Progress Log: Week 12

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Mode

It was a high rep/low weight week.

Sunday

We had a fantastic time at Alicia’s birthday party on Saturday. Unfortunately when Sunday hit, I was pretty wiped out.

This is the second Sunday in a row that I’ve sloughed off.

I don’t want this to become a habit.

Monday

I got in a solid chest and biceps day. I managed to snag two hours before my lunch hour and ran a few minutes into lunch time.

I would have liked to had some time for the bike, but it wasn’t meant to be.

Tuesday

Things unraveled starting on this day and it spun out of control for the rest of the week.

Work kept me hopping. I’m currently part of a team that is bringing a big, complex system into play at OSU. My schedule can get dicey with meetings being added to my calendar within hours of when they’re to happen. I was also put in charge of devising and coordinating a data validation plan. So there was that.

It wasn’t just work, however. I had some external family things that spiraled and left me feeling pretty uncentered.

By Wednesday, I had decided to take the week off from the gym.

So today’s talk is going to be about listening to your body and your mind.

Sometimes, life has a way of taking over everything. This can be a good thing, like when you’re going on a big vacation, or when you have houseguests that you haven’t seen in a long time.

Other times, it’s bad…like funerals, or legal woes, or other crises.

Throughout all of this, balance and self-care become extremely important.

“Hold up!” you might say. “The gym is all about self-care!”

Indeed it is, but sometimes, self-care is also realizing that you’re defeated, exhausted, and need some time to process things. Sometimes this processing happens in a hot shower, other times it happens with an early bedtime, and occasionally it might be with a therapist.

What’s important is recognizing your needs and doing what has to be done to see that they’re fulfilled.

Some folks might like to jump into the gym to drown their feelings out with excessive workouts. This is not dealing with your feelings. It’s distracting yourself from them.

Folks I gotta tell ya, my future wife is amazing. Her patience with me over this week…her willingness to hold my hand and talk about some difficult things I’m encountering, well it teaches me more and more about healthy mental, emotional, and relational habits every single day.

Healing is important and it usually requires some level of work. This is true for all things physical, mental, and emotional. Just like our bodies need rest and recovery, so do our minds, and our hearts, from time to time.

I give myself grace here. It’s one of the things that has taken decades for me to learn how to do and it’s really important of becoming a fully functioning, healthy human.

Diet

I’m laughing here. I have no idea how I lost another pound, but there it is. I ate everything in sight, I didn’t track a damn thing, but something in my metabolism decided to kick in.

Week 13 is next. The bar is currently pretty low. Let’s try to ratchet it back up a bit.