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Road to 159: Week 7 of 8 — Pre-packaged

Alright so it seems like I’m making some progress just when I’m about to hit a couple weeks of travel + celebrations.

What went well: Costco runs for pre-packaged salads and chicken

The other week at Trader Joe’s, I threw one of those plastic bags of individually wrapped chicken breasts into the cart. During the week, I noticed I’d actually gravitate toward them when looking for a snack. Tasty, juicy.

This was nearly the exact opposite of when I would meal prep like 17 pounds of chicken breast and do anything not to eat it during the week.

So I turned that up and picked up a bunch of a similar product at Costco: snack packs of sliced chicken breast.

It feels more wasteful environment-wise since it’s using a bunch of plastic. Money-wise I haven’t done the calculation but it’s surely way more expensive.

It feels less wasteful food-waste-wise because I actually eat all of it, compared to meal prepping a bunch and not finishing it all. 

Other positives:

  • Tastes great, very filling
  • Idiot-proof way to add protein to a meal
  • Super easy to track since it’s pre-portioned

Then I did the same with some pre-packed caesar salads. Similar pros/cons.

But it seems to be working. This past week was the most effective in both workouts and eating.

Convenience over everything.

What can be improved: Just need to prep for the upcoming trip

I’m not a CEO, but I’ve been listening to Dan Go’s podcast lately. On an episode of his High Performance Founder podcast (The Unique Way We Train CEO’s to Their Best Shape), one of the key things he mentions:

  • Focusing on travel and events: 50% of fitness and nutrition damage happens during travel and events. Making sure to have a plan for it is key to success.

Travel makes it harder to work out and social events make it really easy to say “What the hell” and just indulge.

(Note to self: Write a post about good “What the hell” vs. bad “What the hell”)

Which is definitely going to happen to me if I don’t plan for it. Next two weeks:

Travel to NYC and Montana for these events:

  • My birthday
  • Wife’s birthday
  • Wife’s cousin’s wedding 
  • Cousin’s wedding

It’s going to be great! And tempting. And I do actually think some portion of “ah, what the hell” is valid when on vacation. You need to live life. But living life is that first slice of Prince St. Pizza, not the third $1 slice.

Experiment to continue: tracking food in MyFitnessPal

This is working well. I’ve been tracking. The barcode scanner works really well. And also it’s one of those things with the app where it’s tedious but once you start using it frequently and eat sort of the same things, it’s much less tedious.

BJ Fogg has something about this in Tiny Habits where often times there’s a lot of room to grow in ability so that the difficulty lowers.

Cool video: Korean backdash

Really enjoyed this Core-A Gaming video about the Korean backdash.

  • If you’re at all knowledgeable about Tekken, the backdash is obvious. I’m guessing. I’m not at all knowledgeable about Tekken, so even the mechanic explanation was fascinating. It’s an example of something that’s obvious to some people is valuable to others.
  • Great connection to basketball. I’ve followed basketball casually for decades and never knew the history of the dribble and the organizations opposed to it. It was a nice connection about how games can evolve beyond what the creators expected.
  • Mutalisk micro. There’s a history video about the making of Starcraft and the developers mention visiting Korea after it blew up in cafes and was televised. They were seeing things they didn’t know were possible even though they made the game.
  • Balduvian Horde vs. Force of Will. Alliances was the last Magic: The Gathering set I was really interested in during my first stint before playing again like 15 years later. Balduvian Horde was the hot card in the set initially and became worthless. Then Force of Will evolved to be a key card in prominent decks and is by far the most valuable in the set.

Games evolve for different reasons.

Daily content habits (that I’ll probably regret not building)

Good things would happen if I did one of these 3 things daily. And yet, I’ll do a bunch of other stuff and flail instead of doing one of these things.

  • Listen to a podcast and take notes for sharing afterward: This would take 30 minutes. Or I could even cap it at 30 minutes. At 1.5X that’d be 45 minutes (math mastery, i know) of ideas.
  • Grab 3 book quotes and share them + some thoughts: Again, this is something like 10 minutes grabbing quotes + 20 minutes writing thoughts.
  • Chop a published blog post into a thread + add a few sketches and photos: A third time, something I can definitely do in 30 minutes.

Can’t wait to scroll on Twitter here and there for a collective 90 minutes tomorrow.

Podcast idea: Two minds – Anthony de Mello + that Cracked article

The books don’t lie. I could kind of guess what some of my desires were 17 years ago when I took this photo of books from the library. But the books capture it. I wanted to be jacked, tan, and to have a sweet sweet jumper. Since then, I’ve achieved tan on and off with incredible consistency year over year.

Okay just writing this out here to make it a little more permanent. Otherwise I do think this idea would just get lost in my stack of notes.

There’s the whole “hold two opposing ideas in your head at the same time” thing. I really enjoy both Anthony de Mello (mostly about loving yourself and others) and an older Cracked article I read recently: 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person (mostly about how the world doesn’t love you).

My hunch, and something I’ll need to dig into when lurking further, is that they’re actually not that opposed to each other. The world doesn’t care about you, which is why it’s so important to learn to love yourself and what you currently have.

For now I’ll just cherry pick a couple quotes before heading off to bed.

A harsh truth: what you do matters a lot more than to the world than who you think you are inside.

Let’s say that the person you love the most has just been shot. He or she is lying in the street, bleeding and screaming. A guy rushes up and says, “Step aside.” He looks over your loved one’s bullet wound and pulls out a pocket knife — he’s going to operate right there in the street.

The guy can be a vile person 99% of the time but if he happens to know how to and does save your loved one, that 1% is all that matters.

What you do is who you are.

And now one from Anthony de Mello. From Stop Fixing Yourself:

The villager took the diamond and went to sit under a tree on the outskirts of the village. He held the diamond close to his heart, and he experienced great joy. Now, this is the kind of joy most people feel the day they get something they really want. Have you ever stopped to ask how long that kind of joy lasts? You got the girl you wanted, right? You got the boy you wanted. You got that car. You got the degree. You were at the top of your class. You got what you thought was your dream job, right? How long does that joy last? How many seconds? How many minutes?

One of the happiest moments of my life was getting the Newegg packages for all the parts for the first PC I built the summer before heading to college.

Higher FPS, taken for granted so quickly.

Okay off to bed. I’ll do this as a Notepod episode sometime.

Road to 159: Week 6 of 8 — The Swimming Hole

By the end of these 8 weeks I’ll at least have some sweet “here’s what I tried and here’s why it didn’t work” content for the future…

What went well? New gym, barbell workouts, and some swimming

  • I’ve been getting back into the barbell routine, which feels great both mentally and physically. It’s one of those situations where I’m holding two opposing thoughts in my head at the same time. I believe that whole thing that soreness isn’t the way to gauge how effective a workout is. BUT I also feel like I accomplished more if I can feel a little something the next day. The right kind of sore. In any case, just the raw amount of weight I’m lifting with a barbell is more than I could get with kettlebells.
  • I’m also going to pat myself on the back for taking the warm ups seriously. I’m making sure to go through a 5 minute warm up before doing any weights and still making sure to do the warm up sets once I do start with weights.
  • Bonus thing that went well: Did a bit of swimming and climbing up rocks at Yuba River. Fun to use the body again for things that aren’t inside a gym. Not fun: popping the top off before heading into the river!

What can be improved? Still, social eating

  • Last week was a bit of a “fell off the wagon” week. Didn’t keep it up with the tracking, ate somewhat disastrously during the weekend (road trip + Airbnb with friends = good time, bad eating!) But, hey, just gotta keep going and trying to get back on track.

Experiment to try: tracking food in MyFitnessPal

  • I’ve always had the app installed but haven’t been using it. There are two really distinct times that come to mind when I was trying to cut and lost weight steadily and as planned. Once was in 2009 and the other was in 2014. Both times, no surprise, I tracked just about everything that I ate. It just helps in making decisions later in the day and can give me a little push _not_ to snack at night. While I know in most cases when I’m snacking at night that I’m probably over my limits, tracking makes that fact more concrete and might be the little extra push needed.

From the info diet Joe Defranco’s Industrial Strength Show

  • On this episode (What I’m Doing Differently to Drop Body Fat), Joe walks through his day and his approach to eating while trying to cut. Three takeaways: high protein but nothing too crazy (1 gram per pound of bodyweight), convenience over everything, and having an artificially sweet drink with dinner to kill the post-dinner dessert craving.
  • This episode + a recent episode of Danny Miranda’s podcast with Mark Bell got me me thinking that I need to track my eating more closely. You don’t need to weigh and track things forever. But it’s worth doing it for a little bit so that you can really build awareness around your eating. I did the weigh-my-food thing probably a decade ago, for maybe a few weeks, and have cruised on that thinking that was enough. But I need to get a little more rigorous again if I want to see results.

Road to 159: Week 5 of 8

Starting weight: 171 lbs

This week: 168 lbs

As always, writing this on the treadmill. Always incredibly focused writing-wise because writing on the phone just forces me to single task.

What went well: new gym, sticking with it

  • Okay I guess joining a new gym isn’t exactly working out or eating well. But it’s setting something up for the future and also putting some money into things.

What can be improved: just need to eat less

  • Yes, there are nuances with food choices. But it’s not like I’m slamming Big Macs and Big Gulps down day in and day out. So it’s a matter of food volume right now. I have okay snacks but just snack way too much. And I still tend to go a little too crazy with the weekend meals.
  • Maybe I don’t need to eat a pound of rib eye.

Experiment to try: new gym + pea protein shakes

  • Today’s the first day back after squatting with a barbell for the first time since pre-pandemic. I think this is the right type of sore. Will try to continue with RPT on wed-fri-sun. Going to a river this weekend so that’s a little more motivation. First time in swim trunks since early pandemic as well. Let’s gooo.
  • I saw the vegan (pea) protein shakes at Costco and picked them up. Wish they had beef protein in ready-made drinks. Whey always seems to lead to acne for me. So I’m trying this out to see if it helps curb hunger when I’m feeling snack-y.

Info diet

  • Finally signed up for Alan Aragon’s fitness/nutrition research review newsletter after hearing about it here and there year after year. Two fold benefit: learn about fitness/nutrition + study good writing in a newsletter format.

From The Greyskull LP by John Sheaffer:

It’s true that progress in terms of building strength or lean body mass may not come as rapidly training less frequently, however it is important to remember that there are things in life infinitely more important than lifting weights.

That’s a nice reminder, especially after reading “Arnold” which was on the extreme where there were few things more important than lifting weights.