By the Numbers

Status
Not open for further replies.
Jenni: Can't say I know but was told it's basically just shredded cauliflower. I'll ask Spice if there's more to it later today.
LaMa: Will do. I'm quite looking forward to it.

Day 59. HRV: 7, BP: 110/68 - 48, 102.8 Kg, 7.5 Hrs sleep.

Decent numbers today but I was tired this morning so took it slow. I can feel in my legs that I have been doing squats. Not much, but it's there.

When I arrived at the parking lot at work today, I was taken by the sunshine and decided to go for a walk before I went in. It was - 5 C but the sidewalks in this part of town were mostly dry and clear and there was minimal wind so I got in my first real walk of the year. It may not have been my wisest choice as I was wearing a pair of virtually new shoes my mother was not satisfied with but had given me on Sunday. At size 10 EE, they fit me absolutely perfectly, but, it's never too brilliant to go for a long walk in shoes that are new to your feet. This is doubly so if you haven't been walking any significant amount for a few months. In any event, it was a brisk walk of over 5000 steps which is a fair bit over what my Garmin set up as my target. The target is of course artificially low given the largely sedentary winter life style I've been leading. The book on back rehab I borrowed from my nephew strongly advocates walking for promoting general spinal health so I will have to find a way to give this more prominence in my daily routines.

The workout will wait until after pizza dinner with grandson and family. I'll probably wind up doing evening workouts for the rest of the work week.
 
Spice confirmed that the cauliflower rice was simply shredded cauliflower with some added carrots and peas.

Day 59 workout. Managed the 13 minute row and 20 minutes each on the bike and elliptical. I bumped the cadence on the bike to 89 which yeilded watt readings of 389 for the regular part and 541 for the tougher gear intervals. Net result was 622 heart rate Calories with max/average rates of 162/149 and 3300 metres rowed at a pace of 1:58/500 m. With the morning walk added, the Garmin app reported 722 active Calories today.

I had a typical oatmeal breakfast while lunch was a bit over 1/2 of a can of a bean salad mix plus an apple and a banana. Dinner was two salt and pepper chicken wings plus what amounted to more ham/pineapple and cheese pizza than made good sense. I enjoyed it immensely and it was followed by a couple small home made cinnamon rolls.

I have a tender spot on the ball of my left foot that signifies a burgeoning blister arising from this morning's perambulations. Ah well; there's snow in the forecast for the next 3 days so I won't likely be walking off tonight's excesses.

Resistance workout was as previous and I'm definitely getting some soreness in the quads from my light weighted squats or stairs. Sit-ups are getting easy so it might be time to add some regular planks to the side planks.

Visit with grandson was a delight. He's becoming quite vocal and has developed a broader repertoire of facial expressions.
 
Perfect cue Hana. He's 5 months old today, growing and developing rapidly. I'm afraid he's going to get away with anything he wants.
View attachment 25274
Day 60. HRV: 7, BP: 103/64 - 51, 103.3 Kg, 7 Hrs sleep.

Seven hours sleep is a bit marginal for me these days so I'm feeling just a bit beat today. I was not aware of any blister in my running about this morning having made a conscious choice to wear a pair of comfortable running shoes. As suggested before, my workout will wait until this evening. Although the pizza dinner had a weight impact, the advantage of taking a running average of a week's weigh ins is that it's down 0.1 kg from yesterday's weekly average despite being up 0.5 Kg for the day to day change. Furthermore, I know some of it is a temporary fluctuation anyway because I doubt I ate 1750 Calories over maintenance with the pizza and cinnamon rolls, especially considering the additional walk activity. It does mean I will be extra vigilant over the next couple days.

I will reprise yesterday's bean salad/fruit lunch and had my usual oatmeal this morning. Spice has yet to join me skating but has suggested she would this weekend and as the daily high will be about -5 C both days, there is every probability it will happen. If not, I'll go by myself.

Workout update this evening.
 
Day 60 workout update.

53 minutes cardio starting with 3349 metres on the rower at a 1:56/500 m pace followed by the usual bike/elliptical routines at 89/69 cadences with the usual intervals. Overall average/max heart rates were a higher than usual 152/166 for a reported 632 Calorie burn. Today's HRR was 62 and I neglected to post yesterday's HRR of 61. The extra effort during the row translated to an overall higher heart rate for the entire workout today. I decided to give the squats a rest today so as to avert an increase in DOMS and note that I'm seeing almost no sign of the blister on the ball of my foot today. I would have gone for a lunch time walk but for a bone chilling wind today. If the quads recover well, I may do the missed sets on my rest day.

Dinner this evening was beef dip made from the roast Spice cooked the othe day with some fresh made quacamole and swiss cheese. It was amazing.
View attachment 25275
Spice convinced me to pick up some oatmeal rasin cookies on my way home from work and I had 2 with a couple cups of coffee as a dessert tonight.
 
Day 61. HRV: 9, BP: 102/64 - 49, 102.7 Kg, 8.5 Hr sleep.

Generally damn fine numbers this morning, though I weighed less last Sunday. Nevertheless the 7 day running average is down another 0.1 Kg which will do fine. Of course once that slightly outlying Sunday reading falls into the previous week, I'll need counterbalancing readings tomorrow and Sunday if I hope to maintain the current weight loss rate. Fortunately I'm not entirely obsessed with maintaining the rate and would rather maintain my mental balance. I'll finish this week by carrying on as usual.

There was a winter storm warning announced on the radio this morning which means snow, wind and cooler weather than originally forecast for the weekend. It's times like these I'm grateful for a remote car starter, heated seats and heated steering wheel. We are experiencing colder than usual seasonal temperatures and it's gradually sapping morale. I'd be thrilled to walk off another couple hundred Calories each day, even if it was offset by 150 or so in more eating. It just requires me to be that bit extra vigilant in not over indulging. Skating is a definite wait and see prospect now.

The cold weather isn't all bad as it's always possible to add clothing and exert oneself harder to maintain warmth. Also, there are no dangerous bugs or snakes where we live. No hurricanes, exceeding rare tornadoes. There are no rats in Alberta. We don't get earthquakes. There is no risk of flooding where I live and the forests in this part of the world are somewhat sparse and much of the land is agricultural so wild fires pose no risk. The summers are plenty warm enough to the point that I'm happy my primary vehicle has built in seat cooling. All I really need to do is take up cross country skiing or snow shoeing, get some suitable clothing and make more of an effort to adapt to cold outdoor activity. A big winter activity for people my age and older in this part of the world is walking in the overgrown indoor shopping malls that once thrived in this part of the world. They seem gradually to be dying due to online shopping.

I've decided that on those weekends that I cannot get a racquetball partner and it's too cold or windy for skating, I will instead try swimming at a local 50 metre indoor pool to determine whether it's too busy to get in a reasonable swim.

Breakfast was my typical oatmeal medley and the workout is deferred to late afternoon/evening once more so I'll update tonight.
 
Hi Hale,

Congratulation on the loss. Looks like you are doing well in this battle. I run in our weather all the time. I don't mind the cold so much as the snowy and icy trails. They make running down right dangerous at times. Alberta is a great place to be. You are right besides having Winter pretty much 7 months of the year we have it pretty good. Good news is that it hasn't started snowing here in Edmonton yet. Maybe we will be lucky and it will miss us- fingers crossed!!
 
Thanks Cowboy. I'm pretty happy with progress so far.

Day 61 workout. Repeat of yesterday. Row was 3362 metres at a 1:56/500 m rate. The 53 minutes tallied 622 Calories at average/max heart rates of 148/164 with an HRR of 62.

Lunch was one of the same buns I had with the roast beef dip except it had ham, cucumbers and some tasty mustard followed by a banana. Dinner was a can of spicy Stagg chili which claims 568 kcal for the 425 gram can followed by an apple for dessert with a cup of tumeric and ginger tea. Not a truly inspired dinner but serviceable enough.

I have a fish and chips lunch planned with my music industry buddies tomorrow and my son booked racquetball for Sunday to close out the week.
 
Hana: Proud mostly that my son is facing life in an upstanding manner and that I've had a part in that. It wasn't all clear sailing but he's doing a proper job. Having a grandson is definitely icing on the cake and has made my folks great grand parents. I have 4 siblings aged over 50 and this is the first of that generation. In fact, they have only 3 grand children, all in their 30s.

Tinned chilli? I have rather undiscriminating tastes in food. It's a bit overly salty but other than that, I quite like it. The beans and meat have a decent ratio of macros and there's even some fibre. I'm sure this probably uses the lowest quality meats and there are lots of preservatives so I'd not choose this as a staple in my diet. Overall though, it tasted like something successfully engineered to appeal to the palate.

Day 62. HRV: 8, BP: 100/61 - 49, 102.2 Kg, 8 Hr sleep.

It snowed some and at -11 C, is colder than initially forecast plus there's enough wind to make that feel like -18. I had my oatmeal medley. Since I worked out fairly late last night I'll wait until early afternoon for today's daily torture.

The heart rate and blood pressure seem to be a clue that my metabolism is headed for hibernation. I'm going to have to look for ways to keep it ticking. What I'm reading seems to be that an over emphasis on cardio is going to cause progressively more muscle loss, perhaps as an energy saving measure or just because cardio steals some energy from muscle. I suppose I could continue heading to 'skinny fat' or add in some more and harder intervals and reduce the overall cardio time while adding in some more serious resistance. Exactly how I'm going to accomplish that remains to be decided. Ultimately I've always wanted to keep cardio down to about 30 minutes for 6 days a week just because that seems like a life long sustainable amount and my current 53 minutes machine time sucks and is almost too long to get done in a morning session. I may do an occasional longer session to shake things up but less cardio is in the cards.

For now, I'll break my short duration low volume resistance from my cardio into separate daily sessions rather than rushing through both at once and plan out a swap of shorter harder intervals for a proportionately greater reduction of the duration.
 
Day 62 workout report. 9 weeks of 6 days per week completed. Only on one day did I cut back on the planned cardio and on that day I reduced the cadence on the elliptical by a few RPM but still got the full time in.

My row was a bit slower than the last couple but still a respectable 1:58/500 m rate for 3305 metres in 13 minutes. The total was my lowest Calories for 53 minutes with 584. Heart rate average/max was 142/157 which is certainly low enough to raise the cadence on both to what was planned to be the highest steady state speed for each of them before switching focus to more intense intervals. HRR was 62 which has becoming a rather common number recently. Resistance was as usual and I'm still limited to sets of 12 curl to press with 35 lb dumbbells.

It snowed most of the day and I observed 3 seperate truck and car roll overs on our ring road. My eldest brother joined the lunch gang and treated me to fish and chips. I checked out the menu online and the 2 piece dinner was a claimed 1010 kcal. Dinner was a couple Bavarian sausages with sauerkraut, poupon mustard and a mug of mushroom soup. Spice filled a bowl with solid foil wrapped easter eggs 2 days ago and I had one today.
View attachment 25281
My son played in a basketball league final this eveving so my odds of beating him at racquetball in the morning on the morrow's day off have improved.
 
Day 63. HRV: 5, BP: 110/66 - 49, 6.5 Hrs sleep.

Had a former coworker in the neighboring province I used to supervise call me up to chat last evening. It had been a couple years and we talked until well after midnight hence the abbreviated sleep. It could also serve as an excuse for my less than stellar ability on the racquet court today. The scores were respectable but I just plain missed a good percentage of shots that I have handled much better in the past. I lost 21:18 and 21:15. I wore the heart rate monitor and called it a treadmill activity which yeilded 431 kcal with max and average heart rates of 153/133 for the 48 minutes we played after warming up.

Breakfast was a typical oatmeal concoction and my post game lunch was some nacho chips toasted with bits of bacon, cheddar cheese and onions and a dip made from fresh avocado.

My weekly weight average is down 0.6 Kg from the previous week. While this is the least amount dropped in any week this year, it is still a respectable amount at 1.3 lbs and puts me well over half way to the end of June goal.

If you look at the 'active Calories' totals for each week reported by the Garmin App, and this includes steps, you get the following 9 weekly numbers:

1 - 361
2 - 376
3 - 382
4 - 389
5 - 462
6 - 467
7 - 541
8 - 575
9 - 611

I have to work harder to get the same number of calories for the time invested. That is, I have to go at a higher cadence and watts to get the same burn total by time now and the impact on weight is less significant than it was when working much less volume. All this assumes the diet remains more or less constant and I believe I'm eating to the same level of satiety hence a bit more for the increased activity.

I'm not sure how intense I can go with intervals. I hit a truly chest pounding biking hill climb last summer at 183 which puts a 90% interval at only 165 and I've routinely hit over that before I started intervals and recently the somewhat modest intervals are taking peak rates over 160 anyway. Most of my cardio is not at a particularly easy percentage, but it really doesn't feel that difficult. It seems that once I've hit a high rate early on in rowing, the rate is higher overall for the same amount of work in subsequent activity. Maybe if I do some more shorter, harsher intervals I'll start getting better at steady state recovery, but maybe I'll need to take down the current level of the regular pace to develop that.

Oh well, for next week at least I'll just bump the bike and elliptical cadence and leave the intervals at the same durations and proportionate resistances and leave the experimentation to the following week.
 
This is a struggle everyone has, unfortunately. The lighter you get, the less energy you need to survive at that weight (Your TDEE lowers) and the less energy you expend just moving yourself around. The human body is also really good at becoming incredibly efficient at movements you do with any regularity and so you burn less energy as you become more efficient as well. A lot of people change up the exercises they do every few months to combat this and optimize the energy they burn. Unless you are especially attached to the kinds of exercise you're doing right now, you might think about switching it up. Especially the cardio.
 
Cory: I know you're right on this. That's precisely why I'm focused on adding in more weights and planning on losing some of the cardio duration for shorter sharper intervals after next week. I need to do more to rev up my metabolism or I'm going to stall where I am. My resting heart rate has been under 50 the past four days and just dropped to 46 which I'm taking as a sign that my body just isn't needing much oxygen and fuel most of the day. Alternatively, I could try to eat at maintenance for a while and see what happens with the metabolism. It's near enough -12 C right now and it's gradually killing me that it's just no fun getting outdoor activity.

Day 64. HRV: 9, BP: 109/69 - 46, 103.2 Kg, 8 Hrs Sleep.

I just noticed I didn't log yesterday's weight which was 102.4. Today's number is higher, a whole Kg higher than 2 days ago and again, I know I didn't eat that much so I'm expecting it to average out. Even so, it's a lot to average, particularly when the previous week's loss was at a reduced rate.

After lunch yesterday, I had a 1/2 litre of a sports drink I was given at my Nephew's strong man event a couple weeks back. It claimed 110 calories with 25 grams of sugar. I visited my folks and had a couple slices of pound cake, a cherry turnover and 2 chocolate coated cookies. In the course of the day I also had 3 of the small foil wrapped solid chocolate Easter eggs Spice had on table top display. She asked that I pick up donairs for dinner on my way home and I split mine so as to have half then and the other half with an apple as lunch today. I had a cup of tumeric/ginger tea and hit the sack early to catch up on my short sleep from the night before.

I'm hoping that much of the extra kilo is water related to the salt on the nachos and sugar with the drink, chocolate and cake. Although the Sunday snacking sounds like a lot, it replaced much of what I would have eaten anyway and the calorie overage was nowhere near the weight difference.

Workout is getting put off to this evening again but I will get it done.
 
Well I reded HRV and got a 2 last evening. I thought I'd check as I was sneezing a bunch and felt inder the weather. Easy to do in this climate. Workout got a bye.

I had an apple and the 2nd half of the donair for lunch and dinner was a mug and a half of fresh home made leek tumeric soup with coconut milk rice and shrimp garnished with carrot, red cabbage, radishes and a few sarachi spiced peanuts on a bed of lettuce with peanut sauce. I had a second helping of the same.

View attachment 25290

This morning I weighed in at 104.3 Kg. 3 straight days of increase. Over 4.5 lbs back and my eating certainly hasn't gone sideways and I was active on my rest day.

I need to give this a new think.
 
Don't get discouraged. It seems like you're doing the right things. Water weight can do some funky stuff, especially in the short term.
 
Could be water or even some inflammation. Gaining 4.5 lbs fat in 3 days is probably impossible as that would mean a 3500 cal surplus each day ...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top