I think part of my problem with eating right now is not being able to go back into intermittent fasting. It worked very well for me in TX. It continued to work for me even when I wasn't working out. When I started breaking it and, later, adding calories more and more indiscriminately on top of no workout is when things fell apart. January 2024 I committed myself to restarting a better diet and IF was part of that. I was making progress, but it didn't last long as the position I currently have opened and between moving, the chaos that was the living arrangement I moved back to, and the rigors of my current employment situation made IF not a particularly useful diet set-up. I don't know how to fix this.

Sometimes I wonder if it's at all worthwhile anymore.

The Workout
60 Prone Reverse Flys
Lower Body Blast Day 12, three sets of 10 Calf Raises followed by 10 count Calf Raise Hold with no rest
Lower Back with no rest
 
Running IF part time would be two days a week until the holiday season, assuming it would be worthwhile for two days a week. Applying IF later means, at best, breaking fast approximately 1630, if I don't screw that up at work, and having maybe a six hour window assuming I eat after 2100 or so. I don't know, maybe one of these is the only way to bring IF back into the equation. I have to think about this some more to square it with the rest of my life. Thank you for the ideas, @graoumia.

The Workout
65 Prone Reverse Flys
Lower Body Blast Day 13, three sets of 22 Split Lunges with 30 seconds rest
Beekeeper at level 1. Everything has felt so draining the last few days.
 
i was thinking omad was an impossible thing, and it is easier than i think, and at work it could be even easier, maybe, because i have to cook for my children and my husband each evening. Maybe you could give it a try ?, in a nice book @Fanta recommended to me, they are suggesting omad 3 times a week, it could be enough to have benefits.
 
wjs said:
Running IF part time would be two days a week until the holiday season, assuming it would be worthwhile for two days a week. Applying IF later means, at best, breaking fast approximately 1630, if I don't screw that up at work, and having maybe a six hour window assuming I eat after 2100 or so. I don't know, maybe one of these is the only way to bring IF back into the equation. I have to think about this some more to square it with the rest of my life. Thank you for the ideas, @graoumia.

The Workout
65 Prone Reverse Flys
Lower Body Blast Day 13, three sets of 22 Split Lunges with 30 seconds rest
Beekeeper at level 1. Everything has felt so draining the last few days.
Click to expand...
There are two very important things to keep in mind with IF:

1) are you sufficiently nourished before you begin IF? One way to know is to track a normal week of eating. Do not change your habits but keep a log of what you eat to get your macros and calories. If you are consistently below your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) I would recommend first to hit your TDEE for a few weeks consistently, and then begin IF.

2) Hunger is temporary. You may get hunger pangs at your regular scheduled meal, but they should not last more than 15-20 minutes and fade away. I call that "mechanical hunger" and it's usually clockwork. Once that is over, check in with your body to ensure you never force a fast. If you get lightheaded, dizzy, moody, etc. do not push through.

Also, try different patterns. The easiest OMAD is breakfast for me. It's easier to go to bed with an empty stomach, and sleep is so much better, and I dont get hunger at lunchtime at work when co-workers heat up their lunches. Socially, most people do OMAD at dinner because they eat with family or prefer to cook their big meal when they have more time after work.


Also, try to eat nothing at all 3 hours prior bedtime, if you eat late, especially if this is your OMAD. This is to ensure your liver is not digesting things while you sleep, while it should instead be working on detox.

Edit: forgot to mention ---
IF is a form of stress to the body. Check your "cortisol levels" first. Bad sleep, continous training, stress at work, stresses in life all add up, whether positive or negative. Adding another stress on the pile may not be recommended for your situation.

Check with this scale online to evaluate, it's a good qualitative list for a self-check on your stress Holmes and Rahe stress scale (link)
 
@Fanta: As you probably did not follow me on the old site, there's a lot to unpack about intermittent fasting and me. I have used it successfully in the past, which was, granted, a very different situation for me compared to now. Sure there are plenty of similarities, but at the same time, there are a number of non-negligible differences, most notably the difference in my work expectations. Previously, I was in an entirely different field and at a lower level in the hierarchy. The job wasn't necessarily stress-free, but it was easy enough for me to generally have few issues and coast. Now, I'm managing people, and space, and inventory, and generally live on stress*.

Next, I have never calculated my TDEE, I just know what has worked in the past. Which was working out and changing my diet, including the change to IF.

As it relates to eating, what had worked for me then and intended early last year** was a return to a roughly six hour window starting with lunch at about noon. It worked originally when I started making these changes and it appeared to have started working again, along with working out, in January and February of last year. Then I took the position I now have and it's been a struggle to get things to work in my favor***. I have been keeping track of my eating habits, for good or for ill, for almost a year now since the last restart. I'm wondering if I need to hold off on fixing my diet more until I've been working out longer. It took at least two full years of working out before I even started looking at changing my diet when it worked for me...

Two workouts today because I won't be home particularly early tomorrow evening.


The Workout, part 1
70 Prone Reverse Flys
Lower Body Blast Day 14, three sets of 10 Calf Raises followed by 10 count Calf Raise Hold with no rest
The Clash at level 2

The Workout, part 2
75 Prone Reverse Flys
Lower Body Blast Day 15, three sets of 22 Split Lunges with 30 seconds rest
Fifty-five minutes of Steady-State Cardio, reduced to about thirty-nine minutes due to sudden weakness in the knee and ankle that was problematic last time I did Steady-State Cardio. Something, something, still need to be able to work, or some such.








*And caffeine. Well, it feels that way sometimes, but it's probably less true than it seems to me.
**This would be before I was offered the opportunity to manage the store I have now.
***Or, at least, feel like it's working in my favor.
 
Had an alright evening last night.

I realized that I didn't actually say anything about the one meal a day method with everything else I felt needed to be said. It could certainly work for me in terms of intermittent fasting, for sure. I'll need to determine whether morning or evening will be better, though. I have a better handle on variety and diversity for my evening meals, for sure. Morning feels like it should be for breakfast, generally speaking. Not always, but mostly. I'll do my research, and aim for a new diet situation with the new year. I'd rather not mess with building up a new diet come the holiday season in retail, which is not a time to be making huge changes to, well, anything that important to life.

The Workout
80 Prone Reverse Flys
Lower Body Blast Day 16, three sets of 10 Calf Raises followed by 10 count Calf Raise Hold with no rest
Standing Abs with one minute rests
 
Thank you for offering your personal experience, @graoumia. My life always feels incredibly busy*, so the research may take me a while to get to in the first place.

The Workout
85 Prone Reverse Flys
Lower Body Blast Day 17, three sets of 24 Split Lunges with 30 seconds rest
Ten minutes in the Pits









*Or I'm incredibly depressed and it takes a lot out of me to pretend everything is alright while I'm at work. Whichever.
 
I appreciate your kind words, @graoumia. Thank you.

Busy, busy day. Besides my normal Monday paperwork and such, I also have to prepare for pre-holiday inventory by providing my staff with lists of what we are supposed to have so we can correct any inconsistencies in our inventory before they become errors I have to work on after the inventory. On top of that, my mid-shift employee was sick today and I had no one to cover, so that was fun with a high traffic Monday for no good reason.

The Workout
90 Prone Reverse Flys
Lower Body Blast Day 18, three sets of 10 Calf Raises followed by 10 count Calf Raise Hold with no rest
Back & Core at level 3 with one minute rests
 
So, while I was definitely done with Tuesday, I used a song by Lynyrd Skynyrd, Tuesday's Gone*, to convey that fact. The older I get, the more I feel like I'm one of very few people who listens to a ridiculously wide variety of music**. @Louve Rose has a link above to exactly this song above.

In a different vein, I'm considering changing up my workouts with the new year, adding some new ones, modifying the classes of workout I do, that sort of thing. Right now I have upper body, lower body, abs, posture/lower back, steady-state cardio, and two combat days. I'm thinking about bringing in general strength, metcon, and dumbbells while converting my steady-state cardio into a mix of cardio styles. Upper and lower body can combine to become the general strength and one of the combat days can be replaced by dumbbells. Metcon, though... I need to think on how to mix that in. I'm still planning exercise of the month, challenge of the month, and switching between individual workouts and programs on a monthly basis just like this year.

The Workout
105 Prone Reverse Flys
Lower Body Blast Day 21, three sets of 26 Split Lunges with 30 seconds rest
Brawler at level 2








*Also covered by Metallica and some of their friends*** for San Jose's radio station KSJO Christmas with Metallica show.
**Most country, most jazz, and show tunes are the things I never listen to. "World music" I am not often exposed to.
***Les Claypool of Primus, John Popper of Blues Traveller, Pepper Keenan of Corrosion of Conformity, Jim Martin of Faith No More, Jerry Cantrell and Sean Kinney of Alice in Chains, and Gary Rossington of Skynyrd.
 
Day off tomorrow. Thankfully.

The Workout
115 Prone Reverse Flys
Lower Body Blast Day 23, three sets of 26 Split Lunges with 30 seconds rest
Sentry at level 1. The ankle that's been giving me issues off and on this year was "on" today. I felt it better to stop at level one than push my luck, especially after the split lunges.
 
Thank you, @graoumia. It was a peaceful day and my ankle felt good.

In other news, I've started planning out challenges and programs for next year. Nothing definitive, yet, but I think I have a few good choices made already.

The Workout
120 Prone Reverse Flys
Lower Body Blast Day 24, three sets of 10 Calf Raises followed by 10 count Calf Raise Hold with no rest
Ten minutes in the Pits, unarmed
 
The store received a new mini escape room game. I may have let myself get a little distracted before working out.

The Workout
125 Prone Reverse Flys
Lower Body Blast Day 25, three sets of 28 Split Lunges with 30 seconds rest
Extraction at level 1. The Split Lunges took more out of me than I had expected.
 
I wonder if OMAD would allow for a small caloric intake* at least ten hours before the actual meal.

The Workout
130 Prone Reverse Flys
Lower Body Blast Day 26, three sets of 10 Calf Raises followed by 10 count Calf Raise Hold with no rest
Sixty minutes of Steady-State Cardio








*By small, I mean no more than 25 Calories.
 
Still having to modify the Push-Ups in Paladin to Knee Push-Ups, but I need them less nearly every time I do the workout.

Also, ChatGPT is ridiculously good as a resource for RPGs. That is all.

The Workout
135 Prone Reverse Flys
Lower Body Blast Day 27, three sets of 28 Split Lunges with 30 seconds rest
Paladin at level 1
 
@Threadweaver: I had read a headline that the author of the article used AI to create a dungeon, so I hopped on ChatGPT to try out creating a criminal with a bounty for bounty hunter characters in both Starfinder and Pathfinder. Then I spent like three hours teaching ChatGPT how to create a character in Daggerheart. It's extraordinarily obtuse sometimes, but I made some headway teaching it the Daggerheart rules set as it relates to character creation. I probably stayed up a bit too late as a result of that particular rabbit hole.
 
A relatively good day off. Probably would have been better if I hadn't been teaching a generative AI about role-playing games until well after midnight.

In other news, I did a bit more work on next year's workout plan. Still nothing set, but I do know I want to change some things with the new year. Part of it will depend on whether I buy myself dumbbells for Christmas, part of it will depend on what new workouts I find to add into the mix*.

The Workout
140 Prone Reverse Flys
Lower Body Blast Day 28, three sets of 10 Calf Raises followed by 10 count Calf Raise Hold with no rest
Alpha Protocol at level 2. Not because of exhaustion, but that stupid ankle/heel issue that sometimes crops up.











*And whether I just add or if I also remove a few workouts.
 
Was curious how well you had been able to achieve realistic play, so thank you for sharing! I tried to use it to play DnD a few months back. It was decent, but it definetly gave me a lot more leeway than it ought to have and was more geared to making things work out in my favor. I gave up trying to make it play more realistically and just started to have fun with cresting a fun adventure story for my character. I had a blast with it though!
 
I'm hurting less today and a thought occurred to me as I was walking into work from my vehicle: maybe some part of this pain in my ankle/foot is part of the reorientation of my foot as I lose weight in my legs. I do recall a change in gait as I lost weight previously, which included the facing of my feet. Of course, maybe this is just the result of hundreds, at this point, of split lunges. A blessedly easy workout tonight for my unhappy ankle.

The Workout
150 Prone Reverse Flys
Lower Body Blast Day 30, three sets of 10 Calf Raises followed by 10 count Calf Raise Hold with no rest
Posture Perfect
 
@Mamatigerj, thank you for reminding me that there's a badge for challenges. Remembering that is a challenge unto itself when I'm not also doing a program during the month. Speaking of which, tomorrow I start the Gladiator challenge paired with Ronin's Blade. Today, though, a nice, simple workout, nothing extra.

The Workout
Ten minutes in the Pits, unarmed
 
I'm doing something a bit different from my norm. As Ronin's Blade is an RPG program I am printing each day on the day I do the workout to preserve the story as I go along.

The Workout
10 Elbow Strike/Elbow Strike Combinations
Gladiator Day 1, 3 sets of 40 Punches with thirty seconds rest
Ronin's Blade, Day 1
 
I really wanted to just let myself be lost in the day, but... I knew I would feel terrible tomorrow if I didn't work out. I'm already hard enough on myself, I can't afford to miss a workout just to miss a workout.

The Workout
20 Elbow Strike/Elbow Strike Combinations
Gladiator Day 2, forty seconds One-Arm Plank
Ronin's Blade, Day 2
 
Thank you, @graoumia. It turns out I'm probably* sick.

The Workout
30 Elbow Strike/Elbow Strike Combinations
Gladiator Day 3, three sets of 10 Lunges with thirty seconds rest
Ronin's Blade, Day 3. Who fights with a [REDACTED], anyway?







*By probably, I mean definitely. I picked up a sore throat and it's caused some excessive caloric intake to help mitigate how my throat feels. It's all good, though, this isn't going to last.
 
Thank you @astro_lizard, @graoumia, @Fremen, @PetiteSheWolf, and @Mamatigerj for the healing vibes and everyone else who silently wished me well. I'm still sick, but I'm clearly at the gross symptoms stage, not the sneaky contagious stage. Still managed to work out, probably because it's early enough in the month that the workout isn't particularly difficult.

The Workout
40 Elbow Strike/Elbow Strike Combinations
Gladiator Day 4, 4 sets of 40 Punches with thirty seconds rest
Ronin's Blade, Day 4. Still dealing with [REDACTED]. Seriously? Hopefully I get to move on tomorrow.
 
Went to work. Left work very early*. Slept off and on for several hours. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow.

The Workout
50 Elbow Strike/Elbow Strike Combinations
Gladiator Day 5, forty seconds One-Arm Plank
Ronin's Blade, Day 5







*I wisely brought in one of my staff well before open to cover the store when I left just after we opened. They want to learn opening procedures anyway, so a little extra instruction time was also had.
 
Went to work again. Left early again, just not quite so early as yesterday. Came home, slept a bit. Worked out. Good times*.

The Workout
60 Elbow Strike/Elbow Strike Combinations
Gladiator Day 6, four sets of 10 Lunges with thirty seconds rest
Ronin's Blade, Day 6. Optional quest... failed. Even while modified. I could blame the relative fatigue from this cold I have, but I'm not sure I could have finished it fully healthy. No [REDACTED] for me.







*For varying definitions of "good".
 
A day off which gave me what appears to be the rest I've needed to be ready for this upcoming week. I hope.

The Workout
70 Elbow Strike/Elbow Strike Combinations
Gladiator Day 7, 3 sets of 60 Punches with thirty seconds rest
Ronin's Blade, Day 7. I joined the
underdogs
, I hope that was the correct choice.
 
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