Eldgee and the Long Haul

[Eldgee]

Still sick today, but had to do chores and errands anyway. Even more tired now, and besides the lots of steps (not sure how many, I seem to have lost my phone) I don't think any more exercise or habits are happening today. Also struggling to cook/not eat comfort junk – but I did stay within my calorie goals and avoid gluten.

[Eldgee]

Still sickish, still testing negative for Covid, still working and too tired for more than basic exercise.  Partner cooked dinner tonight, which was great, but ended with me going a bit over my calorie budget for the day, and after that I ate some ice cream and went further over. Thinking about two things:

1. That was a little bit of well, I'm over my calorie budget, so I might as well eat whatever now...but once I noticed that and thought about it I ended up eating a scoop of ice cream instead of the whole container, so maybe that's progress

2. Also, though, I think my calorie budget may be pretty low. Several sources suggest that my current maintenance might be around  2400-2500 calories, and my fitness app suggests a daily budget around 1700, which could be a pretty big deficit and it's hard to tell which calculation is right. So far I've been losing about two pounds a week, but that might not continue, so I guess I'll have a better idea about this in a few weeks...but this is more of the reasoning behind why I'm still feeling pretty good about days like today where I end up closer to 2000 calories.

[TimovieMan]

10 hours ago, Eldgee said:

1. That was a little bit of well, I'm over my calorie budget, so I might as well eat whatever now...but once I noticed that and thought about it I ended up eating a scoop of ice cream instead of the whole container, so maybe that's progress

 

Perfectly acceptable, imo.

 

Eating the whole container would be (to paraphrase one of Steve Kamb's analogies) "responding to a flat tyre by slashing the other three as well".

Just one scoop seems like a consciously controlled coping moment. Well done!

[Eldgee]

Still sick, still fairly active with daily life stuff but too tired for extra exercise, still snacking on stuff and coming in slightly below maintenance (still testing negative for Covid, but not sure I totally believe it). I usually go climbing on Sunday evenings (though I just missed a whole week), so I'm hoping to be ready to get back to my regular routine by the end of this weekend.

[Eldgee]

I've now had a whole week of feeling weirdly sick and then finishing with a two-day migraine. I didn't exercise (completely missed my tracker's fitness goal for this week), ate just below maintenance, maintained my current weight, and meditated very little because I just didn't really have the energy to even do sedentary things. 

Today I'm feeling betterish/just a little migrainey, and am acting like I'm ready to get back on track with stuff: shooting for my actual calorie goal, doing qigong and meditation, hopefully hitting my exercise goals. I've made a plan to go climbing this evening. 

[Eldgee]

Nope, still mostly feeling sick after my long weekend...today it's still migrainey and also like I have a pulled muscle or something in my neck/shoulder. 

I did make it to climbing on Sunday and it seemed like some of the routes had been changed, so I climbed:

3 x vb (all of them)

3 x v0 (all of them) and

2 x v1 (including one I'd never done before)

 

Not sure how long it will take to max out what I'm capable of, but I'm enjoying this process of just gradually adding or increasing the difficult of the boulder routes I do each time. There's at least one more v1 to try next time, though I won't be making it for my Wednesday session unless I feel miraculously better tomorrow.

I am going grocery shopping today and back to work tomorrow, so I'm going to try to make a smart meal plan, at least. And the weather looks like it might be good enough for biking later in the week, so fingers crossed about that.

[Eldgee]

While I'm generally feeling much better, my neck injury is still making me cautious about climbing etc, so it's likely I'll be missing my fitness goals again this week. 

 

Overall, though, I'm noticing that exercise is the part of my plan that has been going the best. I actually like climbing and biking, and I even kind of enjoy some of the calisthenics I can do at home and the game of trying to increase my steps. I like that the activity is pretty fun, that I can easily see and feel results, and the gamification aspects with the tracker. 

I'm feeling less successful about my goals to cut calories, meditate, and take my supplements, and I'm also noticing that I really need to work on getting more sleep, so I'm trying to think about how I could use similar strategies in those areas. I think I'm going to try to come up with a set of positive goals along similar lines for the new challenge phase next week. For one thing, I got this pretty intense visual nutrient tracker (this image is just a sample portion) and I'm thinking maybe I'll try focusing on getting all these nutrients rather than counting calories (positive nutrition goal, plus fun tracking).  Trying to figure out similar ideas for sleep and meditation and decide whether I want to keep the supplement goal or drop that one for now. 

 

[Jackdaw]

I think it is natural to do better in some aspects than others, but I get your feeling, I also always want to do great in everything that's important for me. 

 

I think this chart is better than counting calories. I know counting works for some people, but for me it seems so unnatural. If I had to do it, I'd probably get insane or stopped eating at all xD