Weekly Weigh-In
Surprisingly, given the previous week of rehabilitation from a neck injury, I remained at 250 lbs.
I didn’t do anything special other than stayed in slight caloric deficit, and it wasn’t even an issue for me. It wasn’t the kind of caloric deficit that rewards me with weight loss, but I actually ate what felt like quite a bit, and even some stuff that wasn’t the healthiest, and stayed static.
I’ll take that as a win.
Details
It was a high-rep, low weight week.
I’m starting to acclimate to these. To my surprise, I’m actually kind of even looking forward to them. The permission…no, the expectation…to not focus on poundage and go light actually gives me the ability to really pay attention to form. It kind of feels like yoga, in a way, in terms of focusing on breath and slow, intentional, precise movement.
Sunday I had a great chest & biceps day. I’ve shifted to doing free weight barbell chest exercises. I don’t go heavy with these because I don’t have a workout partner/reliable spotter (and really don’t care to cultivate one at this time tbh). The hope is to activate those stabilizing muscles, and they’ve been activated. I can feel it immediately, in that way that says “yep, this is the trick.”
Work interrupted me on Monday…lately things have been bonkers there and more is being added to my plate daily. It’s times like this where it becomes even more important to get some movement in there. The stress is notable. I did get an hour of yoga in, however.
Work tried to interrupt me on Tuesday, as well, with a necessary 5:00 pm meeting with my director and colleague. Fortunately I had enough space to wriggle and got a solid leg and shoulder workout out in just before lunchtime.
Wednesday found me leaving the house at 5:15, but I made it to the gym and got a good back and triceps workout in.
I need to interject here for a moment about timing. It really is everything for me. If I’m not able to cut out from work at 4:30 pm, I get impeded by mad rush hour traffic. A typical ten minute trip easily gets doubled. This then snowballs because the little gym I go to gets packed after 5:00. It affects parking (sometimes to the point of where we have to not only spend valuable time looking for a spot but also possibly have to pay for parking) and it completely obliterates my mood.
As an example, on decent days, the typical machine hogging douchebag doing triple super sets on three different pieces of equipment spread across the gym might warrant a hard eye roll from me. On late days like this, it makes me just a little homicidal. It also sometimes results in me going to their machine, dumping their weights, and not putting them back.
All of this delay means that I usually don’t get home until around 7:30 pm. Basically, a 1.5 hour workout turns in a 2.5 one. I’m hungry, grumpy, and tired by the time I get home and I’m also irritated that I’m missing out on time with my family.
Balance is what I’m striving for. Sometimes this is the hardest thing to achieve. Especially when an equally important part of my life is so tumultuous and uncertain.
Just for context, we were informed that our newly organized department of 1.5 years is being reimagined and reorganized, again. Our Executive Director was removed from her position and replaced with someone I’m not too keen on. I’ve had another project added to my plate and am told that there may be another one as well. This is some pretty serious stuff.
But I digress (a lot)…
For the entire week of my neck injury, I was just feeling really drained. In the evening my throat and lungs would burn and tingle a bit. I didn’t pay it a ton of attention because my neck was really my prime source of grief that week.
I should’ve paid attention to the warning signs…or maybe my neck failure was a result of my body starting to get sick? Who knows?
By Thursday, I had to take the afternoon off of work. It felt like someone filled my head with cement. My throat was on fire. I immediately went back to bed at 2:00 pm. When I woke up, it had gotten worse. I was full-on sicker than I’ve been in years.
Today, on Saturday, I’m still nursing a sore throat and residual ear ache, but at least my lungs and head are clearing and I can walk without feeling dizzy, clumsy, and fearful of toppling down the stairs here in the house.
So I’m going to rate this past week a 6 out of 10. I got my big three in and a day of yoga and my weight held steady. I didn’t progress, but I also didn’t regress, and there’s a moral victory in that, given everything that’s been going on.
Here’s looking to a new week, starting tomorrow with Week 07. The bar is currently pretty low, let’s see if I can raise it a bit. At this point, I’ll kind of be satisfied if this ick is gone and I’m able to actually get in to the gym.