Monday 14 November 2016

Diet & Exercise update - Weeks 36 & 37

Another couple of weeks where I didn't manage to stick to my diet plan (too many after dinner snacks) or reach my exercise goals (too little walking at lunch time to reach my daily step count target). On a positive note I did manage to reduce the amount of snack food I ate last week, and seem to finally getting back into my diet routine. I've been doing some regular air pistol training with my SCATT apparatus, but although I can shoot well when using SCATT at home it hasn't yet resulted in any improvement in my scores when shooting at the club or at competitions. Hopefully that will come when I get conditioned by doing daily practice (and if I start doing daily 5BX aerobic fitness exercises).

The swimming pool had started to turn green once the weather warmed up in October (the pool pump had stopped running a few months ago), so I spend some time getting the pump working again and cleaning the salt chlorinator (so it doesn't keep triggering the 'no flow' warming and stopping the pump every 5 minutes!). After scooping out a whole lot of leaves and palm fronds from the bottom of the pool and 'super-chlorinating' it a week ago, the pool is now looking OK for swimming (DS2 had a quick dip yesterday), and I'll vacuum it and backwash the sand filter tonight. Now that the weather has warmed up and daylight savings time is in effect, I'll be able to start swimming some laps every day when I get home from work. A combination of walking 12,000 steps, swimming 50x8m laps, and doing 5BX and some weight and SCATT training every day should get me quite a bit fitter over the summer months, and help me shed some more kilos (if I can cut out the junk snack food!).


.             Fibre      Carbs    Fat     Protein    kCals     Avg Wt   Steps
              g/dy       %        %       g/dy       /dy       kg       /dy
Week 32       35.8       58.5     27.1     96.3      3,223     93.2      7,746
Week 33       51.1       60.9     25.6    120.2      3,747     93.9      8,214
Week 34       50.9       63.7     21.4    115.6      3,353     94.2      9,071
Week 35       33.3       63.0     22.2    118.9      3,434     94.6      9,149
Week 36       36.7       60.2     24.3    129.9      3,578     95.2      9,592
Week 37       43.2       60.5     22.9    127.7      3,208     95.6      6,560

My main goals for this week are to stick to my diet plan, walk at least 10,000 steps/day, and start doing some daily swimming and 5BX. I should also keep up my daily SCATT training, and do some preparation work for resuming my Msc/PhD enrolment in the new year... lots to do!

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Wednesday 2 November 2016

Net Worth: October 2016

The weakness in the stock market during the past month adversely affected my retirement savings and geared stock portfolio. This was somewhat offset by the increase in valuation of our home. As usual I used the purchase/transfer value for my hobby farm, rather than attempting to calculate a current 'market value'. I also haven't included the 'stock units' recently allocated to me by my employer, as they don't 'vest' for three years. When the time comes I'll start including the current market valuation of any 'vested' stock units. The annual amount isn't material to my overall NW, as the stock allocation is based on 5% of current salary, but may accumulate to a nice little 'nest egg' if I stay with my current employer until retirement.



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Tuesday 1 November 2016

Diet & Exercise update - Weeks 34 & 35

I came down with the 'flu a couple of weeks ago, and I'm still getting over a persistent cough. So my daily step count was below my target for the past couple of weeks, and I also didn't go to the Thursday evening 'social' squash comp (the hour of squash with the family on Sunday was hard enough while having the 'flu). I also still haven't managed to completely eliminate 'junk' food from my diet, or avoid buying confectionery when I go grocery shopping. So not too much progress on the 'diet' side of things.

I've started going again to target shooting (air pistol) at my local club again on Saturday mornings (I hadn't been since the beginning of the year), and I entered a couple of local competitions during the past month. I scored around 515-520 at the club shoots and the state championship, so my initial goal is to get back to my old 'A grade' standard (of 20+ years ago) and I aim to be shooting around 540-560 by the end of this year.

I set up my old SCATT training system (fortunately I still have a desktop computer that has a serial port, and could install a more recent version of the SCATT software that still supports the old SCATT hardware) so I can do some regular 'dry fire' practice in the evenings. I will also need to start doing some conditioning training (5BX every evening would be a good start), and do some regular weight training with light weights and high reps to improve my AM (arc of movement). If I improve enough to be regularly shooting 550+ again at competitions (which would be good enough to get me into the 'finals' of most events), I'll think seriously about upgrading my air pistol next year. I'm currently still using the old Feinwerkbau model 100 that I bought in the early 1980s, so upgrading to a new Stery EVO 10 would make sense (and look less ridiculous at competitions) once my scores are back to 'A grade' standard. While the cost of a new target air pistol is fairly modest (~A$3400), it will be a hassle to get the required paperwork from the state firearms registry, and to fabricate a part to mount the SCATT sensor onto the new pistol. I also no idea how I will manage to find the time to resume working on my part-time PhD in 2017 and fit in daily target practice - but not watching any more TV in the evenings will be a good start!

.             Fibre      Carbs    Fat     Protein    kCals     Avg Wt   Steps
              g/dy       %        %       g/dy       /dy       kg       /dy
Week 30       39.2       53.2     31.7    119.6      3,499     91.6      9,685
Week 31       38.8       55.2     30.5    126.6      3,820     92.3      7,111
Week 32       35.8       58.5     27.1     96.3      3,223     93.2      7,746
Week 33       51.1       60.9     25.6    120.2      3,747     93.9      8,214
Week 34       50.9       63.7     21.4    115.6      3,353     94.2      9,071
Week 35       33.3       63.0     22.2    118.9      3,434     94.6      9,149

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