The week so far....

has not been a stellar week for diet and exercise. For some reason I'm listless and frustrated and while not low-energy, not enthused to expend any. I have trouble getting to sleep, staying asleep, and waking up. My knees, shins and feet are inflamed and my back has been tweaky for weeks now. This all annoys me because I had time off the week of July 4th. I got to bed late on Monday so I tried going to the gym to lift in the afternoon, but then the Crazy Lady was in my squat rack and I've seen her spend 40 minutes on one piece of equipment doing the same exercise so I went to do HIIT instead. About 10 minutes later this dude who smelled like dirty laundry and sour milk got on a machine upwind of me so I had to leave. Kicked the heavy bag for awhile, but I had a doctor's appointment so I left (Crazy Lady still in squat rack). On the plus side, my blood pressure is 100/64. When I had my overtraining/chronic fatigue it was up around 120 and my pulse was in the mid 70's and I couldn't get across to the doctor that it was really abnormal for me.

Dietwise, I decided that the two days keto, one day normal was stupid because I won't eat enough and just end up wrecking myself again. I even took a whole free-day on Sunday and ended up not really eating because I didn't feel like it. Part of the problem is that since my teens my stomach doesn't normally give me any hunger signals. There are more subtle low blood sugar signals, but I have to be paying attention and usually the progression is mellow, chilly, spacy, fatigued, shaky, then suddenly weirdly alert and energetic. Then, since the nadir of being sick, I don't get food cravings anymore. There are certain things I don't keep around--like pasta or Cheetohs--because I'll demolish them if they're in my vicinity, but I don't really crave them.

And then I was pondering my metabolism. I'm pretty much a mesomorph: short, big shoulders, above average strength for my age/sex/size, always 99th percentile for the goofy Presidential Fitness Tests even though I didn't do any sports, put on muscle really fast, etc. Looking back, I started getting sick three years ago, there was a downward spiral for a year and a half, then I quit going to the gym spring semester last year, a year ago I started being able to walk and do bodyweight exercises and I've only been lifting again since the end of last year. In all that I really didn't lose any strength and my lean mass is now more than my original bodyweight when I should've just shriveled up.

I don't think I have a slow metabolism, per se, I tend to be too warm rather than cold, was never cold even at 10% bodyfat, burn off alcohol really fast, while not loud fidgety person am not a languid sleepy person either (unless I'm hungry) and often get a frustrated that other people tire so quickly. I know I don't do well on a high carb, low-fat diet (tried it, that was the previous fattest time ever) and that LISS (anything I can do for 45 minutes is LISS even if it's 80% of "max") does nothing for me. I also know that high protein, low fat (i.e. chicken breast & broccoli) causes a weird blood sugar crash and I'll collapse and be unconscious for 2 hours or just feel sick.

So I don't know what the plan is now... For the rest of this week it will be "don't snap", get some sleep, do some HIIT Thursday, Friday, Saturday, go to TKD, go to sparring class, go back to how I was eating before. Evaluate. Raise calories to 1600 (not including fish caps) and stay on that for a couple of weeks. I didn't see much difference between 40/40/20 and 30/30/30 so I'm not going to sweat the ratios. Maybe try calorie cycling with an average of 1600/day and see if that shakes things up. Anyway - right now it's just "get through the week".

Today was an I Give Up sort of day:
bfast: metabolic drive, GoLean, orange
lunch: chicken caesar salad
snack: metabolic drive, 2 shots espresso
dinner: grilled burger and fries (I'm not sure how much I ate, I was at the 2nd run theatre watching "300" and my burger self-destructed halfway through and it was too dark to see what I was eating)