[WhiteGhost]

Oh, hello there!

 

 

I skipped the last challenge as I was traveling to the US but I am back now and trying to get my life into some semblance of order.

 

Just before covid I went into a kind of semi retirement, which consisted in spending almost all of my time playing video games.  Honestly, it was a pretty great life.  However, I have now decided to take up a new job which means I need to get my life more organized.  This is going to be mostly about managing two things: time and food

 

First, the easy one: Time

 

 

Now that I have a fixed schedule for work, I can no longer schedule my time around my workouts and I need to now schedule my workouts around my work schedule like a normal person.  In trying to plan my schedule, I think I could feasibly get to the park up to 4 times per week so I am going to go with that as my goal, this will be as follows:

 

Monday morning, Tuesday evening, Thursday morning, Friday evening.  This is not a hard and fast schedule and I can adjust as needed, but not having any schedule at all has meant workouts have been few and far between recently.

 

Now for the hard one: Food

 

 

Around this time last year, I decided to relax my food control for the holiday and ended up gaining about 20 pounds.  I wasn't too worried about it as I figured I would work it all off over the summer.  Not only has that not happened, I have gained an additional 5 pounds or so, putting me at the heaviest I have ever been.  I don't like this.  I have a bunch of clothes that could wear for work, but at my current weight I can only get less than half of them on.  If things get any worse, I won't be able to wear any of them, and I am absolutely not going to go buy a bunch of new clothes just so I can stay fat.  Not an option.  So I am taking emergency measures to stop this freefall.  I am calling these measures my ripcord

 

 

I have barely cooked anything for the last several months, relying almost soley on takeout.  Easy, convenient and delicious, but not exactly healthy.  we have 2 takeout nights pretty much fixed every week (Taco tuesdays and pizza fridays) but I need to cook the other 3 evenings.  The hardest part of this is deciding what to make.  I will probably do rice one of the days and noodles another, which means I only need to think of 1 dish per week outside of that.  I can probably handle that.  Challenge goals are as follows:

 

1. Cook 3 meals per week, report back here what those were

2. Don't eat when I am not hungry. 

3. Stop eating when I am full

4. No sugary snacks

 

If I can just follow these 4 simple rules I should be well on track to getting back to a healthy weight level.

 

For tracking  and accountability purposes, as of Monday my weight is 85kgs and body fat % is 27% .

 

 

[sylph]

Welcome back

[WhiteGhost]

On 9/19/2024 at 8:26 PM, sylph said:

Welcome back

Thanks

 

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First couple days into this and I am doing pretty well.  I made it to the park Wednesday and Friday this week, lthough I almost didn't go yesterday because it had been raining all morning.  Luckily it stopped around 5pm so I could go after that.

 

Food has been pretty good,  I have avoided snacks even though my FIL brought over a big box of asorted chocolates which has been very tempting.  The biggest win so far is that I have on 2 occasions stopped eating when I was full rather than trying to clean my plate.

[Mad Hatter]

Welcome back! Still enjoying teaching life?

[WhiteGhost]

On 9/22/2024 at 3:25 PM, Mad Hatter said:

Welcome back! Still enjoying teaching life?

Thanks!  Yeah, the teaching life is actually quite nice.  The pay isn't nearly what I was seeing when I was doing bankong but the work life balance is far more sustainable  

 

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Well, the weekend didn't go as sell as the weekdays preceeding it, having eaten more than a few sugary snacks over the course of the two days.  Food was generally good, but I did stuff the last few dumplings down my gullet even though I was full just because I didn't want to waste them.  Sunk Cost Fallacy wins this round...

 

That said, I am back on track now that the new week is starting and Monday has been off to a really good start.

[deftona]

I have utterly sucked at following people's challenges this go around because here is another I missed! Welcome back to the forums, it's good to see you around these parts again - you were missed  

[WhiteGhost]

On 9/26/2024 at 2:37 AM, deftona said:

I have utterly sucked at following people's challenges this go around because here is another I missed! Welcome back to the forums, it's good to see you around these parts again - you were missed  

To be fair I didn't get this challenge up intil after the first week was already over.  Also, thank you.  One of the reasons I even did a challnenge this time is because I heard you had asked about me.  

 

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This wee has been pretty good challengewise.  I have had sugary sacks a few times but much better than it has been recently.  I actually made it to the park 5 times last week, but one of those days I was only there for 10 minutes before Ghostlet called me and told me he needed a ride to soccer practice. 

 

Food has been good, and I have been, for the most part, only eating when hungry and stopping when I am full.  The scale is starting to reflect this as I am now at 83kgs but still at 27% body fat 

 

 

[deftona]

3 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

 

Food has been good, and I have been, for the most part, only eating when hungry and stopping when I am full.  The scale is starting to reflect

 

[WhiteGhost]

OK, so apparently keeping up with updates here has not been going to plan.  Luckily, most everything else has been.

 

I have been doing my cooking for the most part, usually doing Yakisoba once a week because we all love it and then one other dish that could be anything from Fried rice, to stir fry to , baked salmon.  Even when we have ordered take out, I have kept my portions reasonable and have not been overeating.  The cale has started to reflect this and even though my BF percentage hasn't changedmuch, I am down almost 3kgs.  I can't see any difference in the mirror, but when I do my workouts, the difference is huge.  I am once again able to do muscleups and I have made big progress on back levers and human flags