Ah, Saturday. The day when you find out if your effort during the week has been applied properly. You can work quite hard after all and find out later it was all spent in the wrong place. That’s hard but you can correct it over time. As Homer Simpson complained (as Henry VIII), “I eat and eat and still don’t lose weight!” I have been having a problem that my weight loss has slowed to the speed of a sleepy snail. On a cold day. Is that a matter of readjusting my effort?
Progress is progress, however slow. I have some thoughts about that. But the iportant thing is that since starting my weight control lifestyle in January 2019, I have lost:
Crawling towards a minor victory
I will be pretty happy when I lose 100 pounds, but at current rate that will take months. I am leaning towards blaming the lack of exercise and activity in my life right now. The Corona Virus is playing hell with my lifestyle and I haven’t been seriously exercising (swimming) since March. That and staying home most of the time must be having an effect. I am eating carefully and just the same as I always did when I was losing 2 pounds per week. I am guessing that exercise was fueling part of my weight loss all this time.
I don’t know that for sure and won’t know until I have evidence – that is, once I can start swimming again. In theory the pools near me are open now with lots of restrictions and I can get appointments to swim laps. I don’t know how that will work in practice. Until I can get that working I will have to crawl towards success (good pun there, swimming has a crawl stroke too).
I could try cutting calories some more with a target of 1700 calories per day. That might make up for the lack of exercise. Or I will have to be more systematic about walking or find other exercise, I suppose. It’s always something, but you can redirect after you find out what is going wrong.
Put your effort in the right place. IF you aren’t successful, your effort is in the wrong place. Don’t waste it.
-The Doctor
Doctor – I have also documented a large change in my daily caloric needs fueled by exercise. If I could suggest some interim exercise ideas – walk, run, climb the steps in your building. I use a Polar H-10 chest strap connected to my phone. It tracks your total time, and time in heart rate zones helping you keep on target and exercising at a pace that will give you a metabolism boost. It also has a very good GPS – total distance, time, speed and a map of your exercise route. The Polar H-10 is not expensive and uses a Bluetooth connection to your cell phone (I also purchased a cell phone case with exercise strap and have the phone on my arm, or ankle for convenience). Vimeo, search YMCA Yoga and YMCA core. Yoga a couple of times per week (I prefer the Yoga 2 classes there) and the core classes (I find them very difficult) every other day is an exercise commitment that will help keep you fit and improve your metabolism. If you are thinking of buying equipment, the Schwinn 270 recumbent exercise bike (currently featured in our basement) has proven to be an excellent choice. 30-60 minutes per day after dinner while watching television… I would be watching television on the couch anyway… just some ideas hopefully to inspire!