Wobbly and Out of Control

Hah! Well, no wonder I was feeling like everything was wobbly and out of control. Everything was wobbly and out of control.

So. For the food:

Breakfast is the Spanish omelet: leave half the hash browns. (And if the omelet is ridiculously huge, as it was today, you can leave some of it on the plate, too. But you never *have* to leave any of the omelet.)

Snacks available but not required: one apple and one banana.

Lunch is salad and 2/3 glass bowl of soup, and you must begin it by 11:30.

Dinner is salad, and 2/7 of a packet of ground 93% turkey, prepped with a big spoonful of olive oil, and 450 grams of potato, and you must begin it by 4:30.

In two weeks we'll know if this is a weight loss regimen or not: there's no need to guess. The numbers will tell us. At the moment that question is of no interest whatever. The first project here is simply to get aircraft out of its tumble and under control: nothing good happens until that has happened.

You may have to ask Martha to hide that white candy dish.

Throw out the rest of the bagels, unless Martha wants them.

Ipse dixi.

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For the exercise:

Okay. I must work out 4 days out of 7. An easy mnemonic for that while I'm working 3 days per week is simply that any day that is not a work day is a workout day. But really I want the basic pattern to be upper body day, lower body day, rest day. With some latitude: sometimes no rest day, sometimes two rest days. But never three rest days in a row, and always, if I'm looking backward six days and see only three workouts, I'm due to work out. (This sounds much more elaborate than it is: in practice it's pretty simple. Upper, Lower, Rest.)

Until I get the cardio where I want it, I'm going to stop increasing the rev lunges when I get to two sets of 30 reps (each side) at 5 lbs. (Which is nearly where I am? I think?) The cardio is going to stress the knees: I don't want to pile too much on them.

The cardio is actually the focus: building back the stamina I lost to Covid last year. The program is going to look like this: 

To begin with, short walks every day that is not a lower body day.

Every week, increment the walks by two, where an increment means taking no walk to short, or short walk to regular walk, or regular walk to long walk.

We stop this progression when we're at a weekly regiment of daily regular walks and two long walks. We might or might not at that point progress the long walks, or we might just go back to increasing the weight on the rev lunges. Leave that decision for when the time comes. 

So we're starting at 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5

We're going to 2 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 2 = 16

At +2 per week, this will take five and a half weeks. That seems about right. We should get there around the end of February.

Ipse dixi.

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For the study: yes, you want to be doing BOTH the Spanish and the Greek. And maybe you can do that. Maybe it has to wait until you're no longer working at the Foundation. Maybe it doesn't happen at all, because time and attention are not infinitely elastic. Just relax and get over yourself, young Dale. It is not the most important thing. It is far more important to be doing hard and interesting reading, and to write stuff that is worth reading. THAT is what you actually want to do. The languages are tools for that, not ends in themselves. (Well, actually they're ends in themselves too, and always have been, and always will be: but you don't need to be doing two at once if it just. doesn't. work. Twenty years from now you'll be stone cold and in the ground, Mr Favier. None of this matters THAT much. It is now required of you that you a) get a grip, my good man, and b) relax and give yourself a break. Yes, both those things, and yes, this is a contradiction, and yes, you're just going to have to deal with it.)