Gee

day 25 of 42

Finally a decent weight drop! 97.2kg this morning was a nice thing to wake up to. I was beginning to question everything. This inspired me to keep going and be good today.

Boxing at lunchtime was intense! A hard workout with only me and one other guy with the coach. We drilled some good intermediate combinations mostly on pads for the class. I messed up the pad holding a few times and EVERY SINGLE TIME I messed up, I recalled my brain zoning out and thinking about other stuff. Boxing needs focus, especially when holding the pads for someone else.

I had a morning and evening before dinner walk tonight with my dog. The dogs been a bit of a hassle (shes 2), but I had a bit of a moment with her tonight. I didn't really have anything I wanted to listen to, so walked with no headphones. I think she picked up on that as she kept looking back at me as if to ask for permission for stuff. Shes usually a very reactive dog when she sees other dogs. I've been working on making her sit and waiting until I let her meet the other animal instead of just running off when she feels like it. Tonight she saw another golden retriever (she likes her own kind), she sat, looked at the dog, looked at me. I asked her "do you want to go and meet that dog?", she bark, bark, barked to show her enthusiasm. We had a nice visit with the dog and then moved on. Baby steps I guess.

I need to fix the health sync on this site - I'll add that to my laundry list of tech fixes to make. It synced 6000 ish steps from Google fit, in reality I walked closer to 11 today. My Renpho scale data was synced and retrieved ok (Scale > Samsung health > 3rd party Health Sync App > Google Fit > my AI research assistant downloading via API) - yea, its a brittle flow, but the easiest way I could get it (mostly) working.

Right. Its almost midnight and I need to get off the screen and go to bed.

For some reason my (not so) smart bulb turned on during the night and woke me up 3 times. It put me in such a terrible mood this morning. I had my coffee and then immediately went for a walk before I had a chance to snap at the people I love. A walk always straightens me out. This mornings walk was excellent! I had a seed of an idea planted while listening to a pod cast and now I have a short time to build sass project. I'm not sure anyone is reading this blog, but I am seeing some random visits from the USA in my Vercel analytics console. Shout out to that random person (if its actually a person). I've started a 2nd blog for my technical project here: https://blog.proveitsme.io/churbuilds.

Diet and exercise today was good. I had a nice quick session boxing before my weights. I was reflecting on how much better my jab and left hook have gotten in the last few months. I'm focusing on my overhand right and uppercuts currently. It's all in the hips. I know this now. You can certainly punch with the arms and shoulders only (as I taught myself to do), but the power really comes from your hips. I wish I'd learnt to box as a kid as I'd not be having to correct the bad technique I've picked up over the years. But better late than never I guess. If I could go back in time and give my younger self some advice it'd be - find and train with a coach. My younger self would probably ignore that advice of course. The weights after boxing was decent; 40 minutes or so of push exercises. Low rest, high reps - this is my preferred way to train.

I took another hour walk while my son practiced footy which was good time to ponder my app idea. I'm excited about building this. I have a rule to sleep on any ideas I have. If its still good in the morning, then I'll take action. Tonight I did a bit of pre-work; bought a domain and matching social media accounts. If I don't end up building this specific thing, I'll at least have some socials ready to go for the marketing of the next big idea.

I'm tired, I'm going to turn the smart bulb off at the wall and sleep for 8 hours. Peace!

I got close to the perfect day I planned yesterday!

I fasted until lunchtime after a morning and mid-morning walk.

Lunch was a quite significant omelette with a load of left over roast veges mixed in. It seemed massive, but less calories than the usual steak, slaw and rice I have for lunch most days. I've dropped most dairy from my diet - I used to have a LOT of cheese added to my omelette, but its really quite unnecessary. The cheese doesn't add too much flavour, only calories.

I got to the 6pm boxing class early and hit the floor to ceiling ball for an extra warm up. I had a nice sweat going by the time class started. It was an intense session and I was drenched when I was done. I anticipated the session ad fueled up on salt and electrolytes before I went. I'm feeling OK now at 11pm and no signs of cramp yet. Maybe prevention is the cure here...

Dinner was an insanely healthy beef salad. Greens, lean roast beef, beetroot, corn and a few other misc veges. I added the remainder of my chilli oil to the salad - thats all gone now, so its back to dried chilli flakes for heat if I need it. I had a few extra dried prunes and walnuts as my sweet treat for afters. I could have probably avoided this and just gone for my walk, but I knew I was pretty low on calories for the day and I do like something sweet after a meal!

I had a late night on Saturday working on my app. This app actually. The thing I'm using to log these sprint notes.

I'm still feeling like I've lost my way a little. I'm feeling like the whole process is a bit samey samey now. Back in sprint 2 I was chatting with Gemini on the daily about my training and diet. I learnt so many things about diet and exercise science. The AI chats were super helpful for keeping me accountable and on track. That's kind of the genesis of my app idea. The logging and tracking helps a lot and so does talking to someone about progress and challenges.

Sunday always seems like a bit of a rest day (which I usually need after a long boxing session on Saturday). I still walked near 15k steps and completed a hard weights session. I went back to Strength Sunday after a week off. I enjoy the low reps / high weights once a week, but injury is always in the back of my mind when I train like this. Luckily, I didn't pull any muscles while training, but I wasn't trying to set any records either. I think at 52 I need to accept that I'm not going to be at my strongest and I'm probably not likely to be the strongest person on the gym. I'm happy with top 10, maybe top 5.

My diet isn't as tight as it has been, but I'm not binging on bad food either. A few extra grapes here and there, too much oil added to my meals, over-sized portions of good food aren't the worst things in the world. Every morning I'm in a good position to have that perfect day I need. This week, I'll have a bunch of those perfect days and I'll see 97.x on the scales on Sunday - let it be so!

day 21 of 42

Its the half way point!
I've been talking about turning things around for a few days now, and I know now I need to.
I've eaten almost a full jar of chilli oil in the last week. For the best part of this week I've felt bloated and fat. My gut just feels wrong and it feels like I'm carrying a few extra kg in there.

Aside form the chilli oil and the chinese shallots (which are also delicious, and I've also eaten a jar of them), my diet hasn't changed too much. My exercise has stayed pretty much the same. I'm still performing like an athelete, just eating like a chump.

Tomorrow I won't be surprised or upset about no weight loss, or even a little gain. I'm 100% turning things around tomorrow. No more oil, counting calories for a week.

I need to get back on track. please give me some wisdom and encouragement.

Day 20 of 42

I'm almost at the half way point. Weight loss has really slowed down. If I search hard enough, I know the problem is with me. I've been eating a lot. Its all clean food, but I've been eating a lot of it.

Today I had a big meat pattie and salad lunch with left over Kumera (sweet potato) fries. I mean - this thing was big! I ate from a large mixing bowl! I had 4 patties and most of a bag of salad and a good serving of fries - these were cooked in the oven with minimal oil, so not so bad. What probably was a bit (or a lot) bad was the chilli oil and chinese shallots I've been adding to my meals. I love the chilli oil, but I know I need to put it down. The half way point is going to mean a tune up to the diet. next week will be better.

I'm still slowly losing weight, not gaining, but I know I could be doing better.

My app is coming along pretty quickly now. I need to revamp the food logging. This is a bit clumsy currently. I need to add any food manually and can save them as meals for adding. This is OK if I don't deviate from what I've already added, but doesn't allow me to easily add new things e.g. I ate a couple of boiled eggs today but I can't be bothered to look up what the nutrition info is, add an item, then scroll through a list and add them to my log for today. Too much friction. If I'm finding friction in my own app, then anyone else will hate it. I think this bit can really benefit from AI e.g. lookup of food items, maybe even scanning a photo to estimate the calories. I'll plan this out over the next day or two.

I went to boxing at lunch time today. It was a good session, but the 45 minutes seems too short now. I train hard while I'm there, but I feel a bit short changed after 45 minutes. Tomorrow is sparring at 9 and then class at 10, so I'll get a good long session in. I guess I need to be careful what I wish for because I'll be cooked for the rest of Saturday after 2 hours of training in the morning.

I woke up at 4am with insane cramping in my right calve today. I can still feel it now. I trained pretty hard yesterday and it was hot so I sweated a lot. I should have done better with the re hydration and salt. I need to take my AI coaches advice and up my salt consumption before and during workouts vs as a reactive thing after training. Tomorrow I'll throw a couple of hydrolytes in my water bottle for training.

Day 19 of 42

I had a good sleep last night. Didn't wake up until close to 6am. It's odd, I've been sleeping soundly since I got my tattoo. No idea why.

A lot of weight loss comes out as urine. I remember peeing a lot during the first few weeks. That seems to have calmed down a bit now.

Today was a good day. I got my morning walk completed just before the rain. Managed an easy 30 on the roman rings.

Work was actually fun today. I played with claude code a lot of the day. I worked on this app later in the day. Claude is just outstanding!

Gym before lunch was good; a quick 20 minutes boxing before weights. Boxing felt good today and seemed like my hooks and rips were connecting pretty well. But it always seems good when nobody is coaching me. I'll get a reality check at training tomorrow!

I'm still feeling guilty about my diet. It's not even that bad, but I know i need to tighten things up. I'll work on my food logging component over the weekend.

I WILL reach 95kg this sprint!

Day 18 of 42

Wednesday. Mid week grind day. It seems day 16 through 21 are the mid sprint grind days. I was excited at the start and I remember being excited at the end of the last 2 sprints, but not anymore. I'm not excited, I feel like I'm getting nowhere and I'd super scared I'm just one binge away from a downward spiral.

But for today, I progressed through the grind. I took it one day at a time and did the best I could for today. Well maybe not 100% the best I could, but certainly good. 12k steps, a 6pm boxing class and a pretty clean diet. I had my steak, slaw and rice lunch (with the added miso and chilli flavours).

My weight had dropped back into the 98.x range today. 98.8kg, but 98.x none the less. Its been slow going, but i just need to stay on target. I do feel like I need to change things up a bit. I'd like to get back into some running, but I think it'll probably hurt my knee. I guess I could try some treadmill runs first, but honestly, the thought of any length of time on a stationary piece of exercise equipment fills me with feelings of sadness and dread.

Boxing for 45 minutes seems easy now. Coach is starting a few extra later classes on Monday and Tuesday so I'll be able to train for a couple of hours on those nights. I think 45 minutes isn't enough for me now. A couple of 2 hour sessions should help with my exercise satisfaction levels. I've also got the option to do a kick boxing class before boxing, but its not really appealing to me - I like boxing, kicking aint for me right now.

I did some app work tonight. Claude Code has sped up my progress by orders of magnitude. I tried Cursor early on and hated the lack of control I had. I'm effectively doing the same thing with Claude now, but I've implemented a few processes that keep things a lot less chaotic.

Today was a grind, but ultimately a good day.

day 17 or 42

Back at work today. It sucks even worse than normal when you've just had a 5 day long weekend. I don't hate working, quite the opposite, but not sure I like my job anymore. Or maybe I never really did.

I still felt guilty about my acai bowl last night and lack of steps this morning so I did my longer walk with the dog. I want over the monkey bars again - this is getting easier each time and I can now go forwards and backwards over the 10 - 12 bars comfortably. It hurts my hands, but aside from that, I'm not having too much issue suspending my own weight. I did a set of 10 chin ups shortly after - these are also getting easier, but my endurance always seems to go at rep 9 despite how easy the first few are. My knees were still a bit sore today. The left one had some weird clicking going on which usually happens when there is some swelling going on. I'm glad I rested last night.

I worked all day with just a short break for leftover lamb, salad rice and potatoes for lunch. It was a biggish lunch, but all good food so my energy and focus for the afternoon was great.

I made the 6pm boxing class. It wasn't a super intense class. A lot of focus on slipping and pivots, but I still got a good sweat going. I felt like I was moving pretty well. Slips haven't ever felt really natural for me, but tonight I felt like I made a bit of progress.

Dinner was chicken salad. I had a little bit of gnocci with pesto on the side. And now feel guilty about that. I don't even think it was that bad and it was only a small amount. I'm sick of feeling guilty about not adhering to a 100% perfect diet.

I'm sick of cramping up too. I couldn't rest yesterday as every time I'd start of nod off one of my calves would seize up.

I walked the dog after dinner bringing my step count up to just under 11k for the day. I'm tired and I'm grumpy and I need to sleep.

Day 16 of 42

It's Easter Monday. I'm feeling a bit low today. I feel like things are sliding away and I'm on the verge of falling off the wagon. Or maybe I just don't want to go back to work tomorrow.

I feel fat and gross. I don't really know why. I didn't lose any weight this week, but lost size off my waist. I'm exercising every day with intensity, walking 10 - 15k steps most days, I haven't had any sugar since January. My diet has been 90% good most of the time - if I "cheat" its extra meat, or avocado. I fast every day for 16 hours. I guess it just feels like a grind again. It felt like a grind last sprint at about this point too. 16 days is too far away from the end to be exciting and too close to the start to be exciting too - I'm in no mans land really. I do feel like I need to make some changes and sharpen things up. Maybe add some different training into my routine. I'll think on it.

Again, steak, slaw and rice for lunch. Its nice with the extra chilli flavour. But honestly, I'm sick of writing the same stuff day after day. I'm boring myself here. It's not really boring, its just how I eat. Routine makes things easy to maintain. I'm not really craving any specific food, just a bit of a change.

We had left over lamb and salad for dinner. I really like lamb! I took the kids out for an Acai bowl after dinner This was literally the only "bad" thing I ate all easter and now I feel super guilty about it.

My knee was a bit swollen from playing basketball on concrete, or 3 rounds of skipping, or hard shadow boxing or a combination of all 3. I felt like a walk would have aggravated it, so I sat on my butt watching tv for the evening and felt super guilty about this too.

I did some app work before bed. I ended up redesigning the entire coaching mechanics. I'm not sure where I'm going with this thing now. I guess I'm just in a bit of a rut.

Day 15 of 42

I was back down to 99.15kg today so only a 0.05kg increase this week - thats like a glass of water, so no big drama.

I measured myself today; 97cm waist and all of my other measurements were down too. The scales might not have moved, but I'm dropped some size off my stomach which is arguably more important.

I didn't get to he gym today, but clocked up over 15k steps.

Diet was good; the regular steak, slaw and salad lunch. I bought some chilli oil at the markets yesterday which adds a nice hot spice to the rice. I'm still finding the right quantities and items to mix with, but I think I'm getting close with spring onion, crushed garlic, miso paste and chilli oil. I need to be careful about the oil, I know - but right now I'm enjoying a different flavour in my rice.

We had a roast lamb for dinner which is my absolute favourite. I skipped (most) potatoes and stuck with the sweet potato and carrot instead.

Day 14 of 42

Damn! Weight was up this week - 99.4kg today. I'm not too upset tho. I think my arm is storing a bit of inflammation for the new tattoo and the dinner i had last night felt really salty. I'm hoping both things will work themselves out in a few days. The most important thing is to not let a minor setback derail anything - especially given we're having Easter weekend with a lot of temptations around me.

Speaking of temptations - I'd really love to eat a whole bunch of hot crossed buns this weekend. I love break and something about those salty / sweet buns really does it for me! Hot crossed buns with lots of butter and jam - yummo! But alas, I have other priorities and I know one of those will lead to 5 or 6 of those, so better to just avoid!

I thought it best to avoid my normal Strength Sunday workout today with the new tattoo on my wrist. Instead I did a few rounds of skipping and shadowboxing then a high rep upper body routine. I needed the sweat session anyway and it felt good.

Its Easter weekend, but I still kept to my regular routine; up for a walk at 8, gym at 11:30 and then break my fast at 1pm for lunch. Steak, salad and slaw for lunch - the usual. Then roast lamb for dinner. Its all a bit same same.

Day 13 of 14

It's Good Friday today and I'm not working!

Tattoo feels hot and a little bit weird right now, but looks super cool! I love it! the artist did a great job. I'll need to take it easy for a few days which is timed pretty well with the long Easter weekend ahead.

I trained legs at the gym today. I wanted to avoid any upper body stuff for today and I was due a good leg session anyway.

We went out to the Melbourne markets today. It was a nice outing and I was able to buy some new clothes and accessories. It's actually a really great feeling to be able to buy clothes and not have to look for massive sizes anymore. I didn't eat anything while we were out even though I was surrounded by delicious smelling food. I had my standard steak lunch when we got home at 4pm.

We went out for a kebab dinner. I chose the large meat plate with 6 chicken wings on the side. It turns out this was way too much food so I took half home.

Day 12 of 14

Tattoo Day! I Have a day session booked for 12. I woke up excited and nervous. This will be my first tattoo. I want a mandala design on my left forearm. I have a few specific things I want included int he design that I communicated i with the artist earlier in the week:

• A central star / lighter point. This will use negative space i.e. my skin. To me that will represent my new beginning / origin. I want to look at that spot every day and use it as both a reminder of what my life was like just over 10 years ago when I was at the worst point in my alcoholism, and as a motivation and light for my path forward.

• 6 pointed star / flower / leaf design surrounding the above center star. This will represent my family (Me, wife + 4 kids), the most important things in the world to me.

• Inner Circle surrounding the 6 sided flower / star. I'm not 100% sure why I'm drawn to this shape, maybe its a circle of family, circle of influence, circle of trust, but i feel like I need it as part of the design.

I did my dog walk and then got a good session on the heavy bag in followed by some weights. I'll need to be careful with the tattoo for a few days so I'll not be doing any upper body weights or bag work for a few days. I need a good leg and core session anyway, so probably not a bad thing if I mix things up.

I got to the tattoo studio at 12, the artist had the design finished by around 1. I needed a few bits to be coloured in on paper so I could be sure what it'd look like on my skin. He had nailed the pieces I wanted in the design and I was happy to progress without any changes. We started work by around 1. They print a stencil and then transfer the ink to where the tattoo will sit on the body. Things get real at this point! I loved the design and thought the outline look great on my skin so he started inking my skin. The pain wasn't nearly as bad as I'd expected - it felt like a hot needle. Some of the areas on my forearm were more sensitive than others; closer to the wrist and elbow were tender, but nothing too bad.

I love the finished tattoo! It hit all of my design points and I think it looks really nice on my forearm. I'll probably add it it and am already thinking about a sleeve or cuff. I'll sit with this one until my fight in November and think about adding to it, or a different tattoo in a different spot to commemorate stepping into the ring (and all going to plan, winning!), later in the year.

Apparently you burn a lot of calories getting tattooed. This makes sense as I went through periods of sleepiness and hunger throughout the day. I took some extra food; a couple of sushi rolls, some beef jerky and a couple of bananas. I ate these throughout the session. I was super hungry when we got done at 7pm and had a big munch of pasta and mince when i got home. It wasn't the best day eating, a lot more carbs than I'd usually have in the afternoon and evening, but its not every day you have some guy piercing your skin with a tattoo needle for 6+ hours!

Day 11 of 42

I missed writing my entry on Wednesday evening. I felt like working on my app, so I did that instead. Now I can't think of anything significant to report on what is now 2 days ago.

I don't think it was a bad day, I did all of my standard activities; the dog walk, the healthy main meal for lunch, 16 hour fasting window until 1pm, measured my grapes so kept the consumption within acceptable ranges, lighter dinner with mainly greens and protein, evening walk after dinner, boxing session at lunch time. If I look at that day, its prefect and a day that a 10 year younger version of myself would struggle to comprehend. But now, its starting to feel like there is something missing. I'm putting a lot of energy into fitness, weight loss and boxing which was enough a few months ago, but I have this nagging feeling that I need to do... more.

The lunchtime boxing session was the highlight of the day. I've been working on my lead hook technique and paying a lot more attention to my weight distribution and pivots on strikes. The coach (as always), gave me a bunch of corrections and practical things I can take away and work on. It was hot today which as usual caused me to sweat a lot. I immediately hit the electrolytes and salt while re hydrating for the afternoon.

I spent the day at work feeling cognitively quite slow. I wrestled with a problem for the best part of the day. I solved it towards the end of the day, but I can't help feeling I should have got there quicker. Work is deeply unsatisfying at the moment. There so much more interesting stuff I want to put my energy into - like my own app projects, but when I'm grinding through busy work days with little time available to innovate, play or even really think for very long its hard.

Tomorrow starts my 5 days off work! I'm getting my tattoo done on Thursday and then Easter holiday. I'm planning on keeping my nutrition on point, training, spending my most productive hours working on my app, spending time with my family and getting some rest in.

Day 10 of 42

Double figures! I'm not hating this sprint at all, but my brain works better when I can see an end date to something. So here I am; 32 days to go!

Today was, what is now, pretty ordinary. 2 walks for just under 14k steps, very good diet and some weights and boxing.

I ate lunch early which was a steak, salad and rice. Ordinary, but well balanced and delicious. I have enough daily variance in this lunch to keep it interesting; different steak, different salad pack, maybe avocado, maybe some mushrooms etc. Its also constant enough that I can estimate the calories with a reasonable accuracy. I think repetition is the foundation of good habits. I guess its also the foundation for bad habits too, but I'm trying hard not to have many of those.

My workout was good. I had 5 sets on the heavy bag. I put a lot of focus on my lead hook today. Weight on the back foot, pivot on the front, shoulder meets chin.... When it all connects, they feel great. Low effort, but a nice crisp snap on the bag. I'm also noticing what I'm doing wrong when they don't connect right - this is a good sign I think meaning that I can correct my own technique and hopefully improve.

I finished my session with about 40 minutes of weights; push movements mainly. It was a regular weights day where I keep the reps high at 10 - 15 with a quick lap of the gym between sets. I probably logged 2 - 3k steps doing this while the gym bros sit gazing at their phones.

I did a little app work today. Updated the AI feedback loop to an agentic workflow. I think this will allow me to scale up things a lot easier, but the downside is that it uses 5 x more API requests than the old mega prompt design.

So now its time to take my vitamins and head to bed for hopefully an uninterrupted sleep.

day 9 of 42

It's a Monday and like most Mondays, it seems like a chore.

I did the usual morning routine; dog walk, 30 roman rings pull ups and home. I did knock out my 3 minute plank this morning, which is one of my goals for sprint 3. I guess that small win is something to celebrate for today.

My stomach fat seems squishy today. According to the Internet, this is a good sign and usually a precursor to dropping some circumference. I'll measure myself later in the week.

For lunch I had a really nice piece of steak. it was an eye fillet (which I don't usually buy). I wanted to see what a more premium cut from Aldi was like. My wife is a recovering vegetarian and doesn't have a lot of love for steak so usually buys the cheapest, nastiest bulk packs she can find. A few extra dollars bought me a really, really nice piece of meat today. I also bought a 4 pack of porterhouse's for the rest of the week. In hindsight, I should have saved the eye fillet for the end of the week, now its going to be a comedown next time I eat steak.

I trained boxing at 6pm which meant I was at home working all day. The 6pm class was good; a lot of people in tonight - I guess people binged a little over the weekend and want to train it out on Monday. Not me tho - I had a disciplined weekend and if anything feel like binging out today. I'm feeling pretty tired now which I guess walking for close to 3 hours yesterday will do.

My boxing didn't feel all that good tonight. I thought I had a breakthrough on Friday and was finally getting some power out of my left hook. But then tonight it all felt wrong and awkward again. I felt like I was stepping and putting me weight back on the front foot. A few felt right, but mostly they felt uncoordinated and weak. At least I recognize the fault and know how to start the fix - I guess thats the first step.

Roast lamb for dinner is my favorite of the roasts. Sometimes I miss the roast potatoes that usually go with it, and the gravy, and the mint jelly. But, I've got my eye on the prize and I'm not going to get there without some sacrifice.

I forced myself to walk after dinner and ended up with 11k steps for the day. I think I'll take my vitamins and get to bed early tonight.

Day 8 of 42

Today was Sunday - my first official weigh in day of Sprint 3; Project Novantacinque. I'm happy to say the results were great! 99.1kg today which is a loss of 2.8kg in the first week. I know my initial weight at the start of the week was largely because of GyG bean bloat, but I'm still super happy to be back under 100.

I'll give it another week before I measure myself. The measurements yesterday hadn't moved too much since the previous time I used the measuring tape. I figure if I'm dropping weight, the waist must follow sooner of later.

Its footy season again now and my son was playing 2 back to back games this morning. It was a lovely sunny day so we took the opportunity to walk laps of the grounds while he played. We clocked up 10k steps in a few hours and got some sun and got to watch some kids sport. Not a bad start to Sunday.

I got back home just after 12. I was quite hungry by then, but distracted myself by mowing the lawns and some outside work. I ate at just after 2; Huge porterhouse steak (cooked to perfection), miso rice and a large salad. I usually feel like something sweet after so ate half of my daily allocation of grapes. I've been counting out 20 into a jar each day to prevent me eating a handful here, a handful there and eventually eating half a bag over the course of the day.

I needed a bit of a chill out and a nap after an early start and then hit the gym for my Sunday strength session. I'm getting stronger - in a responsible way. At 52, I'm very cautious of injuries and how easily they can happen especially when trying to lift heavy. I'm sticking to machines where possible for the strength day and staying away from anything that causes any (bad) pain e.g. bench press and overhead press. Strength day = long rests between sets = lots of laps of the gym and addition steps. I hit over 15k by the time I got home.

Dinner was chicken soup tonight. I had a couple of small pieces of bread with butter. I love bread, I know its not ideal food (especially in the evening). I walked after dinner to get me to over 21k steps for the day. I'll sleep well tonight!

Day 7 of 42

My first full week done and dusted. It feels good. Pretty soon I'll be in double figures, then halfway and then it'll be done before I know it. I'm not really in a massive rush, I enjoy the discipline of these sprints and I really enjoy the results I'm getting.

Today I weighed 99.4kg first thing in the morning. I was pretty stoked to see that on the scales. My measurements hadn't changed too much, but I'll take the weight loss!

Not to rest on the small win, I went on a walk with the dog around my big loop. Then boxing; today was sparring and then a class. I like the sparring a lot. 3 other guys there today; one around my size which was good and 2 younger kids. One of the boys wend hard and clocked my jaw pretty good. He liked to get in close and throw big overhand shots. I stopped letting him get near with my jab and that shut him down pretty well. I had to give him a few love taps to show I'm not about to be a punching bag for him. I felt a bit bad hitting a kid, but again, I'm not there to be beaten on because I'm bigger.

I stayed for the class afterwards. It was a nice 90+ minutes boxing today. It was the coaches birthday and one of the girls bought a big cake in. I didn't have any. Not because I was particularly diligent about my diet, but because I knew the sugar would mess me up for 3 days after while I process it. Having the 99.4 earlier was some inspiration too, but mostly it was the fear of the sugar that made it easy for me to say no. It did look like a delicious cake tho!

I weighed myself after boxing - I'd lost another 1kg! Yea, I sweat a lot!

As usual, I was cooked after the double boxing session. I bought some steak and had a normal steak, slaw and rice lunch. I was pretty happy it was raining today which gave me a good excuse to have an afternoon nap and vege in front of TV.

I've spent the afternoon drinking and hitting the occasional half teaspoon of salt. So far, so good with the cramps.

Dinner was a roast chicken and salad, then a walk, a bit of app work and bed.

Day 6 of 42

I'm almost a week in. Its going well. This all feels pretty natural now.

Another night with cramps hitting my calve a few times. They weren't was bad as yesterday, but still getting quite annoying. I'll double down on salt and coconut water today.

I weighed 100.1 this morning, so I'm very close to what I finished sprint 2 at. I still find it a little disturbing that one week cost me 2kg in progress. But it looks like I've recovered OK, I should be back to 99.x on Sunday. I really want to be at the point where I can retain water from eating beans, or a high salt meal and not have it tip the scales over 100kg. I guess that means my dry weight is going to need to be around 97kg, or lower. I'm patient with the weight loss, but also very, very eager to look at myself in the mirror and not hate what I look at. I'm not sure I can actually get to this point tho, theres always going to be something I will be critical of. I guess its better to be this way than not caring and being ok with being 40+kg overweight.

Walk, rings and a few push ups when I got home - the usual morning routine. I thrive on routine. Leaving the house at the same time each day helps me clear my head before the work day starts. I'm very fortunate that I can work from home and get to spend time with my son every morning.

Today was boxing and I'm glad I went. It ended up being a PT session as I was the only one who tuned up. We worked on foot work and my lead hook. I think I have an awful lead hook and I need a lot of work on it. I came away with a LOT of stuff to focus on after the session. My recipe for the perfect lead hook is now:

• 70% weight on the back foot (I was putting far too much on the front)

• push off from the back foot and pivot on it

• elbow up

• head should stay looking forward

• shoulder meets chin

• turn front hip

• try to land front foot and shot at the same time

• bring the back foot in after the punch

• return to closed position after

It already feels better! I'd have been happy to pay 90 bucks for that session! She really is a very good coach!

A good boxing session always sets me up for a nice chilled out afternoon. I got a good workout, but it does seem a little easier than it was a few months back. We did a lot of rounds on the pads which were 3 minutes each. My endurance has really kicked up a level. Maybe I'm putting less effort in and getting more out... I can hope.

I got a shake in immediately when I got home, then lunch. Lunch was leftover chicken, roast vege salad and the potatoes I saved from last night. Work was productive after a good workout and a good lunch.

I ripped out a few sets of push ups throughout the day. I even got 40 in one go! I've targeted 50 consecutive push ups this sprint - that target is looking very, very achievable within the next 36 days.

I had a nice steak dinner with a green salad, then off for a walk with the dog. I hit just under 12k steps for the day which apparently is 9.4km walked. I quite enjoy the walking. I've usually got an audio book, podcast or some music going.

I worked a few hours on my app before bed. A nice productive session and fitting end to another good, high output day.

day 5 of 42

I neglected my vitamins last night and I think I paid the price. I had awful cramp in my right calve during the night which woke me up a bunch of times. I wonder if this is connected to the plantar fasciitis I had last year. Whatever the cause, the cramp sucks a lot. I think the magnesium really helps with it, but last night I forgot, and I paid the price.

Normal start to the day; walk with the dog and the son. I got 30 pull ups on the roman rings half war around. I work these so i am as flat as possible and pulling myself up from directly under the rings. I think 30 is doing ok for a 100kg person.

I did a plank while waiting for my coffee to brew; 2m 39s. Thats now my current record. I used to hate this exercise, but damn - it feels good now! my stomach feels nice and tight after it. I reckon I'll get this up to near 5 minutes before the end of this sprint.

I got to the gym at around 1. I'm pretty hungry by 1pm, so had to have a coffee and a banana to power myself up. 10 minutes on the bike, then 5 sets of 3 minutes boxing for a warm up. I was training next to a young guy today and was honestly in awe of his boxing. I'm struggling to pivot and get my hips into my shots while this guy makes it look super natural. His hooks look faster and harder than mine and I probably out weight him by 20kg. I've got work to do.

The weights session was good, but its kind of the after thought currently. Boxing is where my head is at. I think weights are a necessity though for both injury prevention and longevity. I can see myself lifting weights in some form or another until I leave this earth. Its weird to think about where the older guys train. I don't see too many guys much older than me working out. Do they just stop? or is there some old dudes gym I need to find out about? My gym is full of young university students mainly. Young kids making the same stupid mistakes I made when I was a young kid working out.

Lunch was late. I had left over meat patties, slaw and the rice. I love my homemade meat patties, they are delicious and I've managed to eliminate all the bad stuff that can turn patties into a diet nightmare. I missed my post workout shake, but had a shake after dinner as a catch up.

Dinner was a nice grilled chicken with a roast vege salad and beans. Again, nice and clean and really tasty. I skipped the roast potatoes, but made sure to save some for Fridays lunch!

I made sure to get my vitamins in before bed. I'm hoping the cramps don't wake me again tonight.

Day 4 of 42

I woke up super early today - wide awake at 4:30am, so I figured I'd get up and work on my tracking app for a few hours. Its a nice time of day to work and I got a productive few hours in. Mostly cosmetic changes to layout and a bit of a functionality change for scrolling through past days and data. I'll iterate over the current functions until they are closer to perfect before I move on to any big new features.

I walked for an hour before the day job started. No son today, so i was able to do my bigger loop past his school. When he's with me we part ways earlier as I'm pretty sure he's not going to want his dad walking with him to the school gates! This loop has my chin up bars. I was psyching myself up for 10, maybe 11 this morning, but alas I couldn't quite get the 10th one out. I think I'll start hanging from the bar for a bit after failure and I'll try adding some inverted chin ups i.e. I'll jump and try to lower myself slowly. I've been stuck at just under 10 for a few weeks now, so I need to try something different to progress.

My weight was 100.2kg at 4:30 this morning. Thats a drop of almost 2kg in a few days, so I'm pretty confident the 2kg "gain" i had over my re-calibration week was mostly water weight. I'm confident I'll see 99.x on Sunday now.

I've been ripping out a few sets of 20 push ups throughout the day. I'm not going for any records, just aiming for 100+ a day. I don't think I got 100 today as I can only recall 3 sets at home and one at boxing giving me 80 in total. I'll do 120 tomorrow!

Boxing at lunchtime was OK today. I had a stressful call with my boss on the way to training and walked in to the gym just after hanging up. I can usually shut out work stuff when I'm training, but it was weighing on my mind today. My technique suffered today. I got a good sweat and allocation of cardio for the day, so not a wasted effort.

I worked late and tried some app development in the evening, but I was just fried and couldn't focus enough to get anything done. It wasn't enjoyable so I stopped. I should have walked, but didn't as it rained at my usual walk time. I clocked up just over 7.3k steps today - this is the lowest total I've had n a few weeks.

I feel like I let myself down a bit today, but I guess sometimes rest is a necessity. Tomorrow I'll do better!

day 3 of 42

I woke up today thinking it was Saturday and then realized it was actually Tuesday. Bad start to the day, but it got better.

I did my morning walk with a record 35 roman ring pull ups. I did a set up push ups when I got home. I'm aiming to get 100 done each day.

Work was a bit mental so I didn't get to they gym until 2. I usually like to train fasted late morning, but 2pm is stretching it a bit for lifting weights. I had a banana before i left home and sipped coffee while I trained. My energy was ok, a little tired towards the end. Weights was push today, mainly chest and tricep exercises with an overhead press thrown in. The overhead press is hard for me, I feel like there is some damage to my neck that makes it unnecessarily uncomfortable. Next week I'll change that up for something else.

I ate my lunch at 3:30 today. I was craving red meat so bought myself a nice scotch fillet on the way home from the gym. I had limited time before my next meeting so moved quick in the kitchen; steak, slaw, mushrooms and rice all mixed in a giant bowl. Didn't look pretty, but it was quick and healthy. Who says healthy eating takes a lot of effort?

Dinner was chicken salad. Nothing too special and it left me quite hungry. I had a shake which helped with the hunger, but it was only a temporary fix. I took my son to the supermarket to get some food to feed a few friends he has coming over tomorrow. Damn, everything looked delicious when I was hungry; bakery, sugary biscuits, chocolate... no way I was going to get anything, but I guess its good to at least acknowledge the feelings I had.

I've become very disciplined at curring off eating for the day at 9pm. I'll do this this tonight and probably go to bed early as thats a great way to cure any residual hunger.

I got an evening walk in bringing my step count up to 14.2k for the day - i probably clocked up 2 - 3k pacing around the gym between sets.

Day 3, out!

day 2 of 42

Today I appreciate the re-calibration week. I realize how much that has helped with diet fatigue and how it has amped me up for this sprint. If I hadn't have had the week, I'd be grinding out week 8 now and most likely hating it. But I'm here, fresh start on say 2 of 42. Motivation is high and I'm feeling really good about the remaining 5.8 weeks.

It was a regular start today; dog and son walk, some audio book and 30 roman ring pull ups half way around. I'm loving the rings or chin ups half way into my walk, they give me a nice pump and put a good spring in my step for the remaining walk.

Before I had any food for the day today, I counted 20 grapes into a jar. My daily allocation of grapes! This is some advice I've given myself a few times before; measure the grapes vs eating directly from the bag and today I finally took my own good advice. 20 grapes measured out and only 20 grapes eaten for the day - thats a small win for Monday.

Lunch was some leftover chicken, slaw, rice and some roast veges. It was a big bowl of food which I finished. It amazes me that I can eat a bit bowl of food like that and not get sleepy afterwards. Good food certainly has its merits.

I got to the 6pm boxing class on a reasonably humid day. A good hot and sweaty session. Training was good tonight. I kept hip movement in the front of my mind. I can feel the differences in my punches when my hips are rotating. I can also feel it slip when I get tired and start to revert back to arm / shoulder punching. When that happens, I'm aware enough now to snap myself back into good form. I think I've slightly turned a page here today. Small incremental improvement - thats what I'm aiming for here!

My wife had made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, but they were the store bought nasty kind. I couldn't do it, not on day 2 so i had a big tuna salad instead. I don't love tuna as a protein, but sometimes its the easiest option so always good to keep a few tins in the pantry.

I've started working on my performance goals for this sprint. I cracked the 2 minute ceiling I'd somehow imposed on myself for holding a plank on Saturday. I was cooked at the end of boxing and one of the final ab exercises was an "easy 2 minute plank". My heat usually sinks when I hear these words from the coach as I've not been able to hold a 2 minute plank, well...ever. But Saturday I told myself I was going to do the 2 minutes as I assumed the plank position. That shift from "I hate this and I can't do this stupid exercise" to "today, I'm going to complete this" may have been life changing (in a small way). I completed the 2 minutes which was absolutely the high point of my 90 minute workout. Since then, I've completed a 2m 9s plank on Sunday and a 2m 20s plank today. I've set a target of 3 minutes which now looks easily achievable - I might bump this up to 4 minutes. I've been getting some reps in for the push ups and chin ups also. I'm aiming for 5 sets of 20 push ups each day for the next week, then I'll work out a strategy to get my maximum up. My benchmark was 25 on Sunday and almost 10 chin ups. I'm aiming for 50 and 15 respectively.

My step count was 12.5k for the day between a morning and evening dog walk. I might start going around the block after lunch just to get me closer to 15k each day now.

All in all, it was a pretty good day 2.

day 1 of 42 (Sprint 3)

Here we are! about to embark on another 6 week mission of self improvement, education and fulfillment of some life goals that have always eluded me - until now.

I've always been fat and I've always hated myself for it. I've always longed to be fit, in shape, ripped, jacked, shreaded. Whatever you want to call it, I've always felt I fell short and thats always made me sad. I've lost weight, gained it back, lost it again, and again and again. At one point, at the hight of my drinking and general self destructive cycle, I tipped the scales at over 140kg. I was in a bad way.

I stopped drinking just over 10 years ago and this helped me drop a lot of weight. Initially its quite easy to lose weight when you remove all the unnecessary calories of many, many beers and red wines most nights of the week. For years I sat at between 120 and 130kg as even after quitting booze, I never did much about eating well so the weight only dropped so far.

At the end of sprint 2, I tipped just under 100kg for the 3rd time in my adult life. This sprint, I'm aiming for 95kg. At 95, I'll be close to my idea weight by most conventional metrics. Maybe there'll be visible abs, maybe there won't, but I'll be 5kg, well actually 7kg closer than I am right now. I weighed just under 102kg this morning which was a 2kg gain from the end of sprint 2. I think (I hope), that a lot of this is water weight from the rice and beans dinner i had on Saturday night. I didn't go too rogue on my recalibration week, but there were a few extra treats that I enjoyed last week. But really, I gained 3kg total when i went on holiday for 3 weeks in January and this was a total binge - buffet breakfasts every day and pretty much eating whatever i wanted the whole time and hardly exercising. It's difficult to believe i gained 2kg in a week with only a few (mostly healthy) treats like sushi and bbq while exercising hard every day. Water weight - it has to be!

I thought about smoking some weed last night. I woke up today very glad I hadn't followed through with it. I'd have felt jaded and foggy, probably would have turned the Gyg and Acai dinner into a much, much worse binge. I'd almost certainly want to start Sunday with a puff too which would not be the way I want to start this sprint. Instead I started with a nice long walk in the sun with the dog. I hit a set of 9.9 chin ups midway through my walk and then home to set my initial bench marks for a plan (2m 9s - my official pb) and push ups (25). I'm aiming for 15 chin ups, 50 push ups and a 3 minute plank for this sprint while reducing my weight and waist measurement o less than 95cm.

I worked around the house gardening for a few hours today in addition to walking 16k steps and hitting the gym for my traditional Strength Sunday workout.

My diet was clean, although I did beat myself up a little for eating grapes from the bag - I had around 10, total but I really need to measure a serving vs taking hand fulls. I also had a bit of Greek Yoghurt and Peanut Butter in my smoothie tonight. I don't really need those extras, but I don't think they cost me too much as my calories were around 1700 total for the day - this should be a massive deficit. I'm declaring day 1 of 42 a win. 1 down 41 more to go!

Day 7 of 7

Last day of the re-calibration week and I'm happy its here. My exercise has remained pretty much unchanged with the exception of a couple of night time walks. My diet was about what I expected; still mostly clean, whole foods but a little more relaxed. I had BBQ, I had cake, Sushi, Bahm Mi, GYG and Acai (which actually sounds worse than it was written in a list!), but that was the idea of this week; a reset, a recalibration and a chance to enjoy any food I'd been craving. I drew the line at Korean fired chicken, maybe I'll have that in 6 weeks time.

I had a good 90+ minutes boxing training today. Sparring with some kids and then the class. The kids were fun, but i got hit a lot. It didn't hurt a lot, but makes me think what a 90+ Kg punch will feel like when someone is trying to knock me out. I need to sharpen up on my head movement and moving in and out of range. Coach got me with a massive body shot that I felt for hours afterwards. I don't know if I've ever been hit that hard before. I was glad he got it right on the bell as it would have made any further sparring very, very taxing.

I ate a good lunch; Steak, rice and slaw (the usual). I gave the same to my son and we chatted about macros and stuff while we ate. I'm not preaching to him, just providing a bit of education around food and diet when the opportunity presents itself. He's a sporty kid and I figure it'll help him if he knows what foods will help him perform and train better. I've already noticed he's making some strategic choices on game days e.g a smoothie bowl timed about 90 minutes before his game vs sugar coated serial. I wish I'd had someone able to guide me on food and exercise when I was his age.

I worked on my app over the afternoon. I made some progress today after the 2 hour nightmare I had last night. I updated a few UI components and can now track step count and reps of an exercises in addition to time / intensity metrics. I added this in preparation for sprint 3 where I'll be tracking a few exercises like push ups, pull ups etc. This is a fun side project and very cool that its helping me at the same time.

I kicked the ball around with my son before dinner. Not intense exercise, but every little bit of time I'm moving vs sitting is better for me.

We had GyG for dinner. In hindsight, this was probably a bit of a poor choice the day before weight in. I was hungry and this was my "last supper" before sprint 3, so I had a bowl and burrito. Not gonna lie, I ate some of my wife and sons fries too. GyG is not an unhealthy option, but packed with bans and rice and as I've learned - that'll take a day or two to process and I'll retain water while I process the beans. We went for an ice cream / acai after. This is my first time trying Acai - it was nice, but I'm picking not as healthy as the hype makes out. I'm not going to be too stressed out if I'm up on the scales tomorrow, it won't necessarily be a bad thing to have some water weight I can drop easily in the first week.

I came home and went for a walk which got me to 15.5k for the day.

I gave myself the option of smoking a little weed if I wanted to this week. I sort of felt like it on Saturday night, but the urge passed pretty quickly when I distracted myself. I don't have urges for it much at all now as I know what a land mine it is for me and I really haven't done much of it for a few years now. I'm hoping one day the urges disappear completely as they largely have for alcohol, but I guess its just one day at a time until they do.

Day 6 of 7

Sushi Friday! Sushi was one of the things I've thought about a few times during sprint 2 and today I got to enjoy it. It was nice, but I can now understand why its not a go to healthy food option. I could really taste the sugar thats added in the vinegar, which I guess is the bit that makes it so tasty. I had a nice squid salad, a couple of rolls and a tempura pancake. That will satisfy my sushi cravings for the next few weeks.

I walked around 14k steps today. I got a set of chin ups in on each walk; 8 and 7. I'm not going for any records and I think I've got 1 or 2 left in me each time I do a set. I'm working towards 15 for this next sprint.

Boxing was great today. After I got over the bad fuel I had in my system from my birthday celebration the night before. It was a rough start, but I came right 10 minutes in. I like the coaching I get at lunchtime especially with the Friday coach. Shes really attentive and pulls me up on so many things I'm doing wrong. Its humbling to be corrected so often, but I take something from these classes EVERY time. If it makes me a better boxer, then I'm happy to be corrected all day.

I went shopping for clothes this afternoon. Bought a new knit jumper - another size Medium. I'm no longer looking at the XL or larger and starting to take a glance in the Medium racks. I'm on the big side of medium, but its cool to have a lot more options for clothes.

Dinner was a steak and coleslaw. I avoided my left over birthday cake, but couldn't resist a few reheated fries. I made a bowl of berries, greek yoghurt and a scoop of whey for afters. I can feel myself being hungrier as I've added a bit of treat food over the last few days. I'm looking forward to getting back to 100% clean and dropping a few more kg.

Day 5 of 7

Happy Birthday to me!! 52 years old today and I feel a whole lot better than when I turned 42. I don't remember a lot about my 42nd birthday, but I know from the dates I would have been 45 days sober at that point. Grossly overweight, depressed and generally hating myself. Today, I feel fit, positive and excited about life.

I took the day off work today, it was nice to have my birthday to myself. I did my usual walk with my son and dog this morning. I dug over a patch of garden when I got back which was a pretty good workout in itself. I'm not sure how many calories digging dirt and roots burns, but I got a really good sweat going and cramping hands and forearms later in the day.

I'm getting a tattoo done in a few weeks and went to meet with the artiest today. Cool guy! We seem to have a few similar interests which should make the 6+ hours we'll be together fun. This will be my first tattoo - its a gift to myself as both a celebration of 10 years sober and a mark on my skin to remind and guide me. I have a general idea of what I want; a Mandala design on my left forearm. The center will be a star, or sun, or possibly a compass symbol to signify my guiding light.

I treated myself to a Bahm Mee for lunch. Its one of the things I've been craving through sprint 2. It didn't disappoint! Delicious crispy pork, nice soft bread and that excellent combination of pate,mayo and spices that they do so well.

I had a small nap in the afternoon and then the gym. 30 minutes of boxing and skipping followed by a weights pull workout. I kept the weights light and the rests between sets short - I did my usual walk around the gym between each set which keeps my heart nicely elevated. I see so many people in there on their phones between sets, sitting and scrolling.

I took the family out for karting which was a lot of fun. We went out to a BBQ restaurant for dinner and all ate very well. Pulled pork, brisket, ribs, chips. Damn, it was a mean feed! I ate far too much, but its not every day you turn 52! and, I'm in a recalibration week - I planned for this. I even had a small slice of Black Forrest cake for my birthday. I regret nothing, at least not at the moment. I may regret the bread and sugar tomorrow and Saturday, but thats a problem for tomorrow and Saturday!

Day 4 of 7

Finally I felt lighter and dangerous again this morning. My god! It took the best part of 3 full days to process those friggin oats I ate on Sunday.

Oats soak in water and ferment in the gut. SO i was walking around for 3 days with a load of extra water and 150g of oats slooooowly digesting in my tummy. Never again! I've got used to not eating certain types of food, so best I just stay clear of them.

I had a longer walk with the dog this morning because my son rode to school with his friends. I'd have much rather walked with him, but i guess he's getting older and I'm glad he's made a bunch of new friends. I knocked 8 out on the chin up bar on the way past - these are getting easier, I'm so close to 10 I can taste it!

Lunch was a nice steak, slaw and some mushrooms. It was quite a large bowl of food, but good nutritious food that didn't leave me sleepy or feeling bloated, just nicely satisfied. I went for a quick walk after I ate and then back to work.

It was a busy day at work so I didn't train during the day. I made the 6pm boxing class which was great. Only 2 of us there so I got a good focused session in. It was a bit warmer here today which led me to sweat just a bit more than average. I failed again on the 2 minute plank. I'm determined to get this! I can probably get close to 2 minutes without a prior workout, but usually at training by the time we do planks we're at least 30 minutes into an intense boxing class.

I got called up by the Masters Boxing today. The guy said "we've got you a fight". Turned out it wasn't going to work out as it was for the April show and I'd have to cut 8kg by then. I could probably do 8, but I'd be losing muscle and would probably end up being pretty weak. I told the guy my plan for November and he was cool with it. The thing I noticed about the call was I was actually excited, a little scared, but mostly excited about the prospect of a fight.

Dinner was a chicken casserole with some steamed cauliflower and broccoli. t was tasty, but I think there was probably some flour in it as my stomach is a bit rumbly now.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I've got the day off work. I'm getting a tattoo consultation, going to train weights and then heading out for go karts and BBQ! bring it on!!!

I don't know if i like this re-calibration week. I feel full and lazy and fat and its only day 3. I'm know I'm looking forward to getting back into the "regular" programme on Sunday!

I'm waking up groggy each day. Its been hard to get out of bed. I went on my usual walk today with 30 inverted pull ups on the rings at the park - these are getting easier! I struggled to get 20 out a few weeks back.

My stomach has been upset for 2 days now and I have this persistent full feeling that I hate. Today I changed my diet up and I think I'm finally getting through the carbohydrate binge I had on Sunday and Monday.

Today was closer to my regular diet. Lunch was rice, chicken, slaw and a few left over veges (corn, peas and some mushrooms). This was a bit bigger than my usual serve, but pretty decent taste - I'm getting better at seasoning my rice finally! I ate before the gym today, but as I've learned previously, I need to have at least 90 minutes and a bunch of water before hitting the gym after a big feed.

I trained for just over an hour today; 10 minutes on the bike (this does wonders for my knee), 5 x 3 minute rounds of boxing working on rips mainly. I can feel some improvement when I really focus on hip movement, but its still not natural... yet. I got some weights in afterwards, a push workout today. They didn't feel great. I started with flat bench press which I've not done for years. My rights shoulder felt a little bit pinched after 3 sets. I think that'll be the first and last time I hit the flat bench press for a while - there are plenty of alternatives that don't mess with the shoulders as badly. The gym was average, not my most savage workout ever, but I got there and I got a good sweat up.

Protein shake consumed immediately after training loaded with fruit.

Dinner was satay beef strips and vege with a small portion of brown rice and quinoa. I had seconds of the meat. I probably didn't need it and felt quite bloated half an hour later. I went on another walk bringing me up to just under 14k for the day.

All in all, just a bit of an average day. I'm really not liking how I'm feeling currently. I'm so worried I'm undoing my hard work from the last sprint, but how much damage can I possibly do in 7 days while maintaining good (not perfect) eating and consistent exercise?

day 2 of 7

I woke up super grumpy today. I'm really not sure why. I don't think having extra food including a big dinner helped as I have this weird feeling of going backwards. I know thats impossible in 24 hours, but still, it worries me.

I walked the dog. She was annoying me this morning, just like every other thing in the world. The only positive thought I could muster was for the lunch time boxing class. There is a special guest coach on Monday and he's excellent. There usually aren't many people training at lunchtime, so its a really good opportunity for me to learn. Bigger clasees are fun, but you don't get as much technique specific coaching.

I came back form my walk and decided to get in the pool for some cold therapy. I'm fortunate to have access to an unheated swimming pool. Currently its sitting at around 20 degrees, but it will get down under 10 in the next few months as winter arrives. The water is excellent for so many things and I need to make a point of using the pool more for both training and recovery. Today I hopped around and focused on hip movement and moving my shoulders. I was a bit sore this morning, which I guess didn't help my mood. after 15 minutes in the cold water, my body felt a lot better. As an added bonus, my mood has lifted a little too. I didn't shower after the pool as its better if the body can raise its temperature naturally.

The lunchtime boxing class ended up being a PT session. I love it when this happens - 1 on 1 attention from the coach. She was excellent too. Worked on slips, hip movement and pivots. I have a slip, body rip drill I will now practice. My rips felt a lot better today when I was focused on turning my hips into them. I can feel my form slipping especially when i get tired and a regress back to arm punching. But hip movement is the focus and hip movement is what I'll get better at until hopefully it becomes natural. It wasn't so long ago I had a awful jab, but thats significantly improved, my hip movement can too.

I came home and had my shake, followed by a slightly larger lunch. I added some sweet potato and carrot to my rice slaw and steak. This left me pretty full and kinda sleepy. The afternoon wasn't the usual floating on air after boxing afternoon I usually have after a good lunchtime session. I still felt tired and a bit grumpy.

I did some investigation on my sleepiness and bad mood as I figured it had to be die related. I was right. I've been eating clean food for the last 6 weeks tilted towards high protein and fat with limited carbs. Specifically, limited carbs in the evening. On Sunday I ate oats with yoghurt then a good portion of sweet potato in the evening - this is a lot more sugars than I've been used to processing. My body triggered a reaction to process this quickly which caused my blood sugar to drop rapidly to below its normal levels. This caused my fatigue and grumpiness for most of the day.

I also felt full and heavy after the fiber rich food. Not the good kind of full, but the bloated slow kind of full. High fiber food draws a lot of water into the gut to process it, so I felt grossly full for the next 24 hours after my special oats bowl.

I've also had an insatiable appetite for the day. I guess this is to be expected with high fiber food - I get the same reaction when I eat bread usually. Which is why I've cut almost all bread from my diet.

In summary, I think my experiment with additional calories has been a failure so far. I don't think I went too far over my 3k target, but I certainly chose the wrong foods. For the rest of the week I'll focus on hitting the 3k target, but adding the additional calories from lighter, more calorie dense foods. I'll add back some olive oil, avocado, almonds / walnuts on my salad, maybe even some cheese (I need to look into this one). I'm already eating a few eggs, but I might try adding 1 or 2 with my steak lunches.

The lessons here for a re-calibration week:

• When we add extra fuel to the diet, it should be mostly coming from fats or additional protein. Keep the high fiber carbs to a minimum.

• Keep your meals and food timing the same as you've been doing, just add more calories.

I didn't get an evening walk in today as it was pouring with rain (6k steps total for the day). I'm OK with that for today as I kid of enjoyed sitting in front of the TV for an extended period. Tomorrow will be better

day 1 of 7

Re calibration week is about recovery.

I did a high weights workout for strength. Kept my reps to under 6 with weights that were hard to lift.

i walked 15k steps. I got almost 10 chin ups today - just failed on the last one! I'll get it next time,

Day 42 of 42!!

Ok, it's done. Today was the last day of sprint 3 and it was a BANGER!

I had sparring this morning for an hour. I only had one round with coach and he gave me the usual beat down. I had probably 8 or 9 more rounds with some of the newer guys and smaller fighters. I felt relaxed. It was really fun. I wasn't trying to hit much, just focusing on defence. My fitness felt excellent.

I stayed for the class after and was my usual sweaty soaked mess at the end.

Pretty cooked for the rest of the day. Managed to get 15k steps in tho! Tomorrow, I'm going to get a bham mee for lunch!!!

day 41 of 42

I thought I'd weigh myself this morning. Turns out that was a mistake. Back up to 100.4kg. I know, I know, I know.... its salt, its inflammation, its stress, its a little bit of all of those things, but it still stings to see a weight increase when I ate salads for the two meals I had yesterday and exercised like an athlete. And I know I shouldn't be paying so much attention to the scales, but its almost impossible to turn it off.

I had my usual morning walk with my son and dog with a set of inverted push ups on the Roman rings at the park on the way past. The weather is getting cooler and wetter here, so I'm left wondering about keeping my daily step count above 10k over the next few months. Maybe I'll need to swap that light cardio with some indoor work at the gym. That thought repulses me. Spending hours on a treadmill or cross trainer is not my idea of a fun time. I think combat sports kind of ruin you for any other cardio.

I made the midday boxing class. Its the same coach from Wednesday and Friday. She really is fantastic. She picks up so many little things I'm doing wrong and every class I come away with a list of small things to work on. Today it was pivots; keep on my toes and light on my feet. If pivoting, my hips and legs should end up square so I'm ready to throw. Again, small steps, back foot follows front. All very simple points, but I can 100% see a positive difference when I'm focusing on them.

Lunch was the same as yesterday; rice, steak and slaw. My diet is very repetitive, which suits me fine. I don't crave anything and having a simple meal plan makes it very easy to maintain and track.

I've been bust trying to build my tracking app and have been putting a lot of energy into it. A couple of late nights hasn't helped. I'm now very conscious of the importance of quality sleep so I'm tying to wrap up any computer work by 9:30 to give my brain enough time to wind down before sleep. Its never a good idea to go straight from focused computer work to bed, I need to switch off. I usually watch some TV, but a book is probably going to be a better idea. I have David Goggins' book here waiting, I think I'll start that over the weekend.

Dinner was a nice chicken salad with some sweet potato fries. I wonder if there is pattern for my weight loss when I have a few extra carbs in the evening. Last night I had salad + chicken again, no fries and my weight went up. It'll be interesting to see if it goes down tomorrow. I guess I'll discuss this with my AI coach at some point.

I had another dog walk in the evening and started a new audio book - Red Rising. Seems like a gritty sci fi dystopian story I can get into. I worked late on my app again. It was after midnight before I got to bed. I can't sustain late nights for long, but I managed to finish a pretty big piece of my build, so i can ease off for the rest of the weekend.

## day 38 of 42

Focus up! Thats my lesson for today; focus on this sprint and only this sprint.

I started estimating my remaining sprints leading up to my fight in November. Counting backwards, working out optimum gaps. I started jotting them down in my notebook. I think there were 6. And this depressed me. Seeing such a long road ahead give me a feeling of hopelessness I haven't felt since starting this marathon and sprint framework. SO the lesson there - 1 sprint at a time!

I also had a test body scan on the machine at the gym. I'll do this at the start and end of every sprint from here on to give me some more accurate data to work with. Nothing too surprising in the readings; I'm sitting at about 20% body fat which means my target of low 90s / cruiser weight is pretty spot on. But this also made things look like a mountain - I've got 10Kg to lose which will be the hardest and somehow this seemed to start me thinking things are too hard. 10Kg is hard, its a lot and if i obsess about that number, I'll be in danger of quitting. But if I focus on 3, or 5Kg and a 6 week sprint it doesn't seem so bad. Again, the lesson here is - 1 sprint at a time!

I woke up last night at 3am, this is becoming a pattern and one I don't want to continue. I needed to pee, as I've needed to do every other night I wake at this time. I figured this is the evening protein shake I'm having at 8ish. Tonight I'm not going to drink any liquid past 6pm and see if I get an uninterrupted sleep.

My weight was up 100g today, but as I've learnt - this is nothing to worry about, it happens. And it mostly happens after some intense training and/or elevated salt consumption from the previous day. I trained late in the afternoon yesterday, and it was very, very intense. I can feel a bit of an ache in my shoulder and arms. Boxing is hard. Training boxing, hard for 60 minutes spikes your cortisol which is going to trigger a stress reaction which instructs the body to horde water. Boxing on the heavy bag creates micro tears in your muscles which pull in water to heal. Waking in the night doesn't help either.

I walked 15k steps and hit a personal best for chin ups - 9.8. The .8 came from almost, but not quite getting my chin over on the last one. Pretty happy with almost 10.

My diet was nice and clean; 2 tins of tuna with rice and shredded vege. Not the tastiest meal I've ever eaten, but stacked up pretty well for calories and macros. I had a recovery shake after training and a handful of grapes. Dinner was some grilled chicken and salad - see how I'm living!! No shake tonight and hopefully a nice long sleep and a positive outcome on the scale tomorrow morning.

I had planned on boxing today, but work schedule and family commitments didn't allow it. I don't like weight training in the evening as there are far too many gym bros pumping hard and high fiving at that time. I found 90 minutes between meetings to train.  90 minutes includinhg travel time is cutting it tight, but i managed to get a solid workout in with time to spare:

- High volume push day:
- Dumbell CHest Press + DB flys (Superset) x 3
- Dumbell pullover + dips on bench (superset) x 3
- Tricep pushdown (rope) + tricep extension (rope (superset) x 3
- Front deltoid raise with 20kg plate x 3
- Assisted dips x 3

The dips were the hightligh. I have been rehabilitating a rotator cuff injury for over 2 years now and these used to hurt a LOT. No pain yesterday!

I try to keep my gaps between sets short for high volume days which usually works out to be about 45 seconds which is the time it takes me to walk around the gym once. This adds about 2k steps for the day. With my usual morning and evening walks I hit just over 15k for the day.

My diet was clean for the day:
- fasted until 2pm (I had a shake at 10 the previous day, so a late start)
- protien fruit smoothie post workout + creatine + colegen  
- left over roash chicken for lunch with potatoes, corn, peas and carrots following my workout. 
- dinner was chicken again with chilli beans and tin tomatoes.  I try to limit carbs for the evening meal

A friend  of mine sent me a link to an Instagram post by the Masters Boxing Victoria (MBV). It was showing the 30+ people who went to the first training session on Sunday. If I'm honest, it scared me a little. Everyone looked fit and sharp. I'm not entirely sure what I expected, but I guess this just reminded me that this endevbour to box with these people isn't a joke.  I've been beating myself up a bit for not going to the training session and I can hear that doubting inner voice starting to tell me I'm out of my depth and not good enough...  Thew only way to know is to go train with these guys and I'll be doing that this coming SUnday.