OK, that first week went by fast.
I am on track with most of my numbers, even with the Acts of Kindness. Still, I think this can be the most challenging. How do I get three Good Deeds done per day while sitting in the home office most of the time? Well, some good tips from the world wide web helped, and of course, the holiday season is upon us – there are a lot of opportunities to donate food, supplies, and money. Long story short, hopefully I made a difference for some not so fortunate families out there in our community at the David Lubin Elementary school, Oakpark and Sacramento in general.
This first week had me also learn a lot. Keeping up this rigorous schedule of Kata runs, sparring, push
and sit ups requires a lot of water and protein. Sensei Oliver suggested 1g of protein per lbs. body weight per day – this means for me: 220g. Ugh, that is a lot of chicken. 220g, for my US friends and followers of the imperial measurement system means 0.485 lbs. of pure protein.
General knowledge interjection: only the US, Liberia, and Myanmar are still using the Imperial System. It is time to change!!!
Anyway, 1 lbs. of chicken contain 38g of protein, one large egg has 6. Not going to eat 1.5 chickens a day
(also something I learned: one average chicken weighs 5.7 lbs. minus guts, bones etc. – you get the math)! So I stocked up on whey protein powder – vanilla my favorite so far, plus some peanut butter and “normal” food over the day and I should be good to go.
Next on the list: water. It is easy to forget to drink (at least for me) while you are head down in your
schedule. You let go of the keyboard in the afternoon and realize the last time you drank something was
for breakfast. This can really ruin your day, I am talking about being grumpy, tired, and moody etc. Not to mention that your muscles need that more water while training otherwise they cannot recharge without it.
Even more needed than the protein and water intake is the support from the dojo community. The math
to make enough sparring rounds does not work out with “normal” class sparring time. A lot more time is
needed over the weeks to make it to 1,000 rounds. This week David, Geneva, and me met up with a couple of fellow students to get some extra rounds in.
Thank you very much Cole, Ike, Elijah, and Lucas.
Next week Christmas holidays in Germany start. I am flying out for 10 days and will do my exercises under father’s Christmas tree. Another good thing – I do not have to worry about preparing my own protein rich food while being over there, mom will take care of that.