Adjusted Reality

I was going to title this “I guess it’s better than gaining III” but I didn’t need to troll myself and the three bots that frequent this site, so… good news!

We all know that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is madness, but sometimes you can fool yourself. For 10 months. The last time my trendweight looked anything like this was Nov 2024.

#1 The Unwanted Kettlebell

I have been trying to do two things:

1. Track more exactly. I’m not perfect, but I realized I was undertracking my breakfast daily, forgetting to track coffee creamer, not tracking snacks sometimes, and not always tracking my bedtime square of dark chocolate. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but that could add up to ~300 calories per day sometimes I was just forgetting to put down.
2. If I am not super hungry (like at a 5-7 on the fullness scale) after dinner and still have lots of calories for the day, I’m just banking them. There are days I need every single calorie I burn and sometime more. Some days I’m perfectly fine eating less, so I’m not trying to balance it on a daily basis. This has helped me eat less overall.

From Aug 4 until today, I’m about 3600 calories under the 1200+ activity calories, and this has gotten me about a 2-3 lb loss from the start of the month. I’m pretty happy right now, I feel like I have to watch myself for pure and utter nonsense, but I’m not having to confine myself to tiny meals and celery for snacks. I have to give credit to the “moving more” part of the equation – I burned ~820 calories per day so far this month (I didn’t take out maintenance calories – that is part of my negotiation with myself. If I track super carefully, I don’t have to do as much math!). I’m eating about 1850/day which would be maintenance for me if I was pretty sedentary, but the exercise is doing the work this month.

#2 Sporty Spice Stuff

I’m having so much fun with this stuff lately! I love that, it’s nice to be excited to bike and run again (and sometimes even swimming). I’m not quite back to form (I need to shed a little weight to get there plus some other things I’m sure) but I’m getting after it again. And it feels really good. Garmin has been putting up challenges, the same challenges I’ve been seeing since the pandemic, and a lot of them felt way out of scope for me. I’m looking to hit some running and biking ones this month for the first time in forever.

I’ve also been racking up miles and successful workouts and playing with finding the edge. A sports psychologist I follow on Insta posted about how progress isn’t always made on the days you’re feeling great, and frankly, some breakthrough moments happen when you aren’t at your best. Casting my memory back, I knocked down a longstanding half marathon PR on a day where less than 48 hours after I got rear ended, and the night before the race I fell asleep on an ice pack because my back was seizing up. And then I, out of nowhere, busted out a 9:15/mile pace to do 5 minutes better than I had done over a decade before.

Back to the present, I had a few drinks on Wednesday night. And then a few more. I woke up feeling okay but was pretty tired by the time I finished work. Joel wanted to hit the gym anyway, so I figured I could go do something easy. We swam first because the stupid #*%$ing swim team takes the whole indoor pool 5-7pm every weekday and then spent a moment trying to figure out my life. It was anaerobic interval day for running and I convinced myself worst case I’d start and bail out. And whatdya know? I was just fine. Was it the strongest I’ve felt? No. But I got it done.

But, sometimes you have to know when to hold em and know when to fold em. Last Saturday, I did a spin class, a new one I hadn’t taken before and it. wrecked. me. It was a lovely reminder not to blow myself up on the bike during a race, because I done went and pushed so hard I bonked 40 minutes into the ride. I figured a quick reset and hitting the treadmill would take care of it, and NOPE! My toast was BURNT. I was a little cranky about it but then remembered how many solid workouts I had over the last few months. Consistency is more important than perfection. It was a little blip on the radar and a little sleep and destressing and I was back at it.

So far in August:

• 4000m swim. 1.25 hours. Tee hee. I expect this will be the most for a bit, unless I make swimming my focus for a race or a goal soon.
• 249 miles of cycling, or 15.5 hours. Currently at 39 VO2 max and 182W (estimated) FTP. Progress!
• 34 miles of running, or 6.25 hours. Currently at 40 VO2 max. Paces are a little stagnant the last few weeks but I made some major progress before that. And also, running sucks right now, it’s either boring inside or stupid hot outside.
• 6 hours of lifting, and maintaining my 3x week lifting. Between this and recovery stuff like boots, ice, rolling, and stretching, this is what lets me do all the rest of the stupid stuff.
• 43.5 miles walking (17 hours), or about 1.6 miles/day. We have tried to make it a habit to do this in the morning most days, sometimes with coffee, and it’s been lovely. Less lovely when it’s feels like 100+, but we’ve done what we needed to do to keep up the streak. Sept 9, it will have been 1 full year of 1 mile a day or more! Don’t plan on quitting then, but maybe we can take a day off now and then (or maybe not, it’s a nice habit)

For Sept, I have very few tweaks, I just need to do some of the things in different places:

• I got one open water swim earlier in the summer, and was super excited to start the trend. SPOILER ALERT: the trend never started. I would like to get to the lake twice in Sept before the race.
• We rode the road bikes outside once earlier in the summer, and then again whilst camping, and I was super excited to start the trend. SPOILER ALERT: the trend never started. I need to get two outdoor rides on the tri bike before the race since it’s been inside since last Sept’s race.

Other’n that, it’s just second month, same as the first. Up the miles, down the recovery drinks, and do what feels right.

#3 Adulting:

I said we probably wouldn’t do any adulting in August, we didn’t do any adulting in August, next month we have an appointment with someone to look at some investments, and we made it to all the previously scheduled appointments. Oh, we got the spray in bed liner for the truck, finally. I participated in that I drove Joel back and forth. I helped!

Next month, here’s a softball goal or 2:

• Hang my art in my (at work) office that is sitting in piles.
• Return any of the sports bras I ordered from amazon that don’t work.

There are still some great cleanouts we want to do but goldang, summer just isn’t the right time to do anything at home besides just die on the couch and bedrot with books. Training and even just existing in the heat is no joke.

#4 Hobbies

• Book – I have edited 8 chapters (of 30). It’s a start. I also hopefully will have some time while traveling to do this next week. It feels really dumb to be going so slow but, see above with heat sapping my will to live and training like a madwoman.
• Have continued with my 1-2 songs a few times a week with the guitar. It feels like the muscle memory is mostly coming back to me. I want to keep this up! It’s a nice quick break between meetings or stuff during the day.
• I have finished Vermont, and have started sorting the Bonaire pictures. When I get back from Seattle, I’ll be four trips backlogged. Ah well, it’s either stop traveling places or just live with it (and you know I’m not doing the former).
• Still need to decide whether the Krause Springs painting is done. I’ve had multiple people tell me to maybe just hang it up on the wall but it still feels unfinished. I guess I need to stare at it a little more with a paintbrush in my hand to decide. Winter project here is creating some random modern art (no reference, so I don’t get paralyzed) for above the TV which has been barren for 18 years!!!
• Still deciding on the late November camping trip, but everything else is locked and loaded! I have a solo Seattle itinerary while Joel works at the convention, and I’m very excited to meander around the city. We’ll be doing a short cruise with the family in September, I’ll get a quick diving trip in and get to spend some time with them eating all the foods and playing cards.

#5 Work/Life

Couple things had been weighing heavy on me that didn’t quite fit in the box I leave work in when I leave, but hopefully this is the week all that gets resolved one way or another. I don’t have a huge answer for coping besides just ride the storm and be happy when it’s clear, but it’s nowhere near how it used to be when I’d spend full evenings having conversations with myself about things I needed to tackle. My brain HAS been a little bit of a PITA waking me up in the middle of the night, but generally if I pick up my book, I can get over it quickly. This is always a work in progress, but still, progress.

So, Sept. I’ll race for the first time in forever and need to prioritize some time for race prep stuff like riding and swimming outside. I want to keep up doing what I’m doing with tracking and eating, because I will take a 2 lb loss a month over the alternative. I’ll have a fun trip in Seattle being as reasonable as possible while being super active, and whatever it is, just get back to all the things when I’m back. Let’s do this thing!

Second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit worse?

No matter how much I think the numbers should be lining up, the proof is in the pudding. Or the weights on the scale.

Week 1 – June 30 – July 6 – average 1987 calories consumed – 447 calories burned = net average 1540 calories per day

This is obviously over my goal but it was a vacation week. I tried to frontload the week with all the workouts (hit everything by Thursday!) and eating well (did okay) because I knew I’d go over in my calories whilst camping for the 4th of July. I expected to burn a little more since we had planned to hike, but instead just walked a few miles per day in the very few breaks in the rain.

Week 2 – July 7 – July 13 – average 1779 calories consumed – 500 calories burned = net average 1279 calories per day

This is more like it, you know it’s a better week when the average calories consumed were not a year in which I have lived. I took Monday super chill after returning home from working and hit the rest of the week with good workouts and didn’t screw up my eating too, too much.

Week 3 – July 14 – July 20 – average 1787 calories consumed – 517 calories burned = net average 1270 calories per day

Another pretty solid week in terms of calories in, calories out.

Week 4 – July 21 – July 27 – average 1811 calories consumed – 526 calories burned = net average 1285 calories per day

And, again. Solid. So why does my trendweight look like this?

There’s two possible answers.

1. This is still too many calories. It’s possible. I’ve eaten lower (averaging more like 1500 calories per day) while doing triathlete stuff.
2. I am doing a shite job at actually tracking my food. This is also possible. I’m estimating a lot of things and tracking hours/a day later sometimes. I don’t feel like I’m too far off but it’s possible every day being “not too far off” is just enough to make no progress.

So, I need to decide for next month – do I try to aim for a lower count (shooting for the moon, ending up among the stars and all that) or just aim to be accurate AF with everything I track. Both should accomplish the same goal, but the question is which one will drive me less insane? On one hand, I will probably reduce my calories if I have to legit log every effing pretzel I put in my mouth and measure out the damn cream cheese I put on them (yep, that’s my lazy guilty pleasure “I need some quick salty carbs” snack). On the other, I could just set the bar lower and be okay with a little inaccuracy. I’m aiming for a 500 calorie deficit and coming up with 0. I could aim for more like 750-800 (that 1500 average vs the 1800) and maybe I’ll lose half a lb per week (seriously, I would take it rn).

I think I’m going to try accuracy and see how that goes.

#2 Sporty Spice Stuff

As I alluded to, I’m very happy here even if the fluff ain’t going anywhere. I do also accept and appreciate that I have built a lot of muscle over the last few years and not everything I’ve put on since my low in 2018-2019 is fat now… but I’m still definitely carrying more fat than I was back then. But, we’re working on it.

Garmin calendar sez I’ve had a pretty productive July.

• 13 runs this month, 8.5 hours or 46 miles. My paces are getting faster, and I’m feeling stronger. My garmin 5k prediction is down to 28:40, and I was able to actually run under 30 last weekend. I’m actually having… fun… doing the garmin speed workouts and feel awesome when I can actually hit the paces. Who knew having a watch yell at you would be enjoyable?
• 11 bikes this month, 10 hours, or 155.7 miles. After Joel fixed my trainer, my power got WAYYYY better. I don’t suck so badly anymore, haha! After my new tires, it was bad, I was rolling at like 105 watts feeling like I was climbing hills. I think it may be a little EASIER than outside now, but I’ll have to ride outside (August and September) to calibrate. I also have been feeling stronger doing the garmin workouts vs just pedaling for 30-45 mins with no goal watching Bloodbowl games. I’m still watching Bloodbowl but my bike computer yells at me and tells me to speed up or slow down now. It’s definitely some solid type B fun but it does make the time go faster (I’m now regularly up to 1h+ workouts).
• I swam, uh 3 times. For a total of 33 minutes. Or 1 mile. Moving on.
• Lifting – 15 sessions. 6.25 hours. I hit all 3 sessions each week, I think on one or two weeks I combined the two upper body workouts into one because I was out of time.
• Walking – 48.5 miles, 19 hours. That’s only an average of 1.5 miles a day but it’s definitely 1.5 miles a day I wouldn’t be walking otherwise in the summer.

It feels like a really nice accomplishment to say the only thing I would like to change is swimming more regularly and getting outside on my bike more often (once in July, more in August). While I haven’t done a triathlon in almost a year, I almost feel like a triathlete again, no cap (as the kids maybe say?).

Speaking of, the one I was signed up for got cancelled (for absolutely good reason, Kerrville got absolutely demolished by the floods and I hope they can donate my race entry to the city that wasn’t already used to set up the race!) so I’m looking for alternatives. Thinking:

• Cal Tri Austin, Sept 21. I don’t love love love the course but I am familiar with it, so might as well go give it a go since it’s local. I wouldn’t normally race the weekend before Kerrville but the logistics make it almost impossible to pass up.
• Wurst Tri Ever, Oct 12. Never done this, usually “done” with tri season after Kerrville, but since I haven’t raced at all this year and kinda have some fitness going on… this seems like a fun one (it starts on a water slide!)

And then… what next? Half marathon? Trail racing? Go crazy and start training for a 10k swim or something? Take a break and then think about an early season 70.3? Actually commit to being speedy and work on my 5k times and chase my watts on FTP tests?

I have a bit to consider it, but again, really happy with how I’m training, feeling absolutely very little burnout in my training, and enjoying the garmin dictator immensely. I will ride this feeling (with some down weeks, of course) as long as I can!

#3 Adulting

• Tri bikes got serviced
• Met with tax people and they told us what we needed to do to pay less money on our taxes and we even followed through and did it.
• Uh, we, like flushed the hot water heater because the company that installed it told us to and scheduled an appointment
• I think that’s about it and also about it on the goals besides don’t flake on doctor or chiropractor appointments. We will save any of the great cleanouts for when it’s not a million degrees

#4 Hobbies

• Book – tee hee. I haven’t touched it for the whole month. And I’m totally procrastinating it by writing this. Bad me. Idk what my mental block is but I know I need like a solid, undisturbed hour where I have quiet and brain cells and spoons left for the day and that has not happened yet in July. I know once I get ONE chapter under my belt I’ll get rolling, but right now there’s a little pebble in my path that feels like a boulder. I shall aim low make the goal to edit one chapter in August, and get started, and hopefully surpass that.
• I’ve got the guitar habit forming again! Just 1-2 songs a day when I’m at home, but it’s a few times a week instead “oops, I forgot all month”. Just in time too, because I really have almost forgotten some of the songs I memorized. It took 3 days to lock back in “Don’t Fear the Reaper”. I’m still working through some of my set list and the muscle memory is coming back. But, seems like about 6 months is the limit.
• Photos – I’ve been rocking and rolling on Vermont (only a year later!) and will finish those in August. Then, I guess it’s a toss-up between fish pictures and flower gardens. Goal will be to at least start sorting either Bonaire or Krause Springs before I leave for my next trip.
• I started a painting at Krause Springs, OMG! I haven’t touched it since then, but I shall celebrate the starting of it, at least. I think a good August goal is to put some more paint on the canvas.
• Travel:
  • Seattle in about a month. I’m excited for a semi-solo tourist experience (since Joel is working) and I’m looking forward to taking the ferry to Bainbridge Island, Chihuly Glass Garden, Museum of Pop Culture, all the Parks with all the views, and eating all the seafoods.
  • Short Cruise with my parents in November. Just a long weekend but enough time to eat, drink, scuba once, and play a bunch of card games with them.
  • Fall trip – we wanted to do fall foliage but the timing isn’t going to work out, and since we’re planning 2 epic trips next year, considering just a nice 5-6 day camping trip right before Thanksgiving to relax and enjoy the fall weather.
  • Next year we are looking at potentially Peru (play) and the Philippines (work/play), and it’s always possible we need to go to Germany (work) which would mean at least a long weekend somewhere in EU. But, my travel plans for the next year always look grander than they end up being. However, the first one is non-negotiable and our big adventure trip for the year that is just for US (not connected to a work destination).

#5 Work Life Balance

Some stuff has come up, but I think I’ve rolled with the punches well. I don’t feel overworked, occasionally overwhelmed because I’ll get “behind” (my terms, no one else’s) on things and feel like I’m the bottleneck, and then have one productive day and rock almost everything out of my backlog. Do I think about work in off hours? Occasionally. Does it invade my free time and raise my blood pressure like it used to? Definitely not. I’ll take the win.

So, August. I gotta pick accuracy or raising (lowering?) the bar for the stuff going in my cakehole, I need to get outside on the bike and get to the pool a little more often if I can, and getting effing restarted on my book and painting. Otherwise, August is third verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit… better, hopefully.

So, I got all silly excited last month about trying something new with the diet and exercise, because new is exciting.

I’ve been banging my head against things for a while, with a strategy that worked, slowly, until it didn’t. The science of why that changed totally makes sense once I got the hang of it – when most of your exercise calories are walking and weights, the amount of RMR calories counted in exercise is a LOT more than when you’re running/biking/swimming. So, 1200 + activity becomes a little less accurate when 25% or more of those calories are ones I’d be burning anyway.

So, I was going to try to eat less. Working up my normal activity levels, I needed to eat about 1600-ish calories per day on average to lose 1 lb per week. It sounded totally reasonable.

As you can see, this is not what happened.

What does my dumb@%$ do? I get a wild hair and decide it sounds like fun to work out more instead. On one hand, it’s good because for some reason I CANNOT figure out how to eat in ways that don’t resemble a human dumpster at least a few times a week. I seriously do not know what is wrong with me right now. On the other hand, perhaps it’s part in parcel with doing more intense activity – both being hungrier and also justifying eating more.

By the details…

Week 1: 1805 calories consumed daily on average, 529 calories burned daily on average = 1276. More than I planned to eat, but considering my goal was 1300 calories or less, I thought I nailed it. Week one down, 19 more to go!

Week 2: About the same burn, but a little bit less on the intake. 1726 calories on average eaten per day, 545 burned, so I’m well below my goals. I’m a little upset because I have made exactly zero progress on the scale, but I warn myself to be patient.

Week 3: Stepped up pretty majorly with both. 1965 average food calories per day, which is a lot, but my calorie burn was up to 676 calories per day. So, still under that 1300 goal (just by a nudge). Growing more frustrated the scale isn’t moving.

Week 4: Back down a little. 1876 avg food cals, but I was down to 552 calories burned per day on average. This pushed me slightly over the 1300 goal, but only by 24 per day. Should be insignificant. Still should see some progress. When I started penning this blog was during this week, and the graph above was entirely flat.

Week 5: Worst week so far, I’m pissed at the scale and had a WEEK. I topped out at 2003 average calories per day, 512 average burned per day, so I was almost 200 calories over per day. Which… 1500 calories should not be “I gain weight” territory, but obviously, that’s how it be.

While the last week makes sense that I had zero progress, and maybe the week before, I should be seeing SOMETHING by now, right? I also know in my heart of hearts that I was eating less, or at least BETTER QUALITY (and yeah, probably less) than I am now before the pandemic. And while I’m working out more than I was, it’s definitely not at half ironman levels. And I kinda feel like that’s how I’m eating.

Social situations screw me up. When I’m at home, I can deal with the hungries better. When I’m out and there’s pizza or chips and dip or whatever just sitting out waiting for me to eat it, it’s just… torture when I’m just always hungry and I usually give in. I’ve had a 2500+ calorie day every day this month that has been influenced by being around other humans for foods and drinks. It’s funny, before this I was too burnt out for a while to really enjoy social situations. Now, I’m recovering a bit from that and I’m like YAY let’s try to see more people but BOO seeing people means I’m probably going to break my plan. To be honest, it’s also when it’s just us two (letting myself order in or stop for crap instead of sticking to a calorie plan), so I can’t totally use this as an excuse, but the highest calorie days are social things.

Either way, what I’m doing is a) obviously not quite enough to move the needle or b) I’m not tracking well. Not that I plan to be a complete moron over 4th of July and I will be tracking, ofc, but when I’m back I’m definitely going to put some effort into pre-tracking, planning what I’m going to eat better, enjoy ONE food splurge per week, not multiple, and sticking closer to that 1600-ish goal per day. If I coulda done that, I’d potentially be 5 lbs down and really happy with myself instead of just stupid frustrated.

#2 Sporty Spice Things

Where things have been going really really really well and I am really happy and proud of myself is doing actual workouts again.

Let me completely shift my tone here and talk about all the good things I’ve done in the last 5 weeks:

• I swam once a week. Holy crap! This is major for me!
• Full gold stars (3x week) for strength. I did cheat one week and had to do two workouts on the same day but otherwise I did everything as planned.
• I’ve started to do the workouts the garmin is telling me to do. Maybe not exactly on the days they’re on, but doing an average of about 3 efforts that are above base/recovery/shuffle. And I’m seeing some progress. My VO2 max is coming up, my garmin is giving me more difficult paces to hit, and I’m generally crushing them.
• 15 bikes, 13.5h total for the month. That’s almost 30 mins average per day. And 7 of those were difficult efforts.
• 10 runs. 5.7h total for the month. I backed off the last week since I had a knee twinge, but it let me bike more and my knee is feeling better. And just like the bike, 7 of those were difficult efforts (just less base miles/time).

So, yeah. I’d like another workout month like this. One swim a week. 2-3 days of doing one of the non-base or recovery workouts on the garmin. Weekend bricks. Just. like. June.

The only change is I plan to start riding a bit outside. I need to remember how to do that. But… not every weekend. It’s really hot. I have really loved our gym bricks because I don’t have to choose between getting up at 6am OR die of heatstroke.

#3 As for adulting, we…

• Met with the financial advisor. We are on track for retirement, and she had very few suggestions for us to do anything better. Yay!
• Road bikes went into the shop and are home. We take the tri bikes in this week.
• Murphy bed is installed! July goals are to keep working on the stuff in here so things are set up nicely for Joel. Once that’s better, I will probably start working on mine too.
• For July: take the truck in to get its spray liner. From January. Oops.

I think that’s probably good for goals here with everything else going on.

#4 Hobbies

• Book – I have typed THE END. At about 115k words. I was trying to race to get a first edit pass before 4th of July camping but decided that I’d rather not rush it and read it casually on the kindle when I’m happy with it. Funny, I typed THE END on book two on the same camping trip last year. This one took a little longer than expected but I’m excited the crappy first draft is out there now. Goal for next month is first edit pass and then a read + notes.
• Photos – got my mouse sorted, and I’ve finished Houston trips and I’m almost done with San Francisco. For July, I’d like to sort Vermont and get started on it. It’s definitely more than a month project.
• Guitar – I’ve started playing a few times in the last week after tuning my acoustic up, and goal will be play at least one song (more once my fingers are more calloused again) on WFH days.
• Travel –
  • I get to go to Seattle as a tourist this time (not working the convention, but I have a free hotel room to share so I’m booking my flight and going to enjoy things like taking the ferry and leisurely checking out Pike’s Place Market and maybe a museum or garden or two.
  • Arranging a short cruise with my parents in early October (they want to go on a 4 day)
  • I think our fall vacation will be Colorado camping in November. Need to figure out the logistics of this and if we are ok with the colder weather (right now, yes please, sick of melting…)

#5 And work life balance, while I can’t say things are completely low stress right now, I seem to be keeping it in check decently well. I’m not working when I’m not working and am finding myself decently capable to relax.

And, on the last possible day with like 3 hours to go, you have a June update. 🙂 Wish me luck, willpower, and some magic dust on the calories IN part of things next month!

How’s it going, me?

Well, as I started this draft on Friday late afternoon, I had just put “Right now I want to go face down on a bowl of noodles” in a public chat at work instead of a direct message to Joel. So, there’s that. I decided then it was time to catch up here instead of continuing to work. Otherwise… hmmm, let’s see what’s been going down (on a bowl of noodles or not) in the last month or so.

• My colonoscopy went just fine, and I don’t have to do that again for many years. Yay!
• Last week in April, a gaming convention was in town, and I went to some of it and all the social events. Awesome for networking, fun times, but I definitely overconsumed in terms of calories. And beverages specifically. Fun times, but glad those aren’t often.
• May 10th we got up at 3am to hop a plane to Bonaire for a week! Finally! This was kind of a last-minute booking, when I wrote my last post, we only had tentative plans to go some time in the late spring. But work things came into focus, and we were able to duck out for the week between a major launch and before our Moulin Rouge tickets the Tuesday we returned. Diving was awesome, and while the vacation wasn’t really relaxing, it was enough to unspool me mentally. I’ve felt recharged this week at work and that’s really good news as I was getting kinda crispy.

So, yeah, been pretty busy around here, as always, and I finally have about a good few months where I don’t have a ton of social plans, travel plans, nothing crazy. So, it’s time to buckle down and make a nice, concerted effort on the tracking, weighing, etc etc and get some momentum going into late summer travel/race/chaos time.

#1 The Unwanted Kettlebell

I finally did the work to update all my weights in trendweight and looks like I’ve gained about 3 lbs since November. It is not unexpected or undeserved, but it’s truly frustrating to be a healthy, active, individual who tends to eat a lot of healthy food and only be able to maintain/lose when I am a very hungry caterpillar.

I’m also now understanding that 1200 + activity calories is probably too many to eat as a goal. Actually, it would be a fine goal, but it’s including my RMR, or my resting calories that I’m burning during that time too. Garmin estimates I burn about 1800 calories as a human doing human things (or 75 calories per hour, or 1.25 calories per minute) because I am more metabolically efficient than the average bear (grumble grumble). This is much less of a margin of error when I’m running for an hour (700 calories so like 10%) biking for an hour (500 calories, so like 15%), swimming for… haha, well, lets say 15 minutes (150 calories, so like 13%). When I am walking, that’s 300 calories per hour, so that’s a quarter of them. And no matter what, even the 10-15% adds up over time.

To lose weight, you need to create a deficit. An “easy” or at least gradual one is 500 calories per day. So, if I did nothing, I would need to eat 1300 calories a day. Miserable.

Good thing I always walk at least 1 mile a day, which is about 100 extra calories a day, minus the 25 calories I’m already accounting for (1.25 per minute x 20 minutes to walk the mile, so we are at 1375 as the baseline. Still miserable, but slightly less.

I do weights 3x a week for 30 mins. On average, I burn about 150 calories doing this each session. So, for the 90 minutes a week I do this, I burn 450 calories minus 112.5 just existing calories, so that’s an extra 337.5 calories for the week or 48 calories per day over the baseline. So, we are up to 1423 calories per day goal. Getting better.

The rest of my workout week (little lower than normal) this week will probably include one 45-minute bike (350 calories), one 10-minute swim (100 calories), and three 40-ish minute runs (let’s say 400 calories each on average, or 1200 total), so that’s 1650. Minus 219 for my existing calories during that time, that’s an extra 1431 per week or 204 per day.

So, this week, I should eat an average of 1627 calories per day to lose 1 lb. Since my workout schedule is pretty static right now (maybe 60 more minutes of cycling on a good week, which would add 500(workout) – 75(existing) = 425 more calories, or 60 more per day. So, as a guideline, I’m going to say I should be eating an average of 1600-1700 calories per day and ignoring what my calorie tracker says unless my activity deviates significantly and TBH, I don’t think it would deviate enough that I would NEED to eat more to survive, I just could.

What this probably looks more like in practice is 2-3 days at 2000, 2-3 days at 1500, and 1-2 days at like 1300. I am definitely consuming more than this now. Last week, best I did was 1600, and on average, 1956. My Fitness Pal thinks I overate by 500 calories. This new method says I’m over by about 2000, which considering how my weight is trending, seems to be more acccurate.

Also, this is a reminder to myself that if I can not just meet, but beat these goals some weeks, I’ll make faster progress. If 1600-1700 calories average is a 500-calorie deficit, then 1100-1200 calories is a 1000 calorie deficit to lose 2 lbs per week, which is the lowest you should safely go. I know myself, and I would go batshit insane on that calorie intake after like 3 days so that’s not happening. I love food. I enjoy whiskey (though I’m trying to enjoy it a little less to save on calories). 1600 is a good goal.

And FFS, if I can actually manage to lose 4 lbs per month, holy crap. That’d be the best progress I’ve had in a long time. I weighed in at 186.9 lbs today. I’ve got 18 weeks til Kerrville. This does include a 4th of July trip and a work convention trip, but if I can swing it, I could be back to my happy racing weight like I was in 2018-2019. Now, it just takes doing (the hard part, as always). But I feel mentally ready to go for it right now in a way I haven’t in a while.

#2 Sporty Stuff

I had honestly thought that I’d spend more time hiking this spring, but I have enjoyed the break from needing to spend major parts of my day on a trail. The process of working up to a 50k did some great things – I am super stable, I have great endurance, I feel stronger, and I suppose also that it helped me appreciate the relative simplicity in time commitment of triathlon training.

Since we last spoke, I have:

• Not missed a strength session. I did double one up the week before vacation, but it was a very long and productive arm workout with chest, shoulders, back, and biceps. And I didn’t do anything official during vacation but a week of hauling tanks and gear and myself with tanks and gear totally counts. The 25 lb dumbbells felt lighter after the week “off”, not heavier, heh.
• 11 runs. This is about 2 a week on average, not counting my vacation (which had other activity, see above). Starting a couple weeks ago, I’ve started to just do the workouts the Garmin has been telling me to do, and this has been awesome, I have some speedwork back in my life! It got cranky at me this week and lowered my VO2 max and put me on easier runs, but TBH, the weather got really hot, my sleep has kinda sucked, and it wasn’t completely wrong to do so.
• 13 bikes, so a little over 2x week. As it’s getting very warm, I have a feeling that I’m going to err on the side of hopping on my trainer in my nice, air-conditioned house, vs wanting to be outside.
• Swimming. Heh. Once. Yesterday. Hopefully I can get back into this soon. It’s just never going to be priority and it’s a pain in the arse to do (read: I cannot do it without leaving my home and traveling somewhere) but especially now that it’s summer, it feels SO GOOD.
• Walked 55 miles, which sounds like a lot but it’s about 1.4 miles on average per day. Def doing the bare minimum here right now, but that’s 55 miles (or 5500 calories) I would not have burned any other way!
• 17 Dives, 16h25m. Fun fact, I always thought I burned SO many more calories than I actually do diving. Now that I have the super fancy diving Garmin, I found out my heart rate stays super low (over all the dives, my average was 74 bpm) and searching the internet, the thermogenic effect in 82 degree water is also super low – so it probably just doubled my resting metabolic rate for a couple hours a day. Ah well. At least you burn a bit more by hauling tanks and gear and yourself with said tanks and gear around but not the “OMG IT’S LIKE RUNNING” I was led to believe.

My goal is to basically keep at it:

• 1 swim per week (like, really, it’s hot outside, this will feel very nice, it’s worth the annoyance)
• 3 runs per week (do what the garmin says)
• 3 bikes per week (tryyyyy to do what the garmin says, but prioritize running if it puts in too many “workouts”)
• 3x weights per week
• 1 mile (and probably pretty often just 1 mile) walk per day

#3 Adulting

Some things are in progress!

• Meet with a financial advisor on retirement (scheduled for June 2!)
• Clean out Joel’s office (murphy bed install is set for late June, then we can figure out the rest of the stuff in there)
• New goal for June – get all 4 bikes into the bike shop for maintenance and get my gatorskin tires off my race bike

I think that’s about it. I feel like there was some adulting I did in the last month or so, but I can’t remember it. So, I guess it doesn’t count.

#4 Hobbies

Book – I am at 99k (made some awesome progress this last month!) and I still have the final fight of the story and the resolution/epilogue to go. Definitely a longer one than the last two. I started this one in July last year. I’m going to do my damnedest to have my crappy first draft done by July. Of course, it’s a hobby, not a livelihood, but it’s good to have goals and I would love to read it like a book over 4th of July camping!

Photos – diving photos done from December done, I’ve sorted my winter trips and started editing… and then I broke my mouse dongle. So, I need to get another one of those so I can edit photos again!

Guitar – making the resolution this next month to get my acoustic tuned and play at least a few songs a day when I am WFH. I’m probably getting close to forgetting songs now and I worked so hard to learn them… I want to make sure they stay retained.

Vacations – we need to settle on our fall vacation. Was thinking some sort of sojourn to the northeast for fall leaf peeping, but the timing may not work out with other things going on this year during that specific time window (work trip, trip with family, race). I don’t want it to go so long that I get burnt out again and I also didn’t like doing the week after Thanksgiving trip because it felt like it kicked off 6 weeks of IDGAF holiday eating and the holiday season felt shorter somehow so definitely before then. So, maybe late Oct/early Nov for something?

#5 Work/Life Balance

Maybe it’s the vacation post-haze talking, or maybe it’s a project at work that had a lot of… anticipation and nerv-citedness around it finally finishing in a most amazing way, but I feel like this has been better lately. I’ve felt these pops of motivation this week that I haven’t in a while, so I’m super happy I seem to be emerging from the mental burnout fog I’ve been in on and off for way too long. I also know I have a 4-day weekend (Juneteenth, no plans) and a 4-night camping trip for 4th of July coming up as well. So, relaxing times are imminent, and I’m not even super stressed heading into them. Yay for me!

Going to go take my motivated self to go do some good over this Memorial Day weekend. 🙂

What else would a normal person do at 430am whilst on round 2 of colonoscopy prep but catch up on blog writing?

I mean, after that sickly sweet cherry flavored “gonna poop myself” drink and being up most of the night anyway with allergies? It just makes sense to write something in my delirious state killing time between bathroom breaks.

Soooooo… yeah, that super rough March went pretty much as expected and more. I posted my last missive right before we left for GDC. It was actually a great experience, both professionally and personally, but kinda took a toll. We stayed in a room – the first few nights – with other major quirks, but most importantly only one full-size bed. Not a queen, not a double, a full. One step away from twin. That didn’t work out for two grown ass adults. First night I turned in at a reasonable hour and just tossed and turned. After that, I figured I may as well indulge in the after parties, as it was the only way I was getting sleep. So, three nights of piss poor sleep, 8am-midnight+ meetings and then social events which were pretty much meetings with alcohol and food, and 20k+ steps per day and we were just exhausted to the bone.

We had planned two more nights/three days of fun and sightseeing for just us, and we were so tired we didn’t do a lot of it. I pretty much slept and read in the room on Friday after a few morning meetings except for a quick trip for dinner the Stinking Rose – one of the first nice places we had a “date” on vacation 25 years ago. It was really delicious, but we got sat in a corner by the window with the sunset coming in and kinda blinding us and were ready to leave once the food was in our bellies. We had snagged a rooftop suite for pennies (since the convention was over) and the plan was to get a bottle of wine and enjoy it on our patio… we enjoyed falling asleep for 10 hours each night instead. We made it through a bit of hiking but Joel didn’t have a ton of energy, so we called it at 8 miles Saturday (Golden Gate Bridge Trail to Fisherman’s Wharf) after a hearty crab chowder in a breadbowl and 3 miles in the Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park on Sunday before completely unremarkable pho for lunch.

After the flight home (which landed after midnight), Joel woke up the next morning sick sick and I was kinda sick but not in a normal way. I never had any symptoms, but the level of tired you get when you get the flu or covid or something? Yeah, I felt like I was wading through sand mentally and physically for about 3-4 days. So, besides work? I slept. A lot.

I finally felt some energy back right around the beginning of April and started feeling like runs. Lots of them, but short. I think the first week back I ran like 5 times in 7 days (but between 1-3 miles a day). It actually was quite nice just to think “hey, I’ve got 15, 25, 35 mins right now, I’ll just go for a jog” and not worry about the length, if it wasn’t that much, I’d just go again the next day. I’m going to try to keep up that mentality. Getting a 2-mile run in isn’t usually all that’s on the plan, but it’s a really nice way to wake up if I can make it happen!

I took almost 2 weeks break from weights. I had planned for that during GDC – doing a super back bicep chest shoulder workout the day before I left and then just having “legs” be the 20k steps a day and hills that were San Franciso, but when I got back, see the “work and sleep only” plan. I tried, y’all, I really did. On Tuesday, I brought the weights to do a back and bi workout in my office. That was enough of a workout. I just kind of stared at them on Tuesday. And Wednesday. And Thursday. I finally picked them up on Monday the next week, and I’ve been good for the last two weeks and don’t see that stopping.

I mentioned allergies – those hit on Thursday and have been bugging me since. It’s all springy and pretty and I’ve been tromping around my house to get my mile walk in this weekend because it’s positively YELLOW with pollen outside. Colonoscopy prep + allergies has been super fun too. I already am doing weird things to my body by eating like I’m on a cruise and forgot what vegetables are, plus I also can’t sleep well because all the snot is dripping down my throat and making it all angry-like. I honestly cannot tell if it’s a mild cold or bad allergies but considering the status outside and everyone else in Austin whining about it, I’m going with allergies.

If I sound like a sad sack, I’m nothing compared to what Joel’s been going through. Instead of just “weirdly tired” he was sick sick the week after we got back. He felt better, so the next Monday, he accompanied me on a 2 mile walk and a 10 minute swim, which pretty much knocked him out for the first half of the week. Later on, he felt better so we increased his walk a little and had him walk 3 miles on Sunday. The next day, he was just shattered. So, to the doctor he finally went, and she diagnosed him with previously having the flu (which I assume I was spending time just fighting off) and then he caught bronchitis. He got 5 days of super-antibiotics. And just the last few days he’s finally felt like a real person again (just as I have devolved into the angry phlegmy pooping goblin!).

The good thing is that if I follow Joel’s trajectory for recovery after this procedure, I’ll be back at it very soon (maybe a day or two) and he’ll finally be ready to join me (slowly – first building up the walk to 3 miles without fatigue before doing anything else). I’m looking forward to a little bit of normalcy!

So, brief words about where I’m at with all the things:

#1 The Unwanted Kettlebell

I think I’m about the same weight as the last time I wrote here, which is actually not bad considering the week of ridiculous foods in San Franciso and not feeling well. My back-half-of-April resolutions are:

• Get caught up on my Trendweight. I’m months back and it would be nice to be able to legit track some progress here instead of guessing.
• I specifically didn’t track my calories the last three days of prep so I didn’t get anxious about having to eat weirdly, but back to it tomorrow (after getting whatever the eff I want after 36 hours of clear liquid diet crap)
• I have actually been not doing terribly at 1200 calories + activity, but I’ll start tallying my weeks now for reals.

Basically, now that I’m getting back to normal times, I’m going to do the normal things. I’ll get a baseline in April and try to set some goals from there.

Total tangent: I had truly wondered what the “cleanse” part of prep would do to my weight… let me tell you, after the liquid diet part of the day, I was one lb UP from the morning of, and after the first round of the evacuations – the bloating more than overcompensated for unclogging my digestive system, I was a few tenths up over THAT. So, the whole “do this cleanse and rid yourself of all this weight” malarkey going around? I’m going to say it’s nonsense. Eat healthy, stay hydrated, poop a few times a day, and you’re fine.

#2 Sporty Stuff

After feeling better and before allergies/colonoscopy prop, I had a pretty good groove here which I will aim to return to.

• 3x weights per week
• 2-3 bikes per week
• 3-5 runs (some real short) per week
• 1 swim
• 1 mile+ day of walking

I’ve had some pops of not just easy running and riding over the last month and a half, I’m looking forward to making that a habit. I had a really nice baby speedwork session – basically run hard down the hills, jog the flats/uphills. First 5k under 11-minute miles in a while without me really trying to push a pace!

#3 Adulting

Geez, I’m getting my butt looked at, what more adult is there? Besides that I even:

• Got my registration taken care of
• Got my eyes examined and got new glasses (on the way)
• Cleaned up my new office at work so it’s not a complete trash heap of boxes and bags

Going to give myself a pass for the rest of the month on must-dos and make a few goals for May.

#4 Hobbies

• Book – 75.4k (about 5.4k more than last time). It’s less progress than a good focused day, but I haven’t had a good focused day, I’ve had stolen hour or twos here and there. And forward progress is forward progress.
• Haven’t really touched much else besides voraciously reading the Villian’s Code series. I’m a few hundred pages from done on the last book and that’s pretty much been my hobby time since I’ve been sick or tired or pretending I’m sick so I don’t get sick. It’s been pretty relaxing.
• I’d like to finish my diving pictures by the end of the month so I can start something new.

#5 Work Life Balance

I can’t explain why this one has been so difficult, but it has been. I think I’m past the worst of it now, but I can’t lie, I’m almost looking forward to this procedure, so I get an extra day off guilt free. Sounds like I need a vacation – holy geez, I do, and I have one planned, but need to make sure we’re healthy for it. I had booked time off in a few weeks but not the accommodations/travel, so we’ll see if we can actually go then. I think I’m not going to wait though and take an extra 3-day weekend not this weekend (too many social things planned already to actually get the relax time I’m looking for) but next weekend.

No matter what, I resolve to have the plan, by the end of this month, for some time off to destress.

Whew, only been to the bathroom about 7 times since I started this post, let’s go for number 8. It hasn’t been the funnest weekend, but not quite as bad as I expected (at least in the prep part, DO NOT RECOMMEND doing with allergies keeping you up as well). Once I get er done, and get some dang food, I’m sure I’ll be a happy camper and feel relieved even my butt is healthy!