TL;DR: I worked out a lot over the holiday season and it was both good and bad. Enjoy!
After the heartbreak I found myself enduring at the end of last year, I found myself dreading my annual leave time over the Christmas break. The man who had purported himself to be one of my dreams, a man to whom I had spoken almost daily since April, was set to come over to Australia from Canada, and meet me, with the prospects of a relationship moving forward. However, life being what it is and the fact that the universe hates me and always has, this did not come to pass, and I was left in a pool of disappointment and tears.
So, I naturally thought that the best way to get through this was to go to the gym. A lot. I decided that I’d undertake a program of two workouts per day, every day, from the day my annual leave started on Friday 21 December, until I went back to work on Monday 7 January. That would be 17 days inclusive, 34 workouts in total. Prior to this I did six workouts per week: three Powerlifting and three Olympic lifting.
This is the wrap up.
Facts:
So, I did 32 workouts in 17 days, AMA!
After the heartbreak I found myself enduring at the end of last year, I found myself dreading my annual leave time over the Christmas break. The man who had purported himself to be one of my dreams, a man to whom I had spoken almost daily since April, was set to come over to Australia from Canada, and meet me, with the prospects of a relationship moving forward. However, life being what it is and the fact that the universe hates me and always has, this did not come to pass, and I was left in a pool of disappointment and tears.
So, I naturally thought that the best way to get through this was to go to the gym. A lot. I decided that I’d undertake a program of two workouts per day, every day, from the day my annual leave started on Friday 21 December, until I went back to work on Monday 7 January. That would be 17 days inclusive, 34 workouts in total. Prior to this I did six workouts per week: three Powerlifting and three Olympic lifting.
This is the wrap up.
Facts:
- I did 32 workouts in 17 days. Missed one on Christmas Day, missed another one on a day when my body just wanted to go back to bed and then eat a lot of food. I’m pretty good at listening to my body these days when it comes to stuff like that, so I complied with that request at the time
- I went to two branches of my gym to spread it out a bit. Both weeks I did three personal training sessions with my trainer where we focussed on Olympic lifting. In three other sessions I did a straight up 5 x 5 of the three powerlifts and then often an EMOM of that same lift straight after. All other sessions were up for grabs in terms of what I felt like doing at the time. This included a lot of machine work where I would work myself up from the lightest weight to the heaviest I could manage for a 3 x 6 or 3 x 8, and a lot of metcons involving kettlebell swings, dead ball slams, pushups, situps and squats. Examples of days shown here. Some days I spent upwards of three to four hours at the gym spread across two sessions, but this included lots of rest periods and just taking my time
- Amount of money I would have if I was given one dollar for each time I re-racked someone else’s weights. I once got to the leg press and saw 160kgs worth of plates on there that I had to rerack
- Amount of times I cried in my car, either in the carpark or driving home post workout, because I was tired and what I really wanted to be doing was showing a hot Canadian dude the sites of my home town
- Number of matches on Tinder and Bumble that I got while swiping at the gym: probably 30. Number of dates this resulted in: exactly zero. Number of those 30 men that called me a milf and said something or other about anal sex: way too many, though of course any number higher than zero is too many on that score. Number of men from my gym who saw me on Bumble / Tinder and decided to slide into my DMs on IG to ask me for sex: two, and they’re both complete dickheads
- I was out of the house a lot and thus couldn’t mope too much
- I was surrounded by people. While I only ever work out with my personal trainer or by myself (that is, no classes or with gym friends) just being among people, even if I didn’t talk to them or engage with them, was comforting and familiar
- I burned a lot of calories. I couldn’t even begin to keep up with the calories I needed, partially because exercise suppresses my appetite rather than stimulates it, though made a concerted effort to have more protein in the form of protein shakes. I probably missed entering a few packets of chips and Ferrero Rochers, but I wouldn’t be out by more than a few hundred calories all up. Also, due to an autoimmune disease I have called achalasia, I get food stuck in my oesophagus pretty regularly and have to go and regurgitate it, but I didn’t minus those calories from the total (I am not looking into the toilet and estimating how many grams of steak / potatoes / gnocchi / bolognaise just came back up). I may do a ‘refeed’ next week. In terms of whether I lost weight I don’t know, since I don’t weigh myself. I do know that my legs and glutes are swollen from, I assume, water retention (three leg days in a row will do that to you) and that my pencil skirt was a bloody tight fit this morning
- I went out for a lot of meals. My plan was to go to the gym in the morning, go out for breakfast, go home and nap, then go to the gym again before coming home for dinner, or sometimes swapping the external meal if I wanted to come straight home after the morning workout. I ate out something like ten times. Not as many as I’d said I would, but still a respectable amount nonetheless
- I lost bodyfat. Before and after picture here, you can see my stomach is more ‘toned’. Photo doesn’t show the increased arm definition, but that is there as well. When I returned to work yesterday a colleague said that my face looked thinner
- I slept well. The length and quality of my sleep was much improved (though of course a lot of that has to do with not having to get up at 5.45am for work!), but I also snored less
- I pulled a 5 rep bench press PR (61.5kgs, up from 52.5kgs) and also snatched so well I got up to second place on the leaderboard
- Working out was a much better pastime than drinking myself into a coma, or fantasising about doing so. This is the third holiday period I’ve been clean and sober, and was by far the easiest one to get through
- I drank way too much black coffee and the resulting heartburn was pretty intense at times
- I once did the maths wrong and had twice the amount of protein I’d intended to have (three servings rather than 1.5). I could just about have left the earth’s atmosphere with the power of my farts
- You could very easily make the argument that I used working out and the resultant exhaustion as a way of not dealing with my feelings of heartbreak
- I got very sick of my workout playlist, and the insides of my ears hurt from my earbuds
- My joints began to hurt. Muscles were fine (only a small amount of muscle pain), but my knees and left elbow were notably sore. I assume they’ll come good in days to come
- The amount of laundry I had to do. It’s summer in Australia and when I worked out last Friday it was 111 degrees F. Sweat happens, that’s all I’m saying
So, I did 32 workouts in 17 days, AMA!
