2/13/2019 5:26pm
This has been a great week for me, I’ve met quite a few of my goals from my last blog and have made strides both in the gym and with my diet. These successes have emboldened me to keep grinding, trusting that with enough effort and proper nutrition, my body will sort itself out in due time.
I’ll start with my fitness situation this week:
I went to the gym on 2/6, 2/8, 2/10, 2/11, 2/12, and 2/13, sometimes I went twice because my suitemate introduced me to a fasted cardio routine. We go to the gym together at 6AM and warm up on the stairmaster for about 10 minutes, and then run on the treadmill for half an hour. The idea is to alternate from walking to jogging/running on the treadmill every tenth of a mile. It’s a very strenuous workout because I’m not very cardiovascularly fit, but I really enjoy it and I’m hoping to see some fat loss by the end of the month. So four or five times out of the week, I’m going to the gym twice a day with my suitemate, once at 6AM to do cardio and once in the afternoon, where I do my lifting.
Moving on to my weights and lifts, I’ve made improvements just about across the board. I’ve improved my squat form, so much so that I squatted earlier this afternoon and currently have no spinal pain, unlike past lifts. A big boon to my confidence this week was that I hit a new personal record of 230lbs for reps on my dead-lift without a belt! My overhead press has also improved thanks to a narrower grip on the bar, and it is currently 70lbs. I made a big improvement on my bench press form today, utilizing a narrower grip that allowed me to exert more force on the bar. 135 lbs went up easy this time, and I’ll be looking to FINALLY add more weight to the bar next week.
My tricep pulldowns have become pretty easy at 27.5lbs, so I’ll be upping those next week as well. I’ve largely abandoned bicep curls because I think my biceps get enough work from my compound exercises. If one of the guys who lift could comment their thoughts on my rationale that would be greatly appreciated. One downside this week was that I didn’t really do any lat pulldowns. The machine almost always seems to be in use. This is unacceptable as I need to train my lats in order to have both proper strength and a proper body shape. I’m thinking of doing those before my cardio routine.
Moving on to my diet, I think it’s safe to say I’ve done well this week. It’ll never be perfect, but I’ve made more progress. I’ve all but eliminated the super starchy carbs from ECC (such as tater tots and steak fries), and actively avoid fried options. I also only had Gatorade once or twice this past week, and none in recent memory. Another SMART goal accomplished! I did have ice cream twice at the beginning of last week, but I haven’t had any in five days so I’m looking to keep that going into next week. I’ve also introduced Muscle Milks into my diet in order to ingest extra protein in the hopes of building some muscle. Along with the Muscle Milks, I’m actively trying to eat a lot of lean protein for lunch and dinner, and have been opting to eat two grilled chicken sandwiches at ECC for lunch. They come with some bacon and grilled onions, and taste great. On the surface, they appear to be a healthy option, but I have no idea how calorically dense they are. I’m getting a lot of mixed information when it comes to how much I should be eating. I know that if I eat less than I burn, I’ll lose weight, and if I eat more than I burn, I’ll gain weight. My problem is that I don’t know how much I should be eating. I used the MyDietPlanner within the Pearson MyHealth suite to try and get a different perspective, and it told me I needed to eat about 2,500 calories to lose a pound a week at my activity level. The problem is that once I started putting my exercises into the program, it started spitting out 3,000 calories or more. I don’t think that I can lose weight on 3,000+ calories. Either I’m right or I’ve been starving myself for a year. I can’t really tell, I just eat until I feel just about full and move on with my day. Some help or advice here would be a godsend.
SMART Goal: Keep editing my diet and fine-tuning it to my personal needs.
Finally on to my mental health this week:
I’ve had a couple nights of restful sleep this week, which is very welcome. I’ve felt fatigued over the past week after getting lackluster sleep and it’s showed. Waking up this morning before my alarm at 5:30 and feeling alert and well-rested left me happier than I’ve been in a LONG time. I achieved this through cutting out screens about an hour before bed and reading instead. This has been a great way to make progress on my reading list while also naturally priming my body to sleep. After reading chapter 3 and reinforcing just how important it is to get enough good, quality sleep, I will absolutely continue to incorporate this practice into my routine. I’ve also begun playing NHL with my suitemates in our common room. This has been great for male-bonding between us and is also a healthy competitive outlet. So far so good on that front.
My main take-away from the reading this week was the idea to not sweat the small stuff as a way to reduce stress. I’ve always been a worrier. I’m a firm believer in the idea that the devil is in the details, and I’ve always been very detail-oriented and precise in my work. While this is good from a productivity perspective, I’ve applied this mindset to my life as a whole and it has stressed me out for YEARS. I’ve known this has been a problem for me for a while now, but I just haven’t gotten around to addressing it. Marcus Aurelius’s “Meditations” has been on my reading list since the summer, as it is the first book to outline the philosophy of Stoicism, which is essentially just not “sweating the small stuff”. I need to try and live more in the moment and go with the flow in the coming weeks.
Lastly, some of you may have noticed that my picture doesn’t really seem to go with my blog topics this week. For those who don’t know, the picture is of a children’s book titled: “Scuffy the Tugboat”. It’s an all-time favorite of mine. The story is of a little boy’s Tugboat that doesn’t want to sail in a tub; rather he wants to explore and ultimately see the ocean. So the boy and his father set Scuffy in a small stream and he sails away. His adventure takes him from a stream, to a river, and ultimately to the ocean. But upon reaching the ocean Scuffy becomes scared, as the ocean is vast and filled with ships much larger than him. All of a sudden he is in a panic and wants to go home. Just as he’s about to be capsized by a wave, the father plucks him from the water and the family returns home. I chose to relate my blog to this story because the moral is to appreciate what you have and to accept the help of others. In order to improve my mental health and reduce my stress, I need to go with the flow, accept help from my peers more often, and appreciate my current position in life more.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading! Looking forward to week 4!
Logan's Fitness HEAL102 