After a pretty uninspiring week last week, I am seeing some new progress this week. I had a couple day of missed workouts and my weight fluctuated up a bit. Then, by mid-week, I started getting back into the regular routine of working on and saw some progress. I started seeing my weight more consistently getting to the 259 mark.
On Saturday, I dedicated a lot of time to exercise. I went to the gym for a workout and did a pretty good workout and burnt a ton of calories. Then, I got home from the gym and noticed that the weather was pretty nice. So, I went out for a second workout outdoors with a run around the neighborhood. Then, later in the afternoon, I went out for another walk. These are choices I would never have made on a Saturday morning/afternoon before this journey began and I am happy that it is requiring less and less willpower to keep moving and it is starting to become more of a habit.
A new issue I am starting to develop is that I am starting to struggle a bit with my daily calorie target. My daily calorie target is 2100 given my current weight. Unfortunately, one craft beer (which I really like) is 240 calories or more (more than 10% of my target). So, it is getting much harder to fit in everything in my calorie target and the importance of calorie burn through exercise increases.
Related to my calorie target is a mental struggle too. I have dropped my daily calorie target from 3000+ to 2100 in the span of 5 months. I think this physical change has happened faster than my brain changing to understand it. My brain doesn’t want fewer calories yet even though my body physiologically needs fewer calories. So, I still have cravings here and there that I need to manage. That was something unexpected for me and something that will take some work to manage. Plus, I am going to have to get ok with drinking WAY slower when I drink in order to stretch the calorie consumption over a longer period of time.
This whole journey has been a lot of work for me and has required commitment and focus. So far, I have done great with that and have managed to lose 20% of my body weigh in 5 months. I am very proud of that accomplishment and most people never achieve what I have achieved. But, I think the next chapter is going to be even more difficult. The weight burns off way more slowly now and there are more days where I gain than there used to be. My body is more sensitive to peaks and valleys of consumption now than it used to be. My heart and lungs are becoming more efficient, so the same exercise is less impactful than when I started. But, my running endurance has not ramped up as quickly as I had hoped and I struggle with more than 2 minutes of running. I have not done a good job with putting together a plan for the gym, so I do the same things there, I meander around and get bored. I know I can do this, but it is harder than it was to achieve the same successes.
One other win this week is in my cardio fitness score measured by my Fitbit. I started in the range of “Poor to Fair” and this week I moved fully into the “Average” category after spending a month or more in the “Fair to Average” category. I really hope this is real and my heart health has really improved this much.
Last week’s stats:
Distance walked/run: 26.9 miles
Total calories burnt: 25,614
Total calories consumed: 13,180
Weight change: 1 pound lost
