So, Dry January almost complete, along with nearly 5 weeks of the 16:8 thing.
Weirdly, I didn’t miss the beer that much. I thought it might be a struggle but that didn’t turn out to be the case. I have probably ended up going to bed early a bit more, and going when I am tired and not battling through fatigue with another beer/LP.
I do believe the lack of alcohol has made the 16:8 thing easier. I don’t eat from 8pm until midday. The first week was a case of acclimatising to hunger. Black coffee is what sustains me in the mornings, 2 or 3 mugs. I do basically inhale my lunch though
I made a conscious decision not to weigh myself throughout the process, and instead rely on how I am feeling. I have moved up a notch on my belt, which is pleasing. I feel better, likely because of more sleep and less alcohol. I am going to carry on the 16:8 thing for sure, with occasional mahoosive weekend breakfasts.
Aside from losing some weight (no idea of how much) and gaining more quality sleep the most positive result so far has been a fresh perspective on how my consumption of food and alcohol affects me physically and mentally. I now think more carefully about what I eat and when, and try not to act so impulsively. I am eating less but I have more energy, which presumably is related to sleep patterns.
The new normal is 16:8, with a day or two off a week if/when I feel like it. Hopefully I won’t slip back into old habits with regards to alcohol. It is so easy to knock back 2/3/4 beers of an evening, and the subsequent effects on brain and body both short and long term are well understood but often ignored (by me cos I’m just chilling with a beer, listening to records so why shouldn’t I have this “little treat” each night…?)
I love leg press. Not doing them, but watching other people do them and trying to guess what they’re trying to achieve.
My favourite is the guy who makes a massive show of collecting all the big plates like ‘look at me and the huge tonnage I’m gonna pump’ and then proceeds to make an absolute racket shouting and huffing whilst he spreads his feet apart, has his heels off the plate and bangs out very partial reps. Good for you man, wanna fucking medal or something?!
Wondering what’s people’s approach to things like the gym, in the current viral climate? I’ve pretty much concluded I’ll stay away from the gym and my yoga classes. But I haven’t actually made that formal yet… I have weekly sessions with a trainer, and a bunch of people I lift-share to yoga with. My gym (which I only fairly recently joined) is a very large modern space, where there are rarely more than a handful of people, very spread-out, when I’m there. No more close contact there, than in a supermarket. In fact less, realistically. But nonetheless, there’s the sweat, breath, general physical contact with equipment etc. Part of me wants to keep these aspects of my life running, with much more care paid to hygiene. The other part feels it’s prudent to just cut it all off. Wondering what everyone else is doing?
I’m fortunate in that I have set myself up at home so I can do nearly everything I want to do in terms of workouts at home - mostly for practical reasons, reducing logistics and time taken and taking away those kind of limits/excuses to fitting in 3 sessions a week consistently.
I do have a good relationship with a local gym where I can just turn up and use their facilities for free, in return for me giving back bit of coaching for trainers they’ve got that might benefit from the approach I take for a session or phone call etc. However for the time being I’ve said that I’m not going to do face to face coaching for a while.
Chatting to the guy that owns it he was saying that numbers have dropped off quite a bit already, and his model is not one of signing people up to long contracts, he likes to offer very flexible access so that young people can afford it without too much commitment, but he does offer discounts for monthly, quarterly, annual passes. It would be a real shame if he went out of business as he’s one of the genuine good guys (and a UK powerlifting champ) who tries to promote health and fitness and make it accessible.
I also have a basic but adequate setup at home. It’s more the personal training that I’ll lose out on, and the better equipment. But my little home gym is pretty cool. And yoga I can totally do at home. I really benefit from a good class, but I’ve been doing it long enough to be able to do it at home.
It’s only a recent thing… just had a few sessions. I signed up for it, just to see what it was like, really. All my strength training so far has been done from online, so I was after more awareness of proper form… a general upgrade in my awareness of the whole language of fitness and body composition, I guess. And I definitely benefit from being pushed a bit. I’ve been really impressed so far.
Cool. There’s a lot of value in getting movement instruction and form set up face to face. And you also get a better idea of intensity and effort when someone is pushing you!
I use RIR (reps in reserve) to help monitor and target intensity over a cycle, but its not always easy to calibrate as a lot of trainees think they have only 1 rep left in the tank when they really have 2-3+!
However digging them out, ie training to failure has only a small adaptation signal premium over leaving 1-2 in the tank, and requires a disproportionate recovery given the CNS impact. Basically its the enemy of frequency, and frequency/ volume are bigger drivers of progress than that one heroic chest beating workout that took a week to recover from!
This is what I see when trainers hire PTs explicitly to push them beyond their limit - they keep doing it!And then two bad things happen - they burnout and stop, and they don’t get the progress anyway due to accumulated fatigue and lack of deloads.
