Weekly Wednesday Fitness Check-in

Let's see, where to begin. My average weight for the last week came out to 178.5, so not quite the half pound I was aiming for; and really, until now I hadn't noticed I was that far away from my goal! I will have to figure out how to adjust my numbers. I've alluded to the fact that logging exercise seems to be a crap shoot, and when I was cutting I went by the mantra of "underestimate on exercise" so I generally didn't log the full amount of time I spent doing non-running activities (e.g. sports, weight lifting, climbing). Running is fairly straightforward in terms of pace and distance, and most calculators seem to agree about the rate of calorie burning. But I always felt like it was a stretch to assume anyone knew how many calories I would burn playing softball (especially because so much time is spent standing around doing nothing!) so I generally erred on the side of caution. However, if I'm not gaining weight at the rate I want to I need to make adjustments and that is the most obvious place to do it. Backing up this idea is that, halfway through week 2 (unfortunately my weeks begin on Saturday which is inopportune for the purpose of this weekly update) my average is is just 178.4. Time to bump up my exercise logging and nom some more food!

For the third week in a row I skipped my long Saturday run. This time was not real-life obligation related, but rather was due to health reasons. I got back from my 6 mile run on Thursday and my hip was killing me. I'm talking 'hurts to walk' kind of painful. Yipes! So, I decided that a week off was likely a good idea. Since I'm not training for anything specific yet, there's no need to try and push myself through an injury. Honestly I'm not sure what caused it. I've never had any pain in my left hip before, so it's not like it's an old injury that I just aggravated somehow. My only thought was that perhaps my gait was slightly different for whatever reason? I suppose it's also possible that I hadn't been stretching enough with the colder weather and somehow that affected it. Either way, hopefully it goes away after this break.

It's very odd going from a purely strength based routine where the most reps for a single set was 5 to one that is aiming for some hypertrophy ... and where I'm doing 8-10 reps. Despite lifting much smaller amounts of weight, it's still really hard! My strength day this week was on Monday and, let me just say, I felt like poop. I had not fully recovered from the weekend but managed to drag myself to the gym anyway. I completed all my lifts, but didn't quite get the # of reps I was hoping for on the last set. I was so tired that night, I fell asleep at 9:30 with the lights on!

Next week I am out of town so I won't be tracking calories or lifting. It will be the first time in about 5 months I haven't done either of those things; I am curious how I will handle it, psychologically.