Another good week of Operation Melt is in the books. I have settled into my new job and have established a solid new daily routine. This routine has helped me continue making big progress in my fitness journey including weight progress and capability improvements. I am pretty excited about where I am and where I am going.
New Routine
Wrapping up my second full week at the new job and a new routine is starting to emerge and my body is starting to adjust pretty well. The result has been some nice successes that I will talk about in a minute.
Since I previously shared my morning routine with you, I thought it would be good to share an updated version. Hopefully this gives you a feel for how I do what I do.
Rise and Grind: My alarm is set for 5:15… sorry to say that I truly believe that the morning is the key to achieving big successes. I have studied the daily routines of many leaders and they almost all start early. Some earlier than me.
Start off Productive: I start my morning with the normal bathroom time as most people do. Then I hop of the scale every morning. I know that some people recommend against this but I want the data and it helps my understand how my body works. My bathroom routine also now includes drinking a 24 ounce bottle of room temperature water to start getting my body hydrated. Finally I write a brief entry in my daily journal recapping the prior day, taking about goals and plans for the day ahead of me and recapping my fitness progress from the prior day. I also use this time to do one quick pass through email and social media notifications. I know that sounds like a lot of stuff, but I like the strategy of “activity stacking” where you combine multiple activities into a single block of time. It all takes about 30 minutes.
Fuel my Body: Next up, I eat breakfast. My normal go-to is my Banana Protein Snacks and another 12 ounces of water. While I am fueling my body I am also syncing up the data in all of my fitness apps. I make sure that the entires from my smart scale got captured in my fitness tracker app and I delete the extra entries because I have learned to weigh myself 3-4 times to ensure that I get a consistent reading. I sync my fitness tracker data into my health data aggregator app and manually enter my resting heart rate from the past day and my blood pressure. I close out the prior day in my food tracking app and log my food and water that I have consumed so far.
Time to Sweat: Now the stage is set for me to get my daily workout in. This usually means it is time for a run. I put in my earbuds, I start a podcast and walk out the door. I walk down to the park for about .3 miles and then I stop to warm up. My warm up usually includes 10 walking lunges on each side, 10-20 bench pushups and 20 jumping jacks to get the heart pumping. Then I run. I usually run two laps around the park which is 1.5 miles and then I walk another lap to end the workout. This is the beautiful view!
In all I usually get 2.5 total miles in and burn 400-500 calories during my morning workout. Some mornings I mix it up and go to the gym and lift weights instead and am getting back to a weekly session with my trainer. So I am working on Monday, Wednesday, Friday runs and Tuesday and Thursday lifting.
Work Mode: As soon as I walk back into the house from my workout I enter work mode. I grab a 12 ounce glass of water and I head to the bathroom. I use my Bluetooth speaker continue whatever podcast I was listening to (or the next one) and I hop in the shower. Then I shave, take care of my hair and such and then get dressed and head out the door. I make a quick stop for coffee and one of the several neighborhood coffee shops and then hit the road.
Work, Work, Work, Work, Work: I am not going to bore you with the details of what I do at work on a daily basis. I will just say that I park in a space far away from the building to get more exercise, I always use the stairs and never the elevator (only 2 stories) and I try to walk around whenever possible. Plus I try to drink 3-4 bottles of water using my 24 ounce water bottle. I also try to take a snack with me for the morning so I am satisfied until lunch.
Lunchtime: I leave the office for lunch every day and I prefer to do lunch a bit later if I had a snack in the morning. I try to go someplace fast but with healthy options. I also look for Wifi because I usually use some of my lunch time to write or to work on some other form of content creation.
Quitting Time: I usually wrap up my work day between 5:00 and 5:30 and head home in rush hour traffic. My drive home is usually accompanied by listening to news on the radio, music or a podcast. Occasionally I have a phone call with a friend on the way home using my car’s Bluetooth so I am safe.
Nights at the Weaver House: our evenings are usually pretty unstructured and so there is really no routine to share. We either go out for dinner at one of a few restaurants – we are creatures of habit – or we grill out or otherwise cook at home.
Bedtime: I usually head to bed around 11:00 and fall asleep watching The Daily Show.
There you have it, my newly emerging daily routine. You can see that I try to make as many healthy choices as possible including drinking plenty of water. My daily water intake goal is 140 ounces and I am often actually getting 200+ ounces.
200 Pounds
My daily routine and my smart health choices continue to pay off.
As you may remember, my weight loss goal was 100 pounds in a year. When I got to that point at 9 months, I set a new goal for myself. The new goal was to lose 125 pounds to get myself under 200 pounds for the first time since junior high. I wanted (stretch goal) to get to 125 pounds lost by my fitiversary on 6/15, but I didn’t meet that timeline. So I adjusted my goal again to be to lose over 125 pounds by the end of July.
This week I got almost to my revised goal! I stepped on the scale, one day after being 203.8 pounds, and I was at 200.8 pounds.
I am so close to getting to the sub-200 pounds mark!
That was an exciting moment in my journey and I am about to hit my revised “stopping” point. So I really need to figure out if this really means that I am going to stop or keep going. If I can get to 199 pounds I am sure I could get to 185, right?
Running Around
Since I finished my first 5k, I have become unstoppable!
On Saturday morning I decided I wanted to go for a long run – Saturdays are my normal long run days and Sundays are rest days. So I put out a call on Facebook to see if anybody wanted to join me. My sister-in-law Melanie took me up on the offer and we decided to meet at the Audubon park (the site of my 5K) at 8:30 for a run.
It is important to note that this was a particularly hot weekend. At 8:30 on Saturday it was already sunny and over 80 degrees! So it was definitely going to be a hot and sweaty weekend. This is depicted nicely by my poor sweat soaked hat.
I took a walk to the park which is about a mile away and met Melanie. Then we ran the Scioto trail from the Audubon boat ramp all the way along the river to North Bank Park and back. It was a total of about 4.5 miles and we finished in just under an hour.
It was hot and sweaty and it wasn’t easy because there are a lot of hills and such. But it was such a great run which felt like a big accomplishment. That was over 4 miles and I did fine!
Up until yesterday I had some anxiety about my next 5k that I am running next weekend at Indian Lake, but I no longer have that. Plus I had even more anxiety about an upcoming 4 mile run that I am signed up for at the Columbus Oktoberfest (ends with sausage and beer!) and that anxiety is mostly gone too. I can totally run a 4-miler! Click on the image below to register to run with me!
My next set of decision points are all related to upcoming marathons. Am I ready to sign up for the Columbus Marathon in October to do the half marathon? I definitely wouldn’t run it, but I may run the first few miles and walk the rest. I can totally walk 13 miles.
These are decisions that I never thought I would be trying to make in my life. I have come so far in just 54 short weeks!
Check back next week for more!
Last week’s stats (6/18-6/24):
Distance walked/run: 41.5 miles
Total calories burnt: 24,089
Total calories consumed: 13,218
Weight change: 6.2 pounds lost
