Week 1486

This week was a bit of a deviation from my normal routine. I had quite a bit of work to get done prior to taking a week off to spend time with my wife and her family for Thanksgiving. 

I didn’t prioritize sleep well this week, averaging under 7 hours a night and didn’t feel great because of this. With this, I decided not to go to the gym once early in the week and late in the week, I chose to prioritize knocking out some last pieces of work before we left town. 

It wasn’t as great of a week working with the dogs (I didn’t make the time to do it as well as I have been) but we still did some training and it seems to make the dogs really happy to have more structured time in their days. 

We tried a new dog food this week, Maev. I love that it looks like real food instead of being ground to a pulp like some of the other fresh/raw foods on the market and the dogs seem to love it too. 

The biggest downside with having Great Danes is the cost. It will be ~$650 a month if I feed this as half of the dog food for the dogs and their other dog food costs $330 bringing us to just under $!k in dog food each month. Stack $200 of cat food a month on top of that and our pet food bill is right in line with our food bill…

But, I would prefer to spend extra money to get real food than give Truman Apoquel for the rest of his life with how itchy he gets. 

Towards the end of the week, I found myself on Amazon more than necessary, scouring the internet for reasons to buy products and am more aware than I need to be of our odd consumption habits in the US. Why is it that a sale makes me want to buy an unreasonable amount of goods?

Saturday, I swung up to spend time with my sister’s family in celebration of one of my niece’s birthdays. I was the first to show up (which I don’t think anybody would have bet on given I used to be late to everything growing up) and got to spend some time playing with my nieces and nephew. We played the un-named game of don’t-let-the-balloon-hit-the-ground and I, being 6’9” and 20 years older than most of them, was clearly the dominant support for the group. 

My youngest nieces actually didn’t run away from me when I was the only person there, which was the biggest win of the day. Apparently, a giant uncle that you only see once to twice a year is scary?

Towards the end of the week, I began to contemplate not working with my coach for a bit. There are a few underlying reasons but one of them is that I find myself scared at the idea of not having his support. 

While I think coaches are phenomenal, I would love to not need to have a monthly payment to outsource my motivation if I can avoid it. 

I genuinely enjoy going to the gym and have direction so I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t be able to go at it alone for a bit. There are plenty of apps that I can try for hypertrophy style training and diet support so I don’t see a reason why I can’t try it. 

I’m also bulking so I feel like if there is a time to push myself in this way, the time is now… I only have a year or two left in this bulk so it’s crunch time. 

Another reason is that I would like to have more wiggle room with my programming to keep things interesting. Hypertrophy with a side of ATG or Functional Patterns or GOTA seems like a fun way to push myself to get into the gym more while keeping myself functional. 

I am fresh into a hypertrophic style of lifting so I don’t need a coach as a beginner (more of a nice to have) but I did need one to help me get out of the hole that I had dug with multiple years of a poor diet.  

Sunday, I missed my check-in with Jack (my dietitian/coach) as I spent 12 hours traveling with a car full of our household (me, my wife, our two cats, and two Great Danes). 

Subaru Outbacks aren’t made to haul that much cargo. 

Pain Points: Drinking more energy drinks than I need to because they are in my fridge (stop making it convenient to eat/drink things you don’t need).