I’ve thankfully kept active enough to avoid the absolute worst of the lifetime muscle soreness.
I was definitely on the schedule of
Monday night: What are they talking about? I feel great!
Tuesday during work: OK standing up didn’t used to annoy me this much
Tuesday night walking up stairs: You know… I could just sleep on the kitchen floor
Back at it yesterday.
Squat 3x5 145
Overhead Press 3x5 95
Deadlift 3x5 165
Another better week. 3 workouts again. 2 runs and one bike ride.
Did a few sets of pushups to see how the elbow held up.
Seemed okay. No pain at the time. But a very mild feeling after. Hopefully this means I’m on the road to recovery.
Ran 6 miles today. Feeling a little sore.
Good for you, 6 miles is a decent little run. I have been keeping shorter than that - from my house I have three preferred runs, one is 5km with some hills, the other two are 7km and 9km but flat. I alternate around the 3 to get some slightly different stimulus, going fastest on the flat 7km trail.
You live in NYC right? The Central Park loop is still one of my favorite runs I’ve done anywhere, I like starting at Columbus Circle and looping in the counter clockwise direction. The last bit from the northwest corner of the park down to Columbus Circle has great views of the mid town skyline and it has an overall downward slope so you can finish the loop strong!
That’s where I run. I did the whole loop today. The northernmost section, which I usually skip, is quite hilly.
249 today. Big milestone.
My guess is when I’m doing the diet (and walking/hiking, and lifting 4x/week) I’m losing about 1lb a week, maybe? 2lbs would be pretty crazy I think?
The problem is 4lbs/month is smaller than my water weight margin of error. So it can seem like I’m making no progress for weeks, which can get frustrating, then all of a sudden I’m consistently 3lbs less. My fear is that I’ll hit a plateau, where maybe I should change things up, and not realize it for 2 months.
I also think my body goes into shutdown mode after a few weeks. I just feel super sluggish in everything I do. I still do the same amount of exercise. But just sitting around I feel completely dead. At that point it seems to work best to go off the diet for a few days to reset. But it’s hard to do that and get re-motivated.
/fatty thoughts
Do you also run on the trails by the rivers? I spent one summer living in Greenwich Village and used to enjoy running on the Hudson from Houston south. Views of the Statue of Liberty are pretty cool. I spent one other summer living in Alphabet City and liked running on the East River north from Houston.
When I first moved to the city, I lived closer to the East River and would run along the esplanade sometimes. Now I live so close to Central Park that it’s the only place I run. I still like to walk along the rivers when I get the chance.
New personal best for 5k - 26:57
Really had to push at the end
Awesome, orange theory is going great for me. Feeling better getting exercise often and I’m looking forward to running more. Apparently they have a class every few months where you go for a personal record on the mile, and that’s tomorrow so will be interesting to see what I can do.
I also signed up for a 5k about 8 weeks from now so looking forward to working up to that, doubt I’ll be running it in any 26 mins though
That’s cool. One of the big benefits of regular exercise is habit formation. When I first started running, it was a chore to go out there. Now I look forward to running. And it gets easier as your fitness improves, making it more enjoyable.
I also liked Orangetheory. I could write a scathing post about how gimmicky it is, but the truth is, it got me in the door doing stuff. I quit because of how bad Delta was in FL and from a health standpoint, probably not a good decision.
I’m glad it’s working for you as the only real thing that matters is exercise vs no exercise. Everything else is marginal.
First of all good job.
Thoughts:
Standard target for ~500 cal daily deficit. I really would not recommend aiming any higher.
This is always the problem with weight loss. It really is like poker in that regard since the noise is always higher than the signal and you need to trust the process over short-term results. If you’re recording the data then I’ve found plotting it helps you see the signal within the noise.
I’ll restate my position on diets from the other thread: they don’t work in the long run. But obviously I’m talking about meta-analyses and diets in the aggregate; of course they work in some individual cases. From all I’ve read and know, the thing you should be working toward is better and sustainable decision making, which is to say avoiding extremities. So definitely listen to your body and avoid pushing starvation and overworking yourself.
Furthermore, I can’t help but think your mentality of going ON / OFF a diet is ultimately defeating here. You’ve sandboxed these diets into two mental constructs where one triggers negative affect and physical pain such that you have to “motivate” yourself into following it, and the other is the comfortable version that is easy to fall back on but also brings potential feelings of cognitive dissonance, failure, and/or guilt along with the weight gain. You will predictably lose this battle and should seriously start thinking about how to switch out of this and onto something sustainable now that you’ve gotten off to a good start with pure willpower.
did the mile in 9:34 which was good, i was aiming for anything under 10.I think my best in HS was 5:13 so nothing special there. I think i coulda gotten it under 9 if i was really pushing but I wanted to feel it out.
I once did a mile under 6 minutes. It nearly killed me and I spent the rest of the day dieing on the couch.
It just happened to be during the Olympics and I switched on the marathon. Just to find out that they were averaging 4:30 per mile at the 10th mile…
Marathon runners are ridiculously fast. For the whole thing.
I did 5K at 19:15 in highschool that was the best I could do, I had guys on the team doing 15-16 mins.
I think I peaked at about a 19:08 or thereabouts when I was in my 20s and running all the time and training for speed. It was hard!
My best was 5:3x. I fucking hated distances. I could probably break 8 at the moment and it would suck.
It’s crazy to me that people that never ran in high school or anything start doing marathons. I met this girl several years ago who had never ran and she’s doing 100 mile Ultra Marathons now and shit. Insane.
Bernie Sanders ran a 4:37.
Read Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins if you want to read some insane ultra marathon stories.
Ran the 800 in Junior High and once completed a full marathon without training before turning to triathlons.
Now I mostly walk and hike.
An incredibly effective cardio workout for us dinosaurs is walking on the treadmill with an incline. A brisk walk with an incline avoids the wear and tear of running (there’s no real joint impact when you’re walking fast) but your heart rate goes up really fast. A good hike in the woods is probably a superior experience but if you’re pressed for time a 30 minute treadmill brisk walk on an incline is super efficient.