At the start of 2022 I made the plan to not do the monthly expense reports because, well they are boring. The idea was to do a quarterly update and so free up time (and energy) to do some more, interesting posts. It’s safe to say we all know how that went …
Sure I have some excuses (like my back going kaput) but the main reason is I was and still am a bit burned out on the whole idea of FIRE. At 48 years old now, the RE part isn’t going to happen. And I also knew 2022 wasn’t going to be a frugal year for me. So writing a FIRE blog, well it kinda feels a bit fake you know? To be honest, I am still struggling with that but some people are kind enough to worry about my well being since my last post was in the middle of some serious back issues. So to put everybody’s mind at ease (and perhaps also because I do not like to abandon something half finished) I’ll give a catch up. We’ll see after that if I continu this blog or respawn at a place more aligned with where I am now in my life.
So let’s get some expense reports out of the way!
January
February
March
Income
3 843,42
2 296,00
2 307,00
Expenses
1 460,75
1 526,67
2 772,33
Savings
2 382,67
769,33
– 465,33
Savings rate
61,99%
33,51%
-20,17%
Income Q1 2022
Not a lot needs to be said here. It’s basically my income from work and a few new year gifts.
Expenses Q1 of 2023
Expenses are also the usual for the most part: mortgage, food, filling up the tank of my Vespa .,,
A few noticable expenses:
220 euro for kettlebells. I bought 2 x 20 kg kettlebells. One for home and one for work so I wouldn’t need to lug 20 kgs back and forth to work. I used it for about a month, then ruined my back and now I am too afraid to use it again in fear of ruining my back once more!
I gave 100 euro to an animal rescue (https://forrestandfriends.be/) since we adopted a pig for them. They actually charge less for it as pigs are difficult to place but I like what they do so included a gift. Q1 of 2022 was tough with a pet pig we had for 10+ years dying and also one of the kittens we adopted suddenly dying. For the moment both my wife and I are still lucky to have our parents but we do realize we are now at the age where funerals might be more frequent than marriages.
Speaking of marriages, the reason for the negative savings rate in March was due to me needing to make some early payments for our marriage! Planned in June of 2020 and then having Covid show up. Not wanting any restrictions for our wedding (screw me having wedding photo’s with people all masked up!) in 2022 we could finally go for it! I’ll go into more details in the Q2 post but let’s just say I am glad we waited as the party is still described as the best wedding party ever by most guests. Off course, the two year lull might have something to do with that. As most of our guests were more than ready to party hard after two years of on and off lockdowns…
An advance for the honeymoon (Denmark) of 755 euro and an advance for the wedding rings of 400 euro pushed me into negative territory in March. But money well spend.
This is going to be a very short report for the same raison I am a bit late writing this post.
And that reason is that I screwed up my back.
I have only myself to blame. I know I have a weak back (left side, L4 to L5 to be very precise about it). And my back was already acting up a couple of weeks. I should have taken action then by doing specific back exercises and perhaps even stopping my fitness exercises.
But I soldiered on.
On saturday 2 april I even trimmed our hedge which really made my back worse. This was followed by me spending Sunday 03 April sitting in the car or on bad chairs while visiting family and friends all over Flanders. The combination of those two days made a manageable back issue into an unmanageable one.
To put it bluntly: my back was fucked up.
Even the simple fact of getting up from the couch was very painful. So doctors have been visited, pain medication taken and a physiotherapist visited twice weekly.
But even now is sitting in an office chair painful.
Fitness exercises, greasing the groove or rowing all came to a dead stop that weekend. Mentally I am very, very worried that I will not resume my exercise regime even when my back is fixed. Because this has been the pattern in my past. I am reminding myself that I now have a whole new mindset about exercises.
I also decided to not let these rest weeks be a complete waste a redoubled my efforts on eating healthy. This was helped by a week of double painkillers. Tranadol combined with Diazepam really take away your hunger!
I had to remind myself to regulary drink my proteine shakes because muscle loss is definitely happening! I just hope I am also losing fat! At the moment I stand at 105,5 kg.
Thursday I am visiting my dietician and with her I hope to fine tune my food intake to limit the muscle loss but still get below the 105kg while I can not exercise. Once I am able again to do all my exercises I will hope to rebuild the muscle mass as quickly as possible.
Sigh, I have been jojo-ing between 109 and 110 kg on the weight front. This morning I clocked in at 110.1 kg. While it isn’t really bad it’s also not very good. I kind of lost focus a little bit, mentally I was a bit down and the kettlebell exercises are still pretty fucking brutal on my body. Finding a new equilibrium on what I need to eat to keep up with the demands the kettlebell swings place on my body is ongoing. I’ll explain in more detail below.
Fitness
Again, I didn’t miss any sessions. I like what I do and acutally look forward to lifting weights.
You can ignore the two lower bars, that’s a logging mishap where one session of exercising wasn’t logged. A bit annoying that you can’t correct this. Basically i plateaud at 30 180 kg. Yes I cracked my own goal of 30K!!
The logging mishap does mean that my total numbers aren’t a 100% correct anymore but I am not sweatting about those. They are pretty impressive even if I do say so myself 😉
Staying on a plateau was intentional because of my transition to a 20 kg kettlebell in my greasing the groove routine,
Greasing the groove
Greasing the groove was brutal! Last month I started at 10 reps with a 20 kg weight and my focus was on getting those reps up higher,
At the moment I am at 16 reps and hell was that increase brutal. Off course a 6 reps increase does mean 120 kg extra lifted, 8 times a day for 6 days a week. That’s a 5 760 kg increase. It was a bit much! I think my frugal habits came and bit me in the ass here. I went from 10 kg to 20 kg in one go to save money because kettlebells are expensive and I knew if I bought a 16 kg one I would need to buy a 20 kg one a few months later. I should have bought the 16 kg kettlebell and made the transition to that one.
The big jump in weight got me somewhat out of balance. And this on several areas. Food wise it had me getting the energy out of bad food. It also made me pretty tired, which didn’t help with the somber mood I was in. I did realise what was happening so I was a bit less disciplined and did miss a few repetitions. Like this week I only did them for 5 days and last week I had a few days with only 5 reps and not the normal 8. The reason was life getting in the way (like a Saturday of lots of yard work I didn’t want to interrupt every hour to go do my exercices). But normally I would make up for the missed reps late in the evening or on Sunday. Recognising my body needed a bit more rest I didn’t do it this time. I think I made the right call here.
By het way, my record keeping of my greasing the groove rpetitions is just on a scrap of paper I throw away when its full.
Simplicity does work sometimes. I have off course also kept up my 50 reps of crunches so one bar represents both the crunches as the kettelbell swings as I always do them back to back.
Cardio
Rowing was a big fat zero. Which I realise isn’t good. Like I said above, i now realise I lost my equilibrium, in part because of the big jump to a 20 kg kettlebell.
I am glad I have a three part exercise regime because even if I screw up 1 part as I did now I still have the other two parts to fall back on. But I also need to learn from my mistakes. So the fitness and greasing the groove will stay on their present plateau while I find my balance once more on the food front and rebuild my rowing habit. I am going to really focus on my habit and begin with just 5 min of rowing. Actually how many minutes I row doesn’t even matter at the moment! More important is getting back in the habit of sitting on the machine and do something!
Eating wise I am back on track! The holiday splurge is but a distant memory and I clocked in at 108,7 kg! Earlier in the week I was even very close to the 108 kg but then started eating a bit more because my body was really screaming for more food. My exercise regime might have something to do with this as I kinda put the pedal to the metal here. Let’s dive into it!
Fitness
Once again, I didn’t miss one session. I think I can make it offical and say I like lifting weights.
Last month I lifted 26 832 kg and set myself a 30K goal. With this goal to be reached whenever since I do not want to push myself to much. Consistency and gradual improvements are still my main focus. Well, last week saw me lifting a total of 29 439 kg!
With this amount of kg’s lifted per week I’ll be closing in on the 1,5 million lifted in total within the next two months! Crazy numbers!
I have said many times before that progress is going to halt in the fitness department but this time I am serious.
The reason for this is pretty simple, I finally got a good 20 kg kettlebell!
Greasing the groove
For greasing the groove I keep to the 50 reps 8 times a day for my crunches.
Kettlebell swings I was at 25 reps with 10 kg for 8 times a day and then this beauty arrived.
20 kg of heavy iron. Don’t worry, I warned the delivery guy when he went to get the package from his van. It was a big eastern european guy and turns out he is a fan of kettlebells himself and lost 30 kg over the last 3 years!
With a decent kettlebell finally arrived last week I switched form 25 reps with 10 kg to 10 reps with 20 kg. Less weight in total, so you would think this would be easy enough.
Well, you would be wrong! It’s really a lot more exhausting and it probably explains why my body is screaming for nutrients.
It’s also a pretty great feeling to be honest. I already felt like I had a precent decent core strenght but this new weight is really ramping that up! I feel strong. Stronger than I have ever felt!
So my focus is now going to be to ramp my reps back up to 25. I am going to go slow and steady as is my habit. But since it is also lifting weights I expect my fitness progress to suffer from this. Injury prevention is still my nr 1 goal and this new kettlebell is pushing some limits there. No need to add extra pressure by also ramping up the fitness weights.
Another focus will be cardio
Cardio
Cardio wasn’t bad. But it also wasn’t good. I did about half of the rowing I should have done. But with stepping up the fitness weights and then switching to the heavier kettlebell I just didn’t have the energy for the cardio. I also just like the fitness and kettlebell swings a lot more than the rowing if I am honest. I never was a big fan of any type of cardio. But no exercise regime is complete without a decent cardio component. So I am going to keep at it but I am not going to feel too bad about it. Yes, it’s the weaker part of my work out regime, but hey at least I have a work out regime and it ain’t half bad!
I remained virus free for the last month! It is good to have my health back in full! Two years into this pandemic and I also remain Covid free. Since all reports indicate this Omicron variant is really, really mild it might be time for me to go kiss some strangers and update my immune system with the blueprint for this virus 😉
What did disrupt my new good habits were the holiday. Eating to much during the holidays did result in bad old habits making their comeback. I should have just continued with my normal routine instead of thnking that ‘a few days won’t make a big difference’. The new habits are off course less than 1 year old, and I have about 30 years of bad eating habits ingrained. A bumpy ride is to be expected. A course correction is needed! I clocked in at 111,3 kilo and while a 1 kg gain might not seem all that bad it needs to stop now before it gets worse. This is more a mental than a physical challenge.
Actualy, the physical might be a solution for the mental. Exercises are definitely my saving grace. Eating too much is making the exercises harder. But the exercises are also a daily reminder that if I let go of my eating discipline I will eventualy also let go of my exercise discipline. And I don’t want that! So I stepped up my exercises a bit so that I force myself to be more disciplined in my eating as well.
It might never be the time to be a slacker for your health. But present time definitely isn’t the time for it!
Fitness
No sickness or holiday so I didn’t miss one session! And after a few weeks of remaining on a plateau this last week I also added a decent amount of weight to my routines.
With 26 832 kg lifted weight I ended just shy off the 27 000 kg mark. And where I was pretty happy with cracking the 25K barrier last month I have now set my sights on the 30K barrier. But steady progress remains the name of the game! So no rush and no particular date when I need to reach this goal.
Total weight lifted is now well over the one million kilo and with the current regime I will easily surpass the 2 million mark sometime this year.
Greasing the groove
Here I cracked the 50 reps 8 times a day for crunches! This was one of my goals I hoped to reach eventually and I did it. These goals are somewhat based on what I remember doing when I was 18 years old and in my best shape ever. I never found my old exercise schedules but do remember doing 3 times a 100 sit ups a day. I consider 8 times 50 as a good equivallent. So crunches wise I am at 47 years old in better shape than I was at 18!
Another -general- goal I have is 8 times 25 push-ups to mirror the 2 times 50 push ups I did daily in my youth. But I first need to lose more weight before I can start on that one. And the last one I have is to bench pressing 95 kg while weighing 95 kg. If I can reach those two also I will consider myself to be in the best shape I have ever been. I am confident I will eventually reach those as well.
Kettlebell swings remained at 25 reps with 10 kg. After buying the wrong kettlebells on-line I decided to go to a shop to buy the kettlebells of 20 kg I needed. Well, I wasted 1 hour of my life driving to and back from the shop only to discover that the max weight the shop had was 16 kg. I gave that one a couple of swings in the store and nope, I definitely need a 20 kg one. Back to the web but this time being really carefull to look at the dimensions of the kettlebell I am going to buy.
Cardio
Cardio still isn’t good. I have to be honest here, I completely lost the habit. It dropped to like 1 session of 10 minutes a week. Same story here as my eating, I need to regain my discipline.
Looking from a distance you might say I already do a lot even without the cardio. especially the greasing the groove bit is a bit insane with a total of 2400 crunches and 1200 kettlebell swings a week. But as I said in the begining, this is not the time to be a slacker in the health department. I need to get that cardio back up!
I am early! Only the 13th of January and already writing my full year recap. No waiting till the first of February as was the case last year!
Am I becoming less lazy? Nah!!
This is allready the 5th recap, how time flies!!
Year
Income
Expenses
Savings
SR
2017
30 862
20 719
10 143
32,9%
2018
27 765
20 047
7 718
27,8%
2019
39 221
28 320
10 901
27,8%
2019*
34 221
20 207
14 014
40,9%
2020
32 064
20 228
11 836
36,9%
2021
31 904
18 000
13 904
43,6%
*adjusted
Recap conclusions
Yes I did it! Finally I stayed within the self imposed budget of 18.000 euro!
I did game it a bit. There is some stuff I would like to buy (like a mesh wifi network) that I have been postponing for months now because I now it would have mushed me over budget. I am also sure I forgot some small expenses left and right so I probably spend a couple of 100 euro’s more than the 18 000 here. But you now what, I am going to take the win and say I stayed within my budget for this year. this is not going to happen next year, I am sure of it.
2021 numbers
Income
Income total was 31 904 euro.
Of that amount 30 170 euro came from work and a grand total of 1 734 euro from gifts.
A bit strange is that work income is going down! It was 31 441 euro last year! This is in part because of the new way our bonus is paid I will only get some of it next year. The other reason is that with me almost not going to the office I also didn’t get that much home-work travel expenses paid. This means a lower amount on my paycheck but does also translates in lower fuel and maintenance costs for the Vespa so it is kind of a wash. I would have made more money but also spend more money.
At 1 734 euro the gift amount is high, really high! I call it the perks of being an only child. The parents decided to help fund the purchase of my rowing machine with a 500 euro gift. And when cleaning house and selling some stuff my mother also gave me the 870 euro earned from this. The topic of testaments did come up recently (me and the girlfriend need to update ours) and I did express that I am perfectly fine with them giving to charitable causes or to friends and such. But nope, it’s all going to me. So these gifts are just advances on the inheritance coming my way. Here’s hoping that this will be many, many decades in the future. My mom did have a cancer scare about 18 months ago and it has certainly had an impact on her cleaning house and ramping up the gifts to me.
But even with a bit lower income savings rate was at an all time high and the amount saved was almost the highest ever (only beaten by the 2019 adjusted number!). I could live for 9 months from the amount I saved this year!
Expenses
Expenses totaled 18 000 euro.
Off course the bulk, 13 200 euro went to our joint account. This covers the house, me eating and our car.
The Vespa cost me 405 euro. This amount represents some gas as I occasionaly did go to the office to work, or used it for groceries runs so it didn’t stand still for too long. there was another maintenance bill for 319 euro. The maintenance costs are really starting to annoy me. Combining my health goals with my money goals I am going to try to use our electric bike more to go to work (if and when we actually return to work).
Speaking of health goals. I did spend 475,8 euro on extra food this year. What can I say? It is less then half of last year’s amount so at least there is progress!
Gifts was 399 euro. Considerably more than last year and not a cent for the girlfriend! We don’t really do gifts to each other but I think I buy here something nice this year.
I spend 892 euro on hobbies. Up from last year and I am happy with that! Webhosting for this site and a few other online experiments are covered by this category. As is some hardware like a raspberry pie to run my own Bitcoin node. 310 euro in this category is me buying some crypto. Noticing I put it in the hobby column and not under investments. I did it because I want to play around in the crypto world and see if you can actually use it for something. It’s for trying stuff out and even though I still have most of it I do consider the money as spend.
Talking about money well spend. I did spend 1336 euro on sport. Mostly weights I bought for my fitness (including 80 euro for the wrong sort of kettlebell, grr), 800 euro for the rowing machine and some supplements. Well worth the money! And this year I am going to need to buy the correct type of kettlebells because progress needs to be made! From a purely financial perspective this money would cover 5 years of going to a basic fit. Now the equipment should last for more than 5 years, but it also means I need to keep up my exercising regime to get my worth out of it!
More fun can be found in the random fun category where I only spend 226 euro. The pandemic did have an impact here as a lot of festivals needed to cancel. If the government keeps enforcing the Covid pass I expect this category to be low again this year as illegal raves aren’t all that expensive …
Restaurant visit dropped to a new low with only 70 euro spend here. The covid pass was introduced in August which barred my plague riddled body from entry anywhere. Well, it’s good for my health and wallet so in my book I am winning here.
Telecom cost me 90 euro but I might have missed a few payments in this category. Sorry but I am too lazy to go digging.
I did spend 306 euro on health. I did get sick twice this year (none of those times with Covid) and off course spend money on the dietician and some supplements.
Clothing cost me 97 euro which is in line with my spending last year. Most of it was sports outfiots which should be good for a decade or two.
Travel cost me only 392 euro this year as we only made two small trips in Belgium. On to Brugge and one to Yper. Europe also seems hell bend on locking the unvaccinated filth down like dogs in 2022! But the way I see it, I either go on holiday or get myself a home cinema. Either way, I will be a pretty happy Sloth (don’t tell the girlfriend but I might prefer the home cinema to travel, sshhhht!).
There was some money spend on public transport and insurance too but who wants to read about insurance spending? Even if you want to read about it, I don’t feel like writing about it. Too boring!
Evaluation of my 2021 goals
My 2021 goals were to lose weight and get a side gig of the ground.
The losing weight was ok as I lost 10 kgs last year. My general level of fitness has also improved a lot as you can read in my health reports.
The side gig was once more a no show this year. I really need to find something here!
2022 goals
My 2022 goals are the same as 2021. Continue to lose weight and finaly get a side gig off the ground.
Changes to the pay out system for our bonus means that the remaining part will only be paid out next year. So no extra income from that source this time. But I did do my best to stay within budget this month and even end the year within my self imposed budget. Find out how I did below:
Income: 2 339,69 euro
Expenses: 1 458,72 euro
savings: 880,47 euro or 37,65%
Income
As said, just my normale work income + a small christmas gift of 60 euro.
Expenses
I wanted to end the year below my 18 000 euro budget so I did tighten the screw and barely spend anything.
1 100 euro went to the joint account to pay the mortgage, utilisites and groceries
I also did spend 31 euro extra on food. To limlt this, 25 euro was also spend for my dietician. More discipline on the food front could eliminate both of these!
As mentioned in my last health report I bought the wrong sort of kettlebell, a mistake that cost me 80 euro! And now I have the problem of what to do with 2 heavy and very large kettlebell. Is it ridiculous to just put them on top of the posts and each side of our gate? Thinking about painting them gold and doing just that (the wife does not approve …).
Working from home meant I needed a new – quieter- computer mouse: 18 euro and the wife definitely approved of this!
A full tank for the Vespa (I have been going to the office one day a week) set me back 9,40 euro. And I remember a time when it was rare for this to reach the 9 euro. Gas has become expensive!
Gifts for people cost me 144 euro.
I also bought 40 euro worth of Ethereum because I thought you needed to have Ethereum in your wallet to use mirror.xyz But this wasn’t the case! Well, I now have some Ethereum.
Mirror could become a blockchain alternative for substack, let you turn your writing into a NFT and monetize it that way or be the webpresence for a project and let you fund said project throught the sales of NFT’s. I am just exploring a bit. I sometimes have weird shit to say that doesn’t match with the overal idea behind this site here and I do try to keep my weirder tendencies limited here. Mirror might become an outlet for those tendencies. But my vision on cryptocurrencies remains unchanged! They shoudl be used to buy drugs, hookers and illegal firearms from markets on the dark web: AS GOD INTENTED! (/humor for the too literal people reading this).
As of next year I am no longer doing these monthly expense reports but switching to a quaterly overview of my expenses. They are boring as I do not spend a lot of money and I want to replace them by some more interesting content.
I haven’t forgotten I still needed to do my November expense report. But I am prioritizing my health more than my finances at the moment. The reason being that finances are more or less on automatic pilot for the moment and health wise I still have a lot of work to do.
It’s also the reason why I will be switching to a quaterly overview of my expenses starting next year. Most months are basically the same anyway.
With that said, here is the overview for November.
Income: 2 212 euro
Expenses: 1 408,53 euro
Savings: 803,47 or 36,32%
Yes indeed, I succeeded in remaining below 1 500 euro in November and I am close to ending the year within my self imposed budget of 18 000 euro.
Income
One more boring and predictable income this month. The 2 212 euro is just my standard wage from work.
Expenses
With only 1 408 euro spend I do not have a whole lot to report here either.
1 100 euro went to our joint account as usual
The bank charge of 1,33 euro for my account continues to annoy me. Mobile subscription was 14,70 euro.
I only filled up my Vespa 1 time in November so transport cost me 10 euro.
I still spend a bit extra on food (some of it good like sushi, some bad like pizza): 69 euro.
My fix visit with my dietician cost me 25 euro and the docter visit 4 euro.
A necessary expense I hope to have a bit more fun with next year was my webhosting for a total expense of 210 euro.
I also spend 51,70 euro supplements. One of which was cinnamonum because apparently interesting things start happening if you take a gram of cinnamon with every meal. I am VERY interested to find out if I can personaly replicate these findings. FinancialFreedomSloth, your human guinea pig!
I fell ill again the last month. Still not Covid, but a lot of other bugs are going around and I caught one of those. It knocked me out good for about a week. I normally don’t get sick that much and this was now the second time in a 3 month period. I think it is a combination of fewer social contacts and also the losing weight which made my immunity dip.
Being sick had off course an impact both on my exercises and weight lose. The weight dropped fast the week I was sick but I probably started exercising too quickly again which left me HUNGRY. I didn’t really fell into my old bad habits (except for all the chocolate I ate) but I definitely ate too much the two weeks after being sick. The lesson here is that I need a post-sickeness food plan. Being sick while dieting whipes out any and all buffer you have left. So feeling hungry and wanting to eat more after is normal. I just need to make sure that next time I have – more- healthy alternatives where I can indulge in.
Bottom line is that weight wise not a lot off progress was made I clocked in at 110 kg Sunday.
The impact on my exercises you can read below.
Fitness
I only missed the one week I was really ill. And then the week after I restarted again. Honestely, I think this was a mistake as I was really weak and a longer rest period might have been better. It was a real struggle to get through my fitness program the first two weeks after being ill. I listened to my body and didn’t added any weight here. It was actually only last week that I felt like I had my full strength back.
So 1 week out and almost no progress made in the weights lifted. I did manage to crack the 25K barrier and lifted a total of 25 692 kg last week. And I also reached the 1 million kgs lifted sometime during the last month!
Greasing the groove
Same story here. I didn’t do any during the week I was ill and then restarted immediately once I was, barely, better.
Kettlebell swings remained at 25 reps with 10 kg because I was a cheap ass online and bought the wrong 20 kg kettlebells. The once I got are too big too use in a swing. See photo below off my stupidity.
I will go to a shop and try out one before buying!
For sit-up I did make some progress. I ended last week at 48 reps. I am pushing forward here to reach my end goals of 50 reps, 8 times a day, 6 days a week which will make a cool 2 400 sit-ups per week!
Geldnerd made himself a nice spreadsheet to track his own fitness progress. And I am now wondering if I should do the same for the greasing the groove part of my work out regime. It is pretty satifying to have see your progress in nice graphs.
Cardio
I wanted to dedicate myself more to my cardio and then I fell sick and out went that idea. Cardio is what I have up feeling weak and barely being able to get through the fitness. In a way it isn’t bad that I didn’t do it because I really restarted to quickly with my exercices. But the conclusion of my last report still stands: I am not doing enough cardio.
With the current situation I do need to be honest with myself here. I am restarting at 3 x 10 minutes and then see if I either go up in time again or if I stay at 10 minutes and just do it more often in the week. But first getting my routine of 3 times back!
I am back with another health report. The September report was a bit off because it only covered two week in which I didn’t exercise a lot due to holiday and being sick. I didn’t post in October but this doesn’t mean I stopped exercising or dieting. I was actualy pretty busy with both so get ready for some good progress!
In September my weight was 114,4 kg. After two months with the dietician I am at 110,9 kg. So things are going well on there. More importantly I feel more energetic and stronger which is good to keep up my exercises.
Fitness
I didn’t miss any fitness day since half september. Not a single one. Progress is a bit slower because I am already pushing some nice weights and I also did a nice progress in the kettlebell part of my greasing the groove routine, but more on that later on.
The below weight lifted chart shows the gap after the week of the fifht of September which was me going on a short holiday and being ill for a couple of extra days. And then it show me starting my fitness again and once more making slow but steady progress
Over the last two months I went from 22 217 kg lifted to 24 740 kg lifted! It’s why I don’t care all that much about the slower progress I am making here. Lifting 25 000 kg a week is decent enough. Remember, I started out with only 5 000 kg back in June 2020.
In total I am pretty close to cracking the 1 million kgs lifted! If only if I had 1 euro for each kg lifted ..
Greasing the groove
I missed one day which was me being flat out lazy. I felt a bit bad about it but then I look at the progress I made compared to August and holy cow! I am not feeling bad anymore!
In August I was at 16 reps with the kettlebell of 10 kgs. I am now again at my maximum goals of 25 reps! I should, once more, order a heavier kettlebell. I’ll probably order them in December as I need to order two. One for the home and one for work because I am getting fed up with lugging my kettlebell to the office. Yes dear reader, even when I work at the office I do my sit-ups and kettlebell swings every hour. My co -workers have gotten used to it and since they have seen me do it for several months now they went from laughing at the crazyness of it to respecting the sheer fucking lunancy of it.
The kettlebell swings do add another 2 000 kg of lifted weights to my routine every days or an extra 12 000 kg a week!
Sit-ups I went form 35 reps to 45 reps! That is 10 extra reps 8 times a day for 6 days a week. I now do 2 160 sit ups per week. And I am pretty close to my final goal of 50 reps.
Cardio
And here ends the good news show. This remains my weakest point. I continu to be stuck on only rowing on Sundays.
I have to repeat what I wrote last time: “doing three seperate exercices do help me mentally. Where in the past I just did one thing and then when I hit a rough spot in that one thing I usually quiet doing it completely I can now fuck up one of the three but still feel good about the fact that progress has been made in the other two”
But the fact remains that I am not doing enough cardio. I am thinking of reworking my approach here. The girlfriend is pretty succesfull in only doing 5 minutes of rowing but doing it each and every morning. So I am thinking of switching it to 4 x 10 minutes during the week and 1 x 20 minutes on Sunday.
I’ll give it one more week and than perhaps change my approach.
But overall I had a good two months health wise: lost 4 kgs, made some progress on the fitness front and a lot of progress in greasing the groove!
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