TLDR: Hitting on Sixteen FTW

Too Long Dad Recap

My wife and I celebrated our 16-year wedding anniversary this week. I was a first-year investment banking analyst in NYC, she was finishing up her last semester of college in Boston. I took my first ever day off one Friday, and headed down to the NYC County Clerk Office to meet my girlfriend and get married.

Some call it eloping. We just didn’t want to spend the money or the time with the trappings of a big wedding. At the blackjack table, sometimes hitting on 16 makes you a winner. Some would consider eloping right out of college before you meet her parents a risk, but it’s been a winner so far.

This year, my primary gift to the wife was the flowers you see here (16 roses, 1 for each year). The other gift was an eating challenge where I ate what she ate for a day. That meant a foamy, milky coffee with a bunch of agave in it, a few pieces of avocado toast, and some small cakes from the local French Bakery.

I recorded footage of the challenge, which I will turn into a new YouTube video in the next weeks.

Coming up with a special way to celebrate in the COVID-19 WFH environment is probably a common challenge for everyone out there, especially those with kids and no babysitting support. Comment below if you came up with anything other than a movie night with some takeout (or basically the same thing we do every Saturday).

Speaking of YouTube, I posted two more videos since last Sunday, read about them and watch them in this post.

Things I Watched This Week:

• MattDoesFitness released a video today highlighting how easy it is to manipulate how you appear in photos. The video was interesting to me on two levels:
  • First, as a reminder that what you see in your mirror in bad lighting should not match what you see from fitness stars on the Internet, all of which are experts at manipulating photos (even without photoshop)
  • Second, Matt offered some helpful tips on how to look ripped in photos, which will help me become a fitness star on the Internet…
• I watched some old Chappelle Show episode this week, now that they are available on Netflix. Couple of quick takeaways:
  • Some of it still slaps hard, but other stuff didn’t so much
  • It will be a while before I can show it to my kids

Things I Ate This Week: Thai Food?

In general, with training and eating, I was not on point this week. Calories got away from me and I didn’t move as much as I have been. People don’t get or stay lean very long, because they can’t keep up the discipline and cardio pace when they get past their body’s set point.

But, I have renewed resolve for the upcoming week.

• The biggest calorie day was my anniversary, when we ordered a ton of Thai Food to celebrate, and I crushed way too much Pad Thai and Pad See Ew.
• Bodyweight fluctuated wildly around that day, bouncing from 164 to 168 to 163 in 3 consecutive days
  • After boasting about all the weight I lost in a video, I was pretty alarmed to see 168lbs on the scale this week.
  • What calmed me down was the bodyfat analyzer device I have that indicated 7.9%, down from the day prior.
  • I know the bodyfat analyzer is wrong (i.e. I am not 8%)
  • But I’ve tracked that number for more than a year now, I do trust its directional accuracy.
  • The number has gone from 12% this time last year to 16% in February and down to 8% now.
• Gotta hold myself accountable and get back after it this week at least for another 1.5 weeks until Thanksgiving!

• 

• 

Things I Lifted This Week:

This week I started the Juggernaut A.I. Powerbuilding program, customized for me and my goals. It starts with a hypertrophy block, so that meant lots of high rep sets for the main movements. The first block builds for a few weeks, then it calls for me to hit a 10 rep set at RPE 10.

• 

• 

• 

• Primary lifts this week were hit for sets of 10 or 8 for deadlifts, including:
  • Squats: 10 reps at 190lbs (next week that goes to 10 reps at 205-215)
  • Overhead Press: 10 reps at 105lbs
  • Bench Press: 10 reps at 155lbs, 175/180 next week
  • Deadlifts: 8 reps at 255lbs, 275lbs next week
• I went off program after my new flat bench was delivered to try some heavy bench press.
  • Better leverages from the more stable and lower bench helped me hit 255lbs, better than my 1 rep max when tested a few weeks ago.
  • Posted the footage and got a few tips from Instagram friends. Most notably, I maybe should flare my elbows out some and widen my grip further.
  • Also, I was offered the cue of pulling my chest up to meet the bar.
  • Good, free advice is one of the primary benefits of posting lifting footage on Instagram.
• Daily 400 walking lunge streak is up to 136 days!
  • I resorted twice this week to crisscrossing the basement 6 lunges at a time
  • Coach.me is the app I use to keep track of habits like the lunging. It tracks how many times a week I do lots of things I want to do more of (reading, sleeping 8 hours, reading 30min a day, etc.)
• I somehow didn’t get as much cardio in this week as I did in prior weeks, just didn’t have the time this week.
  • I got my steps and lunges in every day, but no incline treadmill walks or rowing.
  • That will change this week!

Dad Report: Candy-Gate

This weekend, we had an intense parenting situation that it turns out we totally screwed up. We found some fun size chocolate strewn about on the floor near the pantry, and we immediately assumed one of the kids was sneaking into their Halloween candy and got sloppy.

My wife held an interrogation, no one fessed up to sneaking the candy. We made threats, poured their candy into a single large trash bag (that weighed like 20lbs!). Everyone went to bed feeling horrible.

But, it turned out they were all telling the truth and we were wrong. We pieced together that the dog had been involved. We justified our actions, because each of the kids has been caught sneaking various things before (my son sneaks his kindle and a light under his sheets to read after lights out, so not too deviant!).

Parenting: Calibrating Your Energy

My wife and I could do a better job of not creating energy around things like video games, junk food and candy. You want to teach your kids that those things can be dangerous done to excess.

But when you label those things as bad, when you go to the other extreme of restriction, the energy that’s created around those “forbidden” items can backfire on you as a parent. It can lead to obsessive behavior, can fuel addiction, and can lead to extreme indulgence later in life. There’s no magic formula for getting them to be able to exercise moderation on their own.

Threading that needle is just one of the many challenging issues that face you as a parent. A happy medium is usually the best answer. We’ve got rules around “electronics” usage (kids aren’t allowed to do them at all during the week). We let them have a treat most days if they’ve earned it. But we can swing too far the other way at times. Good luck figuring it all out.

Thanks, have a great week, keep it on the DL!