There's Always Tomorrow, Baby

[Nihopaloa]

@Fremen admirable that you're taking it so well (or appearing so, at least). I tend to get frustrated in such phases of life. But I think as long as you do something you're doing something right.

---

Day 7

• Square One Day 19, 20 and 21
• Arms of Steel CE Day 6 (It's more Walking Around Edition than Chair Edition, though)
• ZEN Day2

---

And the song to kick off the week is Aqua - Barbie Girl. Some Bubblegum Pop from the 90s, because everyone loves 90s music. Right? I do, at least.

Hope you all had a good start into the week! (<-- I wonder what's happening here)

 

[Fremen]

@Fremen admirable that you're taking it so well (or appearing so, at least). I tend to get frustrated in such phases of life. But I think as long as you do something you're doing something right.

I'm actually frustrated but doing something that I enjoy and that I'm able to do as soon as it crosses my mind helps me get out of a bad mood
There will be time to plan something more sensible, or not, that's okay

 

[Nihopaloa]

Heh, I had a few ups and downs the last week or so, stuff that kept me a bit from working out and posting, but it's all good now, so I hope I can get back into the swing of things. Nothing bad though, just... stuff and stuff.

I did finish Square One, though, and went all the way up to Day 13 on ZEN, so it wasn't like I did absolutely nothing.

I'm a bit on the fence of building a real big routine at the moment, although I want to, because somewhere in the next weeks or in July I'll get new heating and everything installed in the flat, so I'll have tradesmen (workers?) around me for probably nine hours a day, judging from how long they spend in the other flat already per day.

Despite everything, I've been playing the bass religiously every day. I can almost play Blaze of Glory without mistakes now. Ha!

 

[Scohui]

Oh wow new pic!

 

[Sólveig]

Well, at least you're up for Square 2. Congrats!

 

[Tileenah]

Congrats on square one!

 

[TheLibrarian]

Happy Square ONE and Congrats for the bass-obsession.
And I wish you good luck on implementing a nice routine that serves you well in the end! I also like your new avatar.

 

[Fremen]

Congrats

 

[Froud]

Good job! And nice pic!

 

[Montserrat]

Congratulations!

 

[PetiteSheWolf]

Grats for Square 1!

 

[Mamatigerj]

Congrats!

 

[Anek]

Congrats on Square One!

 

[Gandhalfit]

Belated Congratulations and nice new avatar

 

[Nihopaloa]

@Scohui, @Sólveig, @Tileenah, @TheLibrarian, @Fremen, @Froud, @Montserrat, @PetiteSheWolf, @Mamatigerj, @Anek and @Gandhalfit
A bit late, I know, I dropped off right after posting again, because it didn't calm down as much as I thought it would. Coincidentally (nah, not really) my exercise slowed down, too, until it died completely.

So, back to square zero (heh) and starting fresh. I had some plans now that the first of July has rolled around, and after half of the first day, I already flunked out of my nutrition plan. Meh. I have to see where I go from here.
The plan is as follows:

• Eat less
• Move more
• Profit

In more detailed terms, I've planned on:

• more weight-based training, three or four times a week with three to five compound exercises and isolation for biceps and triceps
• continuing with ZEN where I have stopped. Day 17 or so
• restarting Arms of Steel CE to finish all Level 1 programmes
• do Cardio and something abs related. Maybe Darebee programmes. I have to see.

I still have no idea when the tradesmen installing the new heating will work in our flat, so I don't see a reason to put implementing a proper routine off until they're done. It could well be August or whenever. And besides, they only work until four o'clock, so I can always work out after they leave.

On a sad note, my PC had a hard freeze today during playing Rocksmith with the Bass and now all my progress is wiped. Seeing that Rocksmith was the only thing keeping me on my old Windows 7 install, I will move to Linux tomorrow, finally. Either I get Rocksmith to run there, too, or I install it on another machine and put it in the living room or something. Either way, I have to start fresh. At least the freeze didn't wipe my skill, ha!

Hope you all had a nice weekend so far

 

[Gandhalfit]

Windows 7! Impressive. I still have an old laptop running on w7 but I hardly use it. It was of course the best version of Windows.

 

[Nihopaloa]

@Gandhalfit it was the last good Windows, in my opinion. I've never made the jump to Windows 10 and now that my system is dying, I have to do something. I have to use Windows 10 at work and I hate every day using it because it takes so much control away from you *old man yelling at clouds*

 

[Tileenah]

good luck with your new plans !

 

[Nihopaloa]

Thank you, @Tileenah, but I failed right on the first day, and that rather grandly

So, without further ado, I did the following things yesterday and today:

01.07.2023
Arms of Steel CE Day 1
Foundation Day 1

02.07.2023
Arms of Steel CE Day 2
Foundation Day 2

That's not even half of the stuff I wanted to do, workout-wise.
Things I didn't do:
Eat less
Install Linux (heh)

And now... Adventures in Psychology, featuring me and my imaginary other me.
Me: "Oh, I've established a pretty good eating pattern over the past weeks. One small meal after work, one sweet snack with coffee, and one main meal in the evening. Now that I have this out of the way, I could do some calorie-restriction again to lose fat. I can't count calories this time, because my husband cooks and he refuses to weigh everything. I'll have a light meal of 300 kcals as my first one, drink two cups of coffee with 80ml milk, and then I have enough room to eat whatever is for the main meal."
Other me: "Sounds pretty good, let's do that."
Me: "Shouldn't be hard, I wasn't very hungry over the past weeks, anyway. Let's start on the 1st of July"
1st of July rolls around.
Other me: "I'm hungry, I want to eat all the time, let's eat whatever isn't faster than us."
Me: "Fine, who cares what I said yesterday"

In other news, with the plan in mind to use my new eating routine to eat less, I completely pigged out and ate more. This is some next level opposition in my brain. I had super discipline during my last cut and wasn't even bothered when my husband ate chocolate or whatever next to me, but somehow, I fail every time at the moment. I need to analyse this and come up with a plan.

Anyway, it's not so bad because my current weight doesn't budge in either direction, which is good, but I dislike not having the discipline I want to have, so I'm going to have to do some hard thinking.

Aside from that, the weekend was pretty chill, so, no regrets.

I wish you all a good start into the new week!

 

[Gandhalfit]

It happens. I usually pigout after deciding to eat less and healthier but then I feel bad and don't want to repeat it.

 

[Nihopaloa]

@Gandhalfit glad(?) to read that I'm not alone. I don't really feel bad about it, it's just.... bizarre. But thanks to a weird twist of fate this morning I weighed the lowest in a long time

03.07.2023 (I always type 20023. Future!)
Dumbbell training
Romanian Deadlifts with 7kg per side (up)
Bent Over Rows with 8kg per side (up)
Shoulder Press with 7kg per side (up)
Biceps Curls with 6kg per side (not up)
I also carried a bunch of 5th wheels (at least 9kg per wheel, but there's mountings and stuff on them, so they're heavier) from the street up to the first floor, as well as some europallets and boxes. We had a big delivery at work today.

I'm a bit undecided for strength training if I want to stick with dumbbells or rather go the callisthenics route. I found out I can do dips at the corner of our kitchen counter. There's the reddit bodyweight routine that looks interesting, but dumbbells are cool, too, so I'm not really sure.

I'll visit my father tomorrow, so I don't know how much I can work out. I'm going to sit on my butt for four hours on a train, though, so maybe I absolutely should do something in the evening.

Hoep you all had a great Monday!

 

[Gandhalfit]

The human mind is a mysterious thing

 

[Nihopaloa]

@Gandhalfit that it is, that it is

I didn't work out today, after I spent three hours on the train for the trip back, instead of two. The second train's power was short circuited so we were stranded for some time. Then it continued slowly, until I switched trains and was home one hour later.

I wish I had taken the train an hour later, but I "fled" my father's place and took the earlier one, because I dreaded that my aunt would call when I was there. Thing is, my uncle is dying from turbo-cancer. I call it turbo-cancer, because he was perfectly fine three months ago, and he had a screening just last year wihtout anything being found. Then he had aches two months ago and got the diagnosis of colon cancer, already spread to the spine. And then it went downhill fast. He's in the hospital now, after one round of chemo, the doctors give him morphine and it could happen any minute/day now. My father's driving down to my aunt tomorrow to help her with some things.
I'm a bit devastated, because I only reestablished contact with my uncle (related by marriage) after my mother died, and I liked him a lot. He defected from the Polish bycicle racing team decades ago when they were in Germany and he was the gentlest soul I have ever met. It always was hard talking to him, because he was always laughing when talking and still had a strong accent. But it was also great fun. He also was super fit, biking everywhere, and he loved his BMW almost as much as his wife.
I'm dreading the next couple of days, to be honest. I talked to my aunt on the phone today, and it got to me a lot. I didn't feel bothered much when my mother was in her last days, because I hadn't been on the best of terms with her, but this time is different.
Well, Death's always our companion on this journey we call life, always there, always ready to pull us aside and tell us we're done when the time has arrived, no matter how early or late. He's no one to fear, but those who get left behind still hate him. But we're all going to shake hands with him at one point.
My uncle made it to 63. I hope he'll die sooner rather than later now.

Anyway, I still hope you all had a nice Tuesday.

 

[Montserrat]

 

[Mamatigerj]

 

[HellYeah]

 

[Tileenah]

 

[astro_rae]

 

[Gandhalfit]

That wretched cancer.
Is there any hope that he makes it?

 

[BetaCorvi]

 

[PetiteSheWolf]

Hugs...

 

[Fremen]

 

[TheLibrarian]

 

[Anek]

 

[Nihopaloa]

Thank you all for the hugs, @Montserrat, @Mamatigerj, @HellYeah, @Tileenah, @astro_rae, @Gandhalfit, @BetaCorvi, @PetiteSheWolf, @Fremen, @TheLibrarian and @Anek. It's a messed up way to go and it went so fast.
@Gandhalfit I just had my father on the phone. According to the doctor if my uncle makes it to the end of the week he would be impressed. He's mostly wasting away and swimming in morphine.

I guess I wrote that down yesterday to get it out of my system. But we're still here, alive, and the show must go on, so... yeah. I guess it's back to the usual, I can't do anything over here, anyway, so I can at least take care of myself.

I did that with another day of dumbbell workouts today.

05.07.2023
Dumbbell Training
Squats with 8kg per side (up)
Bench Press with 8kg per side (up)
One Arm Bent Over Rows with 8kg (up)
Skull Crushers with 5kg per side (not up)
Bench Presses are more like, three blankets folded up and stacked presses, because I don't have a bench. But it works and is quite comfy.

Also, it seems like we might not get new heating this year, but next year, depending on how fast they can finish the two flats above us. I don't mind, gas prices are a bit down again so I can afford another winter blasting gas all over the place without getting some precious heat out of it. Gives us more time to get rid of some things and organise the flat some more.

I hope you all had a great Wednesday, despite everything going on over here, mine was pretty chill all around.

 

[NancyTree]

I'm sorry about your uncle

 

[Gandhalfit]

I see.
Well, the show must go on, as you said.
I'm still sorry for him though.

 

[Nihopaloa]

Thank you, @NancyTree
@Gandhalfit yes, it's a shame. He's still "alive" or merely existing. My aunt still had hope, but my father took care to crush it, to say it bluntly and brutally. He won't come back from this and at this point it's the bigger mercy to make that clear to her. Thank you for caring, I appreciate this.

Unrelated to this, but I haven't worked out today and yesterday. I can't really say why. I think I wanted to do some cardio yesterday and didn't found the time for it, today was dumbbells, but I decided to do it tomorrow, to switch the days around. We'll have a summer party at work next Friday and I wanted to adjust my training schedule around that. Or maybe it was an excuse, I don't know
There's always tomorrow (baby).

One day, I'll have a routine established (again). Maybe not today, certainly not tomorrow, but one day, it will happen.

To get back into another routine, I'll post daily songs again, for those who like to listen to a wide spectrum of different genres. To start, I'm going with a chill and relaxed Vocaloid song: liam feat. Hatsune Miku - slowly. This is one of my favourites, especially the second half. I like browsing Vocaloid (and other voice synthesisers) music and look for new stuff. There's so incredibly much, so much music of an insane quality, it's amazing. Sure, there's also a lot of garbage, but there's almost no genre that isn't covered.

I wish you all a wonderful weekend, hope you'll enjoy it! It's getting hot over here, so I'll probably just stay inside

 

[Nihopaloa]

Heyyyyyyyy,

I didn't post yesterday because I was very busy and I didn't do any workouts anyway, so nothing to report. I didn't do any workouts today either. I don't know if I'll do any workouts tomorrow.
I'd like to have a cool pretense for this, or at least say I'm lazy, but truth be told, I have no idea what I should do. That's weird. I have.... decision fatigue. Or programming paralysis. Something like that. I want to build muscle (again) and I want to it do with weights and callisthenics. Problem is, I don't know how to combine that. And because thinking is easier to do than doing (at least for me) I'm sitting on my butt and do exactly that: Thinking. Without finding a solution. Then I think a bit more. Hoping that I at least think enough to burn a lot of calories doing that (I won't).
I'll probably don't have a plan tomorrow either, so I tentatively suppose I'll do something something Darebee instead. Tune in tomorrow to see if I stay true to my word or out myself as fake news.

On the productive side of things (I wasn't lazy after all) I finally moved away from Windows and installed my Linux system yesterday. That's why I didn't post, because I was too busy making everything look cool. Well, I failed, but at least it's running. I call that a win. Considering that I wanted to make the move around Easter already (and before that) I just pat myself on the back and be happy that I finally did something.

The song of the day is The Cardigans - Erase/Rewind, because I had it in my head all night long. There was no escape. Whenever I woke up, Erase and Rewind. Well, considering that it didn't stop, it mostly did rewinding and not enough erasing. Still, I like that song.

I wish you all a nice and easy start into the new week

 

[Fremen]

In the calisthenics course that I did for 3 months, exercises with weights were combined with purely calisthenics ones, I think that in the end we keep what works and focus on what we like best.
Maybe you could combine the weight exercises you like with new calisthenics exercises you want to try

 

[Nihopaloa]

@Fremen if it were so easy, my friend, I wouldn't have the problems I have Really, I'm thinking this all to death and I want to do the right thing, right from the beginning, and I won't start before I have figured out what the right thing is. The worst part is that I know it wouldn't hurt to just start anyway, mess around, and figure things out along the way. I'll get there

To prove that I'm still partial to the truth, at least when it comes to things I say/write, I have done the following today:
- Shadebound Day 1 on Level 1

Yes, it's not much, but it's something. And something is better than nothing. With which we're back to my words right at the beginning of this post, but my life would be a better one if I'd listen to my own words now and then. Alas, I'm my own worst enemy.
But then again, enemies are there to fight, conquer, whatever, and today I decided to fight against my flabby thighs. At this point I have the feeling they get lumpier with every month I'm sitting on my lazy butt. I'm not even sure any more if it's just fat or some kind of lipoedema. Although I don't have other symptoms. I can only find out by building muscle and losing fat. Which I really should do. I have, on both legs, a lump directly above my knees, a bit separated from the rest of my thigh fat. But I just noticed that whenever I sit at my PC, I press my legs against a metal bar below my desktop, so maybe I'm responsible for that separation myself. I don't know.
Be as it may, if I'm unsatisfied, I have to work to get satisfied again. So, building muscle it is. Now this sounds a bit harsh, but maybe disgust would actually be a better motivator than the usual "I want to be healthy, and fit, and mobile, and fight for world peace, etc." I give it a try. If it works, it works. If not, I can look for something else. Sometimes, you just have to look for the right kind of motivation. Especially when you have zero discipline. Which is me.

Today's song is Masayoshi Ooishi - Welcome to Japari Park. This is the opening song of 2017 anime show Kemono Friends, performed by the composer himself. It's a great and fun song, and I love Ooishi's singing. I don't know a single singer who performs with such an enthusiasm as he does. He's "imitating" the various voices of the characters in the middle, and I think it's a blast.
If you're not in the mood for the song itself, here is a cover version "Welcome to Blue Screen Park" made with Windows error messages and sounds. Internet at its best.

Hope you all had a magnificent Monday!

 

[Mamatigerj]

You are right: something is absolutely better than nothing! I completely understand the overthinking it but you will figure it out; good luck!

 

[Fremen]

I too always want to start with a perfect plan which I usually have to change afterwards
What I can tell you about calisthenics, given my very modest experience, is that it makes a huge difference to have someone who follows you and teaches you the correct exercises and checks that you do them well.
Some exercises that I had tried alone and discarded for the pain they caused me, instead done in the correct way, not only was I able to do them without pain but they helped me a lot with joint mobility

 

[Anek]

My tight developed a similar "bump" when I was opening a swinging door with it - I guess repeated bumping does change the fat distribution.

 

[Gandhalfit]

 

[Gandhalfit]

I hope you are having a great birthday

 

[Fremen]

Happy Birthday

 

[Anek]

 

[Sólveig]

 

[NancyTree]