Health Reboot Week 2 Update

Yesterday I wrapped up the end of the second week of this 30 day Health Reboot challenge . The “challenge” is really just a question of if I can actually get good grades on each day of my daily metrics with the slight twist of needing to be at least 20 minutes of cardio every day. Week 2 was pretty solid on everything except diet.

The grading criteria mentioned in the original post are:

So the 30 Day reboot goals looks like the following:

• Goal 1: Eat a Blue Zones inspired plant dominant diet averaging at least 90 grams of protein a day
• Goal 2: Get 7-8 hours of sleep a night
• Goal 3: 20 minutes of focused cardio exercise (indoor cycling, running, swimming)
• Goal 4: Daily calisthenics or yoga
• Goal 5: 15 minutes or more of meditation

With respect to Goal #1 I actually have things pretty nailed down on most days. I’ve been eating very healthy lunches and dinners. I’ve been hitting my nutrient requirements. Night snacking isn’t a bad thing in this plan but because I’m trying to get a decent amount of weightloss by the end of summer I just don’t have room for it in my calorie “budget”. If I exceeded my calorie budget while in the “Blue Zones” eating style then I would still give myself a 4.0 grade. However there were a couple of days where I had more than a couple of drinks. I didn’t get drunk or anything but having more than two drinks in one day hits the grades a bit. The bigger problem was that on those two days where I had a bit more wine than I should have at and around dinner it also trigger a junk food binge on those two days. I never nailed down how to come up with the qualitative balance when things aren’t totally blown out like that but it is moot here. Eating 1400 calories of cookies, chips, candy, Cheetos, etc. has to count substantially against a full day of otherwise healthy eating. I therefore gave myself a 1.0 on those days. That brought my diet average down to a 3.14, or a B, for those days (Pi! mmmm pie…).

When it came to sleep I also took a few lumps. I guess the combination of cleaning up my lifestyle plus working on some interesting things has my brain in a more active mode. A few nights I got to bed a bit late but nothing too egregious. The problem is I didn’t sleep in to my normal wake up time but instead started getting up early. On some days way early, to the point where one day I only got 5.5 hours of sleep. Anything less than 7 is a ding to the grade so the average of 3.29, another B.

When it came to exercise, both the cardio and the calisthenics/yoga, I nailed it. Every day I met or exceeded those numbers. This was the first week I was going to incorporate one hard ride into the workout. I put one of those in at the beginning of the week. Fortunately/unfortunately a ride that I didn’t think was going to be so hard several days later turned out to really kick my ass. So I ended up getting two hard rides in. That was fine though because I actually have been recovering very well even though I rode literally every day. Light rides after the long days really help with that I am sure. I’m very pleased that I am not having any of the posterior chain issues that often crept up when I would start up a running routine. Since this would be cross-training for running I think that is a sign of how neglected my cross-training really was when I do my running. But I kind of already knew that. Lastly, that second kick ass workout kicked my ass because it was a ton of very high speed pedaling. I don’t do much that gets my fast twitch muscle fibers going and it showed there glaringly. Once I hit steady state with this making sure that I get fast and slow tempo workouts in each week will be important. Back to the grading, I nailed each day. Several days I rode more than half an hour not just the twenty minutes. Both Goal 3 and 4 are therefore 4.0.

The meditation I also nailed each day. At the beginning of this it was very hard for me to get back into the zone on meditating. A few minutes in I’d get ants in my pants. I can now get the fifteen minutes in without looking at the clock after what feels like an eternity to find out I only did another couple minutes of meditating. For some time I’ve been heavily considering going to a Vipassana retreat. While I’m keeping my goal at 15 minutes for this round I’m actively working on trying to gradually get my sitting time up to an hour a day or more. As is it was another perfect score with 4.0.

So the progress on the 30 days grades has been very good. At just 0.01 points an A- for the week, the grade I got last week, I’m still very pleased. That is especially true since my biggest problem has always been being consistent with getting my workouts in and I have been nailing that.