Hello, everyone. I'm Robbie Dorman, and this is Serial Fanaticist, the podcast where fans of everything welcome. Today, I'm joined by Eric Zegunite to continue Broke Accountability. This is month three of our year-long project of accountability and supporting each other as we try and improve our health.
This month is an odd one. Mixed in with us both trying to overcome plateaus and internalize healthy changes, we both face the challenges of self-isolation and social distancing. In something neither of us predicted, this podcast has also become somewhat of a pandemic journal as we try and deal with everything happening around us. On to the discussion.
Hello, everyone. This is week nine of Broke Accountability, first week of month three. Eric, how you doing? How you feeling?
I think I still have my fluctuations, but at least in terms of feeling beaten up and depressed, maybe I'm mostly coming out of it when I look back and compare myself to how I was feeling maybe this time last year. I think I'm better off. It's not translating to me getting to the gym more than once a week, but I don't know. It's okay.
Energy levels are good. Health feels pretty good. Things are at least semi-trending okay, but it's starting to feel like a lot of stasis, honestly, a lot of plateau. Staying the same?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. But maybe the... I mean, I'm doing a lot of the right things, or at least I'm doing a lot of things better.
Right. Still fucking up on the weekends, though, not getting enough protein. Even if I'm staying reasonable on calories, I prefer to keep my protein somewhere in that 200-gram-a-day range. It's a tough amount of protein, so choke back, but it's a lot easier on workdays.
I can talk myself out of eating out and enjoying my life. Yeah, but you worked out for the one. You got your workout in. Yeah, I was going to do another one on Friday and Saturday, but ended up doing artwork instead, going to an art event.
And what did I do? I did a lot of housecleaning on Saturdays. That's the thing that, a lot of times, I will not have the bandwidth, you know, mental, physical, or other. Usually, it's more mental-emotional to have bandwidth to do more than, you know, to go to the gym and spend a lot of time doing laundry and cleaning the house.
Usually, I can't make myself do all of those things. It's just... Don't have it in me. Why is it harder to get your hit your macros on weekends?
Is it just because, like, hey, you know, I'm not working. I want to enjoy life more. Yeah. I mean, I still really appreciate food and dining out, and it is one of the ways that I entertain myself.
I do spend all of my waking hours watching food shows, as we just talked about our friend Mr. Matheson. The Pizza Show, also very good. It's also got lots of pizza in it.
I mean, pizza is good. No arguments there. Pizza is pretty universally good. Well, I don't know.
We could talk about the fucking Pizza Show. We need to keep these tight. Okay. Yeah, I would say, like, I mean, I'm a self-possessor.
I don't go ham on it, you know? Yes, I understand. It is like a setback, you know? It's not like I'm doubling the amount of calories that I should be eating, or I'm eating a buffet twice a day, or something bananas like that.
It's just, like, I don't count my macros. I don't get the right amount of protein, and I'm probably going over on calories most days. I was going to say, you know, I'm facing similar challenges of plateauing, of facing that, you know, facing of, you know, where largely I am eating a reasonable amount of calories. I have met my goals with my exercise.
I exercised twice. I walked twice. I probably did more, like, walking because I cleaned the entire house, like you said, and I cooked for, you know, for three hours on Saturday. Those things are important, but I never count them, you know?
I mean, I worked out in the yard, and that's more exercise, you call it. But, you know, I also don't count that either. That's kind of a bonus. That's kind of like...
Yeah, exactly. Bonus is the way to look at it. It's good to have a general, like, high activity level as much as possible, but the workouts are still really important. Yeah, but I don't...
I am... I think I'm just trying... You know, it's... There's gonna be lots of...
There's gonna be plateaus. There's going to be times where I... Kind of like whenever I have a day where I'm like, oh, I ate too much today, or I... It's not that I ate too much.
It's just like, well, I know that largely this is gonna be, like, neutral. It's gonna keep me at, you know, I'm not gonna lose the additional weight I would have lost this week because I splurged on this, right, a little bit more here. I had a couple beers. But it also...
It also... I think on the other hand is I try to remind myself that all of last year, I wasn't even thinking about it at all. Right. I wasn't even considering it.
I wasn't working out those extra times. I was going the opposite direction. I wasn't... You know, the very fact that it is the exception now is kind of...
It's proof of the rule of, like, well, most of the time, no, I'm actually doing pretty well. I'm eating healthy. I'm eating a moderate amount of food, a reasonable amount of food for me, where I feel satiated, but I'm not, you know, I'm not binging. And I'm certainly not binging whenever I feel, like, you know, depressed or stressed out, which I have done many times in the past.
I am being able to control myself and deal with that stress and those emotions in healthier ways, like exercising. And certainly, yeah, would I have lost an extra half a pound this week if I hadn't eaten two beers yesterday and ate some banana bread because I was playing DD? So I was like, oh, I'll eat some mozzarella cheese sticks and some banana bread and have a couple beers. That is an odd combination, my dude.
I mean, it can make banana bread. I mean, I get that it's what's there, but that's a strange pairing. I mean, I'll say broccoli and some crackers and some spinach artichoke dip. Those things all sound lovely apart from each other.
But I just think that banana bread's a... I don't know. It's just weird. I love banana bread.
It's the best. I can't imagine, like, that and carrot cake. I think I'm indifferent to both of them. I also really love carrot cake.
I do love carrot cake. I do. I guess I probably knew that about you. Spiced breads, I do like them a lot.
What? What? That's just... what?
What? That's like, you know, heavily spiced breads. That's what those are. Cardamom is in the banana bread.
Really good. I couldn't even tell you what cardamom tastes like. I have no picture of it in my head. I'm probably eating it many times.
They use it in Indian cooking. It's like a... It's a savvy spice. It's very spice forward.
When you think of, like, an Eastern, like Middle Eastern spice, it's kind of representative of that flavor palette. But regardless, those things would I maybe lost a little bit of extra weight this week if I had anything? Yes. But there's also a part of, like, your...
the reason I have fallen off so many diets, why I've always regressed and gained weight back, is because I've never been consistent enough with them because they're so restrictive at the end of the day that I end up going crazy and just binging and eating, like a... You know, eating irresponsibly. And I gained back the weight over time. For this to be successful long-term, I'm gonna have to have those days.
I'm gonna have to have a day where I have an extra piece of banana bread. You know, it's not every day. It was one day out of three weeks or two weeks or whatever it was. It wasn't...
It's not crazy. That's one of the big reasons why diets don't work. I don't know. There's just...
There's so much insane level of discipline. Right. Or just having great genetics. That certainly helps.
Yeah. It's a large part of it that people don't acknowledge a lot of the time. I think people with great genetics don't acknowledge it. No, exactly.
That's what I mean. They're always like... Someone who is literally, like, you know, they gained, like, 2% body fat once and they think that that's when they were the fattest. Like, those people, I don't know.
I don't think they've really had to deal with it. No, probably not. But I think it's helpful, very helpful for me to acknowledge that those things... Those days are natural.
Those days happen where you're gonna go over on your calories or you won't hit your goals that you specifically want for that day. Yeah. But it's all about, you know, it's still reasonable. It's not...
I didn't... It's certainly not... It was not, like, a crazy gluttonous binge like I've done in the past. It wasn't a fear and loathing style bender except with eating.
No, it was just like, oh, I had a few slices of banana bread and some crackers and dip. You know, it wasn't like the buffet you ate in Vegas. Oh, God And I'm not sure why. I feel like that's an important thing to find out.
It's like when I feel depressed or I feel sad or something, I try and think about why because dissecting it makes it better. But I would generally like to know what I'm doing to myself that's making it worse. Like, how can I step away from that lane and not get hit by the truck? I was certainly not expecting a happy answer, but I'm pleasantly surprised.
Well, I'm glad. I'm glad that you're happy for me being okay, glad you're not just another hater. No, it's been a rough week. Well, no, it has.
It's been insane. The world is insane. But I do think that there's something about, like, awful shit happening. Like, I'm very good at dealing with stuff, but, like, I can accept I have no control over a global pandemic.
I can deal with my feelings about that. I can't deal with my own imposter syndrome or feeling like I'm a useless person. So, I, you know, this is not going to end humanity. No.
I feel awesome about it. Okay. We're going to live. I don't want to blow with the microphone.
Did you get your workouts? Did you continue going to the gym? What? Are you going to continue going to the gym with the COVID, with the virus?
Yeah, I feel sketchy about it, and there's definitely less people in there. And I'm, like, sanitizing the dumbbells and stuff, you know, before doing it and trying to, like, I sanitize my hands after my first set and then wash them after, like, maybe my last set and then head out. It was, I don't know, it was a, it's a thing. It's worth thinking about.
Yeah, it's certainly, I think, I, I got, I got officially a single workout in. I've been working a lot in the house over the past few days because we've been reorganizing everything. And I worked out in the yard and I've gone on walks, but I don't know, I'm trying not to count those. I didn't actually have a second official workout.
So I guess I have at least two walks, though. Yes, the walks. How many did you get beyond two? Oh, just two walks, but I mean.
Okay, well, I mean, that's not, that's not nothing. No, it's just, it's more of like I didn't do it. It's just kind of, uh, it's been on, it's been very, it feels, it feels like the past four days have lasted three years. It feels like.
It's been, it's been eventful, too eventful. Yeah. And I don't know, it seems like, oh, workouts aren't important right now. Go do something else.
You know, go do that or whatever. But the, the, the fucking, like, ab supermodels that go to the goddamn gym that I go to in South Tampa, like, they stayed the fuck home. Normally that place is packed and it was very empty. Yeah.
Comparatively to forget. Well, that's, that's good. That's, we're social distancing, which is the hot topic. But I mean, it's been, I still think I've been okay with my work.
I've, I've walked a lot just around the house and in. Just pacing because you're so stressed out. Well, moving. Because you're so worried.
Literally moving all the game room stuff into this room and all of the couch and TV into the other room. So basically shifting an entire, and you know, I have a lot of board games. So it was a lot of. I have, I have made fun of you about all your board games.
Yes. I've gotten more since the last, since you were here. I ain't getting rid of, I ain't getting rid of some of them. So there's, I am cutting back, like I'm getting rid of like 20 board games.
They don't spark that much joy anymore. Don't play them. Yeah. Don't play them while I have them.
That's fair. You can't play a hundred thousand board games. Not if you have, unless you have a regular group. Unless you have a regular group playing all the time.
But that, you know, it's, it's been a lot of moving line activity. How's your diet been? Fine-ish. Uh, yesterday, I mean, as is for norm, I stepped off the tracks a little bit on weekends, but I think Friday was pretty good.
And I think today's going to end up being pretty reasonable as well. I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm thinking we're getting closer to, I need to up my protein and commit to probably training a little bit more, but I need to be in a place where I'm more ready for that. I'm, I'm, I'm getting closer. I'm definitely feeling good about my workouts, but it needs to be a little bit more.
Things are progressing, but we're going to get to where maybe roughly the same calories, but lean protein, vegetables, still some, still some carbs, but I think my protein goal per day is 225. I need to up it to like 250, 275, somewhere in that range. Am I sure saying that your protein is a lot? It is a lot, but it should be more.
Okay. Particularly if I want to build muscle and lose fat. Okay. It needs to be, it needs to be higher.
Are you, uh, facing any, are there any, is there crazy runs at the grocery stores there? Um, there's definitely stuff missing. I went to a, um, CVS or something a couple of days ago and bought myself some placebos. Um, and there were two people in line buying toilet paper.
Robbie, can you explain to me why every ding dong is buying toilet paper? Um, it's because when the news comes out and says all the toilet paper is gone, everyone on earth looks at their toilets. Everyone who sees that and hears that news looks at their toilet paper supplies and goes, well, I only have eight rolls, so I need more. But, but, but this is the people are doing this all over the world.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Are you telling me that the news? Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Is broadcasting this message? Are you telling me, are you telling me that big TP is in on this? I don't think there's any big TP.
Is this just turned into an episode of the Joe Rogan podcast? Oh God, no. It's sensational. Time for a bong hit.
I don't want to, please. No, Joe. This is no Joe Rogan zone. I'm not a fan either.
I like, I like kettlebells though. I have my foot on one. Okay, I would say here, H-E-B, literally the local grocery chain, has had to shorten their hours so they can have time at night to restock because their shelves are getting cleared out every day of everything, not just toilet paper, everything. I have definitely, I've seen, I've seen some empty spaces on shelves for stuff that doesn't make any fucking sense for it to be gone.
Like, I will say that this has made consumer behavior fucking stupid. Mm-hmm. I mean, we're at the point where I have 20 groceries for the week. I don't need, I don't need to, I have, I went like two weeks ago, I went and bought a bunch of ramen and mac and cheese and soup, and that's just, that's stored away in case we were both sick for a week or two and we can't go anywhere.
But that's, I just need, like, chicken. I just want some chicken and some vegetables, and apparently they're, it's a rush every day to, apparently it's slowing down. That's, that's their local Austin subreddit has said it seems like it's, the panic is people are. People are tired of shitting themselves.
I guess so. I don't know. Have you ever bought the, I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't taste as good as fresh, but the frozen bag stuff, have you been noticing that sold out as well as dry buying now? It's all gone.
That's produce section cleared out, frozen produce cleared out. I'm not surprised. I, I had, I still have enough for a couple of days. So hopefully I can carry myself through some panic, but I, I think I'll be fine.
I don't know. It's, I have to eat goddamn, I have 40 pounds of rice in the house. Maybe I'll eat that and nothing but that. Well, really.
I mean, I, I won't be getting to know 300 grams of protein a day with fucking rice. No. But I'll, I won't die. Not much protein in the rice.
Uh, it's, we're going to, we're going to brave it tomorrow morning first thing. And hopefully we'll get the things, a relatively short shopping list, acquire it, and then not have to go back for a week. And hopefully by then, things will chill out a little bit. Um, my diet this week has also been fine-ish.
I think I would be, I'm right there with you where it's been mostly fine. There has been a little bit of stress eating of just general, like, I've stopped reading the news because it was driving me crazy. Um, it's, it's a lot and it's depressing. And I don't know, I can't tell you why it doesn't affect me, but I, I feel better than I have in weeks.
I feel clear-headed and great. So who the fuck knows? I think it, I think it's just a matter of getting, I, my, my, all my normal routines are all being disrupted. I think that's all our stuff.
You know, I've, I've spent, I've, I've spent, I don't know, my, my routine's not that different. I've spent a lot of time by myself for the past several months working That kind of thinking gets me in a place where I'm having to exercise too much willpower, and that's a thread that eventually breaks, you know? Right. That never works for me.
And if it works for you and it's sustainable, great. For me, like I don't have to think most of the time. It's just like, okay, I'm putting this in my book, and I'm doing the numbers, and I'm hitting these targets, and everything's good. It's just it's doing a budget.
I don't have to think about it. Got it. You got to cook those books. You know what I'm talking about?
Don't you know it. With the food? Those delicious books. Mm-mm-mm.
Mm-hmm. You going to keep your goals the same one workout? Yeah. I mean, I ideally want it to be two, but, you know, I try and and have a life.
I really don't have that much of a social life. I did do a lot of shit this week. I went to multiple art events, hung out with some people. It's more social interaction than I've had in a while.
And I'm supposed to not do it. But it's difficult. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to get to the gym more, but we're going to see. Hopefully I can get to a point where it's easier.
Maybe I'll find another cheap place and have an option closer to me and give myself more places where I can work out and kind of reduce the stress, you know, reduce the like an emotional cost, you know, to like taking action on things for me. And a lot of it is just sort of breaking down that wall, you know, having multiple places I can go or having these weights at a studio or whatever, you know, I can sneak something in. I don't have to be like, oh God, I have to cross the bridge. I have to do whatever.
It doesn't have to be ridiculous. I don't know. That's this is these are the kind of things I think about like how can I make myself more successful, you know? That's it's one of the reasons why it was never stressful to meet the trainer.
It's just like, okay, this stress is on the other side. Like I have to meet him there. I can't meet him again. I mean, that's, that's productive thoughts, though.
That's useful to try and get yourself more to re-invest. Basically, you're reinvesting that energy into trying to improve your own self. So I think about it a lot and I have improved myself a lot over my life, but by and large, it's just a fucking hamster wheel going around and around. I mean, that's most people, I think.
Yeah, I know. We're all full of hamsters. That's true. That's what the wise men say.
My God, it's full of hamsters. The wise man once said, it's true. It's hamsters all the way down. Truly.
Anything you wanna add before you leave for the week? Uh, I can't think of too much, no. All right. Well, uh, all you guys out there, uh, we'll talk to you again soon.
Probably in about one, two, three seconds. Bye. Hello, this is the week 11 check-in for the Broke Accountability Podcast. Eric, how are you?
Tired. Very, very worn down. Just from, uh, from the world or anything in particular? I mean, throw a rock, hit a reason.
How'd you do this past week? I stopped keeping my uh my journal, which is not great. I don't think that I've gone that far off track, you know? I've been mindful and I still eat the same things in the same quantities that I ate before for the most part, but I have not been tracking it and that's always a first step to going off.
But I also kind of just don't feel like dealing with it. It's um, I don't know. Did you get a workout in before your gym closed? Not at the gym, no.
I uh, I did some uh some kettlebell and um dumbbell exercises today. You know, got one pretty aggressively hard workout in today. It would have been easier with uh actual gym equipment, but it is what it is. It's kind of a lot of people are facing that.
Yeah, I mean, what are you gonna do? Um, I, I don't know. I can't make myself drink enough water. I need to focus on what I can do, you know?
I can walk. I can exercise. I can clean stuff. It's been a lot of bullshit and a lot of dealing with stuff.
It's been tough. Yeah, there's a lot of that, you know, everywhere where you, you know, everyone is on, uh, you know, Twitter, Instagram, whatever. They're all everyone's like here, try and stay busy, try and keep, keep yourself as active as you can. Try not to read the news too much.
Check out when you feel your mental health is, you know, destabilized because of it, et cetera, et cetera. Um, I'm feeling okay, you know, situation with the situation we're in. I feel okay. I think.
As good as can be expected, right? Yeah. Um, I got my, I got my workouts in. I got, I did two long walks and I got two really good bike rides in.
I've increased my, increased distance on my bike rides, um, and length of time I'm riding my bike now. I stepped up the difficulty because it's not really a, it's not a question of my legs anymore. It used to be like I couldn't ride anymore because my legs were just worn out, you know, my hamstrings or whatever. But now it's more of my lungs, my heart that I'm really pushing, which is what I want, you know?
I don't, I want to really, I wanna improve my cardiovascular. So it's now it's just a question of pushing myself, you know, more and more in that regard, which, you know, mostly just means riding a little bit longer or doing a little harder on the ring fit. I haven't played ring fit in like a week and a half now, mainly because I'm really enjoying the bike riding. I've gotten the point where now it's because my legs aren't like killing me after every ride, like it's, I'm enjoying riding my bike.
So it's, it's nice. It's nice to get outside because I am, it's the only time I'm going outside. Biking is a really great exercise every time you go out and do it. It's like a little adventure.
I, I hope, I, I didn't really notice, but it kind of looked like the layout of the roads looked similar to around here. We are notoriously bad to cycling. Even though the, the landscape here is great for it. This is a great place to fucking die on a bicycle.
I mean, Austin roads are relatively pretty bike-friendly. Um, there's bike lanes in all the roads are in my neighborhood or have like bike lanes. So, and that's where I'm going. I'm not really going that far afield.
I don't need to. I'm not, I am not fit enough to go much further outside my neighborhood, honestly. Um, but it's like in the catch 22 in the past year or two in Austin, because as they've tried to make the city more bike-friendly, adding more bike lanes, uh, there's been higher and higher bike fatalities because of that fact. More people are biking.
So of course more people are also getting hit by cars and dying, uh, biking. So it's, you know, people are still terrible assholes and don't, don't respect bicycles on the road and don't give them the space they need. They'd rather just fucking kill a person. Uh, not really an issue in my neighborhood, luckily.
Yeah, I mostly would only bike on my paths and sidewalks and things, but even still, I nearly got hit multiple times. I mean, yeah, it's, I, I'm hyper conscious of it. I don't like at night at all. I'm pretty hyperconscious.
I mean, middle of the day, clearly right away and someone like, like I, I have to fall off the bike and nearly kill myself to stop because someone is just pulling in when I clearly have the right of way. No, I mean, that's, that's what people do here. I mean, no, it's just people are assholes. Yeah.
They're terrible. Um, but I've been enjoying that. So it's not, you know, even though apparently there's a huge market for ring fit now because everyone's inside and they want something to exercise with, so they're going for like $300 on the second market. Good God.
Yeah. Uh, but I, it's not like I'm not going to play it again. It's just, you know, I haven't. We've been, Kim has been playing animal crossing and I haven't been playing animal crossing.
So the switch has been being used. Um, but I am, I'm like, I'm trying to focus on the positives. Like I'm enjoying riding my bike. It's, it's getting easier to ride my bike.
I am still slightly above pace on my weight loss for the year, my weight loss goals. Um, I'm still being, I'm not, I'm not being super disciplined with my eating, but I am still like, Hey, I, again, I a bowl of pasta for dinner, one bowl, not two bowls. Uh, and that, you know, and that's, that's something that's progress. That's, it's working.
And that's largely, it's like slow and steady progress in my weight loss. And that's really exactly what I want. Because if I start losing too much weight too quickly, I, it gets like a yo-yo effect where I expect that to happen all the time. And that's, I shouldn't.
It's nice and slow, steady progress is good because then I can, I can, it's easier to like, okay, You measure it and don't go beyond these numbers, and then eventually that becomes, well, I can have whatever I want, and I can eyeball it, and at a certain point, the eyeballing is not effective, but I am still literally eating, like, I don't know, the same half dozen things over and over. So, like, I, you know, I know how much calories are in that bowl of oatmeal. I know how many calories are in the chicken breasts and rice that I'm eating. Do you think you're just going to stick with the dumbbells and the kettlebells?
I mean, I can do most things with those things. It's still a pretty good workout. I can tell you my arms still hurt. They're heavier than the ones that I use at the gym, so I don't know.
Maybe I'll be more motivated to work out, but that has since not proved itself. That did not even want to leave the house yesterday. Well, it's... There's...
I... On my bike rides, a lot of people walking around in my neighborhood. Yeah. As long as they're not, like, cuddling with a bunch of people, it's okay-ish.
It's important that we go outside at least occasionally. Yes. I think it is not good for your health to feel like you're under house arrest. No, I...
It's more of the people walking in the bike lanes. Oh. I'll be fair. Get out of my way.
This is not for you. People pushing triple-wide strollers in the bike lane. Oh, God. All the babies.
That's right. I need to hit your three dogs. Please, please, though, I don't want to hurt your children. No, that's dogs.
Dogs, too. I don't want to hurt dogs. I mean, you put the dog in the stroller and you put the baby on a leash. That's...
Have you... Were you... Did you have a camera with me or something today, Eric? When I was on my bike ride?
I'm like Eleanor Davis. I just don't understand human nature very well. Okay. I know that's another call to the Hans and Boys universe where you guys need to know.
Yeah. Go back and listen to all the Hans and Boys podcasts and then you'll understand. Mm-hmm. All our in-references.
You'll finally understand what a Baba Hotep situation is. That's another one that we just referenced in the podcast we just recorded. Yeah. Michael's are the same.
You know, just eat reasonably, work out twice, walk twice. You know. Stay the course. Stay the course.
I think I tried to push myself for a couple of weeks and it ended up backfiring because I tried too much and I tried to do too much. I think the two and two has worked out pretty well. That's good. You have to go with what works and what works is not failing at everything and succeeding at a few things.
Yes. It's learning. It's hard. It's a hard thing to do.
To learn when to be hard on yourself and when not to be. Correct. When to push yourself and when not to. When to listen to your body and when to go, no, we're doing another lap.
We can do this. Come on. You know, some days it's natural and some days it's a struggle. But, you know, I think all things, things considered, I'm doing okay.
I have lots of macaroni and cheese, instant mac in my house. So, you know. We got to do what we got to do. Plus instant ramen as well.
I mean, I guess, I guess I do have like probably about 35 pounds of rice. You're ready. I hope it doesn't come to me eating nothing but rice every day. Yeah.
But I do have it. Yes. We also have lots of rice and beans. We made some beans the other day.
Got some beans. I'm going to have to wait a few days before I go back to the grocery store, but I want to get some beans in my own self. It's not a bad pantry thing to have. Good shelf stable food.
Yeah. Unlike your, unlike your chia seeds. I got more chia seeds. Good.
I replenished our supply of chia seeds. After you boiled them and turned them into goop and threw them down the sink because I'm an idiot. Anything else you want to add, Eric? No.
Stay healthy. I mean, we're going to, the next time, this is coming out like in a week or in change from now. So God knows what horror has happened in that, within that next week. Let's, let's be positive.
Let's hope that nothing dramatic has happened. I hope. And that we can all live happily. I hope that is the case.
My gut is telling me it will not be, but we're going to, we're going to just live lovely and positively. My favorite. It's going to be nice. My favorite thing is that we're going to sign off today and then immediately the listener is going to jump cut to next week.
Yeah. And we're both going to be. Yeah. Like, oh my God, I can't believe Godzilla is real.
Who knew? Yeah. That was a documentary. Turns out the Mothra twins came out.
We needed, we had to talk to them because we need Mothra. That's Mothra is the best part of the new Godzilla. The most recent Godzilla movie. You have talked about many times to me about your love of Mothra.
Mothra is great. That'll do it for us for this week. Guys, take care of yourself. We'll talk to you next time.
Hello everyone. This is our week 12 check-in for Bro-Accountability. End of month three. Beware the eyes of March.
Beware the march of ideas. Eric, how are you doing? I mean, at this moment, I feel okay. I've been up and down a bunch.
Slept for 13 hours yesterday. Is that good or bad? I don't know. I certainly did it though.
Okay. I left my studio after a little bit and went home and told myself I was going to take a nap and go back and kept napping until about 10 p.m. And then I was like, fuck this shit. Went to bed and amazingly slept all night.
It's honestly the best sleep I've gotten in a long fucking time. Well, you probably needed it though. Maybe. I don't know.
I normally, I have not slept well for quite some time and that's just, that's the way it is, baby. I have not slept well in a few weeks, at least. I've been getting, I woke up in the past few days, 5 a.m. every day, just up at 5 a.m.
And no, nothing, nothing doing to can't stop it. How's the workouts? How's the food? This week?
Been good on calories. Protein's been low a couple of days. You know, I've been getting regularly just one pretty hard workout in a week and that's it. It's tough to stay motivated to do much else.
You know, I, I don't know. I haven't. I've gone from being extraordinarily busy and doing a lot of things to effectively doing nothing all the time. And I've got like watching a lot of television and not wanting to leave the house and then immediately flopping from not wanting to leave the house to intense cabin fever and feeling like I can't go anywhere.
I mean, you could go for a walk and stay away from everyone. No, I mean, and that's, that's probably something that I'm just going to have to start doing. But I, I don't know. It's, it's a bummer.
It's not the best. No, it's been difficult. Yeah. It's one of those things where if you, someone didn't tell you, oh, you can't leave your house or you shouldn't leave your house.
Not that you can't because people certainly are doing it. Like, I don't know. Yes, they are. But you shouldn't leave your house for the better good, not to leave your house.
As soon as that happens, you're going to be like, I need to, I want to go do this. I want to do that. You're suddenly very aware all the times you could easily have gone done something and now you're not doing it. And you don't know when it's going to end either.
And I think that's another challenge leveled on top of just already, you know, we started this, this project because we wanted to monitor our health and help our fitness and help get both get better. And those are difficult things. And then you have a self-isolation and quarantine and stay at home orders and all that stuff layered on top of it. It makes it very, very difficult.
That alone is very difficult. You know, you see a lot of people posting fitness stuff, you know, YouTube workouts and ways that, you know, you see people improvising at home workouts in different ways. And I think those are interesting. Mostly.
I don't, I've not really followed any of them. I think I'm, I've luckily I'm just riding my bike and a ring fit adventure. Both acceptable in our current situation. Uh, even though there's way more people out on, uh, sidewalks and paths and trails in my neighborhood now than there have been in ever so many people.
Um, but I have, I have basically internalized that every day I should leave my house. Meaning like walk outside, not like go somewhere, but I every single day I'd be like, go outside, spend, go for a walk while trying to maintain the six feet distance thing. There's a, it's, it's pretty important to do things like this to feel human. You know, my neighbors are like aggressively chatty and, you know, strangers are much more eager to have a conversation with you.
I think just because everyone is starved for a necessary human level of social interaction. One more time. It is on top of that. What are your goals for next week, Eric?
I don't know if this is the right time to up protein or not. I want to try, and I think it would probably make me feel better to do a little bit of walking before I settle in for the evening. So I think maybe doing some walking would be good. You know, I'll add a couple of walks into my normal gym day.
I think it's just for my own well-being, it'll be good. Just get out of the house, honestly. God, yes. I mean, I say that and I'm recording from the studio right now.
I mean, your studio is pretty isolated. It's like you're everybody else. That's the whole point that I'm here. I mean, there are other people here, but we very rarely make out.
It's usually pretty safe. Okay, yeah, I mean, it's nice to just go and be exposed to sunlight and nature, see a bird or a squirrel or something. And I really want to go to the beach really badly or go swim in a river. That was really hit with that urge a couple of days ago, and I don't know if it's a good idea or not.
It's a bad idea. It's not the best idea. Have you seen the picture of Duval and St. John's County picture on the beach?
What does that mean? No, I don't know what you mean. In Florida, there's Duval and St. John's counties.
Duval closed their beaches, completely shut down. Can't go to the beach. St. John's, all they did was close beach parking.
And there's a heart. They have a kind of aerial three-quarters photo of where the barrier, where the county line is. No one on the beach, obviously, in Duval County. Then you see the border into St.
John's and there's a beach that's full of people. And you're like, why all these people take all the same place? So, guys, you're making it worse. You're making it worse by screaming at people.
I have a hot tub, but it's not really, I can't really swim in it, unfortunately. Just kind of sit in it. Does it travel through time and you go back to when the world was not insane? No, I can't do that, unfortunately.
It doesn't. It's making, actually, honestly, it's starting to make louder and louder noises when it runs its filter stuff. And I'm worried about it. I'm kind of afraid it might not work soon.
So, the time traveling, out of the picture. Not going to happen. That's really unfortunate. Maybe that's what that whirling is.
You don't know. Okay, fair. I'll test it out. We'll do a test.
My goals are, yeah, stay the same. 2 and 2 officially. Two walks, two workouts. But I'm going to try and get out of the house in some form or fashion every day.
I don't know, just to get out of the house. I think it's probably a good thing to keep in mind. We're three months in, Eric. Yep.
Three months. One quarter of the way through a year. How do you feel? Honestly, I'm a lot better off than I was.
Things were pretty dire. I don't know. I mean, to an extent, some of my clothes are fitting a little bit better. But I do feel like chest and arms looks better.
My face looks a little bit leaner, like I cut off a whole bunch of my beard the other day. And my head looks tiny compared to my chest and upper body. So, that's been awesome. I'm pretty pleased about that.
It's good. Eating consistently. Just in general, feeling better. Breathing better.
I feel like this has been, you know, not like a super resounding success. I'm not going to be on the cover of muscle and fitness underwear model magazine anytime soon. But it's positive trends. Feeling good.
Feeling strong. Yeah, I think I'm in the same place. My weight loss goals are ahead of schedule. I feel better.
I think, one, I can ride my bike now. And I don't feel like I'm hating it the entire time. I can enjoy it because I'm not just dying. You know, it's just not constant pain.
It's a general good thing to enjoy your exercise and not just torment yourself. And I think, honestly, it's the biggest change after three months. I mentioned it, I think, previously. It's just a relationship with my food.
I feel better about it. I feel like I have, for maybe the first time in my entire life, have created a situation where I am... I don't think I'm there, but I feel like I can... There's always been a schism between me and people who are just...
Who haven't struggled with this their entire lives, for whatever reason. There's those people who, they know, oh, I eat this and then I'm done. And I don't struggle with it. They don't think about it.
There's no inner crazy. They don't have some brain fight where they're, like, fighting it out. Like, do I eat one cookie? Ah!
They just eat a cookie and then they're done. And they're happy. And it's like, I think I have an anecdote that is kind of at the heart of what you're saying, yeah? Okay.
So, my friend Peter, as long as I've known him, he's been, like, this fitness expert and a personal trainer. And has written a book on weight loss and stuff like that. But I mean, I've seen pictures of him when he was younger. He was...
He didn't look like a fitness expert or anything, but he did not look like I did when I was that age. And he was complaining loudly about how stupid he thinks Halo Top is. Do you know what Halo Top is, Robbie? Yeah, I mean, I love Halo Top.
Halo Top, for those that are listening that don't know, Halo Top is ice cream that... It's like high fiber, low sugar. It's made, like, in the way a lot of, like, a Quest bar is or something. It's got sugar alcohols.