What goes down sometimes comes back up

And, not always in the good way.

Not that it wasn’t a very nice month full of very nice things, but a lot of those things had a lot of calories in them and made trendweight very sad. It’s not like this is an anomaly but still, I start every March going, “why yes, I am going to celebrate our birthdays as a day of celebration and not a month, and this will keep me going towards my goals.”

And then…

…I’m over my calories pretty much every day (by a significant margin) until March 17ish. Ah well. What goes up also must come down (or I say it must), so we are back to clean living and abiding by the numbers, not just what I feel like.

• Week 1 (Feb 26): 1249 OVER
• Week 2 (Mar 4): 715 OVER
• Week 3 (Mar 11): 1153 OVER
• Week 4 (Mar 18): 1397 UNDER
• Week 4 (Mar 25): 1 OVER (lets call it a tie)

It usually takes 2-3 weeks of habit to show on the scale, so I’m guessing the weight will start going down – should I continue the trend of not being a jerk with food – this week or next. Hooray! April should be back to normal, not alllll the celebrating, so goals here are same as they ever were – log all foods, stay under calories for the week, and be no more than 182.4 lbs on April 30th (let’s see if we can make up a little bit for a lost March).

#2 Running and Stuff

I keep thinking my hip issue has cleared up, and then it comes back. Right now, it’s feeling great but I keep saying this and then a few days later… BOOM. I really would like this to get resolved so I can get back to running faster and more often. However, my on-again-off-again relationship with running means my enthusiasm for triathlon has resumed a bit. Cycling (indoors and watching Bloodbowl games) is a thing in my life again and with Joel out of town last week, I managed to get to the pool TWICE in March and once this evening.

Things I have learned:

• If I am to ever swim regularly, it is probably going to just need to be on my own initiative/schedule, and let Joel find his times separately. We just never find the time during the day that works for us to go together and lack the enthusiasm at night. Monday night seems to be a magical exception so we will continue to try for weights n swim Mondayz.
• I can absolutely bribe myself to do 30-60 mins of biking with the promise of watching a game or two and some sort of candy snack every 5 mins (like an M&M).
• I think I need to figure out how to change my stride/pace back to run like I did pre-Covid. This issue developed after I got back to running and intentionally slowed down 1 min/mile to keep my heart rate lower. Now, the stupid hip is keeping me at that pace :P. Maybe I just need to force myself run faster? Who knows?

Check out the difference between the first half of the month and the second, especially that week I was on my own.

Now, remember, it doesn’t log walks, I walked 64 miles this month (24 hours) and that’s not nothing. Check those activity times – 8-12 hours a week – I’m walking A LOT. But besides that:

• 1100 yd swimmming (22 mins)
• 47 miles cycling (3 hours)
• 16.2 miles running (3 hours)
• 4 sessions elliptical (2hours22min)
• 11 sessions weight training (5h37min)

So, that means I walked a little over 2 miles per day and did 30 mins of other tracked activity. That’s honestly pretty great and healthy… just not for the amount of food I ate in March. So, I need to either ramp this up a little or ramp that down. Probably a wee bit of both.

In April my goals are:

• 3x week weights, non-negotiable, at the gym as often as possible, up the weights at home if I can’t.
• Swim once a week. Just friggin’ do it. Yes, it’s not an efficient use of my time as a workout due to prep time and waiting for a lane sometimes and all the rest of it. Yes, I’m going to do it anyway.
• Bike at least once outdoors and see if that can resume some enthusiasm with that particular sport.
• Run a 10k on April 7 and then do whatever running makes the most sense to rehab the hip (none, short, fast, treadmill, sandwiched with walking, bricks, etc etc etc)

#3 Adulting

This month we shall do the taxes and get the things for/clean out the things to remodel the bathrooms. All this stuff has to happen in April, no getting out of it, and I’m sure by the end of the remodel I will not want to do any dang thing else for about a month. Only exception is prepping the pool for the summer. We’ll do that. So, yeah, garage and fridge – maybe in June?

#4 Fun Stuff

Everything has truly taken a backseat to Book 2’s completion and first editing pass. And I did it! Kinda. I have two “notes” left (find a good place to add a specific scene/conversation and make the ending better). I believe it’s currently readable as a first draft, but obviously needs some improvement. I spent more time in the second half of the book on my first pass edit noodling over word choices (did it need it more or did I just have more patience? I’m not sure). I did deliver Joel a plane draft at midnight before his morning flight the next day and said “don’t read the last two chapters”. He only read the first 5 chapters and is kinda now waiting on me to give him the go ahead for a full read. I’m stalling. In April, I want to get a full and complete grammar/word noodling and voice pass and re-read the book myself.

I did have a great and productive photo sorting day and have everything from Paris now ready for editing. I certainly didn’t finish this month (still on the Louvre) but the big hurdle (picking which pictures to edit out of literally thousands!) is done. I’m three sets away from done with the Louvre, so my goal in April is to finish Paris and move onto something else.

I’ve looked at my guitar and paints a few times. It’s fine. I’ve been writing and playing outside and it’s fine, maybe there will be more crafty stuff over the summer when it’s too hot to spend hours tromping around the neighborhood.

So, April is about:

• Actually freaking focus on making some scale progress. Track daily, don’t go over calories, weigh almost every day, and stop with the unearned treats.
• Do the normal weights stuff, add some biking and swim once a week, run less but faster after the race
• Get the bathrooms redone, prep taxes, get the pool up and running
• Word noodling pass on the book and Paris photo editing

And… enjoying as much outside time as possible before it gets too hot. All the walks to all the things.