Week One

Week 1 Recap (Jan 1-7)

I stayed on keto for most of the week. I’ve been using LifeSum to track food, weight, and exercise. I could test out other apps - MyFitnessPal and LoseIt - but I don’t think their free tiers give me all the features I want either. I like LifeSum’s interface, but I wish the food was a little more standardized. The free tier only breaks down nutrients at the macro level and it only tracks waist measurements. I can always track measurements separately in the Google Doc I’m maintaining, but eventually the lack of sodium, potassium, and magnesium details may be an issue. I haven’t even taken advantage of the custom food creation capability either. Once I get more consistent about tracking recipes and measuring portions, I’ll be able to break down the nutrition values and enter all of them into the system. I tried to keep to the diet over the weekend, but I had cake at a baby shower on Saturday and then 3 glasses of red wine with a friend on Sunday. The key to eating throughout the week is to take the time to bulk cook foods so that I can quickly portion them. I’ve been good about eating vegetables this time around on keto. My difficulty has actually been with getting enough protein.

Exercise has been spotty. I’m taking it gradually as I already get in 30 minutes of biking per day if I ride to and from work. As it gets closer to summer, I’d like to ride another 30 minutes after work. Other options include yoga, running, and body weight workouts. I’ve installed several different apps so now I just need to try them out until I find one I will stick to. I’d like to utilize lunch time as well, maybe with 30 minutes of walking?

I’m optimistic about doing a 50 mile ride this coming weekend. On Sunday, we cleaned the apartment, making me feel like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. There’s still more to be done, but I don’t feel like I’m avoiding responsibilities anymore.

Planning for our trip to Japan has been slow. We’d like to take care of booking the rooms by tonight. I’m fairly happy with the progress I’ve made so far on memorizing katakana and hiragana. I may be overextending myself by writing in addition to reading, but I find that it helps with the memorization. I’m going to throw in vocabulary eventually too.

Goals are still being tweaked. I haven’t decided on a book to read yet! I sense that I need to just pick something or else I’ll be stuck at analysis paralysis, trying to optimize my choice. An idea to make it easier: just create a list of 10 books that I can pick from! I’d also like to define rewards for achieving my goals, not only would it be good positive reinforcement, I feel it’s a good way to practice self love.