Hi all!
First thing to note is that while I will be writing blog posts, I want to do more regular content on Instagram talking directly to camera. This will be training focussed, talking through my workouts, and ways that others can follow them :)
What an excellent first week it was!!! From the kick off (first proper post) on Monday 29th Jan to Sunday 4th Feb, my weight dropped from 102.7kg down to 101.3kg. This is great progress, but could have been better. On Friday, I weighed in at 99.6kg (fully hydrated and rested). The subsequent gain was from parties attended over the weekend (family parties), and eating more than I should have been!
But, a win is a win, or in this case a weight loss is a loss!
Let's do a review of what went great and what went pear shaped:
Positives
1.) Water! 3L's a day. This was a game changer for hunger pangs. Before a meal and after, I would slam a glass. Previously, as soon as a meal ended, I would think "I need something crunchy/sweet", but drinking water helped curb that.
2.) Working out - Anj and I got up twice at 05:30am to exercise, which is something I struggled with, but saw the benefit of doing. This is something that will take some time to build into a recurring habit. Also managed 2 basketball sessions and 1 weights session.
3.) Protein - On all weekdays, I hit my protein goal of 170g/day. If I wondered why some days I felt super hungry vs super full, I bet it was due to a lack of protein that day!
4.) Tracking - More on this below.
Some simple meals from last week
Negatives
1.) Fell off the wagon when presented with a social environment. I need to come up with some mechanisms to avoid this (eating before hand, having a plan to avoid calorie dense food)
2.) Saturday was the big day of going out, but then Sunday somehow got dragged in too.
3.) When I fell off, I didn't track as accurately.
Tracking progress
Something that has helped me massively is the creation of a habit tracker. On its face, it is super simple. You choose X number of daily goals, hopefully focussed on getting fit. As you move through the day, you check them off. Your "adherence" score is what % completion you managed of your goals!
The hard part is making it easy to update. To that end, I ended up using Notion. A free tool that allows you to build handy dashboards.
Its great. I simply open the app, and press the button of the action I have completed, then the chart at the bottom updates to show how well I am doing.
Currently my average score is between 50% and 60%, but its getting better over time.
The updates I want to make for this are to
1.) Import my weight logs
2.) Import my net calories from MyFitnessPal
Doing these 2 things, and aligning with the adherence score should show that when I stick to my goals, my net calories are low and I lose weight. An experiment is born.
That is all for now. As I said, I am going to try and blog once per week, and record more content with voice over. Lets see how it goes.
Goal for this week is to drop to sub 100kg by Sunday and to record 1 voice over!
Raj, DADthlete
Fitness as a dad isn't just about lifting weights; it's about lifting life's responsibilities with strength and a smile.