Fitness Weekly Discussion

Introduction

This past week ended up also being a bust. I did a half session of martial arts on Tuesday but the rest of the days were lost. We'll try again this week, but with a modified layout.

Fitness

My martial arts session on Tuesday ended up only being a half session, as I was wearing out a little sooner. These things happen. I'm going to tweak my plan here a bit: Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday will be mobility and training days, meaning that I work on warm-up, static and dynamic stretching, mobility, along with whatever else I feel like doing, whether that be martial arts or calisthenics, or just keeping it at the mobility work. Then on Wednesday and Friday, these will be my gym days. Alternatively, this can be flipped so that it's Monday and Thursday as gym days, and then the remaining weekdays as the mobility+ days, but we'll try the former plan first.

Nutrition

41 days without energy drinks, and this week the plan will start to slowly reduce my caffeine intake. I should have started that this last week but I didn't think of it until Friday. So this week, only buying large size coffees (because I don't give myself enough time in the morning to make coffee), then the following week switch to mediums, the week after that switch to smalls, and then remove them entirely after that. This should help peter out my caffeine "needs" and reduce withdrawal symptoms.

Conclusion

New plan starting with mobility+ workouts on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, with my gym days being Wednesday and Friday. Also,start reducing my caffeine over the course of three weeks and then cut out coffee entirely for 45 days. This will save me about 1500 kcal every week once they're cut off, as I get the ol' double-double (two cream, two sugar, for non-Canadians) in the mornings.

Well the new year has been great so far. I spent much of early 2022 doing PT for a hand injury and then latter 2022 dealing with a knee problem. The hours of exercises and stabilizing seem to have paid off and I've been hitting my stride since about mid December. I'm feeling so good in fact that a friend and I have signed up for a 200 mile one day bike race. I am super nervous and excited for it. The longest I have ever biked is about 100 miles in a day while living in the Netherlands with almost no elevation. This will be about 10,000 feet of elevation gain and double the distance so I'm going to have to ramp up training. Right now I'm cycling about 10-30 miles per day with the hope of scaling that to 20-50 in the next few weeks and so on and so on. I've got about 6 months to train so I'm optimistic (barring further injury).

Otherwise I've also been able to get back to running after almost 4 freaking years! It feels incredible! I had the realization that I was drugged up with endorphins for the better part of my twenties (i'd run, climb, or bike for about 4 hours everyday) and now realize why I was always so upbeat. 30s Rosco is about to get back on the sauce, metaphorically speaking!

Picking up 3-pound weights and gyrating/dancing. So far better than other daily exercise routines I tried in the past: running kills my knees and pushups kill my wrists. I only have to worry about keeping my grip on the weights as I swing them around. Gets my heart rate up surprisingly fast.

Even though I’ve been in my ideal weight range for months now, it’s hard to switch from a weight loss mindset to a focus on maintenance and fitness. It's like I’ve programmed my brain in a way that worked really well for weight loss, but now I don’t need to lose weight so I have to reprogram it in a new way.

This is further complicated by the fact that I quit drinking back in October. Now that I’m not consuming all those empty calories, I need to eat more, but I’m so used to eating a certain way now, it’s hard to eat more and not feel like I’m overdoing it.

I also have this fear of gaining weight back, like if I gained a few pounds back that somehow it would spiral out of control from there and I would gain all 60 pounds back. So, I allow myself to eat more because I need to, but then I’ll get overly cautious and not eat as much the next day to compensate when I shouldn’t. I also have this tendency to weigh myself daily so that I can catch a sudden weight gain and make adjustments to fix it before it gets out of control. It might have served me well enough when I was trying to lose weight, but it’s just not necessary anymore.

So, this past week or so, I’ve been trying to just eat when I’m hungry and make sure I’m getting lots of fruits and vegetables. Also, I’m going to only check my weight once a week at most. Ideally, I can just continue to eat healthy and exercise a lot and not worry about my weight anymore, but we’ll see.

I had a bad bike crash 1.5 yrs ago and stopped cycling for sport since, but I plan to resume soon once the weather improves. (California here.)

I started using Apple Fitness+ on my Apple TV to do yoga. The prerecorded yoga sessions are fantastic, and they offer short to long sessions. It's a real game changer doing guided yoga whenever I want.

I've been on a long plateau in bouldering. I picked it up 1 year ago as part of my recovery process, and I'm hovering in V2–3's. I'm going to keep putting in the volume.

Started dieting again with Huel to cut down on the weight I've gained since aforementioned crash. I'm using the high-protein Huel Black to minimize muscle loss. I'm getting mild-to-moderate hunger pangs as I adjust. I also bought some Atkins high-fiber, low/no-sugar treats: they don't satisfy my sweet tooth cravings, but they're enough to keep them quiet.