April 10th, 2012: 284 lbs. today! Rolling southbound with a gone pound people! And for 100 days I’ve given it my best. 16oz. “earned to be gone” to me right now are as good as an Olympic gold medal “earned to be here”. That last sentence may not make much grammatical sense, but you get the idea.
The main difference to me about daily vs. weekly weigh-ins is this: when I wait all week long to weigh, I think more about exercise than I do diet. Of course, I stay with my program diet, but I don’t think so much about how much I weigh, but rather how my fitness levels are improving. On the other hand, when I do think about how much I weigh, I become obsessed for a short period of time. This is all I think about.
When I weigh every day, the weigh-in isn’t so much of a big deal, it’s like taking a shower or a vitamin C. I think about my diet more on the daily weigh-in, but there isn’t so much of an obsession. So I guess the feeling is more chronic on a daily basis, more acute on a weekly basis.
I think I’m going to keep weighing every day. Though I won’t see as much of an improvement, I’ll be more concerned with diet, which is the harder of the two factors for me. And I also run less risk of seeing drastic “bad” numbers, i.e. gains of weight. I guess it’s kind of like taking your blood pressure. Weekly would be just fine, but then I’d worry about my blood pressure all week. Daily, well, taking your blood pressure daily can’t hurt.
April 10th, 2020: How hard should I exercise? The second question from my April 8th post that I always have to ask myself.
This is an extremely relative/subjective question, and therefore, quite difficult to answer. It can be quantitative (based in numbers), but more often than not, it’s entirely qualitative, i.e. I have to ask myself, “well, how the fuck do you feel today?” It requires a lot of thought and data to answer the question quantitatively, a lot of introspection to answer it qualitatively – and this is just when I’m answering for myself. Imagine what it’s like as a personal trainer programming for a client.
Quantitatively, I’ll look at past performance and try to beat it. For example, if I ran a mile in 8 minutes and 30 seconds last week, I’ll try to complete that mile in 8 minutes and 25 seconds today. I try to up my performance by tweaking a psychology-based principle called Weber’s Law of Just Noticeable Difference and applying it to exercise physiology. A link for the website is below this paragraph. Basically I try to make it so I don’t overload my brain or body with a goal too lofty.
Qualitatively, I’ve got to ask myself just exactly how much I can really do without injury, or without making the experience miserable. Then I’ve got to review my short-term and long-term goals. Informally, I do this daily. By informal, I mean I think about it while I’m driving to the gym. Formally, and on paper, I do this probably like once a month. Then after I do either one, and when I’m at the gym just starting or even as I’m evaluating how I feel during a workout, I’ve got to assess and re-assess my performance and check my own ambition. I ask myself, “am I giving it my best shot based on how I feel?” or “am I just being a pussy and not trying as hard as I should?”. And I’ve got to answer those questions while keeping in mind that challenging myself a little bit each time is good, but overload could cause injury or burnout.
As you can see, I’ve learned there is no easy answer to question #2. However, I have learned that the most important thing about exercise is to find something I enjoy doing, and fucking do that. Even if it’s not what the trainer says is best, even if the literature says “try harder”, or “don’t do that every day”, or “a minimum of 30-minutes resistance training has to be completed daily”. Yes, I consider that info, but I live by what my body and brain tell me, and I’ve learned to love exercise by doing the exercises that make me feel good, and doing them as hard as I feel like on any given day.
