Author: Aaron

It’s Friday, it’s Fitness Check time.  

First thing’s first, let’s follow up on the previous check.  The weight loss I clocked was real, I did in fact drop some lbs.  My concern that the big 5+ pound drop was not quite real has also turned out correct.  I have consistently clocked higher weight than that big drop, but also lower weight than the previous week, even with some less than great snacking.  So I’m pretty happy on all accounts.

To that weight weirdness, I had a thought and it looks like there might be some truth to it.  I seem to go up a few pounds directly after workouts.  I haven’t checked enough to notice any specific consistencies.  I would have guessed that I gain more after strength training than I do cardio or calisthenics, but the numbers haven’t really supported that.  Either way, the weight tends to drop back down after a rest, which I can only guess suggests swelling.  For my medical situation, swelling gives me concern, but I’m pretty sure this is the healthy kind of swelling. I think this because I’m familiar with the weight lifter’s concept of “The Pump”. I’ve experienced myself. Actually these days I tend to experience it after every strength training session. I suspect I have the actual science here wrong, but the intuition is that the exercise swells your muscles with fluids and stuff for various reasons, including healing. I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter as long as I don’t need to be worried about it.  And that seems to be the case, I just want to keep myself aware of it, given I need to weight myself more regularly than is typically recommended to keep an eye on those medical needs.

It’s worth saying again, even if it is just to keep reminding myself, the weight isn’t the real goal here.  The fitness is. I had planned to test a few of those goals by my birthday, which is the middle of June.  I also planned, or rather expected to fail those. The idea is to see where I’m at to plan where I’m headed. Log a baseline… KPIs, right? Well I did, and I’m quite happy with the results there as well.  As predicted, I did miss the goals.  Not all of them, I guess.  Some goals were just to get going and keep it up.  I’ve far exceeded those plans.  I hadn’t planned to start my HIIT calisthenics until the end of summer, but I’ve gotten ahead by doing it a good couple times already in June.  I’m pretty happy about that, too.  My big cardio goal is to run an unbroken mile.  I was expecting to fall extremely short of this goal at this time, especially since my preferred training route is a little out of sorts right now.  Having tested, I did fall short. However, not anywhere near as far short as I was expecting.  I stopped and started a couple of times, but the intervals of running added up to longer than a mile, and my overall pace was higher than expected as well.  Very dope.

Okay, next up.  I bought some equipment.  I’ve had my eye on a few bits of gear for a while and decided that it’s time to shit or get off the pot, as the rather gross saying goes. So to figure out if I actually want them, I read some reviews to get an idea of whether or not they’ll actually help as desired, check price versus quality, etc. If they seem to check out and I have the budget for it, I should just go ahead and do it.  Top of the list for years and years has been one of those walking pads.  A walking pad is like a specialized treadmill, but the specialization is to actually make it smaller, weaker, and cheaper than a standard treadmill.  When I started looking at them, the tech tended to be split into two groups.  The first group seemed to deliver on the promise of helping me get my steps in without having to leave the home, but were well above my price range.  The second group was cheap, but seemed like hot garbage and as though they’d fall apart immediately and also had no warranty.  It’s been a few years and the tech seems to have caught up with my budget.

I’m actually typing this (slowly) while at about 50 minutes walking on one right now.  I also got myself one of those standing desks for this.  Both are much less expensive than they were just a year or two ago, and they are both way better quality than the cheap ones used to be. I feel pretty confident I’ll get a lot of use out of both, and they both completely fit my current needs. I’m pretty happy with there, too.

I’ve also been looking at those selectable weight dumbbells for years.  I’d not really thought of them seriously.  Similar to how the walking pads have changed, these used to be split between super pricey or super shitty, leaving them largely as a novelty at best. They are still expensive, but they came down enough that I was able to get a set for a little over $100, and that works for me.  I also got a pull-up bar.  It was $20.  I haven’t set it up, but for that price, I don’t care. I figured I could at least save myself the mental space of constantly asking myself, “Should I get a pull-up bar?”  Now, even if I never use it (though I’m sure I will), I can at least stop wasting time on the internet looking at them. Still looking at them – kettle bells. Though not because I’m not sure the worth, I know they are worth it, I’m just cheap and I’m looking for a good price.

It’s also worth saying how happy I am with the weights.  I’ve been using an old Bowflex for my strength training.  Those are fine and all, but they very much have drawbacks.  Most of those drawbacks are fine for my purposes.  I’m just trying to get fit, not get huge.  But I am a big fan of free weights, and I also really don’t want to go to a gym every day.  Perhaps that will change in the future, but that’s where I am now.  My tits are pretty sore today, even though I didn’t come near maxing on weight.  That really puts things back into perspective.

Last bit. Though I’ve been lamenting my schedule and routine lately, I’ve actually been making little tweaks all this time.  I’ve been getting out of bed progressively earlier, which has been a big win.  It’s so much easier to manage the other time constraints, needs, and wants when you have a bigger window of “up time” to work with.  I’m not saying you can’t be a night owl.  When my life was entirely about being at that desk, late nights were regular and actually useful.  But those habits had long become less useful to the degree of being detrimental before I’d even noticed.  In my life now, I’m at my best when I get to bed at a reasonable time and pull myself out of the envelope early enough to knock out at least one goal before 9 am.  Even earlier might be better, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves just yet.

There are additional tweaks I’d like to make, some already in progress, but the biggest bits left to tackle outside of fitness and academia are really about my social needs.  I think those will take more work.  However, I don’t seem to be alone in this want amongst my friends, so I think I’ve got a leg up.  I just need to keep up with the commitments.

Alright, I’m going to finish up and dick around for the rest of the day.  I think I’ve about earned it. Peace out.

Looks like I have my first missed post in this era.  I’m not going to beat myself up for it, but I do need to rethink whether or not I continue to have expected posts.  I really like the idea that I’m going to have a scheduled, weekly post. I like that being consistent and of a consistent type of content. More specifically, since my health has become paramount, I like keeping it oriented around that, and I like the set day being Friday.  So I do plan to keep that up, though also I think that, like the routine I was lamenting last week, the idea or my execution of it needs a little tune up.

Alright, this is the second post in a row that I include a weight measurement after saying that I wouldn’t.  Can’t be helped. I got down to 255.  I think that’s a fleeting 255, and I’ll get to why in just a sec, but I’m still quite pleased.  It’s incredibly frustrating to feel stuck in a weight plateau, even when all of my other vitals and measurements are telling me that things are going well. So I was very happy with that. My scale measure 254 at one point, but I’m not counting it. I expect to go back up a little this week, maybe even all the way back up to 260, which will be a real let down, but I have to be ready for that very real possibility or I may have a crisis of motivation.

I sort of fasted. I’m not sure where to mention this, but I think it’s worth mentioning, so I’m just going to squeeze it in here – I first started seeing a bit of difference on my scale before I fasted. I saw 258 on Thursday, even though I hadn’t been eating great. I mean, it’s not like I was housing pizza rolls or whatever, but you know, I wasn’t on my best behavior.

I had not planned on fasting, but I got pretty close and maybe even did fast by some definitions for a couple of days in a row.  I got really busy, but not the bad kind of busy I’d been in for the many years of my previous employment.  Instead, while my time was packed, it was packed entirely with things that I wanted to do.  And it felt pretty great.  I studied, worked on projects, spent time with friends and family, exercised, wrote, played some music, and did some art.  I cleaned, which I struggle to keep consistent with, but this week I was able to get into a real chill zone while doing it.  That was pretty dope.  The only drawback was that I didn’t do a lot of cooking.  That’s a bummer for a number of reasons, the top two for me are that it means a higher risk of eating something that could hurt me (not a super high risk, I can read a label), and also I enjoy cooking. Not being able to put a little time in the kitchen is bit of a bummer. But I did make eggs a couple of mornings, so at least there was that.

I suppose that wasn’t actually the only drawback.  I mean, I did get hungry to an unhealthy point more than once.  I didn’t ignore the hunger, which is why I’m not definitively declaring that I fasted.  It’s more like a taste of fasting… odd phrasing.  I have done actual fasting in past attempts to lose some weight and it always went poorly.  I felt like hot garbage the whole time that I did it. On top of that, I didn’t make much progress to my goal, and quickly rebound right after finishing.

That rebound is a big part of my skepticism I mentioned earlier of my drop to 255.  There’s also the logic of it, like I got in some decent eats yesterday, including some turkey meatballs and pasta salad at my brother’s house, and a big bowl of ramen with gooey egg, murky broth, and springy noods last night.  I started today with eggs, toast, cream cheese, and avocado.  Not unhealthy, but also certainly not low cal.  On the other hand, I have been eating pretty healthy by most measures for months, and I do feel like my body is otherwise pretty happy with that.  Lots of fruit and veg.  Peaches have been showing up lately, and I’m pretty happy about that, too.  So while I can buy the 258 number before the mini-fast, it’s likely that the additional drop was really just that I was on empty, and now that I’m back to normal, that won’t last. Given previous experience, I also have to prepare myself for a possible over-correction. Those really suck.

This little accidental experiment has also been helpful in instructing me on what not to do.  The truth is, I have been seriously considering a real go at a fast for a while.  Things are different for me now than they were during the previous attempts, so results and side effects would likely be different as well.  I can’t yet speak to results, they are still settling in, but the side effects were definitely different.  Every previous attempt was just terrible.  I felt horrible the whole time, I was super irritable, I had awful bathroom times, and at the end of the fast I felt so sick to my very empty stomach that I had a hard time getting calories back in me.  Then as soon as I stopped feeling so ill, I just binged.  Completely crushed whatever I had at home and often ordered in some real gut bombs.

But none of that happened this time.  I mostly felt pretty great throughout.  I wasn’t frustrated at the struggle of not eating, in fact I wasn’t thinking about it.  It wasn’t until Sunday morning when I was quite strangely both very happy and also kinda weepy that I realized, “Oh, shit, I haven’t eaten anything but fruit and treats in almost 24 hours.”  Fast forward past the aforementioned ramen and I was feelin’ fuckin’ great.

I don’t know what that means for me going forward, but it’s certainly something to reflect on.

Anyway, that’s the Fit Check I owed to this blog, a few days late but I think worth it.  Barring another event, I expect to check back in on my fit this Friday as scheduled.  We’ll see what’s stuck.  Alright, I gotta study.  Peace.

I have been struggling with getting my… well, what is it I’m struggling with?  Something, right?  My schedule, for sure, but I think it’s slightly bigger than that.  It’s like a combination of schedule, plans, balancing needs… like my routine, I suppose?  I think routine.  Yeah, I think my routine is broken.

My routine is in need of some fixing.  

I know I’ve lamented some issues with my routine before, though I don’t recall exactly when or to what degree.  I think at some point I had this notion that I’d just figure it out, fix it, and it’d be super cool so I’d share it.  It is not super cool.  It’s not fucked, I mean I don’t have a day job to get to.  I don’t have any job to get to.  So that means there isn’t like, something every day that I’m rolling in late to or that’s dorking up all of my other plans and wants or anything. But I do have studying, which I have been increasingly treating like a job. And I also have occasional appointments and other obligations, but those are relatively rare.  It’s really the learning needs and the social obligations… obligations?  I guess I am obliged to participate in some of them, but there are many more social situations that I’m not obliged but also not having and would like to have. Wow, that was a real sentence there. You know what? This post is going to be short and barely edited, and that’s just how it’s gunna be.  I’ll post something on the subject that’s more substantial when I think it through some more.

Actually, the tone of this post is a decent illustration of the point.  I’m a little overwhelmed, occasionally flustered, and I’m like, 99% sure it’s because my routine has completely fallen apart.  Supporting this claim is how I’m starting to feel better about things with even the little work I’ve done so far towards fixing it.  I think that’s what I was starting to say in the last paragraph.  Well, that and how I’d like for the fixes to my routine to include more openings for my social wants.

I definitely have the time and I’m pretty sure I have just about everything else that I need to fix this shit. I guess I’m currently in the trial and error phase, and I’ve made some errors.  I am dialing in my needs regarding health, fitness, and sleep pretty well.  I’ve started a good effort on fixing my studying situation, which really needs to take up the lion’s share of my time.  But I need to open up as much time as I can, and I need to reserve a good chunk of that, every week, for some social gettings of together.  Preferably more than one.  I’ve been averaging something like two outings a month, and that just ain’t cuttin’ it.  But it’s tough to make get togethers happen when you’re an adult and even harder when you have weird health needs and that further compounds with anxiety.

I did myself up a little starter schedule, which was some nice spreadsheet practice.  I’ll post whenever I get around to the real one.  I think I’ve figured out that in order for this to work, I need to get back to starting my days earlier.  Not as early as when I was in the military, but way earlier than I have most of this past year or so.  

Alright, I’m not totally together right now, but wanted to jot down this thought while it is fresh in my head. I also wanted to to get something small posted before too much of the week burned by.  Talk about routine problems, it’s already Wednesday. I’ve got some work I want to put into that schedule and routine before today is over, so I’m off to do that.  See you on Fitness Check Friday.

The fitness check this week is… good? I’m not really sure what to put here as a check-in when it isn’t a number, and the goal is “better health”, so, you now, what is the progress indicator other than I feel good? I don’t know, I’ll work on that. But I do have numbers, in a moment.

I definitely feel like I’m continuing to make progress, and that’s the whole deal here.  I know I said I wouldn’t bring up my weight measurements until something happened just one week ago, but hey, something kinda happened.  Nothing huge, but I think I might be under 260.

My weight fluctuates very frustratingly throughout the week.  It fluctuates to the point where I can’t trust the measurement even when I try my best to control for standard factors.  It’s a pain in the ass.  I also think my scale might not be great, but I’m not in the market to replace it anytime soon, so we’ll just have to deal.  Anyway, on Wednesday I had a check in with my cardiologist, and the nurse that brought me in clocked my weight at 258.  I think that scale may have been adjusted to deal with clothes, and I was uncharacteristically dressed quite lightly, so maybe I was a little under.  However, in previous visits to the same office, the scales had me a good bit heavier, and also matched fairly closely with my home scale. Also, while the recent home weigh-ins didn’t match that number, things do add up to indicate the away scale is at least plausible.  Nothing for certain, though.

What I am certain is that what I’m doing is working.  It might not be taking the weight off me at a rate I would like, but as I keep stating here and reminding myself, that’s just an indicator not the real deal. I feel, frankly, pretty damn good.  I mean, there’s the underlying pain and discomfort that are always there, exacerbated by the health problems of the past few years, but man. I’m out there, able to get regular exercise again, and that’s rad. And my fit check continues to improve.  I recently bought some shorts off the internet and had to guess at my size. When they came in a few weeks ago, they were very tight. Unpleasantly so, to the point that I would not wear them out. I figured it would take months of dedicated weight loss to squeeze my fat ass into them. But I was able to slip into them this week and was surprised to find them loose enough to require a belt. I’d call that a win.

But wait, there’s more.  I don’t much like looking at myself in the mirror. Not sure if you can relate, but the guy I see in the mirror is not the guy I want to see.  I wouldn’t mind the aging aspect of it all, in fact I rather enjoy the grey creeping into my hair and beard. But my face and body have been so very big and out of shape that it’s been tough to just see the state of myself. I’m a stranger to myself, and I don’t like it. Given the effort I’ve been putting in over the past year, it’s not just demoralizing, it’s downright soul crushing.  I’ve had to keep watching my stupid shitty body get bigger and less defined every day, even as I cut calories and add exercise. And then I also have to see my stupid face, distorted, distressed, and depressed. Nothing like the man I see in my minds’ eye.  But not this week.  This week, at least a little here and there, I saw my actual face.  The feeling was uncanny. It was exactly the boost I needed.

I’ve been working on getting back up to speed on math for the last few months.  Okay, in truth, I started this more like a few years ago, but if we’re talking serious concentration, it wasn’t until the last few weeks.  You know what?  None of that matters.  What matters is that I’ve been giving it another honest go, and this time things have been working.  Though not perfectly.

Wanting to get a college-level understanding of a few subjects has lead me to believe I need to do the same with some math. This is definitely true if I decide to go for that paper, but it would be pretty useful even if not. I’ve been staring down the barrel of a Stats class I’ve been meaning to master for a while, and that would absolutely be helpful in any direction I take my career. But in looking at that class and thinking about taking others, I have been feeling pretty behind. So I tried some problems that I found online to figure out where I am.  Sort of like giving myself a “placement test”, I suppose. It seemed reasonable to start pretty low, so I did, going through a bunch of simple arithmetic stuff.  That stuff was, thankfully, pretty easy, and I was honestly worried it wouldn’t be. I kept working up the scale of difficulty and continuing to be surprised by my success in each level. It was starting to make me cocky, frankly. I got particularly cocky when I found I could still do quite well in Algebra.  I managed most of the problems pretty well with little to no refreshers on the subject. But as I continued through the work, it started to highlight some holes in my knowledge.  Those holes grow as I continued and it reminded me that there are some lower level things I’ve never really been good at.  I thought about stepping it back again to refocus on those lower level topics, but decided to keep on moving forward. This has, so far, turned out to be the right choice. it turned out that the Algebra classes and practice problems already included a mix of those arithmetic problems I needed to work on. Better yet, the more abstract ways that Algebra presents problems work better for my way of understanding things.  

Fractions are a good example.  I’ve never been great at them, which is tough because they are absolutely foundational. You can do higher math without them.  I remember doing OK with fractions in grade school, but when we moved past them and they showed back up a just part of bigger problems, I struggled. Something about how those classes on fractions were taught and tested didn’t really get me up to speed and basically allowed me to bullshit through the answers. I would later find that other classmates experienced something similar, though for different reasons. They had all memorized things, important and useful things. But I’m not a memorizer.  This is a big drawback for early math learning, and many of my classmates sailed through early math because they could memorize to the point they sounded like old pros. But memorization has never been my strong suite. I do better when I understand something on a more fundamental level, really getting all up in its conceptual guts. What I now know better as “intuition” – a term it seems I’ve long misunderstood. Anyway, I really started to lag when I not only didn’t have the memorization skills to just fudge my way through nor to build intuition off of. It’s really hard to build your math skills when you lack the memorized foundation of basics like times tables, formulas, and identity rules.

I’ve been working on writing this post for weeks and keep getting lost in it.  A big part of that was trying to list out my various Math pitfalls.  I have many, and the more I think about it, the more I think I should take each of those on in their own posts.  I think maybe the next time I talk about Math, I’ll talk more about my problems with fractions.  Today is more of a statement of where I’m at.

I am in Trig, I think.  Let’s back up.

So when I settled in on Algebra, I picked a couple of online learning platforms to try and catch up.  The main ones are saylor.org and mondernstates.com.  I had looked at the lectures and coursework from big colleges, much of which is free (like MIT’s Open Coursework [https://ocw.mit.edu] – Algebra I [https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-701-algebra-i-fall-2010/]), but I was looking for something a little more interactive and structured.  Given that, the logical next step would be to go to a learning system like Brilliant.org.  I’ve used Brilliant before and liked it, so that seems fair.  A few years ago, I got a deep discount from my job for an annual subscription, but I was busy with work and didn’t have much time for it.  Then it lapsed and they didn’t offer the discount the next year.  The little I did do I liked, but it was never an immediate “click” for me. Still, I could see myself going back in the future if I have another pitfall. But what I’m using now is really working for me, so we’ll continue with that until further notice.

I made it through all of the Modern States – College Algebra course and most of the Saylor stuff.  I also picked up some books on the subject:

• Algebra Workbook for Dummies, Mary Jane Sterling [https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/algebra-workbook-for-dummies_mary-jane-sterling/256815/#edition=4274999&idiq=2893122]
• Algebra Essential Practice Workbook…, Chris McMullen [https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/algebra-essentials-practice-workbook-with-answers-linear–quadratic-equations-cross-multiplying-and-systems-of-equations-improve-your-math-fluency-series_chris-mcmullen/9175043/#edition=9125188&idiq=12479764]
• Algebra for College Students, Mark Dugopolski [https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/algebra-for-college-students_mark-dugopolski/348912/#edition=5405451&idiq=693198]

They are all helpful, though the first two have mostly been as additional practice problems.  Anyone who has gone through a few books of the “for Dummies” variety will likely agree they are pretty hit or miss.  This edition is from 2005 and some of the phrasing really shows it, but I’ve found it helpful.  As it is, it’s a great backup to reference in case the structure and wording from my other sources just aren’t doing it.  

That last one, though, is an actual textbook, and it is fantastic.  I know this is something teachers and dedicated academics already know, but textbooks are sort of amazing when it comes to documenting and transferring knowledge.  There was a subject near the end of the Modern States course that I was just confounded by.  I can’t remember what it was exactly, something in the logarithms and factorials zone. I just couldn’t get there, and I was starting to think that this whole experiment was coming to an end. Just too stupid to move forward.  I watched the Modern States lecture, read some of the materials from there and Saylor, and even watched some of my favorite youtube teachers.  I just wasn’t getting it.  But I wasn’t about to give up just yet and figured it was time to fall back onto what has worked best for me thus far – trying and failing.

So I cracked open that textbook and flipped to the section that went over the offending subject.  I decided to go for a practice problem right away.  I tried two.  I bombed both.  That feeling of failure was creeping back in, but I was still determined.  I went to the front of the chapter and read through it.  I still didn’t get it.  But I came across a couple of problems with the work shown and explanations of the work with it.  That completely cracked it for me. Bam! Just like Emril and a fistful of cayenne, it suddenly made sense.

I had a few more stumbling blocks, but between all of those materials and some youtube teachers, I got through the rest of the course.  There is just the final exam, which I haven’t taken yet. I think I’ve still got a little polishing left on a few subjects, and I also found that I better understand each level work if I can start putting it together with the next level up.  For that, I figured it was time to make the jump to Calculus.  I decided to go with the course from Modern States again, which started out pretty well.  And then I failed the shit out of the first two tests.  Between the two, there were something like 8-10 questions.  I got one right.  Yikes.

But this isn’t a give up point either.  Instead, I recognized that many of the questions included information that I am just not familiar enough with.  Stuff I vaguely remember from years ago, but not enough to actually use. Reflecting on my past, I can’t exactly remember what classes I took in high school. I remember doing calculus and doing pretty poorly in it.  What I don’t have any memory of is a full pre-calc or trigonometry class.  In fact, I’m now pretty sure that I skipped those, which if true is fucking batshit. That leap to Calculus is massive, and it is crazy that some people can just make that leap. Absolutely nannercakes.

The thought brings me back around to that missing set, the memorization and intuition that I had to rebuild for Algebra. What this informs me now is just how dependent each new piece of math is dependent on the previous sets.  What I do remember of Calculus, it seems like everything up to this point is basically just learning the language and syntax, and it isn’t until Calc that you really apply it. And I’m definitely missing something between the end of Algebra I and Calc I.

So I decided to fall back again, but this time on a different familiar platform – Udemy.  I have, in truth, some mixed feelings about this platform.  I’m not going to get into them now, but maybe we add that topic to the ever growing list “for another day”.  What I will say is that they regularly have sales and discounts (which sure seem shady) that bring expensive courses down to reasonable prices.  Most of these courses are basically overblown youtube playlists, but some of the presenters really go above and beyond.  A great example of that kind of presenter is Krista King [https://www.udemy.com/course/calculus-2/?couponCode=ST21MT30625G1#instructor-1].  I really like the way she presents things.  Her courses are set up to follow the standard academic categories, which is pretty common.  What’s different is her style, which I’m afraid I don’t have a good description for. It’s like a teacher that doesn’t feel condescending.

Within the courses, she breaks topics down with a video, some reading, and a quiz.  She also provides a great handout with some of the stuff you should get familiar with.  The combination really helps to build up both confidence and intuition, so I’m pretty into that.

Okay, this post is going longer than I’d meant it to and I’ve got some CS50 coursework I need to finish.  But before I go, here are a few of the free youtube teachers that I’ve also really liked:

• Mr H Tutoring – https://www.youtube.com/@mrhtutoring
• Black Pen Red Pen – https://www.youtube.com/@bprpfast
• NancyPi – https://www.youtube.com/@NancyPi

These are each great. Their styles are all a little different from each other, but they all share a sort of “here’s the thing, just give it a go and you’ll get it”, which is an attitude I can really appreciate.

Alright, Imma fuck off for today. Peace.

Today’s check-in up top – 260.

I’m a little cautious with that, skeptical that I’ll be able to maintain, but we’ll clock it. Also, I don’t think I’m going to check that in every week going forward. I do think I’ll keep up the general check in, which will likely stay fitness focused and on Friday, for free. Fun? I just won’t be logging my weight here until something of note happens.

I think it undermines my overall fitness goals and explorations to just focus on that number. I stated that when I first started the fitness check and then, you know, did the opposite. So let’s get that part of my blogging back on track, and only log the weight when something happens. Instead, let’s get to what the check-in is supposed to be about – overall progress and what I’m doing to get there.

Let’s start with what I’m doing to get there. I mentioned in the last post that I finally followed through on my threats of HIIT, in both the sprinting and calisthenics flavors.

Side note – what is up with the spelling of that word? Calisthenics, I mean. How does anyone know how to spell that without a spell check? Truly, every time I go to type it in for the first time in any session, I inevitably get it wrong. I’m not even consistent in my misspelling. Sometimes I remember there’s a “th” in there, other times I don’t. That “i”? Yeah, sometimes that’s an “e” in my head. About half of the time I think it’s like “calisthedics”. That’s not right, we all know that’s not right, but for some reason my head thinks there should be a “d” sound in there, and I do not know why. Words are bad and I don’t like ’em.

Right, two flavors. Three, I guess, counting the spinning session. Unless we can just call a stationary bike HIIT session another sprint, which seems fair to me. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about it because the research on HIIT suggests that it is far more effective at fat burning than most other forms of exercise. Fat burning is pretty high on my list of sub goals under the overall fitness umbrella-ella. It’s one of those compounding things, where the various changes that accompany the core results give an additional boost to other areas. Yes I’ll lose weight, get thinner, and fit better in my clothes, and those are all important to me. I’d love for a woman to look at me with wanting ever again in my life. It’s a feeling I didn’t realize that I’ve wanted until it recently became painfully clear how deeply I’ve been longing for it. But I also have to think about stuff like, my mobility, blood sugar, pressure on my heart. Mortality shit. Arguably more important than lookin’ spiced, but then the soul doesn’t burn for the touch of, like, target heart rate.

Now this isn’t going to be a deep exploration into any of that, though perhaps there are some subjects for other days in there. So back to the subject at hand. The short version is that I think I’m going to try incorporating HIIT sprints and cales… body weight exercises sooner than I had originally planned. I figured I’d pull in the HIIT stuff around the end of summertime, but I’m feelin’ like now would be better. However, I would have to be carefull with balancing the workouts. When it’s just a few jogs and lifting sessions, I can kinda do them whenever. But when each workout effects the next, I gotta Jenga these things better so I don’t just topple over.

I mentioned that the HIIT session canceled my scheduled Leg Day. I had plans to just treat it like a rain out postponement, and pick the leg stuff up the next day. But when I got up yesterday, my legs told me “no thanks”. It is now two days later, and my thighs are still on fire. I think we gotta admit that leg day ain’t gonna happen this week. I guess I count the HIIT session as both, but given that the different workouts focus on different fitness aspects, I don’t want to completely replace my actual leg strength training with something that isn’t focused on that going forward. So my loose plan to put together a schedule eventually has to tighten up. Evidentially, “eventually” is now.

Okay, now for the overall progress part, for which we shall do a “fit check”. This is the space between the numbers on a page and how you might feel about yourself in a more ethereal manner. For me, that is squarely in how my clothes fit. And I have a great check in for that today.

Late last week and early this week, there has been some rain and chilliness. That coincided with my leg day turned HIIT, of course, but that wasn’t the only chilly day. A few of those days brought me out of doors, which precipitated me throwing on a jacket. This is a jacket I’ve been wearing a lot the last few years, and one whose changing feel of fit I’ve become quite familiar with. The last few years have been marked by insane weight gains, near instant losses, rapid regains, and now (hopefully) slower and more healthy losses. That jacket has been along for the ride, and I’ve felt its distinct fit at each level. A couple of years ago, I got too big to even put it on.

After leaving the hospital, having shrunk down considerably, it basically hung off me. Before the spring of 2024, when I’d gotten down to about 220lbs, I was practically swimming in it. It of course got tighter as I rebounded to a bigger me. A few months ago, it was starting to feel real tight again. Tight enough to raise concern, like I worried how much longer I’d be able to zip it up. That was a real motivator, one of many, to step the exercise up a notch. This week, however, I am happy to report that every time I donned my dark blue jacket, it felt comfortably loose. Fancy free. And that’s a very dope feeling.

Anyway, that’s it for today. I’ll try and write about something that isn’t my stupid gut next week. In the mean time, have a great weekend. I will.

Today was supposed to be Leg Day, but instead I got HIIT.

HIIT isn’t a typo, though there is still a grammatical error we’re just going to chalk up to style. It’s a workout, or I suppose style of workout that is geared for improving your fitness, whether a specific area or overall, by pushing your limits.  By style of workout, I mean it’s kind of like a workout philosophy. Like how cardio can be running, biking, or swimming.  Or how strength training could be weights, resistance, or fighting the urge to open another tab from that… site. HIIT, too, can be a variety of workouts, but they all share the same basic idea.

High Intensity Interval Training, aka HIIT, gained popularity years and years ago, and I’m pretty sure it’s become standard exercise cannon these days.  Most people that I know that have at all explored exercise past their high school gym class know it, and I’d bet there are schools that teach it now, too. I think I talked about doing HIIT years ago, back when this blog was very different. In my late 20s and early 30s (I’m in my 40 now), I had great success when I employed HIIT workouts. I might guess they were the most successful parts of all my cross training efforts, and I would suspect I could make progress again if I just focused on the HIIT style. I base this in part on a friend that states he just does HIIT (burpees I think), and he has looked amazing ever since.

I’ll give a brief explanation for what HIIT is, though if you’re really interested, you should probably find a legit fitness source. I seem to remember the Mayo Clinic having a great write-up in the mid 2010s, but I can’t be bothered to google that for a link right now.

The first aspect of all HIIT style workouts is right in the title, that they are high intensity – meaning you do the workouts with a ferocity, a level of exertion greater than your normal workout. So if you go for a jog and want to increase your fitness level, then sometimes your jog should be a run. But it’s not high intensity until you bump it all the way up to a sprint.  Imagine you can mentally gauge your workout intensity and know what your effort level is at each workout. Let’s call a light walk something like a 10-15%, a jog or light run between 20-50%, and at 100% you’re in a dead-ass-leave-nothing-behind sprint.

The “interval” half is just as important, because if you just go from zero to 100%, ignoring the obvious invitation to injury, then you probably aren’t going to sustain the workout for very long. And that’s kind of important, so you break the workout into sections of “on” and “off”, where each section of “on” is where you go hard and “off” is where you don’t. The lack of quantifiable specificity in that last statement is key, as different styles and techniques place the intensity and interval spacing in each section at different levels, often within the same workout.

For a single-exercise routine like HIIT Burpees, you might do something like 45 seconds “on”, where you just do as many Burpees at as hard an intensity as you can muster followed by 15 seconds “off”, where you just rest. That rest might not be entirely literal, but maybe you grab a swig of water, shake the legs out, swing your arms a little… you know, whatever you do to reset as best as you can before the next round. Because the next round is coming, immediately.

If you’re doing my favorite version of HIIT interval sprinting, or “Wind Sprints” as I called them back in my military days, you might do a hard-as-possible sprint for 20 seconds or 100 yards, and then fall into a light jog for 20 seconds. In Wind Sprints, you never stop, you just slow down to a sustainable pace. In either case, after the “off” section, that next round I warned you about comes for you. You’ll repeat cycles of “on” and “off” sections until its over. You know, intervals, just like the label on the tin reads.

This past Saturday I did a version of HIIT sprints to help work on my running goal, though not nearly as intense as the Wind Sprints of my younger years. Instead, I just used the open basketball court at the school across the street to run sprints, then actually stopping to rest in between charges. Not long rests, which would negate the benefits of the “interval” part of the training, though admittedly not as short as would give the best boost. I think for this type of sprint training, the recommended rest period is mercilessly short, like 10 seconds or something. Woof. No, this was more like 30 second rests. And not actual Wind Sprints, which is something I’d love to do again, but to do them right, I’d need a group of at least five people. Five might be too few, come to think of it. But whatever, I’m not doing them anytime soon. Should I explain how to do those? Another time, perhaps.

Today, which is Wednesday, I had plans to do just a normal walk and some weightlifting.  Today is supposed to be leg day.  However, it’s raining outside, which doesn’t  usually stop me from my walk. But yeah, I just wasn’t feelin’ it.  And I’ve been telling myself that I would cross train with my indoor bike and some HIIT stuff, and that would leave me plenty of time to do my legs, right? So cue today’s workout, in which I followed two routines. This time I can easily share them, because they were from some youtube folks:

GCN – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI_nSzypjO4

Emi Wong – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bleOTMDa3_4

I can’t vouch for either of these instructors’ other works or as people in general, and I’m not going to bother finding out if I can.  I’m just interested in these specific workouts, and I’m happy to recommend them for folks like me whom are just getting back into the swing of things.  For my use, I did the two back-to-back, starting with the spinning (which is how cycle-douches refer to stationary bike sessions).

For the cycling session, I don’t think I can honestly say I went at full intensity.  I was a little worried about injuring myself, so I definitely held a bit back. On the last leg, however, I did try to cash in as much as I could, and that left me pretty close to spent.  The second workout was a calisthenics routine, which I was likewise planning to hold back on. It’s my reintroduction, so I should ease into things, right. Yeah, well, ain’t nothin’ in this workout an “ease” when you’re old and busted. I found some of the exercises in this routine so hard that there wasn’t any slack to hold back on.  To the point, I had previously thought that when I got back to HIIT, I’d keep it simple like my friend did, and just do all-burpee sessions. How foolish. The penultimate exercise in this video, what the presenter Emi called a “Walking Burpee”, is supposed to be an easier version of the standard. And I bet she’s correct in that assertion. But they were definitely not easy for me!

I was already beat from the exercises that preceded it, and just in the act of trying to hand-walk into the down position of my very first rep, I was ready to give up.

Doing burpees is one of those exercises that is infamous amongst workout…ers, I guess I’ll call them, whatever, I’ve clearly lost my mind. People find them hard to do. Even people that work out regularly, including those that are considered quite fit, find burpees hard to do. Perhaps because they are hard to do. Everyone I know who’s ever played intense sports or been in the military knows them well, and they all agree that doing burpees sucks.

I’m going to share a link to someone explaining burpees in a second. This is for those of you who have yet to have the pleasure, so you can get an idea of just what they are. It is also for the rest of us that may know them by other names or with slightly different techniques. In case you don’t know, there are a lot of different types of burpess, which may omit a step, add something extra, or mix it up some other way. Sometimes the differences seem regional, like everyone from this area does the jump and everyone from that area doesn’t. I sometimes omit the jump because I live on the second floor, but when that isn’t a problem I tend to include it. It’s how we did it in TACP. Also fitness couches will sometimes modify the technique for specific needs and targets, like there’s a version with an extra “frog hop” that I’ve heard gets used for people on the defensive line in football, so they get an edge on that explosive first burst off the line.

This is the one I’m most familiar with – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZQA08SlJnM. If you’ve never done them before, I encourage you to give them a try. But anything you have planned for the day done first.

Fucking ridiculous. How could I have even entertained the idea of doing a full HIIT Burpee-only routine? What was I going to do, one of them? The instant I got into the down position on the first one I knew I was wrong. Remind you, this isn’t even a fullass real burpee, it’s a modified easier style. In the 45 second window she gave to perform them, I got in like five.  If good form counts, then zero, actually.  I did zero, and it still beat my ass like a drum. I was dripping with sweat and shaking before the 10 second mark.  I had to drag myself into the last exercise, and I definitely did not finish strong.

If you are already fit, I bet neither of the routines I linked would be much of a challenge.  But for where I’m at right now, they were both pretty damned intense, especially back to back. They were exactly the beatdown I’ve been looking for. Highly recommend.

If the rain lets up a little, I’ll probably still try and get a walk in. A nice walk always feel good and sets me right. But Leg Day is fucking canceled.

Today’s weigh-in is about the same and I’m going to log another 262.  

I have walked every day so far this week.  I also finished all three of my planned strength training sessions, and I’ll likely go for a bonus or two.  I am thinking about how to spend those bonus sessions, leaning toward swapping out a normal cardio session for sprints.  I’m also thinking of giving a first go at the burpee HIIT session I mentioned a little while back.  The results my friend had with his were quite dramatic, and my own results from a lesser version in a distant past were pretty good, too.

OH!  I mentioned in the last post that my preferred walking/running path is a little busted right now, and that it seems it will remain that way for a few months.  I also mentioned that I want to gear up to try an actual full mile run by my birthday, which is about the middle of the year.  I also-also mentioned that the busted path kinda dorks up my plans for the run, but that I’m looking for workarounds.  It’s the end of May when I’m writing this, so that mid-June check in is comin’ up mighty quick.  Though I’m expecting to fail this goal, that’s not the point.  I suppose from a certain perspective that pre-invalidates the goal, but that would also miss the point.  Pretty bad point aim, my guy.  

It’s really the effort towards to overall fitness goals that matters, with the honest attempt being a checkpoint.  I guess it’s more like preconditioning for a starting point evaluation.  I want to get a better idea of where I’m actually at, and for my needs, I don’t think starting with an entirely cold reading is meaningful.  Like, I already know I came out of the hospital totally busted, that data point does nothing for me.

What I really want to note is that I did get some running in.  It wasn’t as much as I’d like, but it wasn’t nothing, and I tested the two most ready versions.  The first time, I did the full walk-loop on the detoured path, then went back to the section of path that starts behind my condo. I walked to where the closed off section starts, and interval trained the way back home.  The second time, I did the detoured walk-loop, but instead of adding the partial section, I just finished with interval training on the street portion of the way back.  Both were a little compromised, as expected, but both were still good.  Good enough for my current needs, certainly.  But I do have to keep ramping things up to make progress, so think I’ll take a few days next week to try and push myself harder. I’m thinking a combination of longer overall sessions and sessions with longer run-sections in the intervals.  I’m also keen to restart my sprint training strategy from years past, though that has some logistic troubles. Solvable ones.

All of that is to say that I’m pretty happy with today’s check in, so you know… stay the course.

One of the things I am up to these days is studying.  I’m thinking about going back to school full time.  I’m also considering a more current-era alternative to traditional college, which would be to pick a couple of projects and use those as springboards to get up to speed on the skills most relevant to my desired job.  The thing is, I’m not sure my desired job is a job. At least not one that already exists out there and if it does, that job would likely require that I have a college degree to prove that I can do it.  Seems more like I’m leaning pretty hard in that college direction, and though I feel a little uneasy writing it, I suppose that does seem about right.  Though maybe not exactly the traditional route. And if that sounds like I’m hedging my bets, well… yeah, I am.

Most of the best results I have had in my own personal growth have come out of a combination of traditional education (or similar) and pursuing something like autodidact projects of need.  I was really shooting for a succinct description and I don’t think I got there.

Autodidact is a term that entered my lexicon a few years back.  It came to me the same way I first learned the term “luthier”.  Luthier came to me when I was a few guitars into learning how to make electric guitars.  These little projects of mine came up in a group conversation and a friend of a friend remarked, “Oh, so you’re a luthier…” and I didn’t hear the rest of what he’d said, because I was so lost in that notion.  I think I disagreed a little confusingly and someone else mercifully took the conversation over before I could look any stupider than I undoubtedly already did, which was quite kind of them.  It’s been a while since I’ve built a guitar from scratch and really don’t think of myself as a luthier. However, I might have bulked at the title back then even if I had heard it before, given that it’s hard to think of the guitar work I’ve done as amounting to the level of craftsmanship that “luthier” implies to me, though I’m pretty sure he was correct, at least in a strict, literal sense.

(little side note, the spellcheck on the CMS backend of WordPress is absolutely certain that “Luthier” is not a real word, but then it also just flagged “WordPress” as a spelling mistake. So that’s fun.”)

Autodidact, which basically means self-taught, also came to me when in a conversation where I was talking about a side project and someone much smarter than I was all, “Oh, so you’re an Autodidact”, and I was all, “the fuck you just…”.  The term felt off to me, for a number of reasons, not the least being some nebulous feeling of undue pride. I’m sure this comes from the extremely bad experiences and interactions I and so many others have had with people who claim to be self educated.  This compounds when you begin to understand those making this claim and break them down into groups. Some of the most adamant of “self learners” absolutely did not teach themselves anythings, and instead were just watching youtube and reading bad reddit posts from bad reddit posters.  Another annoying subset of those people actually did go to college and seem to think they learned nothing from that experience, even when the thing they brag about teaching themselves was literally a class they took.  What are you bragging about, that you didn’t pay attention and wasted money? I have a feeling that if I did any research on the subject, I’d find that it’s one of those classic American myth maker backgrounds that a certain type of douche just loves to claim, like being a self-made millionaire while failing to mention how their rich parents paid their way through everything. I’m sorry, “invested in them”.  This is yet another subject I feel like I could go on forever about, and maybe I will, but not today.

Anyway, of the education euphemisms I’ve come across lately, the best fit for my current situation is something along the line of “self-paced education”. This leaves a lot of room for a variety  of learning paths and styles, including any mix of traditional college, vocational classes, in person, online, old books, worksheets, non-traditional yackings, you name it. Anything you can hodge-podged together into learning counts.  And that kinda works for me.

To wrap up the greater point of the educational… I don’t know, let’s call it a scheme. The Educational Scheme I’m driving towards right now is to more or less follow a college curriculum and use free-or-cheap college resources to get up to a college graduate understanding of my chosen fields of study. Bit of a mouthful, and I have more to say on it, but I think that will be another post. What I will say today is that the landscape of resources available to us all now, much of which is free, is incredible. When you get a good look at it all, it’s hard not to feel like there is an educational revolution just begging to happen. Fingers crossed the current administration and otherwise political climate don’t ruin that along with everything else.

So that’s sorted, let’s get a little specific before closing for the day. Just a smidge.

I’ve set down some very basic criteria for my first round of chosen subjects:

1. I will need them for a degree and will still find them useful if I don’t pursue college
2. I am directly interested in them or it would benefit the pursuit of my interests if I studied them
3. I can find a healthy variety of resources to learn them from
4. I can, if I choose to (and I think I will), get college credit for them (or useful equivalent, like a professional certification)

Not everything I’m studying meets all four.  For a related side note, I’m like a chapter or two from finishing a book on the subject of learning. The book piqued my interest because it’s basically talking about what I was planning on doing, and I was hoping it would give me either direction or clarity.  Now that I’m so far into it, I find it absolutely is talking about what I’m trying to do, and it’s been a good read.  It’s also been helpful, giving me some good ideas, a combination of starting points and well worn strategies .  I’m hoping for a bit more, and the book’s forward, table of contents, and first chapter implied it would give me that in the form of overarching actionable advice. I haven’t gotten to that just yet, though it should be coming up next.  I’ll name the book and give my opinion on it when I finish.  But it’s not going to directly lead to a degree, is the point, and that truth isn’t a problem given that it could help me get through the journey a little bit better, more quickly, and less haphazardly. No red squiggly on “haphazardly”, huh? Alright, cool.

Likewise, I’m also picking back up some interests that I just like, regardless of whether they satisfy even one item on the list.  I’ve been digging back into playing music, woodworking, and gadget tinkering hobbies. I don’t know if anything from that trio can lead to whatever my main focus will be, or work, or side hustle, or anything really.  Heck, I’m a terrible musician.  But I love to play music, and that helps me, if indirectly, to just get by in this shit world of ours. And that’s a good enough reason for me.

With those and the more formalized subjects I am pursuing, one thing I want to do on this site is to talk about that experience.  Talk about what I’m learning, talk about how I’m going about learning it, how things are going, and so on.  I keep getting about halfway into writing about how I’m doing in this subject or how learning that this is going, and then realizing that it’s not what I want to go up as the first post on it.  That should be no surprise, I mean this post had a few unnecessary stops along the way. And that’s the point of this point, to give a point to start the conversation. A sort of “starting point”, if you will. Woof. I need an editor.

That’s why one of the subjects is English Composition, sometimes called College Composition or Introduction to Writing.  If I do the college thing, I’ll need credit for that class.  Moreover, I’ll need what I should learn from the class to actually succeed in other classes further down the line. The big positive upshot is that even if I don’t do the college thing, it’s still something that would be useful.  I love to write, and I haven’t been doing it much outside of just the most awful corporate office procedure documents for years, and man, writing those things sticks. The style guild on a corporate doc is basically “stuffy turd potato, double-spaced”, and they only ever get read by other workers that are skipping every other sentence or managers that are desperate to have a thing to correct so they can justify their bullshit jobs. I think it would do wonders for me to just write something fun again.

I’m planning to come in later this week and write some more about my English Comp experience.  The experience has already proven itself worth discussing, and I’m likely to dedicate an entire post to just one of my shortcomings in the class.  Here’s a preview to that – Citation and References: Aaron Stinks At Them.  The rest of the subjects I’ve hit so far are easy peasy, stuff we should all already know, really. Though I could really use some practice on writing essays… not really sure how to go about that. Guess I could harass my friends for help, but that doesn’t exactly sound like a fun time.

The second subject is College Algebra, which also deserves its own post.  I was really happy when I got far enough into it to relieve my fear that I had lost all of my previous math prowess.  Before starting, I was really worried that I would have to go back to remedial math or that I just couldn’t do it at all, effectively shutting this entire experiment down before it even starts.  It was a real boost to my mood and motivation when I found that I could still factor.  Better still when I came to feel I better understand now how logarithms work then I ever did in high school.  This is not a good paragraph, and I’m somehow both getting really ahead of myself and somewhat behind the point. That’s some more proof that I could use those Composition classes right?  Also, I need a lot more work on logs before I can declare I actually get them.  So a post on that is forthcoming.

The other classes I’m taking are Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, and Computer Science.  There are other subjects that I’m tracking, but that is the list that I am most actively pursuing at the moment.  The Econ stuff is mostly out of interest, though that interest is strong, and I have, so far, found it easy.  CS, on the other hand, I’m not that interested in on its face.  It’s more like the results of having had learned it will be useful, you dig? I’ve had some pretty meaningful successes in my professional life with some really low-level coding, and I’ve found a shitload of fun and fulfillment in personal coding projects.  I think my side interest in CS may turn to something else and having had that class will be extremely useful. At present, the most likely suspect is some discipline of engineering. But let’s hold up a minute on the whole getting ahead of myself stuff.

Alright, this is at least a whole page-scroll longer than I’d meant it to be.  I have more to say, big surprise, but it’s late and this isn’t going to help me get to bed on time, so let’s start wrapping things up.  Maybe that essay practice will help with my shitty brevity.  We’ll plan to follow up on all of this as we go.  Fuckin’ “we”, like it’s a group over here or some jazz.  It’s just me, the notable Aaron.  You know, this guy? With the thumbs? Yeah, that’s right.