyone to take my classes, could I please give them more time. I was 75% sure this would happen, only less than 100% because I had heard a rumor that they might have someone. I gave them two weeks. I don't currently plan on offering another extension. I feel like six weeks is generous. I also feel like they need to reassess their schedule more holistically. As people have learned I'm leaving they've opened up about their frustrations and one major one is that there are no consistent strength type classes a person can go to throughout the week, they just seem randomly dropped in the schedule.

You might find this surprising but I don't know that the answer if more strength classes either. They don't have a staff that is interested in strength, they have a total of one instructor other than me teaching all of those kinds of classes and she works something like six hours, five days a week, during business hours. This is not their wheelhouse. I think getting a referral program going with strength gyms would be hugely beneficial. It sounded like they were going to do one better and get and instructor exchange going but that seems to have petered out.

 

I watched most of the debates. I turned it off when Laura got back from yoga. Clinton started out where I think she needed to, being the statesmen of the two. She got baited into a couple inelegant exchanges but pulled herself back. It was interesting to watch her go fishing on why Trump hasn't released his returns and doubly interesting to see her seemingly find her target in the process. Trump stated things that are obvious contradictions to things he's said in the past so certain parts of the media are already having a field day with this. I was really surprised when Lester Holt, the moderator, actually called him out on endorsing policies that have been ruled unconstitutional. It was mostly what one would expect. I would imagine that Clinton will go back and watch and rewatch and you'll see her more aggressive on policy and producing more sound bites in the next debate. 

 

I had a friend who came out to me as a cross dresser. We've been friends several years but not like best-best friends. According to him it's something he only started recently and he's definitely still keeping it secret from most people, which I can totally understand. It's largely a social thing for him, I think he likes having this second character of himself that he can make in whatever image. 

I've had a couple people come out to me in a kind of formal way for a couple different things in my life. I'm of the camp that more people should pursue whatever makes them feel good so I'm a pretty safe person for that kind of thing. That said, I'm always torn between "I should just kind of nod and go on" and "ok, this is really interesting tell me all about it". I figure neither is quite right. We talked about it for a bit but I could also tell when he asked about teas that I like that he was over it so off we went. 

 

Tuesday

Work from home day. Work is super boring right now so I doubt I'll get a ton actually done. I'm still waiting for a database to happen. Supposedly  one is right around the corner but it's been four months so you can imagine how I'm getting a little cynical about that. I've been taking advantage of the time to learn Python. I found a website that posts challenges and I've been working through their archive of easy challenges, I did two yesterday and may do one more today. 

I'm planning to take an hour at lunch to row and do a little other work.

I teach TRX tonight. I currently have three people signed up, a regular, one pseudo regular and one that I don't enjoy teaching because she tends to show up late and it's just really hard to get a read on how she's doing in class. The pseudo-regular is one of the twenty-somethings I taught this summer who would always show up with her friend and the first few times they would gripe about crippling DOMS the rest of the week. This one has kept coming and the complaints have gone away, her friend has stopped coming to any classes at all.

[LouCarJo]

3 hours ago, The Most Loathed said:

I teach TRX tonight. I currently have three people signed up, a regular, one pseudo regular and one that I don't enjoy teaching because she tends to show up late and it's just really hard to get a read on how she's doing in class. The pseudo-regular is one of the twenty-somethings I taught this summer who would always show up with her friend and the first few times they would gripe about crippling DOMS the rest of the week. This one has kept coming and the complaints have gone away, her friend has stopped coming to any classes at all.

A nice little win wrapped up in amongst all that ;-)

[The Most Loathed]

1 hour ago, LouCarJo said:

A nice little win wrapped up in amongst all that ;-)

truth. There are two of those people, people who started with me while I was there and have come regularly and have gotten a whole lot more fit. I should mention that they take classes from other people who aren't me. They aren't my disciple or anything, I'm just happy to have participated and to see them succeed.

 

Got in my noon workout, which makes me happy. I decided to test myself in trying to row 10km while sticking to to 70-80% of my max HR (green zone)

I followed it up by seeing what I could do in terms of 16kg snatches and stick to the same HR window, 14 then I had to set it down. I did five rounds of 10/10 to follow which also stayed in the green zone. I attempted one round of 20lb x 2 thruster but pretty much jumped straight towards the yellow zone,.

 

Two notes that came out of this session

1. I'm not going to call it a goal because I don't feel like I have any control over it but something I'm hoping to see if I am consistent with my cardio over the coming months is this same workout completed in 42:00 or less. To do that, my heart has to let me hold a 2:12 /500 m average pace, my current average is 2:14. Two seconds isn't alot until you think about the face that I have to do it 20 times in a 10 km workout. 

2. I'm going to steal the color scale for the polar heart rate monitor to describe my days. I'm going to use this to try and frame my weeks. Trying for a white day, a blue day, two to three green days, no yellow days and one to two red days (if you're couning that 5-7 and that's fine). The idea behind this will be to reinforce more cardio as my intent over the winter. It'll be a multi-month experiement to see if I can improve my heart health.

  white - no exertion, standing, walking, light house work kind of stuff

  blue - light exertion, yard work, moving furniture, long or weighted walk

  green - cardio exertion, a row, a run, rucking

  yellow - intense "cardio", running or rowing hard but easy relative to my usual gym work

  red - gym work, long cycle, snatches in volume, that kind of thing

[Elastigirl]

I think 6 weeks is plenty of time to give the gym. I watched the debates too. I was kind of hoping I would actually feel inclined to vote for one of them, but no, I decided that I still don't really like either of them

My fitbit has activity levels color coded too. You don't get anything for sedentary, yellow for low level like walking, orange for  running in the cardioi zone, and red for intense. That's part of why I started running. I do pretty good on getting moderate activity stuff like walking, but swings don't really get much above 120, and then they go right back down. They used to up my HR more, so I guess I'm better conditioned. I haven't really done a full out  push it hard swing sessions since I returned to it after the rings though. Next week, when my toe is better, I'm planning to see if I can push the swings harder and up the HR that way.

[The Most Loathed]

09/27/2016

I got an email not long before class that I was to announce to the class that this would be the last TRX class at this time. So, I guess I won't be teaching that class for the next two weeks as planned, which I'm ok with. I ended up with three people in class. One of them was quite outgoing about how frustrated she is that they have now canceled both of the TRX classes she could attend. I can appreciate her frustration, there is now an 11 am and 2 pm class, once each per week. I'm not sure if they're looking to retire TRX but it seems like they might.

Class itself was fine. Everyone had been to at least a couple of my classes and had good form. It was as good as this class can be. I enjoyed it. It made me briefly wonder, did I chose wrong. Nope. I'd rather be doing my own thing even during the best possible class. 

 

I got home and read a bit and that was the end of my night. I'm just shy of the halfway point on book 2, about 1,000 pages into the series. Wikipedia tells me I'm about 9% done with the total series (not counting prequels). 

[The Most Loathed]

09/28/2016

Another frustrating and seemingly pointless day at work. I've done nothing to help my company directly this week. I've spent 100% of my time either working on learning Python, wasting time or trying to get two IT people to finish a ticket I started in June. They are either assholes or incompetent. I can't say which but I'm actually leaning to the later. They will say something like, I need to know what ID you are using to access this thing. I will give them my ID and they'll say that's not it. I'll ask a peer who works more on this thing (because it's not my primary area) and he'll say that is my ID but maybe they mean this other thing. They'll say no, that's not it (with no clarification on what it is). I'll ask where I could find out what it is and they just get quiet. Every interact requires four emails where one should be adequate and I have to wade through their misuses of words and wait three days for them on each step.... ok I'm done...no I'm not...I want to bitch some more but I'll spare you and put it in a spoiler tag.

 

Oh, also, there will be some swearing (including f-bombs) behind the tag

warning: the following is a spoiled little boy whining about a perfectly good situation because it's not to his liking.

 

You have been warned

 

Let me begin by admitting a mistake. It was a mistake to leave my job, at Target, a little over a year ago. It was a mistake that I tried to convince myself was not a mistake for some time but I'm well past that point now. They sold off the pharmacy and I really felt like I wanted to stay with healthcare. I was trying to give myself a direction and go in it. 

 

So I tried healthcare. There one major problem: Ego. I

As an old school institution you get a lot of people who have been in their jobs for a long time and think that they are in charge not because of competency but just because of time. Because they have no real authority, their one tactic is to just be a jerk to people. This was the biggest thing I learned in going back to a hospital, those people, a lot of them not all, are assholes, self righteous assholes. A business approach of just wanting to solve the problems is not what most of them want, despite what they will say. What they want is their solution, usually with their name on it. 

 

This extends to doctors and nurses, who I believe really want to do their best for each and every patient. Unfortunately, they are absolutely certain that what they think is what is best. There are a huge number of studies that show that a decision tree and a little bit of statistical analysis can make patient treatment better, cheaper and faster. Nurses and doctors, however, feel marginalized by this so they want to make the decisions. This relegates people who want to help them make those decisions to just printing data to a screen, which isn't helpful.

 

So, between working with some of the most toxic people I have ever worked with and realizing that the work I came for was not there, I left. I don't regret that but it was then that I really started to wonder about leaving Target. I told myself that I was unhappy at Target and I was just forgetting why I needed to leave. So I went looking elsewhere.

 

Now I'm at US Bank as a "database guru". There is one glaring problem, no databases. Seriously, I've seen one but it hasn't been relevant to my work.If you're thinking "what about the databases they always talk about on the news?" I have heard about those too, from the news. This is going to seem like an academic difference and to some degree it is but so far, I have only seen mainframes, not databases.

 

The issue here is that mainframes use an entirely different process to extract and process data, for one thing. For two, are you fucking kidding me, mainframes? What the fuck is this 1960? I could and ,if I stay, will learn Focus, which is a program used to extract mainframe data. I can even do a lot of the same tricks with mainframe as I do with SQL and other tools. The mainframes though are a symptom. The reason they are using mainframes is not because they are better than a database in anyway, they are universally worse in my opinion. They are using them because it's not important to them to do it well. 

 

I want to say, I have seen them do nothing unsavory. The team I'm on exists to prevent any unsavory practices from cropping up, exactly like the recent Wells Fargo debit card scandal. It's the right thing to want to do. However, if their policy wasn't to keep data buried in archaic forms and their security policy to make it as hard as possible to query, we wouldn't need hundreds of people to work on this. By the way, it may sound like hyperbole to say that their security policy is to make it as hard as possible to access/query but it's not. I have been told on multiple occasions that they way they keep their data secure is to not let anyone query it. That is not a security policy in any mature organization.

 

So, I've spent four months in this job tracking down data sources only to find one of two cases in almost every case:

1. "they don't let anyone access it" to keep secure, which is insane

2. it's on a mainframe.

So why am I here as a database guy? The only SQL I've seen was one of my team members who uses Microsoft Access to throw his mainframe outputs into and he decided to do a little processing there. In a minute I showed him why it was misbehaving.

 

So I'm annoyed and I'm whiny. I've started talking to the managers in my old team back a Target. No move is imminent but I've made it clear that I'm ready to come back. The problem I have created for myself is that when I was already there, they would have happily trained me up on new stuff (since pharmacy went away). By leaving I made myself an outsider who has to compete against other outsiders to get a gig. 

 

ok, now I'm done bitching for now. I kind of just needed to work that out. I'm mostly mad at myself and really sick of the very incompetent IT folks here.

 

 

I made myself get a little hungry yesterday, ok a lot. I did something I haven't done in a long time, I came out the other side. I started getting hungry around 10 but I held off and got really hungry around 11. I held off longer and about 1 pm the hunger went away but there was a very slight light headedness. I wasn't light headed like I was going to fall over, just a light, aloofness. That's when I figured it was time to eat.

 

I took a look at the gym schedule for last night, I had two people signed up. I looked at next week and noticed that I was off the schedule. Ok. So I emailed to confirm and give my well wishes. Got confirmation back, I'm all done there. I'm good with that. I had talked about starting a new thread at this point but I think I'm just going to leave it. If I get to 100 pages or get to a point where I can no longer edit my first posts for some reason, I'll probably close this out but I'm good for now.

 

So, it's time to get down to my own business...more on that later

 

Class was decent. I had a new guy and a lady that I've had a few times. I like her well enough and she works hard. She like to talk during our warm up which is fine but I have to make sure I keep the warm up moving along which occasionally means interrupting her. The guy is new to the gym, 20-something, very fit looking. He's my first person to claim he was going to puke during the workout. It's a workout I've used at least a half dozen times and it's tough for a lot of folks because I pack a bunch of volume in the first half of the class but no one's fully dropped out or said they were going to puke.

 

It was pretty clear that he was trying to go as hard as possible and just pushed too hard. I mentioned it to him, that we was just pushing himself to the top of his capacity and that he didn't need to do that all the time (boy do I feel like a hypocrite). He said that it "just happens" to him and that his coach told him that "it happens to a lot of athletes". My plan to work on my own aerobic capacity just sounds better and better.

 

09/29/2016

It's supposedly Nation Coffee Day, which couldn't sound more made up. So I went and got my current favorite coffee, Blackeye Nitro Cold Brew. Still good. It makes me think about making cold brew for myself and bringing it to work. Still thinking but that might happen as early as next week.

 

Tonight is off. Laura is making supper tonight which I'm excited about. She's been doing that more the last couple weeks and I'm super happy that she is. Tonight is something with chicken thighs, I think she's doing a braise. Damn, now I'm hungry.

 

Plan for the rest of the week

Thursday - off, dinner is chicken (white day)

Friday - kettlebell work, dinner is loaded sweet potato skins (red day)

Saturday - yard work but probably no workout, food TBD (blue day)

Sunday - cardio, food TBD (green day)

 

Planning broadly for the next couple weeks (note I'm leaving a little slack in each week)

10/3 - Two red, two green, parents visiting over the weekend so food and workouts will be blown up

10/10 - two red, three green, one white

10/17 - two red, three green, one white

10/24 - two red, three green, one white

 

Training - Red days will feature kettlebell work, long cycle primarily. I also want to have some squats in those workouts. Green days will feature the rower but I would like to play with walk/run. I know that my HR shoots into yellow too fast to just run. Green and white days will feature some mobility work. I've been doing the deskbound foot prescription so far but that will expand.

 

Food and weight - currently 217 (ugh). bodyweight will be measured at night, right before bed. Aiming or 2,000 calories per day, close to 50% fat, 25% protein and carbs. I'll reassess in a couple weeks and see if I want to adjust. I don't care as much about the exact weight but I want to get more comfortable in my jeans which are feeling really tight as I dust them off for the fall. How the jeans feel supersedes weight but weight is there as a guide.I will use MyFitnessPal to track calories and macros. I will try and do 5 days a week.

 

Other
Reading - still reading Malazan Book of the Fallen, I'll finish book 2 by the end of October and move into book 3.

Writing

Python - 2+ exercises per week

Penmanship - 2+ penpal letters per week. keep writing everyday. sticking with print and cursive. I'm going to add italics eventually but not yet.

Family

work with Clementine 1hr+ per week. (dog training)

I'd love some suggestions on something to make a weekly goal/project that is spousal improvement, meaning improve me as a spouse, not me trying to force my spouse to change. I'm coming up with blanks on something I could put here which is probably a sign that something needs to go here.

House

We need to repaint the living room in October

 

ok, that was a big data dump. Done for now.

 

 

 

[Elastigirl]

Sorry about the job situation. Man, that is just crazy stuff. Our security is that no one can access it ?! What the ? Don't beat yourself up over the move from Target. The way I remember it is Target was changing everything and had downsized so you were really unsure what your job was going to be like and didn't think you were going to like working there. So you put out some job apps to see what was out there, and you got some offers. There was no way you could have had a crystal ball to look into the future to see what exactly each job would be like (unfortunately) You went with what you thought was best at the time

 

 

[Sloth the Enduring]

The real world makes no sense to me, good luck figuring out your corner of it.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[LouCarJo]

17 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

Sorry about the job situation. Man, that is just crazy stuff. Our security is that no one can access it ?! What the ? Don't beat yourself up over the move from Target. The way I remember it is Target was changing everything and had downsized so you were really unsure what your job was going to be like and didn't think you were going to like working there. So you put out some job apps to see what was out there, and you got some offers. There was no way you could have had a crystal ball to look into the future to see what exactly each job would be like (unfortunately) You went with what you thought was best at the time

 

 

This was my thought too: you couldn't have predicted what would come out of the decision to leave, and who knows what you would be thinking now had you stayed.  You can only deal with where you are now (which is precisely what it sounds as though you're doing :-)).

[The Most Loathed]

2 hours ago, LouCarJo said:

This was my thought too: you couldn't have predicted what would come out of the decision to leave, and who knows what you would be thinking now had you stayed.  You can only deal with where you are now (which is precisely what it sounds as though you're doing :-)).

 

20 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

...The way I remember it is Target was changing everything and had downsized so you were really unsure what your job was going to be like and didn't think you were going to like working there. So you put out some job apps to see what was out there, and you got some offers. There was no way you could have had a crystal ball to look into the future to see what exactly each job would be like (unfortunately) You went with what you thought was best at the time

 

I tell myself these same things. Sometimes it's a poor comfort. I feel like the guy who had a good girlfriend but wanted to "see what else is out there" only to realize that she was The One but now she's the The One for someone else. In other news, my old Target manager has passed my name on to the BI recruiter there and she emailed me yesterday, so we're in a conversation. She has not open spots not but I have an open invite to remind her of my existence. I'll take that as a win. In the mean time, try to be productive in whatever ways I can.

 

Yesterday was an off day. It was nice. Laura made a chicken thigh braise with a creamy mustard sauce and leeks for supper. It was a new recipe and she sucks at doing recipes so it didn't come out as desired but I enjoyed it. She sucks are recipes but shes really good at variants. We're already talking about when she'll take a crack at making a variant and that, I'm sure will be delicious.

Recipes are one way in which we are very different cooks. I can follow a recipe pretty well and have enough knowledge to know when something needs to be tweaked, like cook time, wet or dryness and so on. I'm not good if you just set ingredients in front of me and tell me to go. Laura doesn't read the entire recipe and is constantly surprised by things in it and turns her brain off with regard to minor tweaks. If, however, you give her a handful of ingredients, she can almost always produce something absolutely worth it. There have been times where I have despaired because we couldn't possibly have the right stuff in the house to make anything for supper. She goes to work and cranks out something really great. 

So, while I say she sucks are following a recipe, she absolutely has a great skill set. It's probably best that we're balanced in this way but I'll admit to coveting her skillset sometimes

 

My scale hates me. I hate my scale. It said 218 last night and I wanted to kick it. 

 

According to MyFitnessPal I am running a pretty severe deficit. My physiology agrees. I made myself wait until 1 pm to eat my lunch, I was hungry again by 2. The hunger was much easier on day 2 than day 1. Although I'm pretty sure it contributed to this:

Yesterday I looked down and the clock and realized it was time to go in an hours, my work day was almost over. I was doing a new Python exercise so I wanted to wrap that up. Just as time to leave to catch my preferred train came, I uploaded my exercise and it checked out. So I shut down and headed out. The train was sparsely populated but that happens. I got home, fed and walked the dogs and as I got into the house my wife texted that she's leaving work...that's weird, we leave work at the same time. 

I had left an hour early. Totally unintentionally. I think I was distracted by being hungry again and working on the project. For whatever reason, my brain saw 2:55 and knew I needed to get downstairs to get the 4:00 train.

ah well.

 

According to MFP, if I stay on plan, I will consume 1,738 calories today, 21% carb, 38% fat, 21% protein.

I bought a 5ish pound pork shoulder for this week. I may try to get a little more next week or maybe a chicken thigh or two to fortify my diet each day. 

 

I've been practicing my cursive. Here's my current writing styles with two different pens (both TWSBI ECO but one is a Fine nib and one is 1.1 stub)

I'm getting increasingly comfortable with cursive and it's becoming as fast as my print. When I'm just writing a page of text I tend to prefer cursive but  prefer print for lists and short notes. I need to spend some time thinking about/working on my 'z', 'f' and I'm not totally in love with my 'b'.

 

Today I tried an experiment, homemade, cold brewed coffee. Yesterday I bought  $4 cold brew and I enjoyed it (as I do) but as I was drinking it I began to ask myself why I wasn't just doing this myself. So, last night I bought some cheesecloth, I filled a lever-latch mason jar with water, put two layers of cheese cloth over the top then pressed a little pocket into the water. I put in four scoops of grounds (we have course grounds because we use a french press) and latched it shut with the lid holding the cheese cloth in place. This morning I had a nice medium-dark brew which I poured into my wife's Klean Kanteen that she doesn't use. It says it's 800 ml and I'd say it was 4/5 full. 

So far, so good. I haven't made cold brew in a long time and it was different grounds back then. I used what I had on hand which was a super dark bean. It's unbelievably smooth with absolutely no bitterness. I'm maybe halfway through it and it think it's hitting me so there must have been more caffeine extracted than usual. I can usually drink a french press of this size by myself and not really notice it. That's not a bad thing. I'll take a time out to drink my bottle of water (I keep a 750 ml camelback bottle at my desk) then finish the coffee. We'll see if it screws with my sleep or not. 

 

Tonight is a red day. I'm definitely doing long cycle. I'm thinking 3:00 on, 3:00 off with 24s. Then I'll follow up with some snatches and thrusters. Finally foot and ankle mobility work. 

 

There are no specific plans for the weekend. I don't teach anymore so that's one less thing. Laura isn't booked for a class tomorrow but I may suggest it since she can't do her Friday class today. Tomorrow I plan to do yard work, mow and maybe remove a tree stump. Sunday will be cooking and I need Laura to empty a bookcase so I can take it apart before my parents arrive next weekend. 

[Elastigirl]

I cook like Laura. Recipe's are guidelines. Which is why I'm a horrible baker. You have to follow the recipe with baking, or bad things happen. 

 

I hear you on the hunger. Looking at my food thinking, "really, that's all I get to eat?! " Been hungry all week, and the stupid scale refuses to budge. Course, you know the drill, it's also how your clothes fit and all. Just so frustrating though. 

[The Most Loathed]

On 9/30/2016 at 10:58 AM, Elastigirl said:

I cook like Laura. Recipe's are guidelines. Which is why I'm a horrible baker. You have to follow the recipe with baking, or bad things happen. 

 

I hear you on the hunger. Looking at my food thinking, "really, that's all I get to eat?! " Been hungry all week, and the stupid scale refuses to budge. Course, you know the drill, it's also how your clothes fit and all. Just so frustrating though. 

Even with baking, they're guidelines, it's just the the axes on which you can tinker change. There is a great book called Ratio that I can't recommend highly enough if you are at all interested in understanding the relationship from one baked good to another. It's pretty short and your library may have a copy.

 

I can happily report that my body and or brain are rapidly adjusting to hunger. I'm more tired, I think, but the acute discomfort has gotten better each day. The first day that I cut back to around 2,000 calories, a little more, I thought I would die. The second day, the first day below 2,000, I knew I would die, that was the day I left early on accident. Since then my calories have held pretty steady but the discomfort is becoming background noise. I know it can bounce back int my attention but for now, it's doing ok. 

I didn't plan a calorie count for today but I'm looking at something shy of 2K. I even had a cookie.

 

Last night Laura was asking for a chill night in, so no training. White day

 

Today I went out to the garage for a Red day. I wasn't quite as productive as I had hoped t be but I did some work.

Long cycle

24 kg 3:00

3:00 off

24 kg 3:00

3:00 off

24 kg 1:30

4:30 off

20 kg 3:00

 

I had planned to hit that third set with the 24s but it was getting tough and I wanted to go for the drop set

 

I did some additional snatches and swings but my hands felt like crap. There's a common lore in the kettlebell sport community that it's all technique that preserves your hands.  beg to differ. There is a conditioning process. If you take an extended leave you will come back to soreness and blisters. It sorts itself out quickly but I'm still in that stage.

 

I wrapped up with Headspace. I'd like to get back to meditation now that I have more time.

 

I did some yard work, clearing out some stumps and thorns behind the garage. I ended up also removing some large concrete chunks as it appears there was a sidewalk buried under a thin layer of dirt. Now that I got the concrete out, I have to figure out what the heck to do with it. 

Tonight is supposed to be emptying of books and CDs from the two storage pieces of furniture in the living room. I'm super happy for this.

 

Also, the guy came by today to mark our property lines for our fence that we're putting in. It turns out my neighbors hedges are pretty well into our property so now I need to make sure she actually thinks of them as her bushes. It's totally possible that she's wondered why I haven't been trimming my bushes more. If they're "mine" they're going to come out.

 

With the change of plan last night on training, I'm undecided on tomorrow. Probably cardio but I could just take it off.

[The Most Loathed]

funny thing happened when I woke up this morning, I wasn't hungry. I'm completely unable to explain this. I had two slices of Frittata for supper. Each slice is 1 1/3  eggs (8 eggs and I sliced it into 6 slices) an ounce or two of feta and some veggies (zucchini and tomatoes). That would have been 14 or so hours prior to waking up. We had gone to bed early and Laura had slept nearly 12 hours. While I had gotten up to feed the dogs and dozed back off, I hadn't eaten anything while I was awake

 

My food prep for next week was kind of ridiculous. I made chicken stock in the crockpot yesterday (thanks @Elastigirl )

Today I prepared:

• 1 whole chicken
• approx 4 lbs of chicken thighs
• 4 leeks
• 3 onions
• 3 heads of garlic
• 10 lemons
• 4 turmeric roots
• 1 large ginger root
• 2 parsnips
• 2 turnips
• 2 beets
• 2 carrots
• 2 sweet poatoes
• 4 jalapenos
• a bunch of mushrooms

we ate a little of the chicken and root veggies for lunch but the vast majority will be my lunches this week. I'll have: 300 g chicken, 100 g root veg, about 2 cups chicken broth, and unknown amount of cooked onions and garlic. The lemons, ginger and turmeric are for breakfasts. The mushrooms, jalapenos, some onion and some garlic go in my eggs for breakfast.

 

workout was performed with HR at or below 143. 

Row 30 minutes (HR mostly at 140)

push up 3 x 20

One Arm LC 24 kg 4/4

One Arm LC 12 kg 25/25

I was mostly playing with the long cycle stuff to see what would fit in my "cardio" work

 

I still haven't found a heart rate monitor app that will read my monitor and will set threshold alarms so I don't have to watch my monitor all the time. This will be super inconvenient when I get back to running.

 

 

 

 

 

This week in review:

• Whenever I think back on my week I tend to not appreciate what a week looks like for me, for good and for bad. This week is no different, I should come up with a format to hand off from week to week. This will not be it:
• The most important thing, it seemed, was that this week I taught my final two fitness classes. I stand my my statement that this was important for me to do, it needed to be checked off my life list. That said, I'm glad it's over and am ready to go forward.
• Given the turning of the page I decided it was time to get down with some serious weight loss effort. So far everything seems to be in good working order. I cut my calories deeper than I have in a long time and I've gone to approximately 100 grams of carbs per day for the second half of the week. The first couple days were super tough but by Friday I was feeling much better with it. No obvious signs of weight loss but a half a week is not much time. This seems like it'll be through year end at least.
• I got an email from a Target recruited mid-week. There are no BI roles open but she's been passed my name and contact info and I'm invited to stay in touch
• I started to cold brew experiment and hope to continue it this week. Friday was the only day last week. I felt over caffienatied with four scoops, dialing back to two.
• Completed thee green and one red workout
• Completed two headspace sessions.
• I had a post midweek with some goal thoughts in it, I mentioned time training Clem, I've been working on "sit" with her a bit but we have a long way to go
• Property stakes were set by the city. Our neighbors are cool with us putting a fence partially on their property (between our garages) but we still need to talk to the other one. We're not looking to cross onto her land, just an FYI

 

 

current stats

body weight 214.6

average calories 1850

book page Malazan Book of the Fall, Book 2, Page 502

python challenges: Code Eval - 3 complete, 2 partial

penmanship: two penpal letters

gaming: 1 partial game of Acquire

meditation: headspace 1 x 10 min, 1 x 20 min

Time working with Clem: nothing documented

 

Next week

• Monday - dinner is cod and sweet potatoes, Red workout
• Tuesday - dinner is .... I forget, we have a guy coming to do and estimate to install a bathroom in the basement. This means probably no workout
• Wednesday - I have to attend training this day. I will be learning a mainframe reporting tool called Focus. Dinner is tamales. Green workout
• Thursday - more training. Dinner is the coop so we can stock up for the weekend. maybe a green workout
• Friday - normal day, dinner TBD based on Thursday. Probably off from the gym or a green workout if I don't have two in a row at this point
• Saturday - my parents are coming to town. Super may be burgers. 
• Sunday - my parents leave town. Start doing chores
• Note: Monday is a bank holiday, as such, I don't have to go to work. 

 

 

[The Most Loathed]

In other news, I just saw the Fitbit Charge 2. Damn. Now I want one.

[Sloth the Enduring]

What's special about it? I keep wavering on the idea.