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Fitness Weekly Discussion
What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?
I was away from the gym for a full week recently, mainly because of the vaccination appointment and dealing with side-effects. Back at it as of Monday, and went again yesterday. I kind of half-assed it yesterday, I was just finding my normal incline push-ups absolutely impossible and I bailed out of my last interval on the bike. Of course I started my freaking period mid-workout, so I'll chalk up the energy problem to that... explains the fact I had been an absolute black hole for food the day before too. Ugh.
I start a new program soon, which I think will be nice. I've stalled out on my deadlifts for sure and I feel like I kind of want to mix those up a bit. I did make a little progress on my dumbbell bench press at least.
Weight progress has also been slow. I'm not consistent with food tracking (breaking the phone I was tracking with didn't help - now I have a new one so I ought to start again). I am at least making some better decisions here and there even when I'm not writing everything down so I'm happy at least to have not gained weight in the last couple weeks.
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I got to practice some step sequences today, and I'm finally able to actually process both the information the coach is giving me, and what I'm seeing her perform on the ice. When I mess up, I am now able to figure out why (positioning, stance, etc). This all feels very important.
I did reach the 75 mark as predicted here, which was shortly followed by a "cheat day couscous" I'm still recovering from hahaha.
No other update for the time being. I'm starting to be a lot more confident on the ice, so maybe I'll have some videos for next update. In the mean time, here is a heart, because I heart you, Tildes.
Been cycling a lot again, and just completed 14 weeks of training for what was my longest ride to date: 63 miles and 5600 ft of climbing (100km/1600m). It was a great weekend of riding for 110 miles total. I'm settling into some general structured training with no specific events heading through the next 12 weeks and to get faster, lighter, and stronger.
I'm really targeting a 36mph flat-ground sprint (current best is 33.5), a 42mph slight downhill sprint (current best is 40.6), and another 20lbs off. I think the sprints could easily be achieved with a leadout, but quite a bit harder to do them solo, and solo is the goal.
The past couple of weeks have been the same as usual for me.
I have been trying to push myself a little bit more each week. My twice-weekly yoga sessions are now 60 minutes long. Instead of driving to the gym, I am doing my warm-up run by running to the gym. Each week, I push for a longer run than the previous week. So far I have reached 7 miles in one go. My speeds are slowly getting faster. I ran a 25 minute 5k and a 7:25 minute mile just this past week. My "comfy" pace has been hovering around 8:30 minutes on my longer runs and I am noticing it is taking a little longer each run for my heart rate to progress to the highest zones. So I can safely say that I am noticing positive changes in my cardiovascular health. In addition to running, I have reached my step goal of 10,000 steps a day for 76 days in a row.
On the nutrition side, it is the same old thing. I'm hitting my targetted grams of protein each day and trying to be mindful of the types of carbs and fats I am ingesting. I eat very little pre-packaged food these days but I have been increasing the amount that I am eating out. This makes me question how accurate my tracking really is on these days since there isn't usually accurate nutrition info for a lot of those meals. Speaking of which, I did reach 90 days of tracking calories yesterday. I'm also not tracking my weight unless I have a loss. I will step on the scale every few days if I think about it, but I'm going with mirror results right now which has been very positive!
One issue I am encountering is my partner seeing my progress and feeling discouraged which makes me not want to be so thrilled about my progress. She's happy for me but she feels insecure about her body image and it is like she is getting into a negativity spiral. Part of her problem is that she has to take a birth control pill to keep her PMDD under control, but this is having negative consequences on the way she feels about her own body. She is focused on the number on the scale while I try to encourage her to be patient and use the mirror as a judge instead. On top of that, she feels that the only weight loss plan that works for her is Weight Watchers, which is okay if you have terrible diet habits that you need to break but I feel it is not so great with other habits that it has created for her (i.e. fasting a day before the WW weigh-in day, then using up whatever extra allotments WW grants for the week over the next couple of days). She has been following this plan for 6 months (although she has used WW on-off over the past 4 years with decent success) but hasn't seen the losses that she would expect. I suggested she should go visit a nutrition/dietician to get a plan that is more targeted towards her own fitness goals and lifestyle but she is reluctant. She keeps coming back to it being her birth control's fault more than any other specific lifestyle choice. The whole situation sucks for her and I want to help as much as I can. But unfortunately, outside of the unequivocal support I give her, I can't help but feel like the mental roadblocks she is facing are out of my depth to help with. And I guess the reason why I feel like it is a problem with my own fitness goals is the reflection that she has on herself when I make progress, dampens the good feelings I have on my success so far.