Fitness Update: The Power Of Routine

I mostly failed at my strength training goal and it took some thinking to figure out why. Everything was going fine until the middle of May. After that, the girls got out of school and life got busy…

Failure

A couple of years ago, I worked and Mrs. 1500 didn’t. At that time, she took care of most domestic duties like getting the girls ready for school, household chores, and meal preparation. I’d get up early and start working. Then, Mrs. 1500 got her dream job and for the first time, we were a household with two working parents. This was not fun. I have a very high level of respect for parents who pull this off without losing their sanity. But now, Mrs. 1500 works and I don’t, so our roles are reversed. I get the girls ready for school, cook and do the dishes. I enjoy my new domestic role. I fire up a podcast or listen to music while I do my chores. Life is good.

During the school year, I have about 7 hours to myself during the day. I use this time to keep the house in shape, write, walk around aimlessly, read, chase squirrels, play Nintendo, and set things on fire in the garage.

As chaotic as all of that sounds, I have a routine too. After I walk the girls to school:

Morning

• Exercise first. This works out well because I’m already warmed up from the walk, my energy levels are high and my determination is strong.
• Write! I catch up on the blog and answer emails.

Afternoon

After lunch, life is mostly unplanned. After I’m done with chores, I’ll often download a podcast and walk down to the library.

Summertime When The Livin’ Is Chaos!

We have two girls, aged 11 and 8 and they couldn’t be more different.

Older Daughter (OD) is quiet and thoughtful. She loves to read, write and raise money for the local humane society. She can spend hours by herself. Sometimes, she lacks confidence which holds her back, but she has a lot going for her otherwise.

Younger Daughter (YD) is completely different. She’s very social, craving the company of others (except her sister) and has a magnetic personality. Put her in a pool with other kids of similar age and within 10 minutes, half of them will be following her around. I wish I had her social skills and still haven’t quite figured out how she does it, although extreme confidence plays a part.

Mrs. 1500 and I had a foolish belief that two kids close in age would be playmates.

You parents out there, stop laughing!!

I realize how foolish this was. OD and YD love each other, but they don’t like each other.

This is a long-winded way of saying that in the summertime, my routine is vaporized. I do have time to myself, but it’s unpredictable, limited and often interrupted. I may have time to exercise, but it may not be until 7pm when a rigorous workout will interfere with my sleep, so I skip it. Lack of routine is why I failed at my strength goal.

It’s All Good

And I’m more than fine with all of this. While I now know that I shouldn’t plan rigorous goals, I get to spend summers with the girls. In the mornings, we work on math together and fool around outside. We go to the pool in the afternoon or ride bikes or hike or fly commercial jetliners:

Anyway, now that school is almost back in session and we’re home from our travels, I’ve started up the workouts again. Instead of diving back into P90x which is time-consuming, I’ve been doing shorter workouts where I go hard, but only for 30 minutes or so. Depending on the day, these workouts consist mainly of pushups, pull-ups, dips, squats, deadlifts and some dumbbell work for my shoulder, biceps, and triceps:

I’m also keeping track of some random stats. At the urging of the Twisted Gardener, I’m now taking measurements. So far, it’s not going so great:

The one bright spot is my daddy gut which is trending downward.

And brace yourself. In the interest of transparency, here are the pictures:

No Beer My Dear

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed that alcohol consumption screws with me in new and sleep depriving ways. If I even have two beers in the evening, I’m hot in bed. Not in a good way. I sweat like crazy.

After the alcohol wears off, I wake up and it’s difficult to go back to sleep. The next day, I’m tired which is never good.

As a result, I’ve cut back. Way back. My last alcohol consumption was on Friday, July 27th. While I won’t be completely abstinent, I plan on not drinking until the Great American Beer Festival at the end of September.

I thought it would be difficult to cut alcohol out completely, but it hasn’t been. Last Friday, I had a beer pang, but I just told myself No and the urge went away.

No Meat I Shall Eat

Well, almost no meat. I LOVE cheeseburgers. I really LOVE them. Sitting here right now, at 8:18am, I had this thought:

Where can I get a cheeseburger? Right now.

But, meat is hard on the planet. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna get all preachy on you, but my personal choice is to minimize meat consumption. This means more tofu and eggplant, both of which I happen to like. And I like it even better now that we have this thing in our house:

It’s an air fryer. It puts a healthy crunchy texture on almost anything. Hell, when I get around to drinking again, I’m gonna see what this magical device can do to beer! I like it way more than I thought I would.

And shit, I sound like one of those jerks on late night TV hawking some crap. But it’s true, this thing is a little miracle once you learn how to use it. And you don’t overcook.

The first time didn’t go so well. Mrs. 1500 had found a recipe on the internet that had us cooking the tofu for 29 minutes. It came out with the consistency of a rubber ball, but didn’t taste as good. This is what the tofu was like:

To make matters worse, the Penny Planters had joined us for dinner that evening. I’m sorry Mr. and Mrs. PoP. That dinner sucked. Are you done chewing yet?

Since that one misstep, everything we’ve put in the air-fryer turns to gold. Here is a blooming onion that I made:

So yeah, I’ll still have an occasional beer and cheeseburger, but not too often. Take that daddy gut!

Steps

One bright spot is walking! Lifting weights is hard and so is not eating cheeseburgers, but walking is pretty easy. My goal this year was 6,000,000 steps. So far, I have 3,870,733:

This comes out to 17,594 steps per day and puts me on pace to do 6,421,897 this year.

Forward

I love my girls and spending time with them over the summer is great. My older one knows what the Pythagorean Theorem is now and my younger one is a whiz at multiplication tables. However, I look forward to getting back to my routine.

I’m going to post fitness updates every other week. Tune in for another titillating update in 2 weeks!

And I’ve blabbed on way too long, so I’m off to go play with my new favorite toy.