Doing OK

Despite my lack of blogging, I'm still here. My two Peleton Challenges are going well. I have done a Peleton class 52 days in a row. For the 100 day streak challenge, I actually started 2 days before the challenge so I have earned 50 days toward that challenge.

The other is my work challenge of 300+ minutes on the Peleton app between Jan 20th and March 1st. I actually completed my time for that yesterday so I am in good shape! The past couple weeks, while I was in PMS phase and then waiting for my (late) cycle to start, I did very low stress workouts, a lot of yoga and full body stretching, some dance and some walking. Mother nature had her own plans, dumping piles and piles of snow on us day after day. I did so much shoveling and oh was I sore for days after! My eating is OK, not as strict as it could be. I have such a problem with wanting to snack between meals during PMS and I did cave a get peanuts. They ate technically low carb enough to be a solid snack on Keto, but not at the volume I consume them if they are in the house. I was doing good just not having them in the house at all, but in a moment of PMS weakness and cravings I caved and got some. I finished the last but of them today and won't buy more. I also allowed heavy whipping cream to creep back in for my coffee, and that's gone now too, and I don't plan to keep adding it. It just makes me overindulge in coffee. Eating on the weekends has been hit and miss, with some intentional higher carb meals and some on-plan meals out. My husband is doing a 6 week program where he can only eat meat on Sundays so between his pescatarian diet and my low carb diet, it's a little tricky to navigate. I really don't like most fish or seafood so cooking is interesting. Thankfully, he's only got a few more weeks of that. I was doing pretty good with fasting until my progesterone phase. I definitely lose some momentum during that phase when my body needs me to not push it/raise cortisol. Here's what I think I need to do to break bad habits and get more mentally focused for next week, I need to plan meals that are more calories, especially since I am including strength training and HIIT. Those types of workouts keep your metabolism revved up for up to 24 hours, so you continue to burn calories even after you are done working out vs cardio which pretty much stops burning calories as soon as you stop working out. This week I was lazy and using leftovers so I am eating a diced ham and mayo wrap on a keto tortilla for breakfast and a ham sandwich on keto bread for lunch. Lazy planning and zero food prep. This is not enough calories to allow me to fast from lunch to breakfast, so I have some cheese for a 5PM "last meal". In order to do a 2-meals-a-day kind of fasting, I need to get a lot more food into those two meals in order to stay satisfied and feed my (ahem) massive (not so much) muscles. Today when I ate the last half ounce of peanuts it meant I would be getting hungry before lunch. When my stomach growled, I realized it had been a while since I felt genuine hunger. I could have had some cheese, but there's a positive sort of power to mastering doing something challenging, so I sat with my growling stomach, and felt strong until lunch. I am still doing good, but there's always room for small tweaks and improvements. Fasting has really been something that works well for me but I do have to plan more carefully to make sure I'm giving my body at least enough calories to meet my basal metabolic needs. There are calculators online if you are curious about your caloric needs based on your basal metabolic rate. Anyway, next week goals are, better meals, more fasting, ans no heavy cream or peanuts. If someone would have told my younger sugar-binging self I would one day have an issue controlling myself around dry roasted peanuts, I would have laughed myself off my chair, but here I am. Hi, I'm Amy. I'm addicted to nuts. LOL.