2025-09-22
• weeknotes • 1600 words
My weeknotes for the week 2025-09-15 to 2025-09-21.
(Also, this technically marks the end of 200 Days to Offload but I can't be asked to post specifically to celebrate it!)
It's been a good, busy week, with a lot going on. At the same time, a week like this has not been good for my health and fitness etc.
I felt tired in the morning so I ended up skipping the gym. I worked, then in the evening cooked my lunch for the week, went shopping, and saw friends.
Work of course, and then in the evening I chatted to my mum, and played some mandolin. I'm starting on Bach's Cello Suite #1 and was annotating the notes onto Constanza Mazurka. I'm quite slow at it.
Because we have a Macmillan cake day event at work tomorrow, I cooked a banana bread. My mother baked a guinness cake but we can't take it in as she fears it might contain plastic.
The cake day event was fun but I ended up eating a lot of calories. There was no other vegan food so I ate my banana bread. In the evening, I went for Italian (pizza) and saw Tosca at the opera house. Anna Natrebko was starring in it as the lead role, and was downright incredible. My seat was far away though so I didn't get as good a view as I would have liked. Tosca is very good. The lady to my left was quite good conversation and interpreted my reading a book as a prompt for conversation, which I greatly appreciate!
Of course, the issue with going for the opera is that I get back late. I did indeed (bed around half one in the morning) and then had to go back into work so an early rise too.
The office was pretty quiet but there was still a lot of leftover cake. All this is wreaking havoc on my diet.
The show in the evening was Sicilian Vespers, which was... good, if slightly repetitive. It was four hours long and didn't need to be so long. I bought a standing ticket which I greatly regret, although even sitting for that long is not pleasant.
I skipped on a swim in the morning (due to tiredness), and idled away the morning a little bit. We had our musical soiree at lunchtime which was very fun! I didn't feel nervous about playing yet once I started I noticed my hands were shaking and were sweaty, so evidently I was nervous. I played Norwegian Wood with my mother (the mandolin part is fairly simple, she played piano) and Losing my Religion. I made many mistakes. At the end, we played Losing my Religion to the studio track with a singalong, which worked well and lessened the pressure on me when I made mistakes (which I still did). I have to also realise that what sounds horrible to my ears sounds a lot better to others. Even if I record myself playing and hear it back, it sounds decent, and mistakes are not as crushingly painful as when heard from the player's point of view.
In the evening, we went to a bhakti yoga event. It was a similar experience to at the temple, and was downright lovely. I declined the milk this time as I did not trust that it was ethically obtained like with the milk from the Bhaktivedanta manor, yet still would have had some milk in the rice and the cake. Oh well, not a terrible blunder.
In the morning I walked up to town to have breakfast and tea with my mother, and buy printer ink. I want to print out a few bits of music. Then, around lunchtime, we got on the train to go to the rave. My friend brought along one of his mates who was good company. The rave itself was lovely: basically a chance to get a little drunk and dance along to some music that is very easy to dance to. Everybody respects your space quite well. Had a few small chats with people but nothing deep.
Around eight (the rave ended at nine) I fell a little depressed and was contemplating things. My friend came over to talk though I didn't exactly want to discuss it with him. It was about the issue I have around women: I find myself in a bit of a bind where I am generally attracted to them (in the sense that I am heterosexual) but lose attraction incredibly easily. Whenever women try to appeal to me I lose attraction: that can be as simple as wearing revealing clothing say, which one sees a lot at the rave. It disgusts me a little bit to be totally honest.
I'm not exactly sure what to do on it. It is likely the reason why, whilst I have been going to singles mixers a fair bit, I never find myself attracted enough to anyone to make a move in that way. I talk a lot with people and have a good time yet never find anyone (even ostensibly attractive women) who I would want to pursue for a relationship.
Too much detail here and I haven't thought it through properly. I have been wondering of late if I should just try to force myself into dating a little bit so I am actually giving it a go, and seeing more in depth how the experience is, instead of simply going to mixers just to chat. Not sure. I feel like if I did force myself, I would end up in a pretty terrible mood: some of this stuff makes me physically sick.
It still has a long way to go in terms of improvement, but I had 16h 45m in total across the week, which works out to 2h 23m per day. Some days were around an hour. Better, but still not where I want it to be. Still, happy about that.
80,359 steps. That equates to around 40km walked and 2500 kcal burnt apparently, and is about 11,479 per day. Not terrible at all. I actually barely walked at all on Monday, and only 5000 steps on Saturday, but made up for it with 15k on Friday and 28k on Sunday. I'm not particularly trying for steps, this is of course just what I am getting from going about places. I haven't specifically been for a walk at all this week.
I am still reading The Gift. Page 287 of 332 so will end up finishing it this week I reckon. I have therefore read 59 pages this week: not a lot, but I have been busy with other things.
For the second week in a row, I have not studied at all.
For the second week in a row, no progress - still 53 pages in.
See above.
See above.
I of course had the soiree to attend, so performed in front of others for the first time this week! I also did some practise on Bach's first cello suite.
I've found a sonatina by Beethoven for the piano and mandolin, which I might try to practise to play with my mum.
For the second week in a row, I have not practised. I'm thinking of swapping violin to biweekly lessons (of course, I haven't had lessons the past two weeks as I've been busy).
I did not go to the gym once nor did I swim.
(The figures here are very inaccurate as I barely even recorded food for Saturday and Sunday, and a lot of the calories from alcohol and cake are estimations. Still, it gets the general picture across I think.)
My current weight is around 10 st 6 lb. My approximate maintenance calories would be 2282 kcal per day.
My total calories for the week were 17,270 kcal (2,467 kcal daily average). This is a surplus of 185.14 kcal, resulting in likely weight gain of 0.37 lbs based on maintenance calories.
Bad!
So, where did most of this come from? Cake and alcohol essentially. I had 3200 - 3400 calories in Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. Thursday saw likely 750 calories of banana bread, 500 calories of guinness cake plus a pizza in the evening for likely a thousand calories: 1250 of bad calories at least then. Friday saw likely 600 calories of banana bread and 500 from guinness cake, as well as calories from three protein bars (to the tune of 690 calories) that I ate during the opera. Sunday saw likely 2000 calories from alcohol (between cider and vodka-cokes).
Worse still, my sleep has been severely compromised on all four of these days, and I have not been going to the gym nor swimming.
As such, next week I really need to get back on a good track. It's not the end of the world: it takes my expected total weight loss from 2.7 lb to 2.3 lb.
My average daily protein intake was 63 g: 10.3% of calories, and about 0.4 g per lb of body weight and 0.52 g per lb of lean mass. Again not great but that goes back to the diet as mentioned.
A lot of my spring bulbs have arrived so I need to do some work on that and general gardening next week. Monday I will skip the gym but I need to get back into it, and swimming as well if I can (at least on the weekend mornings) too.
In terms of events, I have two: strings and keyboard to listen to on the Thursday evening, and a dating event on the Friday. So those days are (to an extent) write-offs, but I can be good for the rest of the days.