Month: October 2019

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Weekly Post 9/23/2019

Highlights:

  • Bears Won
  • Short Work Week

Lowlights:

  • Still Worked 6 Days

Goals for next week: To continue have smoothies for breakfast

Bears won so this week instantly became a great week in my book coupled that with a holiday week here wasn’t much to complain about. Even though I did work 6 days this week it was not the usually hectic and frantic workplace that I usually experience in 6 days.

Bears played well against a winless Washington Redskins team. It’s early in the season but every win is major since our loss to the Green Bay Packers and how strong the rest on the NFC North division is playing at the moment. Add that we have an intense second half of the season scheduled as well we cannot afford any more step backs.

Been getting into a nice groove with my Breakfast smoothies. I no longer crave anything else in the morning until I am hungry for lunch. I also have been working in some salads for lunch from the salad bar. So far I’ve been having a smoothie 5 time4s a week and a salad for lunch 3 times in that same week. This has been a major improvement in my weight management strategy. Plus all that extra vegetables have to be doing some good as well. I have been enjoying the progress seen on the scale and have given that extra motivation to stick to my routine to faster reach my goal of getting under 220 lbs.

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Weekly Post 9/16/2019

Highlights:

  • 2 Workouts
  • Meditated
  • New Camera Lens
  • Finished another book

Lowlights:

  • Pretty sore for my workouts
  • Still, haven’t hit the golf course

Goals for next week:

  • Stick with the morning smoothies
  • 3 Workouts
  • 2 Meditation sessions

It was a pretty productive week. especially in the health department. For some reason, I have found it very hard to find time for a 15-minute meditation session. I was able to get one session this week and I’m pretty proud of that. I’ve read that most of the benefits come from being disciplined and staying consistent to earn all that meditation can bring. I need to make a better concise effort to work this into my weekly schedule. The harder part for me was finding a place that is pretty quiet and is isolated from all the foot traffic at work or even go outside and stay a good distance from the roads. It might be a little scary sitting in a park all alone with my eyes closed. It might be a little easy for something to happen to me, so I will try and stay inside, for the time being, I also snuck in 2 work out this week as well, I will be focusing more on my diet rather than burning calories to see if I can achieve my goals faster.

I was able to finally was able to pull the trigger on a real deal lens for my Sony A7II camera. I had been using the kit lens and achieving some good results with it. After taking some online courses and learning the mechanics of the lens and how wildly advanced my camera is compared to my amateur skills. I started to do some of the course homework shoots. shooting in manual mode at night or taking a fast aperture sorts picture. I found that I was pushing the kit lens to its limit and missing out on some nice shoots sue to the lens that came stock with my camera. This was a large investment for me but, it will help take better pictures and this lens with stay in my arsenal of camera gear even if I upgrade my camera body.

Finished up another audio book making it 8 books in total this year. Extreme Ownership was very intriguing to me and was jam-packed with a lot of actionable ideas that I have already begun to bring into my work and personal life. Each chapter was broken down into 3 parts. First was a battlefield story from Iraq. Middle being what the leadership principle is how it helped win the battle and the last being the application to the work environment. I plan on reading the rest of Jacko Wilik’s books due to how fast and to the pint he got. Always a fan of efficiency, Next on the list is the book that was adapted to the movie Field of Dreams.

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Weekly Post 9/8/2019

Highlights:

  • Played tennis
  • Breakfast smoothies

Lowlights:

  • Missed 2 workouts
  • No Golf
  • Chicago Bears Lost

Goals for next week:

  • Make a Smoothie every workday
  • 2 workouts
  • 1 meditation session

There was a lot of expectation for the Chicago Bears season especially with a season opener against the NFC North divisional rivals Green Bay Packers. This whole offseason we heard that Mitch Trubsusky had advanced enough to the level that Preseason game reps were not needed. To be fair this was a trend other teams around the league were also participating in to keep the team as healthy as possible for the entirety of the season. In a knee jerk reaction, a day after the Bears offensive production yielded scary low results. and showed that we desperately needed those in-game reps during our pre-season to tighten up. I will not turn this blog post into a game recap, but maybe I might expand that type of content into an additional post to separate them and keep these short and simple.

I got invited to play Tennis with some old college friends at the park this weekend. I have not played since maybe, gym class junior year of high school? They were able to lend me a racket and a quick recap of the rules and some formalities of the sport. I was little up on my tennis knowledge since the US Open was dominating the sports broadcast world for this past week and a half. It was fun playing some doubles matches on a Saturday afternoon in the park, the weather was perfect for the 2 hours we played and I even was able to score some aces on more than a few serves. It would be cool to get out there and play some more tennis before this Chicago weather kicks in.

I’ve continued to make breakfast smoothies and I feel the difference from eating at Mcdonalds every morning. Not sure if its all the vitamins or the lack of caffeine and milk that I have deleted from my diet but, I feel much better and have also lost a little weight. My body does miss the caffeine, I will have to grind it out to make it past the dependency and come out clean on the other side. Hoping to make my iced mochas a treat again and not an everyday habit. I’m still on a quest to shed some pounds, I’ve never have attempted to lose weight without working out. In the past couple of years, I’ve lost the time and/or excitement to work out, which always has to give me this weird paradox. Working out hard one day and eating while attempting to stay at a caloric deficit but, my body would be ultra hungry for 2 days after I work out and I would end up at a caloric surplus. Missing out on that instant gratification, I would lose all hope to go back to my non-health-centered lifestyle. The major goal here is to lose weight without working out to help curb my appetite. Hopefully, I will gain some motivation to go for a run or lift some weights once my body has adapted to the 2000 calories a day. Overeating at when adapted will only be 800 calories extra meal, which will be in the same range as my workout effort and will my hunger satisfied and not reaching for sweets or that extra meal.

Still Missing out on some golf. My schedule is starting to book up especially with Football back in full swing. My weekends don’t seem to have time to go play 18 holes in a day. Maybe I, should be to playing 9 holes instead? Halfing the holes is still golf and I’ll take any golf over zero golf. It is also time to start thinking about offseason training to make the 2020 season the best golf yet.