Here I Go Again (On My Own? Probably Not)

wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
Hi everyone. I fell off the face of the Earth for a little bit there, yeah. Life happens. Life sucks, sometimes. So, in the interim since I'm sure I last posted*, I changed jobs, I moved positions within the company, I managed to find a girlfriend, and in the very latest news, as of April 6th, I was laid off. Along the way, I also lost nearly every bit of gains I worked so hard for in TX. I restarted my food log with the new year and have been sporadically** working out the past month. I'm hoping that posting here will help me hold myself accountable again on the working out. Here's hoping.

I will do my best. That my best for today isn't as good as my best yesterday is immaterial.










*Which was on the old forum. I was really, really confused that I couldn't log in until I read @PetiteSheWolf's thread and figured out that there was a change in fora.
**At absolute best.
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
And we're back. Had a terrible weekend, what with having just lost my job, but I talked my girlfriend into going to the new* fitness center our apartment complex has. We hopped on treadmills for about half an hour and spent some time exploring the options there. Looks like I have some free time to get back into shape, or something. I do intend to get back into more fully working out with body weight workouts. We'll see how all this works out. That's a lot of out working, or something.







*It was recently built with the renovations the management company completed recently.
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
So, it's been a week. I've posted all of... <checks number of posts>... three times.* I'm off to a fabulous start. No bodyweight workouts. Wandered to the fitness center... <counts>... most days. My girlfriend has found out she likes the whole treadmill thing. Oh, and tossing medicine balls. Also, she hates that she likes it, possibly because of the ridiculous hour we get up to go there since she doesn't feel comfortable working out with others around. But also she was apparently conditioned to hate movement/exercise in any form when she was younger. As for me, still no bodyweight work. I'm finding it difficult to work up the will to actually get up and do anything in the hours I normally would because that's normally time my girlfriend and I spend together and I've never been one for working out in the early morning. I like being already warmed up from the day before working out, it's one less thing to do to get going with the workout. I feel so drained the rest of the time and have other hobbies to attend to as well. Yep, reads like excuses to me, too. What am I going to do about it? Do my best to get started again, obviously.








*Including this one.
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
I've been MIA for a day or two*. I picked up a new job in retail at a board game store while I searched for a chemistry position, which sent me back to the St. Louis area about a year ago now. In January, I restarted working out and reshaping my diet. Then I received a new opportunity to manage the game store, which I accepted, and took me back to central Minnesota. The company was already planning to expand my store, but I was able to get the location I wanted because the owner put his trust in my judgment. This has been a rewarding change, but one of the most difficult positions I've ever had, if not the most difficult. In August, I restarted working out yet again and this month, I've been working on my diet. It's been a thing. An exceptionally difficult and ridiculous thing. I can't promise to post often, but I can offer to do my best to be more active.









*Fine, is week or two good enough?
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
First, thank you to everyone who has either reacted to my recent posts or posted themselves whether recognized from the past ( @Laura Rainbow Dragon @HellYeah @Fremen @neilarey ) or not so much ( @aku-chan )*. I appreciate the responses and that at least a couple people remember me.

The workout:
Wall Sit 2:05
Balance Challenge day 25, 9:00 balance (completed in one go)
Two sets of Tempered Steel

Wall sit plus balance hold is rough on the legs, but when haven't I been willing to be a little** rough on myself?

Soon enough I'll detail my plans for the rest of the year and into 2025.










*By which I mean I don't recognize your name from my previous stints here in the Hive. We may have been in different circles at the time.
**Or a lot, for that matter.
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
And the workout tonight:

Wall Sit 2:10
Balance Challenge day 26, 200 Side Leg Raises (25/25 until complete)
30 minutes steady state cardio (10 step jacks/10 side jacks until time runs out)

I plateaued for a while at 30 minutes, and I'll continue at 30 minutes through the holiday season given the new stresses of managing a retail store. I don't need to add the stress of failing a day of anything on top of the holidays in a store three times bigger than the one I thought I was going to inherit*. As a result, I've been doing my best to not go too quickly into the workouts, because my will to work out at all can be, and often is, fragile.












*Fair. I did inherit the small one and upgraded after. Regardless, it's already going to be terrible on me, my imposter syndrome**, and my impossibly high expectations of myself***.
**Always just waiting to be found out that I have no idea what I'm doing.
***What? Me, have issues with being good enough? Never****.
****Alright, you got me. Always it is.
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
My plan goes like this:

1) A simple challenge of my own. This month it's the wall sits to which I add another five seconds every day. Next month's is knee push-ups equal to the day and December will be ten times the day of the month in calf raises. I have not yet started thinking about January and beyond.
2) A DAREbee challenge. This month is the Balance Challenge. Next month I'm doing Squats & Punches and December I currently have the Back & Core add-on program set, but with the number of new monthly challenges, I probably should look at changing that.
3) Sunday and Thursday I do combat workouts. Sunday is a variation on In the Pits, in that I sometimes use it for weapon work rather than solely unarmed combat. Thursday I had been rotating between Brawler and Knockout, but this past week I removed Knockout for Alpha Protocol. Four of other five rotate throughout the week as the weeks go by, creating a five week rotating schedule, rotating between two workouts currently. The fifth day is steady state cardio, as created for me by former Hive member xingyiquan, who apparently did not make the switch to the new boards. I have upper body work with Tempered Steel and Biceps & Triceps Light, steady state cardio (noted directly above), abs workouts Standing Abs and Batman, Bane Edition*, lower body exercise through Prowler and Knee Tuner, and finally posture work via Posture Perfect and Lower Back. Currently I do thirty minutes of the steady state cardio or two sets of the workouts, based on the day and the rotation of workout types and individual workouts of each type.

Come January, I'm going to a) switch 3) to a program which will probably be Foundation as hard as I can go, b) add an additional workout to each of the lists above, c) add a set to everything in 3), and d) start adding time to the steady state cardio again, until I reach an hour total time. I'll probably swap back and forth between programs and the workout rotation in 3) above on a monthly basis in 2025, but that remains to be seen.

Finally, diet. I've gone back to a diet that was working for me a few years ago. However, as a result of pulling a lot of added sugars from my diet now, I miss some calories I was getting then and I think that my be an issue if I continue it for much longer. I could use some ideas for where I could get more calories to help this situation. My biggest issue is I don't really have a breakfast** or a lunch***, so I end up around 1100 calories across the day and I struggle to get a few hundred more in the evenings. I do pick up my eating on weekends, per the diet I was following before, so it may not be as much of an issue as I think it is. I know the weight loss will take time, but I'm more worried about the my short-term caloric needs at the moment.








*Created by our own @neilarey but removed long ago because apparently Warner Brothers doesn't like free advertising****.
**Breakfast is one Monster Tea & Lemonade (25 calories, 3 total grams of sugar) and a serving of almonds (160 to 170 calories, no sugar).
***I do keep granola bars around at work, just in case.
****That, or their Batman fans working out. Whichever.
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
The workout:

Wall Sit 2:15
Balance Challenge day 25, 10:00 balance (completed in one go)
Five Minutes in the Pits with a jo staff


One thing I didn't make entirely clear with my previous post: this year is about rebuilding the habit of working out and cleaning up my diet, next year will be about pushing harder.
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
I'm trying to figure out what is going on with my appetite. I have almonds with tea and lemonade in the morning. I have a granola bar more often than not at work.* But it's only after having an actual, full meal in the evening that I get overwhelmingly hungry and eat so much more than expected, while still under 1500 calories, mostly because I rein in the eating by keeping a rough idea of what my calories are at in mind. Does anyone have thoughts on how to minimize this sudden** desire to consume calories?

And on to the workout:

Wall Sit 2:25
Balance Challenge day 29, 10:00 balance (completed in one go)
Two sets of Posture Perfect








*And copious*** amounts of water.
**Fair, how sudden can it be if I know it's coming?
***For varying definitions of "copious".
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
Yesterday was ridiculous. I went to a business lecture in the morning as a part of the company I work for and drove through rain. While I was there, it changed to snow. While I was there, I found out that I would need to go to the store I manage after I returned for our mall's Halloween event because my sick employee was still under the weather and my potential back-up employee had a family event. We gave away these cool dice instead of candy. Correction, we gave out over 650 pairs of these dice instead of candy. After getting home for a second time, I had some supper (beef barley soup, two slices of garlic bread, and two cups of milk) and then this:

The workout:
Two sets of Brawler
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
I think I need to bring something else into my diet to drink, just for weekends. It doesn't have to be soda, but something more flavorful than, well, water. Because it's boring and rarely helps augment the flavor of the food I'm eating. I just don't know what to have. As it is, I have tea & lemonade six days a week, milk four days a week, Gatorade Zero* every day, and Monster juice flavors once a week in addition to the water. Monster, including the tea & lemonade, is for mornings, milk goes with supper Monday to Thursday, and Gatorade is meant to be after workout, so I'm looking for something to go with supper Friday to Sunday. Good luck, me.

The workout:
Three Knee Push-Ups
The Guardian Challenge day 3, 3 sets of 1:00 March Steps with one minute of rest between each
Five Minutes in the Pits with a bokken
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
Bad things happen occasionally. Do I want to talk about it? No*.

The workout:
Five Knee Push-Ups
The Guardian Challenge day 5, 3 sets of 1:00 March Steps with one minute of rest between each
Two sets of Tempered Steel

Also, Guardian Challenge day 2 and day 4 are the same.







*Anyone who has read my check-ins since I started posting on the previous Hive probably already knew this answer.
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
K e l l y said:
Hi, dear :happy: you would be at the top of the thread after I’ve been gone for years! Makes me happy. How are you?!
Click to expand...
I've been up and down. I've had several jobs, moved several times. I fell out of working out for too long, started to make a comeback, lost it, tried again, lost it for better reasons, and finally stuck the landing on the third try to return. Diet failed slowly over time with the loss of working out, but as with the working out I tried to return to it until it stuck again. Now I manage a board game store in St. Cloud, MN. Stressful, tough, but rewarding and worthwhile. Actually, I was in the St. Louis area* again this time last year. We'll see, I guess, where I am next year.







*Collinsville, IL, in case you were wondering**.
**I know you were wondering.
 
K e l l y

K e l l y

Member
Posts: 9
wjs said:
I've been up and down. I've had several jobs, moved several times. I fell out of working out for too long, started to make a comeback, lost it, tried again, lost it for better reasons, and finally stuck the landing on the third try to return. Diet failed slowly over time with the loss of working out, but as with the working out I tried to return to it until it stuck again. Now I manage a board game store in St. Cloud, MN. Stressful, tough, but rewarding and worthwhile. Actually, I was in the St. Louis area* again this time last year. We'll see, I guess, where I am next year.







*Collinsville, IL, in case you were wondering**.
**I know you were wondering.
Click to expand...
I can’t get a handle on this new website 🥺 I’m not a tech moron, but it’s so different! Also, I missed your ps, pps, ppps asterisks 😉 I haven’t worked out regularly in so long, it’s embarrassing. I’m doing an 0.5 difficulty program 😂😂😂 I guess that’s a thing…
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
Why is life difficult? More to the point, why do I let life be difficult? These rhetorical questions and more today on my check-in thread.

The workout:
Ten Knee Push-Ups
The Guardian Challenge Day 10, 3 sets of 22 Calf Raises followed by a 12 count Calf Raise Hold with 30 seconds of rest between each
Five minutes unarmed in the Pits
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
I'm planning to sub in two workouts and remove one of those that I had been doing. Something, something, change is good*. Next year's plan is odd months** are programs, even ones self-directed individual workouts. Either way, monthly Darebee challenges and exercise of the month are both expected to be in the plan.

The workout:
Eleven Knee Push-Ups
The Guardian Challenge Day 11, 3 sets of 2:00 March Steps with one minute rest between each
Two sets of Biceps and Triceps Light












*Or something.
**Admittedly, they're all odd, but I mean odd numbered in this specific case.
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
Thank you, @WolfDreamer.

The holidays quickly approach and I am very not ready for dealing with people on that scale. Yes, I have staff to help me. No, that isn't comforting, because I'm going to be out there as much as or more than any of them. As it is, I don't feel I have enough opportunity to recharge my social battery, and throughout the next six weeks, give or take, I'm going to be out there even more...

The workout:
Thirteen Knee Push-Ups
The Guardian Challenge Day 13, 3 sets of 3:00 March Steps with one minute rest between each
Two sets of Standing Abs
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
Laura Rainbow Dragon said:
Wishing you strength for shopping frenzy season. Do you have to do Black Friday?
Click to expand...
I do. We all do. It's an all hands on deck situation at the store. Ideally, I'll be out at 1500 that day*, but as the manager, I am expected to be there as long as I need to be as well as be on call if my staff needs help. The much bigger issue is that the store is, well, bigger than it used to be and we went from being one of the bottom two stores** to among the top three*** almost instantly. The conventional wisdom is November and December make as much as the other ten months combined. If we extrapolate the numbers since moving to ten months, the next six weeks or so are going to be ridiculous.

Separately, I plan to do a refeed week in conjunction with Thanksgiving, which is 28NOV. This will hopefully also help mitigate some of the stress, given my tendency to stress eat. The things we are taught as children, amirite? It feels like the timing is probably right for that as it is, since I am starting to body recomp enough to see results even now thanks to diet and exercise changes and in the past I have seen the greatest changes during and immediately after refeed weeks.

I have December's workouts mapped, continuing with my individual workouts similar to what I have been posting paired with the Upper Body Blast Challenge and calf raises for the individual exercise for the month, and January is being planned. I think I have a reasonable concept in the new version of Foundation**** coupled with the Destress Challenge and Iron Core Challenge.

Finally, the workout:
Thirteen Knee Push-Ups (8/7, one minute rest between)
The Guardian Challenge Day 15, 3 sets of 3:00 March Steps with one minute rest between each
Two sets of Prowler










*The mall my store is in, and therefore my store, will be open to the public 0800 to 2100 for Black Friday. I'll be in an hour earlier than open.
**Of seven. We have five stores in the Twin Cities***** metro area, ours, and the location in Eau Claire, WI.
***Not including our Mall of America location, which is always the number one by sales.
****I have completed an older version of Foundation a few years ago, seems fitting to give this new one a go.
*****That would be Minneapolis and St. Paul, both in Minnesota.
 
wjs

wjs

Active member
Guardian from St. Cloud, MN
Posts: 44
@Laura Rainbow Dragon, I appreciate the sentiment and hope that as well.

In other news, I feel like I managed to bruise a couple of metatarsals in my right foot. It only hurts under specific circumstances when I'm walking, but it also feels better* when I roll it with a tennis ball. I'll continue observation. Also, I need to go to work tomorrow evening to deal with new hire "orientation" and product knowledge night. Additionally, I'm going to be meeting with my long-term employees for evaluations. This also means an early workout. Good times. Oh, the life of a manager. Why did I think I could possibly be ready for this?

The workout:
Sixteen Knee Push-Ups (8/8, one minute rest between)
The Guardian Challenge Day 16, 3 sets of 24 Calf Raises followed by a 14 count Calf Raise Hold with 30 seconds of rest between each
Two sets of Posture Perfect







*In that "I really hate how much this hurts right now" sort of way. Anyone who has rolled out their quads after realizing they were a little tight will know what I mean.
 
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