Day 16: Back On The Tracks !

 

Here is the link to my original Day 16 on Nutrisystem. It was Saturday January 19, 2019. My headline that day was "A Milestone", as I had completed the first 2 weeks of the program. It was a quiet winter day and all was right in the world.

I was awake just after 8 and up before 9. As always, I could have slept longer but my bladder and the cats were calling. Once they were fed I sat down to enjoy my breakfast and first cup of coffee, along with a little YouTube. Minnie hopped in my lap but only stayed a few minutes. She had good timing today, as I'd left my tablet upstairs and wanted another cup of coffee. Since I was upstairs I went ahead and made my bed, then got dressed and made that second cup of coffee. My calves are not hurting today ! No more excuses to avoid the treadmill, so I'll be there by noon at the very latest. 

Breakfast was 150 calorie pancakes with low cal syrup. As soon as the bottle is empty I'll be switching back to the sugar free syrup. Late morning I had an 80 calorie yogurt. During my first workout I had a 155 calorie vanilla shake. Lunch was a 220 calorie pepperoni pizza melt and the rest of the open bag of pretzels. Dinner was a 250 calorie meatloaf sandwich with carrots. Evening snack was a 140 calorie lemon zest cake.

Last night I got into the butter toffee cashews and ate about 3/4 of the bag. Not a great thing, but honestly I'll be glad when they are gone. I am done buying anything that is not Nutrisystem compliant because I can't control myself. I will only allow the whipped cream, as that's not really something you can sit on the couch and munch.

Yet again, I'm not getting enough protein and it's causing evening hunger. The goal for today is eating everything I'm supposed to and getting at least 2 workouts in. I might even give the Total Gym a spin for a bonus workout.

On the AT&T front, the union has opted to stop working with a mediator ! They claim the company was using the mediator as a delaying tactic and I'm inclined to believe the union. They'd like to completely eliminate the union workforce because of their high wages and benefit costs, but federal government and many state customers will not allow their accounts to be serviced outside the US. Little do they know that plenty of people outside the US have access to their accounts ! The only other option is to have the work done by management employees that are paid less and can be let go at will. The problem there is in a union environment you can't just move the work to managers and dump the union employees. It will be interesting to see who blinks first in this game. 

Since it's Labor Day I decided not to go hard looking for new jobs to apply to. I checked LinkedIn and Glassdoor briefly and also took the time to update my resume on Indeed. I've seen a lot of commentary recently that indicates people are more successful getting a job via Indeed, so I'm going to make sure I check there going forward.

It was after 2 pm before I actually got on the treadmill. When noon rolled around Minnie was snoozing in my lap but she got up around 12:15 and I failed to get up and get my fat ass on the treadmill before she came back. She got up again just before 2 and after a couple more YouTube videos I headed to the treadmill. She actually came back before I got up but there was no way I was going to use that excuse again ! 

So my first workout of the day was 15m14s with a 3 minute warm up (wu) and a 3 minute cool down (cd). I did the warm up at 2 mph and the workouts in this series (Tommy Rivs Road to Recovery Part 1) start at 1.5 mph for about a minute before increasing to 2.2 mph. The final minute or so of each workout reverts to 1.5 but today I popped it back up to 2.2 until the end. The cool down was 2 mph for 90 seconds and 1.8 mph for 90 seconds. I should note that the wu and cd speeds and duration are what I always used. Today I felt like 2.2 mph wasn't quite so hard to maintain and that gives me hope regarding my ability to increase my endurance. Going from 2.2 mph to 3.2 mph doesn't sound like a lot, but your legs have to move a whole lot faster to reach that speed. When I finish this series of 20 workouts I will test myself to see just how hard it is to maintain 3.2 mph. I will continue to test myself after each series thereafter. There are 6 Road to Recovery series and the workouts get progressively longer. It seems like the speed stays constant at 2.2 mph but as I progress through them I can increase it if that starts to seem too easy or too slow. 

Today started out cool and gloomy but the sun eventually popped out and it was a nice early Fall day. It was in the low 60's so I left all but the kitchen windows closed. Overnight temps are going into the 50's but I still find myself using my fan, so we're nowhere near needing to turn on the heat. I'm going to try and keep the heat at 68 during the day this winter, since I'm unemployed. Even if I get a job I'm sure I'll be making less money and it just makes sense. I have 3 space heaters so I can use one in my office, one in the living room and one in my bedroom. After today the daytime temps are supposed to be in the upper 70's so it'll be nice.