Always learning the hard way

Weight Loss

It’s been almost a month since my last post!

Unfortunately, I haven’t made any net progress here. I managed to make progress at first until April 23rd, but then a week of overtraining caused me to overeat. As a result, I actually lost progress.

The silver lining here is that I know that listening to my nutritionist does actually help me lose fat and gain muscle. I’m meeting with her again today and will tell her that.

ADAPT Level 2 Course Prep

I’ve kept up with my weekly reading of the ADAPT Level 1 Learner Pack 🤓 

The longest unit was Unit 2 where they cover the definitions of all the common movement patterns in parkour. I made a weekend out of reading that one start to finish.

Before reading it, however, I found that the learner pack had come unbound from being jostled around in my string bag. It’s got a cheap plastic binding that had released some of the pages. I didn’t love that, so I went to buy a ring binder and some page protectors. I threw out the cheap binding and assembled all the pages into the ring binder. Now it was not only “jostle-proof”, but also somewhat weatherproof 🌧️ 

I brought it with me to the skatepark and the YMCA outdoor fitness park to review some of the movements I hadn’t done in a long time. It was helpful! I was reminded of small but important details like:

• reaching up during a wallrun for maximum height

• not bending past 90 degrees when landing to allow the muscles to absorb more of the impact

• raising my knees during a precision jump to unlock quieter landings

I was also reminded that there are still some movements I haven’t mastered, like the reverse vault and the retour bras (arm jump/cat hang return). These still give me anxiety but I like having room to learn new techniques even 15 years after starting in the discipline.

Here’s what the retour bras looks like (this isn’t me, in case that’s not obvious):

Training

I’ve been having a blast with the Meta Raybans I got recently. They’ve been great for 1st-person parkour videos. Here are a couple I’ve recorded during training sessions:

It’s been a joy to see my training played back from the perspective through which I originally experienced it, and to show my wife and friends what it looks like through my own eyes when I’m doing all this stuff.

On a less fun note, last week, I massively overtrained: 5 days in a row of 1-hour parkour training sessions, and 2 heavy weight-lifting sessions. By Friday, I was gassed, and my brain was not functioning due to significant brain fog. I had the leave work early because of it. Lesson learned: rest days are important.

I always seem to have to learn the obvious lessons in life firsthand. The lesson here is that when I don’t prioritize rest and gradual training progression, I end up hurting my performance at work and undoing any weight loss I’ve managed up til that point.

When rock climbing at Potawatomi State Park, I was reminded of my own mortality a couple of times, and today I was reminded of the importance of a good warm-up. Currently icing my hip on the couch. No leg press for me today 😕 

TLDR; I’m gonna be less stupid going forward. Slow and steady. Just call me Tortoise because I’m doing trying to be the Hare 🐢 

Nutrition

Adding more fruits and veggies to my diet again has been more powerful than I realized. In only 2 weeks after doing so, I saw my fat % decrease and muscle mass increase from doing roughly the same amount of training. I imagine eating more fruits and veggies was increasing my satiety so I wasn’t reaching for as much food overall. I haven’t been tracking my calories so I wouldn’t know exactly why, but the model of energy balance dictates that somehow I was eating less food.

I was tempted to start tracking my calories again after the overtraining episode, but I don’t think that’s wise. I recall every time I tracked calories, it brought me more stress and it didn’t improve my food choices at all. I tend to be an emotional eater, which is something I’ll be telling my nutritionist today, so there have been many days when I saw I was already over budget but still ate a DQ Blizzard because I didn’t know how else to manage my stress.

Maybe my nutritionist has some ideas for that. I’ve decided that I want to try eating salads every day, so I’ll bring that up with her for starters.

Mental Health

I was meditating for a while, but I eventually got bored of it. That, or Strattera started doing its job, or maybe it was even my nutrition improving my mood.

Either way, I’m no longer doing meditation, but I feel more productive at work than I have in a while. It’s taking less effort me to focus more and deliver more work per day. I feel unstoppable!

The overtraining bout last week definitely didn’t help, though. I feel like a million bucks this morning compared to last Friday. I’m going to make sure I continue to get plenty of sleep and take it easy on the training. After all, weight loss is more about what I’m eating than how much I’m training.

The increased default focus and mood stability has made it easier to handle conflict in my marriage when it arises, which prevents like 99% of arguments now. It’s not like we were arguing all the time, but now we barely do at all. I’m convinced the medication has allowed me to slow down and listen without putting up my knee-jerk emotional defenses. I can actually engage with her feelings and honor them better than I remember doing prior to starting this medication. Maybe it’s not the meds, but I’ve had plenty of times in life where I’ve gotten my training and nutrition and work going smoothly and still had trouble with “emotional” stuff. Not since I started the meds, though. It’s cool 🌈 

What’s Next?

Obviously weight loss is the main focus still. Thankfully the ADHD medication has gotten me to a much happier place mentally, so emotional eating should be somewhat easier to manage now.

My wife and I want to start this “challenge” we did a couple years ago called “Treat Level Midnight” — named after Threat Level Midnight from The Office — to help me with my weight loss. It worked pretty well last time, gamifying sugar avoidance.

Before my next post, I’ll have seen my nutritionist and primary care physician again, so I’ll have something to say about that.

I plan to have much better news about my weight loss next time. I may wait til June to post again. That’ll be the last check-in before I go to Boston!