Three sets of ten wide-grip pull-ups. Unassisted. I did them this morning, and I was fucking proud of it. I had done pull-ups before, a few here and there, and I had used a band for assistance when I was heavier. This felt different. Full grip, deliberate reps, all three sets. By the time I got to the show, I wanted to tell the others what had happened.
I started by saying I couldn’t remember the last time I had done that. Jon asked whether I ever had. I had to be more precise: I hadn’t done three sets of ten like this before. It was easy to describe it as getting something back when I was actually looking at something new. I was glad he pushed me to give the achievement its proper place.
The back session was big more generally. I looked at the numbers I was tracking and could see my lifts moving up. That was a useful experience to have after standing on the scale and wondering whether I had plateaued. My weight had been around 168 or 169 for much of the week. This morning it was 169. Then I got into the gym and had something else to look at: what I could do.
I had come into the morning well rested by my recent standards: seven hours and twelve minutes, with a 95 sleep score. I felt clear and ready. I had my egg, and I was already walking when I made the morning entry. When Oz asked what I wanted to bring to the show, the answer was energy. I wanted to enjoy the conversation and be fully there for it. The training gave me plenty to be excited about.
Food was quiet this morning too. Yesterday the cookies had looked good and I had been thinking about hunger. Today I wasn’t feeling the fridge pull. That change interested me as much as the scale. I had begun considering whether to change the Reta because the experience felt different from the early weeks, but one morning wasn’t going to settle that question in either direction.
The body-fat estimate was 18.7 percent, lower than the recent readings. I didn’t take that as proof that I had lost a particular amount of fat overnight. I liked what I saw in the mirror, my training was going well and my weight had stayed fairly steady. Those were the observations available to me. I wanted to keep seeing what happened before making another adjustment.
I wasn’t changing anything today. Monday could be a checkpoint, without becoming a promise to increase something. Between now and then I wanted to pay attention to hunger, the amount of space food took up in my thoughts, the mirror and the training. I had enough moving parts to observe without deciding in advance what the next few days would mean.
What I don’t want to lose in all of that observation is the pleasure of the pull-ups. I’m fifty-four, carrying about 169 pounds, and this morning I did something I hadn’t done in that form before. I could feel excited about it without needing a smaller number on the scale. There was a point in the conversation when Jon reminded me to take the credit, and I did. I had worked for that morning. I was happy to have it.