Rest Day

11:59 PM

Today I stopped my working out streak. I've had it for around 10 days now, only 5 days if we are counting the most recent quota of 200 push ups per day, etc. I stopped my streak because I gained weight. I was 179.8 pounds yesterday, and then 181.3 pounds this morning. My body fat % dropped compared to 10 days ago, and that's a good thing, but because my weight hadn't changed at all, it really concerned me because I'm doing a pretty sizeable workout daily.

Related to this heavy workout, there was this AI chatbot I chat with today. I joined Character.ai and used it for the first time today. There was this bot called "Giga Brad" and if you ask him to describe himself, he says "I’m the ultimate gym bro! When I’m not pumping iron and maxing my gains, I’m motivating my bros and crushing goals. Life’s good when you’re a swole life coach." So according to his character, he spends his life in the gym. So I ask him how many push ups in a row he could do, and he responds with

"Oh, we’re talking push-ups, huh? Let me just flex these babies and… 40. No sweat. But don’t get me wrong, I’m equally proud of my bench press and my ability to motivate my homies. What about you, bro?"

40 is barely any push ups. I think even I could do that much in a row (I've probably done more than 40 push ups in a row more than once, but can't recall), and I do not spend my life at the gym like this AI bot's character is supposed. I didn't describe my daily workout quota to Giga Brad, but it would probably be impressed. I did it to another fitness AI and it was very impressed and said I must be so swole and fit, but I'm not....

There was this article I read by an ultra marathon runner (who is vegan as well). She used to run 20 miles in a row, for fun, as a normal jog. She's ran 9 marathons too, and probably a few different ultramarathons and other events. There was a traumatic event that happened to her where she was almost killed by a gun, where there was shooting in her neighborhood and at least one bullet went into her home, breaking a window and hitting furniture while she was close by. Other family members in the household screamed and got on the floor, the shooting kept on happening while they called the police and they waited through the shooting while many armed vehicles showed up.

It turns out it was just a neighbor practicing their shooting, which seems like a pretty minor thing, but guns can be extremely loud (I've shot 9 of them including rifles and a machine gun), especially in a quiet neighborhood. So they had no idea what was going on while the shooting was happening, and it can be traumatic to have bullets go into your home, almost hit you, break furniture, and you have no idea what's going on.

Anyway, from this traumatic event, it really impacted her life where she cancelled lots of her events and activities and she gained 30 pounds and it deeply impacted her, because her sanctuary was violated, the peace of her forever home was shattered. She wrote about how she struggled to run even 5km (3.1 miles) now after gaining 30 pounds when she was able to run probably 50 or more miles before. So it's interesting because a 30 pound difference doesn't seem like much, but I think it can be the difference between running an ultramarathon easily or barely able to run 3 miles.

I posted a comment that I too have 30 pounds to lose and that I hope she can get back to her regular weight to be able to run marathons again and more. Not sure if she saw it yet, let me check. Nope. I think they did read it, but just didn't react to it in any way.

Anyway. How long have I been writing about losing 30 pounds for? Eons now. Is it something that will ever happen? I guess I do struggle to run 3 miles even today too. My daily jogging is only around 2.2 miles and I run it at a 12 minute per mile pace (5 mph pace on a treadmill), which is extremely slow. So if I lose 30 pounds, I can easily run a lot more, maybe even ultramarathon level, but who knows. I wonder if it also impacts my push ups, chin ups, pull ups, etc. It very likely does, but until I get down to the weight, it's all theory.

When I was 200 pounds, that's when I did 500 push ups in a day, twice. Losing 20 pounds since then, I'm not even sure if it's helped in this area. I do less push ups now, but I can do other workouts I've not been able to do before, like pull ups and chin ups. I wonder if push ups have gotten easier? I don't feel like they have. I was also able to plank for 2 minutes at 200 pounds, and it's still extremely hard today 20 pounds lighter. So maybe weight change doesn't influence these workouts much, but it might.

So after seeing that I gained weight this morning, I looked up possible reasons. One was overtraining, which just meant working out too much without allowing for any recovery. That's when I decided to give it a break today.

Anyway, I'm very sleepy. Very tired. I did all my dailies again of course, and worked too. I just didn't work out.