day 7/30 (wow it has already been a week! Counting days somehow makes it seem to go by faster for me)
bw 206.4 (water fluctuation?)
calories 1466
p 173
c 95
f 44
I am feeling this week. Going to try to take this deload week to see if I can’t adjust my schedule and wake up earlier. Going to have 7 days to try to do it. Up to this point I have been doing cheats every week as long as it is within my calories. Basically a fuck macros kind of cheat. I think I am going to try to wait a few weeks till I do that again though.
I believe these things are industry and company dependent. What engineering are you? I assumed you were EE but safe to double-check. We may be talking about entirely different things here.
Are you in the U.S.? I know states have slightly different rules for who are exempt employee vs non-exempt but I thought all the states had the same basic rules for who are considered exempt.
Forgot to response to your question about where I am- I am in San Jose, CA.
Yes, the basic definition for an exempt employee is someone doesn’t get paid overtime for working beyond 40hr/wk. But what that really means is that they’re not getting paid hourly, and so expectation from upper management is different.
I don’t know much about systems engineering, but in EE and CS fields the basic expectation is that you work well past 40hr a week in order to even do the bare minimum your job requires.
Yeah I am thinking this must be an industry/company difference. I work on a fairly small program within a huge company but all the ee and cs I work with are same as me. I even know 2 cs that work 30 hour weeks and get paid for just that. I am kind of curious why such a big difference though since we do have pretty big time crunches or maybe a bunch of people are doing this and I’m just unaware of it.
Not sure what your plan diet looks like, but I’m currently eating an absolute ton of baked chicken breast for this very reason. If I can eat 250g of protein from chicken breast, that’s only around 1000 calories, but damn near 2.5lbs of chicken. If you bake it so it’s still got a lot of the water, I still feel pretty dang full after eating that much chicken over the day, even if the rest of my calories only add up to around 1900. Helps me stave off hunger much more than hitting my calories with fats or carbs
1 lb of lean meat (lately it has been turkey breast but it varies on what I can get that day at the store)
two pieces of toast with cream cheese (like only 290 cal but keeps me ok till lunch and it is quick)
2 eggs with 3/4 cup egg whites and a slice of cheese (370 cal)
some sort of berries (73 cal)
something small and easily measurable so I don’t feel cheated if I go way under. Usually I shoot for 1500 to 1600 cal
At this point I don’t want to cut out fat because of hormone production (you need like 30 g or so if I remember correctly to be healthy). I can cut out the bread in the morning and add in more tukey but that isn’t the time that I am hungry, it is later in the day so idk.
Edit: I will also say that a big thing has been that my meal window is from 7 am to around 8 am since I have to eat with medicines that I typically take at the same time. This meant that I needed a meal of at least 300 cal at 8pm. Yesterday though, I started trying something different where I take one with my dinner (the one that needs 300 cal with it for absorption ) and then am just taking the rest at bedtime with an empty stomach. I feel like this is really helping my hunger so far and upset stomachs I usually get from taking them all at once. I think the big thing was my lunch would be a good size and then dinner and last meal would be small.
No I appreciate the advice I really do and I might try changing things up a little to see how things work but I like to only change things one at a time for like a week. We will see how it goes.
Always fun to get more exposure to new info. I didn’t know of EE working hourly. Ya, this is definitely industry/company differences.
And sorry, I don’t want you to get the wrong impression- those 72 hr weeks I mentioned are typically because of crunch time or an emergency of some sort. They’re most definitely not the norm!
Oh I figured that but now you have me not wanting to leave my company lol. It seems like I have it made from a family perspective. I always kind of thought about maybe seeing what was out there in a few years but maybe not.
10/05/2021
day 8/30
bw 206.5
cal 1424
p 159
c 114
f 39
10/06/2021
day 9/30
cal 1520
p 156
c 93
f 59
kind of screwed the pooch again on this last day. Didn’t get to make lunch so I just had some protien bars again then a lb of lean ground beef for dinner. Also taking meds early isn’t working they put me to sleep at 8. So, will have to change that too. Almost a third of the way there though.
Feeling the itch on deload week. Going to aim for a heavy set on deadlift and push press tomorrow or tonight.
edit:
worked up to a single rep on push press for 185. Tried for 195 but it just wasn’t there tonight. I really think that I should be able to do this once I get back to handling heavy weights and get my form down again.
Ya. If you have a stable 40hr/wk job that you enjoy and it keeps you financially where you want then you’re probably in a good spot.
It’s always good to have an idea of your job market and how competitive your pay is… Sites like glassdoor is an easy, if possibly inaccurate, way to get an idea. Regional pay differences matter too.