It was a better week on the personal front. Ran twice, first runs in 2021. Mediated once, first in 2021. Cajoled R into making a decision on the car, one way or the other. Rested and read. Slipped a bit on the sleep front, made up a bit today.
The black spot was the weight. Recorded a high weight of 91.3kg, and a high weekly average of 90.8kg.
…and massive fitness loss.
76.2kg in mid December 2019 :)
83.2kg in mid March 2020 :(
The dark clouds arrived—Boris returned as PM, winning a big majority, winning a mandate for more lies and bluster for all future elections.
The silver lining faded—Corbyn refused to step down, instead asking for a period of ‘introspection’, and only promising a vague ‘will not lead the party in next election.’ Labour lost 61 seats across the country, and managed to win just one from another party. Labour has now lost two elections in a row under him; elections that any other decent leader would have won comfortably. Still, the ditherer-in-chief says he wants to introspect for a few months to figure out what went wrong!
Then the interesting stuff began.
I published my second Android app: Accelereader for Instapaper. It was in beta for a few weeks, but went into public release earlier this week. It’s always scary publishing publicly, however small the audience may be.
Then I did something even scarier—I decided on the Hanson method for training for the Paris marathon. Even the beginner program has 6 days of running most weeks; I struggle to run 5 days consistently. The beginner program also has almost two months of running 80-90 km per week. My weekly cadence has only rarely been above 50 km. It involves multiple faster-than-race-pace 10-mile tempo runs, and interval sessions that go on longer than my current long weekend runs. I’ll come out of this training season at the top of my running fitness, or broken—mentally and physically.
Not everything is scary. I made progress with the pull-ups. Today I did two full ones. Twice. Last week I was celebrating almost completing one. A few weeks ago I couldn’t even do a quarter. I also do 4-6 chin-ups a couple of times a day, up from just 1-2 a few weeks ago. (Yes, chin-ups and pull-ups are different)
I’ve also made progress with weight loss (despite the muscle gain from pull-ups and running). Yesterday, I weighed-in at 76.2Kg, a nearly 5-year low, and within hitting distance of the goal weight.
And finally, the best bit: I’ve started meditating again. I’m on a 15-day streak, sometimes twice a day, and finally getting back to being able to focus for a few minutes unbroken. If nothing else survives from this period post (I really hope the current government and opposition leadership don’t), I hope at least this will.
Latest life tweak is ‘No Carb Thursdays’.
Why ‘No carbs’? Because I love carbs but they also make me feel bloated and lazy. And avoiding them all, all the time, unnecessarily taxes my will power. I have reduced the usual intake, but it still spikes occasionally (actually more frequently than I admit).
Also because I’ve gained nearly 1.5Kg in last week—76.6 last Thursday, 77.9 today. And I hadn’t run in four days. And I’m not happy—about a few things in particular, but also that low-intensity background unhappiness in general.
So I decided to try a new thing.
Why ‘Thursdays’? Because today is Thursday, and I didn’t want to put this off till tomorrow.
Completed some good, fairly complicated work yesterday evening and this morning.
Weight is down to 77.1 Kg. I haven’t been lower than this since early 2015.
Someone responded to my appeal for help just as I was losing hope that they remembered me.
And I’m about to head out for a run.
I’m happpy.
Weight is down. At 77.4 Kg, it’s the lowest it’s been since December 2017, and within touching distance of the all time grown-up low in early 2015.
I’m running again. 5 consecutive days after 3 dreary runs in 3 weeks.
I’m working. It’s hard and happy work. Just the kind that drives me crazy yet leaves me happy.
I’m reading. I’ve run out of things to watch on TV so have been happily spending evenings reading in bed.
The boy is sleeping with me again. He comes and snuggles up while I’m reading. He even forced R to open the doors to come to me last night. And again this morning.
Autumn is at its most beautiful. I get to enjoy it everyday on my runs.
I’m listening to music that I like.
And, it’s sunny today. People outside northern Europe won’t understand how valuable is a sunny November morning :)
Because…
Spoke to ma-pa yesterday.
Active user count for Todo.txt for Android touched a new high.
It’s freezing cold but sunny.
Weight didn’t increase despite yesterday’s gorging on chocolate and kaju katli. It dropped by 0.2kg.
I’m about to head out for a run.
(It was a wonderful 10K, half with boys who were half brown by the time we finished)
I saw KJT run the 100m hurdles. I think I’m in love with her :)
I’m wondering if I can lose 5.21 Kg in a month and a half?
The weighing scale read 81.4 Kg on Saturday, 10 Aug. Last time I weighed this much was on 26th February, more than five months ago.
As recently as a month ago, on 5th July, I weighed just 78 Kg. I gained 3.4 kilos in a month!
That 81.4 isn’t a single spike. My average weight last week was 80.3 Kg. A month ago it was 78.3 Kg. Even the weekly average increased by 2 kilos :(
Based on BMI (25.4), that makes me officially overweight.
