Week 18 (34 to go)

As predicted, re-adding in weights this week after last resulted in a minor loss overall for the week. I dropped 0.3kg however was able to get back to my workout routines, even increasing the resistance on the cross trainer (more on that later).

Looking at my food, i had 3 dinners that were over / higher than normal this week. I think is a symptom of having the whole family at home (definitely not something i am complaining about). We have more time to cook meals, which opens the door to more variability in meals. The best i can do is track and make better choices.

Friday night we had virtual drinks, with each of us having a couple/few beverages while video chatting. I then compounded that with ordering pizza for dinner - so Friday went well over my calorie goal. It was a good night, and a necessary break from the isolation of working from home, but one that i should have probably thought better on.

The other two meals that were high (above 800 calories for a meal) were on Sunday night where i made a Welsh Lamb Pie and then on Wednesday where we had slow cooker Hungarian Goulash. In both these instances, i used the recipe function of My Fitness Pal to input the recipe, ingredients and servings to calculate the overall impact. It worked well, and gives a good insight into what the actuals are for a recipe (and doesn't miss little things like oil etc in the count that may be overlooked.)

That being said, besides these three meals, i was bang on and not struggling. Of note, after the pizza night i did not have any cravings for more 'naughty' food the following day. This is different to previous times i ate poorly where i had to consciously get back on track. I think this is more than sustainable and i wont drop back into previous bad habits.

On workouts, i bumped up the cross trainer resistance on my Tuesday workout and then continued on the Thursday one. For history - in a 24 minute session on the cross trainer, i was reaching 8.2 - 8.3 kms on the previous setting. Instead of trying to keep extending that distance, i thought i would increase the resistance and aim to hit 8km again.

Well Tuesday morning kicked my proverbial. The bump up of 2 bars felt like running in treacle the first 'peak' and it didn't get better all the way through. I was happy to hit 8.09kms on Tuesday and then increased it to 8.11km's on the Thursday. Once I get it up to the 8.3km mark again i will increase the resistance once again.

I did track my time on the cross trainer (as i do all workouts) through my fitness tracker and noticed that i was in 'intense' and 'peak' bpm for most of these workouts - an increase over previous. I have added a combined image of the cross trainer (top) and heart rate (bottom) for interest. This was replicated on Thursday. I think keeping at the higher resistance is making me work harder both from a cardio and muscular perspective. I will track this the coming weeks and see how i trend.