I've found my new approach with The Wall to be encouraging, even for a Saturday. It makes me consider moving away from working out to reach a certain minute mark, and instead, train to lose a set amount of calories. That's what we're doing, isn't it? For weightloss, it's chiefly about the calorie burn—as it has been said,

I feel my temperature rising, higher, higher; it's burning through to my soul!

Minutes logged doesn't directly impact the scale and the waistline. It's the calories burned! But, we don't say I'm going on a 250-calorie run or whatever, it's a 30-minute run.

This approach clearly has its difficulties. Unfortunately, we're not embedded with calorie counters like the clock currency of Justin Timberlake's In Time. Thus, calorie expenditure is a generalized approached with a little faith toward the engineers from NordicTrack and Sole. And while I wish there was a way to have those estimations to be spot on, as long as the machines are consistent, then they can be used as a metric.

This calorie vs time approach has its benefits. Honestly, I don't get amped up in making a minor goal to put in X amount of minutes of cardio a day. It's an indirect approach to go after what I really want. However, if I say my training goal today is to reach a sum of 1500 calories or whatever for the day, then I can see the direct results of what I'm trying accomplish. I actually find this more motivational than any step count. It's 1500 calories that I would have relied on my BMR to lose and 1500 calories less come weigh-in time. That mindset is extremely satisfying.

I'm bringing my FitBit back online. After everything I said in my last post, I realized that maybe I can both preserve and maul that proverbial cake.

I reworked The Wall to include:

1. Hours slept to setup each day;
2. Calories burned as estimated by my treadmill and elliptical;
3. Minutes performed in a resistance routine;
4. Daily steps to 7:30 PM;
5. Calories consumed for the day.

For all of its tedium, successful sleep is a sneaky component of weightloss wins.

To make room for the additional data columns and for clarity, I removed the columns that didn't contribute much information for my daily purposes: macro % and net carbs— strategically important, but insignificant for me to see on a daily basis. Finally, I took down the star system as its checkbox approach that wasn't working for me.

I broke the 53-row, mega table apart so as to have a table for each week, again for clarity.

Lastly, I created a summary table on top to provide daily averages by week.

My hope that this new version of The Wall will strike down inactivity and promote additional gains.

If my status on The Wall is any indicator, I've had a lousy training stretch. I haven't hit 20,000 steps in over a week and I only have 5 stars in a week—by far, the worst workout stretch.

The stars and step count aren't precise. It's just an indicator toward an overall approach. The calorie intake is a far more telling approach of my overall success. As it relates to training, since my approach is cardio and not resistance, the step count has a positive correlation thing going on to training status.

Lately, things turned south with it...

Can I be burning out without recognizing it? Physically, I feel fine with my morning, lunch, and dinner workouts. I just wind up lowering their priority. Of course, this is in context to the gym/neck stuff. Early the other morning, I even pulled a foot muscle while in that waking period of movement. gargh Waking up is so awkward!

I am moving away from FitBit as I examine whether its a motivator or a demotivator. When I hit my daily step goals, I recognize that it's something I passively achieve from a tactical standpoint and success is only achieved with a 40,000 foot view. As it is something I cannot substantially change in one workout, is it motivating? HOWEVER, I do find it demotivating if I fail to fall into my mark. Indeed, there were days when I put in more work, but is not reflected accurately in a step count. For that matter, a Fitbit doesn't know if I'm on a 0% incline or 15%. In fact, I am influenced to make it easier so as to have a higher step count to give the appearance of a better day.

Thus, if I intend to use The Wall as a motivational tool, I need one that better motivates. But, how I record my progress isn't the chief issue; clearly, an argument can be made that it exacerbates the issue.

I don't want to discount that on some level in my psyche, the possibility of burnout. Perhaps, that is poorly defined. I don't think it is so much burnout but a saturation. Morning, day, night— it is like I adopted a mindset of hanging at a Tube stop. Miss the train and I'll just pick up the next one. Sure, each workout has is different, but the mindset at its entrance is the same.

No, I need to restore my workouts to their rightful place. And to further promulgate less is more, I'm going to slash my workouts down. No lunch, no dinner ones AND trim an hour off the morning.

Instead of a generalized, unfocused approach of these past few weeks, I want an enhanced focus with specific reasons why I choose the things I do and how they will enable me further.

...ugh for now, it's another morning with this bleeping foot sprain.