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.