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Personal story tonight. I finally shed my Covid-19 lbs that made their way onto my body this year. 2020 was a mess for so many reasons, and we heard lots of stories at the store about people looking for ways to stay active. Little did they knew, I needed that help, too.
I can boil it down to four reasons I fell out of balance this year; most of them pandemic-related.
1 - new dad life
2 - store was crazy busy
3 - squash club closed
4 - pandemic shopping habits
I wasn't going to share most of this, but @Mike_Donachie inspired me, so here goes.
1 - new dad life
2 - store was crazy busy
3 - squash club closed
4 - pandemic shopping habits
I wasn't going to share most of this, but @Mike_Donachie inspired me, so here goes.
I think the first three are easy to explain. Basically I ate as a coping mechanism for my lack of sleep, and never had any time for exercise. In the "before times", squash gave me a mandatory outlet, where at least once/week I'd run hard and do some self-assessment on my fitness.
We were so busy at the store that I often forgot to eat lunch. I'd grab a Clif bar here or there through the day, we'd order staff pizza on Saturdays, and just basically trying to cope with a level of activity that was extremely high.
At home, I'd eat extra breakfast to try to push further into the day, or cope with staying up half the night with Rosie. It was exhausting. If we didn't have an espresso machine at the store, I'd probably have crashed on the couch beside Hector most days.
The fourth reason became apparent to me only as the summer dragged on. Due to Covid, we'd reduced our grocery shopping from 3-4 days/week to once every two or three weeks. This meant less fresh stuff, and more pantry/frozen products. More bread and bacon. Less green goodness.
Oh, and peanut butter. We always had peanut butter. And I absolutely LOVE peanut butter. So I ate terribly, didn't sleep, and didn't have time for exercise in the rest of my week. Seems about right that my body gave me a solid middle finger.
So what did I do about it? About mid-way through the summer I did some self assessment, and decided I need to start measuring some things, and give myself ways to make healthier choices, despite our current conditions.
Rosie has been sleeping better through most of the summer, which has been a game changer for both parents, so that fortunately wasn't something I needed to change. The rest would take some work, however.
Canonical work in isotope geochemistry is all about mass balance - inputs, and outputs. It works on an organism level, more-or-less, too, and the ability to measure those things in your body has never been easier.
Step 1 - measure outputs. How much energy am I burning on a daily basis? How much exercise am I actually getting? I picked up a Garmin Vivosport (our store actually sells these by special order, so it was easy to choose) https://buy.garmin.com/en-CA/CA/p/574602
I got a revolutionary understanding of my body from Garmin (and their wicked software). The ability to measure walking, cycling, and sleep gave me a rich data set to work with. Turns out I *was* getting quite a bit of exercise: bouncing around the store is hard work.
So outputs wasn't really the problem, and I was getting OK sleep by now. Inputs are where things mattered, so I needed to figure out how to do food better given our circumstances.
I invested in two things - MyFitnessPal premium software that paired with Garmin Connect that let me barcode scan my food to measure calories, carbs, protein, fat, and a whole bunch of other things, and a really great smoothie blender (NutriBullet).
Turns out I was eating worse than I thought in some ways, and actually had some good habits in other ways. Having the app reinforce the good habits was a turning point.
I've set my planned intake at 2000 cal/day, which gives my body enough to function well. I'm also not too hard on myself for overshooting this target, although I try to hit it. The "net" value that Garmin calculates from Input-Output at 2000 is my "hard" cap.
This means on days like today, I can go ride my bike for a bunch of errands and then casually eat pizza and drink a pint of cider without any interruptions to progress. I'm still below my target despite a *lot* of pepperoni.
Other little things like audiobooks on dog walks, or putting Rosie in the backpack instead of her stroller make a difference, too, but the main change has been food (and stress, but for me stress led to food, so ultimately, let's call it a food problem).
Coming up on three months since this all started, and it's going really well. I haven't missed a day of tracking food input (which isn't that time consuming once you start scanning thing), and smoothies have become my default pandemic meal when we're running low on produce.
The other thing I've noticed is that as we slowly transition to eating less meat (this was my New Year's resolution, and I think we've kept it up as a family), is that meat is so energy dense - I can eat *way* more of my vegan chili or meatless lasagna than the carnivore versions
Overall, it's been a great experiment, and I'm pleased with the results so far. This pandemic year has been tough on everyone in different ways, and I feel like as the year draws to a close, leaving some of the remnants of 2020's struggles behind will be a good thing.
So TL;DR: sharing my story because it might inspire/offer an approach to someone else. I've successfully hit reset on my body's 2020 imbalances, mostly through walking more and eating less, while biking about the same. DM if you want details, or a kick to get going yourself.
Today was a typical weekend day. Get a little bit more exercise, and eat some takeout so both C and I can get a break from cooking and enjoy spending time with Rosie.
Friday was a super typical weekday. Hit all the food targets, walk a bunch w/Rosie, voila. Piece of cake (or in this case, a pint of porter).
