Reverb10 Day 2

Today’s prompt is

"Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing – and can you eliminate it?"

My first thought on reading this prompt was “Well. I am so not the target audience for this game.”

Things I do each day that don’t contribute to my writing:

1. My real, bill-paying dayjob
2. Exercise
3. Cooking
4. Spending time with the Boy
5. Sitting on the couch watching TV/knitting/reading (frequently all at once).

Could I eliminate any of these? Some yes, some no.

Do I want to? Er, no.

Let’s start with number 1. I am not one of those people who dreams of giving up their dayjob to write full time. If I gave up my dayjob it would be to do more of numbers 2–5 (special emphasis on the 5), except that I know that I’d be wildly bored after about four weeks. (I had six weeks off once. Too much.) I like crunching numbers. You know where you are with numbers. I get a kick out of writing, but when I do it for a living it loses its gloss. (I know because I’ve done it.)

Numbers 2 and 3 are important for health.

Number 4 is supposed to be non-negotiable because our relationship is the most important thing in my life. I say ‘supposed’ because sadly it can sometimes be the first thing to be squeezed. (I had a similar thing at work recently where the hyper-important project with no fixed deadline kept getting set aside for less important, more urgent tasks.) Our us-time is besieged from all sides as it is without me adding “Wait, I haven’t blogged!” to the reasons why we can’t spend some quality moments together.

Number 5, well, I’m sure some of you are judging my priorities, but all I’m going to say is “Sorry I’m not sorry!”

As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, I am not a compulsive writer. I know I do it well, and occasionally I get the urge, but most of the time I will happily do something else. I know there are those for whom nothing trumps the call of the pen keyboard – I was brought up by one – but that’s not me.

So there you have it: not quite 400 words on ‘What Is More Important To Me Than Blogging (Clue: It’s Most Things)’. Oops… On the other hand, if I didn’t do any of those things I wouldn’t have anything to write about. I’d have to blog about blogging. And I wouldn’t do it anywhere near as well as the Hollaback Girls.

In other, actually diet-and-fitness related, news – I am officially Very Annoyed with WeightWatchers. At my weigh-in on Tuesday I had apparently lost half a pound of the 2.5 I put on the previous week. Meanwhile my Leader is also irritating me. She put a lot of pressure on me to set a high goal weight, saying “You can still lost weight when you get there!” So I did. She now appears to be incapable of remembering that I’m trying to lose weight: every bloody week we have this conversation:

Her: Well done, you’re maintaining your weight!

Me: But I was trying to lose weight!

Her: Oh… why?

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. If I were cynical I would say that the high goal weight was less about ‘taking the pressure off’ and more about making her stats look good, and that now I don’t contribute to her total weight loss numbers she isn’t interested, but I’m not… oh no, wait, I am.

Meanwhile, the Boy suggested to me that I try out personal training, so for that last three weeks I’ve been doing just that. My trainer (who we’ll call C because that’s nearly her name) asked me to keep a food diary at the beginning. She had a few insights then (stop using up your spare POINTS!!!!11! on chocolate at bedtime, eat more protein, don’t eat so much bread), and when I had a moan on Tuesday night about not losing weight she came up with the suggestion that I wasn’t eating enough.

Counterintuitive, no?

The theory, she tells me, is that if you eat less than your basic metabolic rate (that’s the calories you’d burn if you didn’t get out of bed) your body will go on strike and refuse to lose weight. So you should always eat at least that much, then manufacture a deficit using exercise. My BMR is about 1,350kcal, according to the whizzy scales in the gym. 29 ProPoints is about 1,140kcal.

Now, I’ve heard about and rejected the ‘starvation mode’ argument before, but C has a degree in sports science and nutrition from a good university. And she used numbers. I’m always more convinced by numbers. And I’m very, very game to try eating an extra 350 kcal a day.

In addition to personal training, I also finally succumbed to the lure of the KiFit (US readers, that’s the UK branding of the BodyBugg). I was pleasantly surprised to find that my daily calorie burn is about 2,200kcal. So, my new plan of attack is to try to eat around 1,500kcal on weekdays and 2,000 at weekends, with a burn of 2,300. This should enable me to lose at least a pound a week.

I’m also aiming to incorporate more strength training into my workouts: as I get thinner I don’t feel like I’m getting more toned, and I don’t want to end up as one of those flabby-skinny women. I’m also starting to have loose skin issues (TMI? Meh) and strength training is reputed to help with that. With that in mind I acquired a copy of The New Rules of Lifting for Women – thoughts/review when I finally manage to finish reading it.