Quarterly Performance Review
‘Why aren’t you hitting your targets Clive? We’ve got untapped markets to exploit Michelle, let’s get out there and smash it!’ This is, I imagine how a sales-driven performance review might go. Or it might not. I’ve no idea, and I don’t think I’d be very good at selling stuff. Fortunately, I don’t have to and my personal performance review is with myself and I’m quite comfortable setting myself unreasonable targets, telling myself to fuck off, then making up later over a beer and laughing about it all.
So how has it all being going. First of all, I had some short-term targets, if you like:
- Identify what’s going on with lack of deep sleep
- Verify effect of increasing protein on fat / muscle ratio
- Maintain cake discipline
What’s Going on With Deep Sleep?
Fuck knows. Honestly. I’ve tried various things to improve this:
- Exercising earlier in the day
- Enabling night-mode on all my electronic devices
- Not using electronic devices in bed
- Going to bed earlier
- Reading a book in bed
- Magnesium / zinc supplements
None of which seems to have made a lasting difference. Only thing I haven’t tried is not being in a calorific deficit. Turns out there may be something to that the more I read. Anyway, it doesn’t seem to be getting particularly worse at this stage so will just have to see how things go.
Protein Intake
This is going better. Upping intake to 150g from mid Feb seems to have coincided with a slightly better fat/muscle loss ratio. What’s interesting though is over the last week I (inadvertently initially) upped to 180g and saw a fairly immediate increase in reported muscle mass. While I’m fairly sure I didn’t just put on 1kg of muscle overnight, I wonder if there’s just a bit of extra water stored in the muscle and maybe I’ve tipped over some sort of threshold there. It’s just a week so could be just random variance but going to stick with this level for a bit.
Cake Discipline
Cake discipline has been much improved. Managed to average about a 100 calorie deficit over the last month. Actually it’s probably better than that but I’ll come to that in a bit.
Fitness Three Months In
In terms of all-round fitness, this might be the most consistent 3 months I’ve put in during my lifetime. I log everything (walking, weightlifting, running, whatever) into Strava and if nothing else I’ve put in the hours.
More Than Just Turning Up
Putting in the hours is OK but that only gets you so far. Intensity is required to get results and I’ve been trying to make sure workouts are just uncomfortable enough to keep pushing on, and challenging myself to go a bit further, a bit faster or knock out one more rep. I’m not likely to be the fastest runner or cyclist around but there’s one person who I can compete against — me, the previous week — and I’m usually winning that battle.
Give Me The Numbers Dammit
I look to the HRV & RHR numbers as the best indicator of overall fitness. Back in January I said I wanted to get to, and beyond my numbers (154 HRV / 44 RHR) from last June. Hitting 173 & 42 in March feels pretty sweet. Lets just see how far I can push it now!
In terms of the diet, once I regained my cake discipline things have gone well. Ideally I would have preferred to keep a bit more muscle but there’s more fat dropped off so getting there. If nothing else all my T-shirts fit.
What Next
Well, keep going mainly! The fat loss is going to tail off at some point — it might even be now, since upping the protein to 180g has meant keeping to that deficit has been a bit less likely, but once I know that’s definitely happening I’ll look to try and increase the weights a bit and progress that way. In the meantime, I’m going to reward myself with a well-earned pizza! With a chicken breast on the side, obviously…
