Fitness Fellowship 2026: Check-in 18

[sylvanwitch]

Greetings and salutations, one and all. I hope the week that was has been kind to you.

As usual, please do share your ups and downs with us here, if you're so inclined, and remember that you may change your goals at any time. There is never any judgement here.



Weight: Yesterday's number was 193.2, which is down 1.2 from last week's weight. (This morning's weigh-in was grim, but I'm ignoring it because I usually use Sunday morning's number.)

Exercise: Yoga 4/4, strength-training 3/3, walking every day. Yesterday, we did two butt-kicking climbs while out for a ramble. Today, my body is reminding me that if I'm going to keep climbing steep things, I need to do some training first. ;-)

Eating plan: I definitely reined in the runaway calories during the weekdays; I was still eating into my workout calories, but not by as much as I had been. I was satisfied that I had made progress. Saturday was okay, but yesterday Choices Were Made that I should have resisted making. Still, we did do an awful lot of climbing, so I'm hoping that this morning's uptick is just a blip. And, even the choices I made were healthier than they might otherwise have been; I'm definitely back on track with the better choices, food-wise and, to a degree, portions-wise.

Meditation: No. None. I have been paying a lot more mindful attention to my breathing during yoga, but that's not the same thing as actually meditating.

Hydration: Yes!

Sleep: D'oh! I'm blaming Alan Alda. I was finishing up his memoir this past week as my before-bed reading, and it is so good that "just a few more minutes" turned into several nights during which I got to bed up to 15-20 minutes late. Last night was much the same, though I can't blame Alda for it because in this case I was playing a game on my iPad. D'oh! I will definitely work on being in bed on time this week because I have been *so* tired and out of sorts today.

The week ahead: More careful eating, better focus on sleeping, and meditation (at least twice). Otherwise, same old, same old.



Here's hoping the week ahead is easy on all of us, friends.

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Still, we did do an awful lot of climbing <<

Go you! Climbing can be fun.

It rained earlier today, but I managed to get some yardwork done. Next task will be breaking down a big walnut branch in the savanna.

Sunday: I got a little planting done before the weather turned to howling wind. That's been a problem all spring.

Saturday: We attended the Sheep to Yarn to Quilts festival up in Amish territory, which involved a lot of walking.

Friday: We went to a May Day and Full Moon Walk event at Whiteside Garden. We made flower crowns, danced around a Maypole, and hiked up the hill to watch the moon rise. :D I did a bit of brush trimming in the yard too.

Thursday: I got a good bit of planting done.

Wednesday: We went up to Champaign-Urbana, which involved a lot of walking.

Also over the last week or so, I put the wax on my apothecary cabinet, we got it hung up, and I put the bitters in it. \o/ A good deal of work in an area neither of us are adept at, so just finishing the project is an accomplishment.

Tomorrow is the Poetry Fishbowl with a theme of "Older Scenes and Forgotten Characters" so I'll be in my office most of the day. Plus it's supposed to rain then.

[delphi]

Well, okay, now I really want to read Alan Alda's memoir. Best of luck getting more sleep this week, and congratulations on all the exercise!

I had good luck this week with force of habit kicking in when it comes to meal times and the meals themselves. I'm mentioning this to remind myself that when things start feeling easy, it's okay to just keep them easy. Having an interest in food and cooking, I think when I feel myself having more capacity, I end up thinking, "Gee, feeding myself no longer feels like too much to handle. I should step up my game," and then things are promptly too much to handle again. But there's something to be said for sustainability, especially when I'm eating things I like that have decent nutrition to calorie ratios.

Meals - 7/7
Water - 7/7
Stretching - 7/7
Walking - 7/7
Fibre - 7/7
Sleep - 5/7

Re: Thoughts

[sylvanwitch]

It sounds like you are being kept very busy in good ways! Yay! I'm glad you're getting yard work done in between the monsoons. It's been frustratingly wet and cold here, except for brilliant and beautiful days, when things are too wet to work in/with. *sighs*

Good luck with all your excellent plans for this week. I hope the Fishbowl went swimmingly!

[sylvanwitch]

Oh, sorry, did I mention it last week, too! It was the book I'd reserved for before-bed reading, since I need to be off-screen with a half-hour to spare before bedtime, but it backfired because he's just so charming and funny and human and flawed and...yeah, I really enjoyed it. (Bonus points because I bought it used, as well.)

I can so relate to your observations here about cooking. I have a similar thought process some evenings, especially now that I've fallen off with my Sunday meal prep, and I sometimes fall back on less healthy (though not usually terrible) choices because I'm tired, whereas if I just took a moment to make a simpler but no less tasty and healthy option, I'd be better off. I very much appreciate your idea of sustainability here as an end goal rather than a baseline, if that makes sense. I'm in the middle of a lifetime of retraining my A-type perfectionist brain that good enough is good too.

I think you did marvelously well on your goals! Good luck with wrangling your sleep; that's definitely the sticky one for me. And YAY for walking and stretching! That's awesome!

[oschun]

Well done for the better food choices.

I didn't manage strength training last week, nor this week, even though I did actually quite enjoy it the week before. At least I made it to my regular pilates class both weeks. It's been crazy at work. Exams officially start tomorrow. My plan is just to survive the next two weeks, especially the additional revision classes after school and on Saturdays! We're also down two members of staff who are off this week for pretty major personal issues.

[delphi]

Modern food culture is so weird, because it's gone and tied so many impossible and sometimes conflicting standards to an activity that we not only have to do multiple times of day but also spend a significant amount of our money on. The stakes feel so high, and I often struggle to factor in my own feelings and limitations into the cost-benefit analysis.

And of course, everyone's lifestyle is different! I live downtown, right across the street from a grocery store. I know I'm in a very different position than folks who have to drive to get groceries. So, while I definitely want to meal prep now and then to ensure that I always have something nutritious and filling in my freezer that I can heat up in an emergency, I'm making peace with the fact that the mental energy of planning and prepping (and dealing with my feelings when I fail to plan and prep) something complex on a weekly basis is not for me. It might be a savings of time and physical exertion on paper, but it doesn't feel like a savings compared to preparing something simple freshly every meal, and feelings do matter.

What I prepare possibly isn't as nutrition-maxxed as something I'd research and batch-cook, but I think I'm happy with where they're landing in terms of nutrition and calories while being things I enjoy eating that are almost mentally invisible to stay on top of.

I guess what I'm getting at is that feeding ourselves should be an act of love, and love's more complex than just optimization. <3

[sylvanwitch]

Everything you say here is so relatable to me. My husband works at a grocery store we love, so I'm lucky that I can just message him and ask for this or that, if his shift ends at a reasonable time. That's made it easier to reduce food waste, which has been my big personal goal for a while now.

When I physically go to the grocery store, I always have big plans in mind for food prep and elaborate meals, and then weeknights after work happen and all those plans fall apart, leading to something going bad and needing to be tossed, composted, or thrown outside for the animals. Making avoiding food waste my focus has helped a great deal to make my cooking goals more reasonable and less guilt-driven, too, which is great.

Now, I just need to remind myself that "better than" is still okay, even if it's not "best." I'm getting there.

Big, big *hugs* to you!

[sylvanwitch]

Ugh, exams! Hold on, my friend, and do what works best for you to make it through with as much of your sanity intact as is possible. I am sending you ALL the big energy vibes. You can find your way back to where you'd like to be, routine-wise, when your hair isn't on fire all the time, right? Big, big, BIG *hugs* to you!

[delphi]

'Good' is definitely underrated. *hugs*