So, big news upfront: it’s officially 6 weeks, 5 consistently, and I am just short of 25 pounds lighter. This is significant! But not as significant as you might think, because I think Week 5 was filled with a lot of failures.

Despite the fact that I dropped about 2 pounds this week, I was incredibly lazy as regards my food-journal efforts. Not here, even though this post is late. It got to the point where I was eating the same thing every day, so I saw little to no point in always writing it down. This is bad, because now I have no idea if there were days in which I deviated from the norm, ate too much of something, or whatever. I highly doubt it, but it’s definitely a possibility.

I know I probably could have eaten better. I still can’t quite shake the burrito as a post-workout meal. It’s filling and enjoyable, so I get pretty fixated on it as a reward for myself. I also will probably owe Brandon a new single-serving blender thing by the end of this, because it makes odd noises when I use it, and I use it daily if not more.

So, a couple of revelations: sleep, it turns out, is seriously important to muscle recovery. This, again, falls under the category of “shit people have been telling him for ages,” but sometimes I just need to go my own way, alright? What was interesting here was that during the course of my weight-lifting rotation, I came across a random day where certain exercise felt like they bordered on impossible. In fact, Saturday’s workout involved a real disappointment at the bench press. I had no one to stop me, so I may have played it overly safe, but I did not remotely approach my current maximum, and I had been hoping to overshoot it. In fact, the second tier of my workout felt like it was dangerously close to failure, and I had to stop at tier 3, which was really disappointing.

I have a suspicion about the reason for this: I slept particularly poorly the previous two evenings, including the evening since I had last worked out and in fact fell asleep in a position awkward enough that I couldn’t feel my hands in the morning. Not like my fingers were asleep; from the wrist down, I had a weird tingling sensation in my hands. One theory that’s been suggested, in addition to the harm of a fitful night’s rest or two, is that I guess I pinched most of the blood vessels off in my arm, depriving the arm-portions of my bench-pressing musculature the necessary nutrients and enrichment they require in order to repair themselves, which is actually what allows them to do the whole strength-building thing.

Today, I re-achieved that maximum, but I was nervous of trying to push beyond it. On Wednesday I’ll increase my weights again.

I also learned that consistency in content of meals isn’t as important as consistency in time of meals, which is something I probably should have learned awhile ago. This is inferred from some interesting medical bloob-blab that I read or heard somewhere (I think a guy was on The Daily Show?). The basic concept is missing a scheduled meal by two hours or so already begins to trigger stress hormones and frustrate our bodies and encourage the storage of fat. Two hours. If you eat 5 or 6 times a day, it’s pretty easy to miss one by a significant margin.

Especially when your routine is entirely self-imposed. This is getting to be a recurring theme, but it’s also one I’m having a hard time shaking. It’s interesting: when I started this, the effort involved made it seem prohibitive to having gainful, full-time employment while also dedicating yourself to working out and getting healthier. No it seems like I need the structure of something I’m required to do to help me generate structure in my personal business. Harrisburg isn’t exactly rife with jobs for someone of my skillset, but I am investigating.

Unrelated to fitness, but related to the job hunt – ever apply for a job that you just know you shouldn’t get your hopes for, but then you up and do it anyway because the job seems made of awesome? Well, I have and have quite recently, in point of fact. That’s a frustrating experience. Mostly because I know on some level that, if I’ve gotten nearly 200 non-responses (which are the worst sort of “no”) or “Thanks but no,” responses, I can’t expect the one I really want – and would be fantastic at – to suddenly be a different scenario. But sometimes, I think, you can’t help that. When you want something to work out really well, even when it’s an incredible long-shot, it’s tough to nail down your aspirations.

Hm, that sentiment is a little related to this, as it turns out. I want to sneak under 200 by the end of the summer (yeah, folks. I am crazy fat. In fact, I used to say I weighed “Two-hundred and Crazy-Five” pounds because the actual number was damning and depressing).  I began to believe that I might be able to do it really quickly, but the efforts required at this point – the monotony of it all, honestly – are beginning to have their toll on my ambitions. I haven’t sent Cody a meal sheet in a week or possibly more. I think from the last one I sent him, I only recorded about two more days, but that’s not the worst of it. I think that aspiration – like the awesome job – is certainly attainable, but I can’t drown myself in the disappointment of not impressing or outdoing myself early.

I’m still pressing on (if not impressing), and I’m still doing mysel– wait.

It’s possible things just got weird for you. That’s fair. Let’s just take it back, 40 words or so, and live in that time. When things weren’t weird. Alright. Cool. I’ll see you all next week.

Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day to all the Ladies out there, single or otherwise. To the guys – hey, guess what, you don’t get a holiday. #sexism