Now here’s a topic I haven’t posted about since the earliest days of COVID: my weight. Once I attained my peak weight of 187.6 back in February 2020 I haven’t posted any progress reports or gym updates. COVID hit and that meant the Y closed and our lives were uprooted. My weight declined and I never felt the need to post about it. I’d rather write about gains I’d made versus muscle mass I’d lost.
When we got back from our trip to South America I weighed myself at the Y on my first day back and I weighed 177. That is not unusual: I always lose weight on vacation, and even though I ate healthily on the cruise and worked out in the ship’s gym, Mark and I did so much walking that neither of us gained an ounce. We always lose weight when on cruises, which defies the myth that all passengers gain a few pounds while at sea.
Muscle memory means that I will rapidly gain the weight that I had lost. I put on the seven pounds faster than it had taken me to gain that weight in the first place. Within three weeks I was back to my pre-cruise weight of 184.0. Now when I weighed myself today I was 186.0. The scale at the Y does not have any decimals other than 0.5 so I cannot report if the 186.0 figure is accurate or is a result of rounding up or down. The fact is that I feel bigger, and a couple extra pounds of muscle mass makes a noticeable difference.
When I retired I never felt, since the Y is across the street from my former employer, that I would slack off and make fewer trips to the gym. The truth is, I go more often. And while library work was never extremely physical or back-breaking, sometimes when my evening shift ended at 9 p.m., I’d be so tired after standing up all day that I just wanted to go home and have dinner. (If I worked out after 9 p.m., I’d still eat a full meal when I got home, but it would be very late by the time I finished.) So my gym visits have increased and I have maintained, even surpassed, the gains that I had made before I retired. I like that I can now go during off-peak times, so I always get to use the equipment and never have to wait for it.