February Goals Check-In

By Adam Tuttle on Mar 3, 2020

At the end of 2019 I posted a couple of goals for 2020. It's been two months and I'm at the checkpoint for my first milestone, so I thought I would check in on how I've been doing.

Goal 1: Body fat reduction

I started eating a Ketogenic diet in November 2019, and as a result had to either torture myself through the holidays by watching everyone else eat delicious treats and not partake, or I had to find a way to get my sweet fix. I found some recipies for things like cookies and frosting using keto-friendly sugar substitutes, and, let's be honest here, I also started to play a little fast and loose with the 20g/day carbohydrate limit. My limit of 20 became 21, and eventually 22, and 23... and before you know it, I can't seem to stay in ketosis at all.

To make matters "worse", we had a family vacation scheduled for the end of January. A cruise, to be specific. If you've never been on a cruise, let me explain how the food works: You can eat as much as you want, at just about any time of day, but almost everything has carbs. Also, there's a formal-ish dinner every night with fancy desserts to choose from; all included for the cost of the cruise. Why should I pay for fancy food and not eat it?!

If you were super disciplined, I suppose you could make it work.

But I'm not, and I couldn't.

And I didn't.

In fact, in the days leading up to the cruise, and knowing that I would be at least temporarily abandoning my keto diet, I chose to quit early.

At the time that I quit eating keto, I had managed to work my way down to 19.8% BF already! I was way ahead of schedule. This was mid-January and I had already passed my goal for March 1st. And then I went back to my junkfood mid-day snacks and carb-loaded meals, and only a week after getting back from the cruise, I was back up to 21.2% BF. Ugh!

That was February 8th, and it was quite the wake-up call. I've been back on Keto since, and trending back down. I'm happy to report that I did just barely manage to hit my 20% BF on March 1st goal.

This goal also had other aspects to help me reach that metric. Not missing many gym days, and hit my macros consistently. Well, I pretty much blew the macros thing up for a while there, but I'm back on the wagon now.

I've also missed more gym days than I was anticipating, but overall I'm really happy with my gym attendance. I got sick once, I chose to do a career day presentation that didn't leave enough time in the day to work out, and, yeah, a couple of times I was too lazy. BUT! Most of the time I don't struggle to find the motivation to get into the gym, and almost always I feel great when I leave the gym. I'm not seeing much muscle mass added yet, but I feel healthier, and that's a big part of why I want to go, too.

I also managed to find time to work out during the cruise! I only missed one workout and in my defense, traveling -- especially with children! -- is exhausting! I missed my cardio day on the day we spent traveling back home.

I've found that I really love doing squats, probably because I can already squat a lot more weight than I thought would be in my reach. In fact, my training program recently had me re-evaluate my 1 rep max on all of my primary lifts, and this happened:

So I guess let's say I get a solid B+ on this one. I can do better, but nothing to be ashamed of here.

I learned just how effective Keto can be for me, and I also learned that just because the rule of thumb recommendation for beginner keto is 20g of carbs per day doesn't mean I need to aim to finish every day at 19.9. If I aim for 10-15, there's wiggle room for those times when I need a couple of spoonfulls of keto ice cream to get me through the day.

Goal 2: Christmas present for my wife

Well. This one is going to have to end up being an excused absence if I don't come up with a new idea. I managed to bring casual conversation just close enough to the topic of the project I wanted to make for her to find out that it's not something she wants at all. Back to the drawing board!

Goal 3: Build my CNC and learn how to use it

Step 1: Build it. Check! ✔️ (Mostly? I ran out of t-track so there's a small area of the wasteboard that's incomplete while I wait for more to come in the mail. But c'mon! Close enough for credit, right?!)

I have definitely started learning. I've already broken one router bit by setting up a carve that was too aggressive. Failures lead to the best learnings!

Goal 4: Wean down to no soda

This one might also require some re-thinking. Ideally I would avoid soda completely. I'm sure most doctors would agree that would be the best thing. But on the keto diet I personally find the complete lack of sweets to be crazy. I don't know how people do it. I've been drinking Diet Mountain Dew (#notsponsored) for a really long time, and since it's 0 calorie (or close enough to round down) and 0 carbs, and it satisfies my sweet tooth, I'm willing to flex on this.

I still believe that reducing soda consumption would be beneficial to my health, but if I can keep soda levels where they are and it enables me to hit weight and body fat goals that would be otherwise (nearly?) unattainable, is that an acceptable trade? I think it might be.

Unofficial goals:

There are also a few things that I didn't include in my official list, but that I was trying to stay on top of as if they were official goals anyway. In particular, gratitude journaling and being diligent with backups of my Hackintosh.