ERE Adventuring

Where are you and where are you going?
disk_poet
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by disk_poet »

Sorry for your loss! I am also a cat owner and I can really understand the sentiment of wanting them to have a great life but missing them when something happens. It sounds like she had a good and adventurous life which I'd say is a gift and something worth cherishing. I hope your family does well.

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Thank you disk_poet. We're doing okay, I guess. The oldest cat is still off somehow, as he basically lost his girlfriend. She was also the calm part in the dynamic with the other pets, so it's definitely different right now...

---
Anyway, I still managed to get some stuff done:

Moving:
While cleaning out my old apartment I noticed a few things that might need repairing before the new tenant moves in. I prepared an email for my landlord about those, but I'll have to check one more time which of the shut-off valves for which sink doesn't work exactly. I hope I won't need to be there for the repair work, but I might make a few more walks over there.

I'm still looking to give away my last big piece of furniture, as the last person simply didn't show up to get it. We have now decided to give it only to people who will pick us up from our current apartment, as walking over there and waiting in an empty room with nothing to do gets old real quick.

Fitness/Adventuring:
I noticed how I don't have the energy I had last year. My last hike left me burnt out and unmotivated for 8 days now and the apartment sightings were so bad that I took a day off work afterwards. So my main goal with this would be to up my energy-levels by increasing my work capacity, with maybe a bit of weight loss as a secondary goal. I have thus taken up my yearly pre-season routine that I skipped this year due to a personal crisis. It normally consists of bodybuilder-style meal prep, macro tracking and daily lifting and cardio, but I've pared it down to the essentials.

Right now (well, starting the day before yesterday) I set myself a daily step goal of at least 8.000 steps. Normally I work this up to 14.000/day before it naturally evolves into a sequence of much longer hikes with rest days inbetween. It also gives me an opportunity to reiterate the plan on my evening walks which automatically primes my brain to not eat crap and drink lots of beer afterwards.

The second big part is that I noticed during the last few weeks how I would have nothing ready to eat when I was hungry, which leads to... suboptimal meal choices. It's also stressful to have to think about future meals all the time. I was prepping meals for a good 3 years now, so not having a plan is a novel situation which I don't like. Because of that I will start meal prepping with a bit more structure now, while still building in opportunities for nice meals out and the like.

I've not yet started calorie counting or macro tracking, as I want to build my good habits back up first. Maybe I won't at all this time, as getting super lean is not a priority at the moment and the habits alone will take care of part of the chub anyway. I will however have to start a strength-like program in the near future, as I feel my body is way more robust when I do that, and right now I feel a bit more frail that I'd like.

As I said, I've started 2 days ago and right now I'm feeling awesome with it. The whole routine part provides a nice framework for my day and keeps me accountable in regards to food (and drinking) choices. The walking requirement also has me actually doing all the things that involve walking (shopping, doing stuff in the old apartment), as I'd have to walk anyway. It's also nice to be "on The Plan", as I know it worked the last 3 years, so I have high hopes of coming out of this winter in better form than ever, which should aid my hiking performance in 2021.

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Moving:
I sent my landlord the mail requesting all the necessary repairs two days ago, but no answer yet. He also didn't get back to me on whether one of the candidates for my old apartment will get it, so I'm kinda sitting on hot coals right now.

Fitness:
Today is day 6 of my plan. I hit and mostly exceeded my goal of walking 8.000 ever day, even though my knee is not as happy with walking as I am. No problems yet, but my pain went from 1/10 to 2/10 on my patented pain scale on day one and has since stayed there. I try to counteract that by having meticulus form when going for walks (as taught to me in physiotherapy a few years ago). Since my orthopedist suspects improper loading as the cause for my pain (no morphological problems), this hopefully helps. I might have to put in a rest day or three if it gets worse though.

I also went from 79.1kg to 77.3kg, although 0.7kg of this was just this morning. This might be my low point for the week, before it becomes the new normal in a few days, so I expect things to stall. But it's nice to see some progress nonetheless.

Wedding:
My fiance was out without friends yesterday before driving home with her sister to see her parents. Inbetween she had to come home to get some stuff that she forgot, which is when she hit me in the head with the fact that a friend of a colleague wants to be her maid of honor and will throw her a bachelorette party. This... triggered a massive panic reaction, which had me awake for another 2 hours.

I think my problem with the situation ist that I imagined (and we agreed to) a small, private wedding just for us, but:
  • A celebration for immediate family was added to the agenda immediately, of course, because how could we not?
  • Then my fiance wanted to have a separate celebration with our friends, which is difficult, because I don't have any friends per se. I get enough socializing at work and as a hanger-on when she meets her friends. So basically it would be all her friends, some of which are also kinda my friends, but I don't even necessarily enjoy going out all that much.
  • Then we added my fiance's sister to the wedding planning committee, as my fiance wants a nice wedding, but doesn't have the energy and follow-through to organize all the details with everything else going on. Said sister is highly motivated and I fear for the low-key-ness of my wedding, as flowery decorations and wedding games are added to the list.
  • And now, apparently, that random girl friend-of-a-friend has also inserted herself into the situation. I hate the idea of a bachelorette party for myself, at least. I might missunderstand the purpose here, but it seems like going out with a bang and/or celebrating freedom one last time. I don't feel that anything should change, though, so why have a capstone ritual? Anyway, what's worse is that this random person is now part of the big big group of people somehow entitled to my intimate private wedding.
Anyway, I noticed that I dread most of the above points in addition to all the organizing, the lawyers, etc. You might remember me mentioning that I would just as happily do a heathen ritual and live happiliy ever after, so most of the above are already compromises I agreed to. I do see advantages to making it official, but it's not a must-have for me. It's just getting too much and right now I need to put on the brakes and reevaluate, as my own wedding fills me with anxiety whenever I think about it. I have since made this known to my fiance and we will talk tonight, once she returns from her parents', so hopefully we can agree on a toned down version of the above.

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

oh no, i am sorry about your wedding predicament. but i hope you can see the situation with some humor, because the situation is a little bit funny. and psychologically, some humor could help ease your anxiety over this melding of introvert & extrovert worlds.

me, i managed to avoid the whole wedding mess by simply going to the courthouse, but it was not an easy thing to accomplish, and many boats were rocked at the time, although everything worked out for the best in the end.

anyway, marriage is a long exercise in compromise and negotiation, sort of like an endless marathon, hahaha, so maybe you can ask for your intimate heathen ritual in exchange for putting up with one big social intrusion? get something like, a 1-1 score, instead of a 3-0? that way you both can have a satisfying experience and a sense of ownership in this.

anyway i’m sure you can work something out. and don’t worry—there will be much more of this in decades to come! :lol:

best wishes.

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Alphaville wrote:
Wed Sep 09, 2020 2:57 am
oh no, i am sorry about your wedding predicament. but i hope you can see the situation with some humor, because the situation is a little bit funny. and psychologically, some humor could help ease your anxiety over this melding of introvert & extrovert worlds.
Thank you. It's good to have it put into perspective a bit, as I tend to exaggerate these things while going over them in my head a thousand times :)
Alphaville wrote:
Wed Sep 09, 2020 2:57 am
me, i managed to avoid the whole wedding mess by simply going to the courthouse, but it was not an easy thing to accomplish, and many boats were rocked at the time, although everything worked out for the best in the end.
I think we're way past the point of un-inviting our families, but I'd be very happy to reduce the number of friends with which we celebrate afterwards. I just had a talk with my mom and she had a great idea: If my fiance wants a bachelorette party, she can just invite all the friends she wants to there, and we do a small gathering with only mutual friends after the wedding.

On a completely different note, do you have a journal on here? I was looking for it a few days ago, but I couldn't find one :/

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

ah, i don’t have a journal. my brain doesn’t operate that way, i think. instead of journaling, i start up topics asking for help with solutions to problems. i guess they’re a “journal” or a log of my life’s puzzles :mrgreen:

-

alternatively, i tend to post in threads that feature problems that i think i can attempt to help solve...

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Alphaville wrote:
Wed Sep 09, 2020 4:26 am
ah, i don’t have a journal. my brain doesn’t operate that way, i think. instead of journaling, i start up topics asking for help with solutions to problems. i guess they’re a “journal” or a log of my life’s puzzles :mrgreen:
Aaah, that's a bummer, but you're quite prolific anyway, so that's okay ;)

---

I had the talk with my fiance yesterday, and we agreed to limit the after-wedding celebration to only our closest mutual friends, which is great. It also seems that the whole friend-of-a-friend thing was mostly a VERY badly communicated half-joke. Apparently they got buzzed and started fantasizing about throwing a party with no plans to actually do it. It might still happen though, partly because it allows my fiance to invite her colleagues without me needing to be there, so I'm all for it :)

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

ha ha, congrats!

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Moving:
The landlord has given over the handling of all repairs to his agents, who did not get in contact with me yet. While it will be easier to coordinate with the agent, I have a feeling that this will delay the whole thing. Since I didn't hear back about the candidates for the apartment either, I am starting to doubt that I'll get out on 01.10.

Fitness:
The first week of my plan is over and I reached my 8k step goal every day. Min/max steps were 8.000 and 22.000 respectively, with an average of 12.839. This might have been a bit too much, as my bad knee keeps telling me. I will try to do less steps overall and spreading them out more evenly, as I've made the tactical error of getting the steps in early a few times now, which just leads to surplus steps (and thus stress) racking up later in the day.

I also went from 79.1kg to 77.9kg, which is nice. I have also started tracking calories along other metrics in an excel sheet which calculates my TDEE, so I can get an idea what my maintenance calories would be, once I set up a diet break. The current plan is to keep going for another 2 weeks and then do a 3-4 day break to refeed and get my hormones back to baseline.

Strength training has been postponed until after that break, as I want my knee to build up some resilience before I start squatting/deadlifting. Adding too much too soon is a common problem I run into, so I'll keep it low impact for now.

This seems to be a fitness journal now, but I guess the weekly meal prep also saves me some money, which ties back into ERE nicely. This whole thing also adds a lot of structure to my day, so no more evenings with nothing to do :)

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Moving:
On saturday I got the good news that my apartment will be rented out to a new tenant on 01.10. We then moved that up to 16.09. which is this wednesday. I've since worked quite a lot to remove the tapestry (grueling!) and re-paint the walls underneath. Yesterday was so bad that I don't want to really talk about it, as I had to cut a few corners, which gladly only resulted in a single parking ticket. I'm not proud, but all my stuff is in the new apartment now.

Right now I'm sitting on the floor, waiting for (hopefully) the last layer of paint to dry. I'll have until 6:30 PM tomorrow to clean everything up and then it's gone.

Work:
My boss hit me with an e-mail on friday about how I am to give a presentation this thursday. I was taken aback, as we never talked about it beforehand, but I managed to hit the ground running on monday. I coordinated with a coworker from another department who is handling the presentations and it looks like I'll maybe have to hop in for 5 minutes in the middle of the bigger presentation. Right now it looks like my NDA with the project partner we wanted to feature won't be suspended in time, though, so maybe it was all for nothing :/

Fitness:
I became a bit of a bad-knee-whisperer over the years, so I suspected some muscular.. uh.. knotting as the root cause of my ongoing knee pain. So I decided to unearth my foam roller and subjected myself to 15 minutes of torture, rolling out my calves and quads. It seems to have helped, as not only did I follow the foam rolling session up with some light strength training, but I also went up and down ~60 floors in total when moving yesterday. All without pain! I hope this means I can ramp up my steps and get to a level where I can hike normally again.

In addition, my feelings of hunger have been getting weaker and weaker. I find myself skipping meals now, as I just don't feel like I need to eat. Since I'm planning diet breaks in advance, I feel like I can go a bit harder inbetween, so that's not too bad. I've also noticed that my mouth often tastes like it did when I did a keto diet (no bad breath though, the fiance confirmed). Since I'm eating ~100g of carbs every day I find that unlikely, but maybe it just means my body is supplementing body fat for additional energy?

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

yeah, if you’re doing intense work, 100g carbs (net?) would be a measly 600kcal, not enough to lift all that furniture or whatever, so yeah, the body burns fat even if not “eating keto”, especially under such a stimulus.

e.g. in my experience farm workers rarely eat big meals while working. a bit like the “warrior diet.”

eta: same thing with any kind of marathon run, triathlon, etc: glycogen stores get depleted and fatty acid oxidation kicks in.

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Ah, I was under the impression that one needed to be fully keto-adapted to get that effect, but a cursory internet research seems to confirm that burning a good amount of body fat produces enough ketones for the weird feeling in my mouth. Which is a nice confirmation that body fat is actually burned, but also feels a bit disgusting, so I'm having mixed feelings about it. As long as it's just the taste without the smell, though, I'll keep at it for now :/

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

yeah, fat is your energy savings account, and your body makes withdrawals and deposits as needed.

a lot of keto information out there is a bunch of marketing bullshit to sell supplements, subscriptions, get your private data, etc.

a ketogenic diet is just a form of fasting. sometimes fasting is voluntary (religious, medical, etc) sometimes involuntary (famine, bad luck hunting, etc), and without this capability we’d be extinct as a species.

keto adaptation, if it exists, is just a form of optimizing the body for fasting i guess? might just be psychological, i’m not sure.

btw i eat keto seasonally, so im not a naysayer, i but it’s hard to know what’s what with so much crap marketing out there... :(

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Moving:
Done. We did all the paperwork and I gave back my keys yesterday. The new tenant (uni student) brought her dad to co-sign the contract, so she could move in that day, but her dad got weird and refused to pay the deposit to the agent until the landlord would sign the contract (only after IDing himself as the actual landlord, of course). They made a new appointment for today, but that's not my problem anymore, as I'm officially out. But that was the overall mood for the ~45 minutes we all spent there yesterday. Which has me worried about my deposit, in case daddy decides that the walls weren't painted well enough or some such...

Work:
Complete misscommunication on all fronts. I spent the last 4 days repeatedly "simplifying" and cutting short my inital presentation. The project partner will not even be mentioned in the final version, which is now 2 powerpoint slides inbetween other people's chunks of the greater presentation. I had to call the partner and apologize for removing them after they were kind enough to suspend the NDA. Also, it turns out that this will not be a meeting to find industry partners, but rather an advertisement of our work to local officials who will not even understand what I've dumbed down twice already. A photo-op, really.

What's worse, this matter has seeped into my private life to a point where I worked on my slides at 1 AM because I couldn't sleep duo to anxiety. Part of this might have been compounded by the stress from moving, too, but I will try to set clearer boundaries next time (or just not read my mail after work, lol).

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Work:
Phaw! I went to the meeting, but didn't even get to present my 2 slides as there "wasn't enough time" (TWO slides, 5 minutes max, remember?). We went over the alloted time nonetheless, and still managed to add on another hour of "networking", which I spent eating and staring at my broken phone pretending it still works. So my whole week has lead to nothing, absolutely nothing >:(

Since my boss didn't participate (it was another department's responsibility), he didn't have a say in the decision to throw me under the bus and might just be rightfully pissed. This gives me hope to avoid such meetings in the future.

Fitness:
Week 2 of my plan is done. Due to moving and work stress I focused on the food part, as the steps were coming in anyway from hustling about. My 7-day-bodyweight-average* went from 78,1 to 77,1 kg which is solid.

I managed a min/max of 8.000/16.000 steps, with 10.000 steps per day on average. The 16k steps were due to moving out, which included carrying a 20l tub of paint over 2km by hand, which seems to be the reason why my knee is acting up again. It feels acute though (vs. chronic), and got continuously better of the last few days. Due to this, and the demands on my time, strength training has been completely neglected :/

Life:
Getting rid of my old apartment (and that darn work assignment) made me feel way too reactive, as I had to bow to the demands of the situation instead of marching to my own drum. I have thus decided to work through Alex Vermeer's "8.760 hours", which is basically an outline for a yearly life planning session. I like to go through it after big life events to see where I stand and what I might have forgotten about myself again. I've only finished Phase I, which is a review of my past year, but I noticed that my actions are unusually well aligned with what I think I should do. For what it's worth I blame ERE, as I already made an effort to consolidate all my interests into a coherent life plan around the time that I started this journal.

Phase II will be the actual planning of my next year, although I'll limit it to the next 3 months, as I do badly when planning any longer and the Covid-crisis is adding a lot of uncertainty about the future too. I'll probably be back with an even longer post tomorrow, once I've drawn up a few new plans and projects.

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Life:
I finished the "8.760 hours" thing, but this time I didn't have any great epiphanies. I might need to find a quicker solution that focuses more on planning, as I feel that I don't exactly need the vision-part as much, now that my web of goals keeps me centered quite well. The project planning and prioritizing part was still good though. It produced a long list of things I need to do but can't, as the fitness plan and work saps most of my energy on weekdays :(
Going foward, I'll plan to do bigger projects on the weekend and not stress about them during the week.

Work:
My job keeps changing. The presentation I didn't get to do seems to have left an impression with the head of the other department, so I'll probably be involved in another project. Overall I feel like my job is changing from basement programmer towards what some might call an actual career. I am now doing project management, networking, organizing meetings, etc. instead of just producing software. I'll also get to do a certification specifically to signal competence to future project partners.

All of this makes me value my current job less and less, as it's slowly changing into what any other job would be like. With all the networking events and meetings thrown in, I might just switch positions if something lucrative comes up.

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Fitness:
I finished the 3rd week of my fitness plan and my 7-day-bodyweight-average moved down another 0.7kg. Food intake and activity levels were similar to prior weeks, with a min/max of 8.000/15.000 daily steps with an average of ~9700 steps per day and some light strength training thrown in. Still, not only did weight loss slow down, but I also felt very drained throughout the week, with very little energy left after coming home from work. Energy levels increased after my 5PM meals, so I might have counteracted this by eating more of my food earlier in the day.

One thing I re-discovered during my quarterly planning process, however, is the need for ruthless prioritizatin. Since all my energy seems to have been used between work, dieting and increasing my activity levels, I have decided to cut dieting out for now. Not only do I not have the energy to sort through all the stuff we brought from my old apartment into the basement, but the lack of energy left me positively miserable for a few days there.

This is why I will extend my diet break (originally planned to be 3-4 days) indefinitely to have a bit more capacity for stuff that is arguably much more important. I will however keep working on increasing my steps and keeping up a strength training routine, as being fit is more important than looking fit, to me. This should provide my body with some stimulus to reshape itself even if I'm not losing scale weight, so all is good. I might resume dieting in a more structured manner (or not) later this year, once the moving-out-aftermath is done.

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

great job i think recognizing priorities where they belong. every time i see the word “prioritizing” i am reminded of this article by merlin mann about how that’s the wrong concept because true priorities are recognized, not manufactured:

http://www.43folders.com/2009/04/28/priorities

i always go back to the idea when i’m trying to figure out why i procrastinate stuff hahaha. in any case, terminology aside, you seem to be applying the right concept to the situation.

it’s really near impossible to diet when under stress. the first response of the body is to alleviate the pain, and a nice piece of buttered toast with jam will do just that :lol:

you’re obviously correct valuing fitness over “leanness,” because focusing on weight loss without exercise can shut down your metabolism.

so with that in mind, i was connecting this and that (i just read some nassim taleb last night, that book of aphorisms he's got) and i though of a possible solution/compromise for your focus trilemma.

what if instead of dieting every day, you just fast or semi-fast on resting days? i’m experimenting with that this morning: last night i ate too many carbs (my wife made cheese crackers, haha), this morning i’m skipping breakfast and sticking to unsweetened caffeinated drinks in exchange (and had a light workout upon rising).

since i’ve been messing with keto-adaptation in recent months i can switch to the fasting state fairly easy i think, as one normally does in “a state of nature.” lunch will have to be something light because we have an online dinner appointment (lol, these days) and there will be a bit of feasting (hopefully not too much). if successful, i will have jammed a daytime fast in the middle of a chaotic week.

anyway, tldr: maybe a “weekly fasting” scheme can fill the diet gap until you can resume daily habits? not saying it’s proven or it will work, just a though for experimentation.

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Alphaville wrote:
Fri Sep 25, 2020 9:52 am
great job i think recognizing priorities where they belong. every time i see the word “prioritizing” i am reminded of this article by melin mann about how that’s the wrong concept because true priorities are recognized, not manufactured:

http://www.43folders.com/2009/04/28/priorities
This has left me very confused... I don't seem to have a priority (as per the article's definition) most of the time. I mean I have one most important thing and my web of goals is constructed to get it done, but it's kinda fuzzy and not just one thing. What's more: "Drop everything for this thing NOW" is not a thought that comes up often in my daily life, as most things influence my end goal in different ways, so I kinda have to order them by impact.

I think my overall philosophy, which was also reflected in my life planning session is to do the important things and not just what feels good. Looking fit feels good and might make me slightly happier, which is good for my relationship that might just be "the priority". But other things have a much more immediate impact and require less effort, so have a better cost/benefit ratio. So maybe the priority is happy marriage then, and all the other things are just ordered by their impact on the priority... Sorry I'm rambling, but I rewrote this 3 times (and got a lot of insight from it) and it still doesn't make much sense :p

Alphaville wrote:
Fri Sep 25, 2020 9:52 am
what if instead of dieting every day, you just fast or semi-fast on resting days? i’m experimenting with that this morning: last night i ate too many carbs (my wife made cheese crackers, haha), this morning i’m skipping breakfast and sticking to unsweetened caffeinated drinks in exchange (and had a light workout upon rising).

since i’ve been messing with keto-adaptation in recent months i can switch to the fasting state fairly easy i think, as one normally does in “a state of nature.” lunch will have to be something light because we have an online dinner appointment (lol, these days) and there will be a bit of feasting (hopefully not too much). if successful, i will have jammed a daytime fast.

anyway, tldr: maybe a “weekly fasting” scheme can fill the diet gap until you can resume daily habits? not saying it’s proven or it will work, just a though for experimentation.
I'm already skipping all of my breakfasts in favor of a 11PM meal. I might try to eat a bigger meal then and maybe wait it out until 5PM (I normally eat 4 meals: 11AM, 2PM, 5PM, 8PM). Right now I'm just scared because my motivation for work really suffered in the afternoon. A bigger "breakfast" might help that, though.

My problem this time around has really not even been the hunger. I embraced that right at the beginning by really focusing (and confirming) that I won't die if I skip a meal. This "maybe, maybe not" eating also led to my body really reducing the hunger signals, so it's ridiculously easy not to eat. What really worries me is that I'll just shut down without a notable increase in hunger, which also has me thinking if maybe I messed up my body's hunger-feedback-system if it just lets me run into a wall without much warning.

But to be honest, I'll probably kinda diet anyway, as even the "diet break" is just eating at around maintenance level. I'm already having problems today, as I kind of napped through my second meal, so there'll definitely be days where I eat under maintenance. Thanks for your suggestions, though. I'll mull it over a few more times and see how I continue on tuesday when I'm all recharged again.

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

NuncFluens wrote:
Fri Sep 25, 2020 10:52 am
This has left me very confused... I don't seem to have a priority (as per the article's definition) most of the time. I mean I have one most important thing and my web of goals is constructed to get it done, but it's kinda fuzzy and not just one thing. What's more: "Drop everything for this thing NOW" is not a thought that comes up often in my daily life, as most things influence my end goal in different ways, so I kinda have to order them by impact.

I think my overall philosophy, which was also reflected in my life planning session is to do the important things and not just what feels good. Looking fit feels good and might make me slightly happier, which is good for my relationship that might just be "the priority". But other things have a much more immediate impact and require less effort, so have a better cost/benefit ratio. So maybe the priority is happy marriage then, and all the other things are just ordered by their impact on the priority... Sorry I'm rambling, but I rewrote this 3 times (and got a lot of insight from it) and it still doesn't make much sense :p
haha, it makes sense to me though, seems like you’re using something similar to the “7 habits” approach of the 4 quadrants (important/urgent), which is a great sorting method

mann’s article is not really 100% serious, a good part if it is a rant about the annoying passenger fretting about “priorities!”, and then finishes with an exaggeration to make a point. but underneath all that it makes a valid clarification between “what is really important” and “what is arbitrarily force-ranked.”

since you already recognize what’s important, his criticism doesn’t apply to you. i just like that article hahaha. maybe because i have overly long to-do lists that sometimes create mental clutter and need to remember that maybe i don’t need to do some of the pointless stuff just because “it’s on a list.”

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