a post-midterm review of where I am with my goals

pushups:

By mid-July, I was supposed to be up to 10 pushups. That's on hold as my shoulder heals.

planks:

By mid-July, I was supposed to be up to 20 seconds per side with my planks. I can't do side planks thanks to my shoulder, though. And I'm still following Hampton's program, very slowly, which means I'm still doing leg raises. No actual planking yet.

pullups:

By mid-July, I was supposed to be halfway to my initial goal of a single pullup, but as with pushups and planks, I've had to delay because of my shoulder. Now that I have a pullup bar, though, I might risk trying to do some negatives. We'll see how that goes.

walking:

Let's just say I'm way ahead of schedule. I quickly got to where I could walk 18K, and I've done 26K as well. I may do a 30K or 35K walk one of these weekends, perhaps starting in Hanam and walking out to Yangpyeong. Given the heat, I'd start in the late afternoon and arrive at a motel in Yangpyeong at night. What the hell would I eat while in Yangpyeong, though? Everything's carby, and I'm out of cheat days. I'd have to look for a place that served something low-carb like kimchi-jjigae, then forgo the rice. But if I arrive at night, nothing but the convenience stores will be open. I guess I could buy carbonated water at a convenience store, wait until the next day, find a place that served low-carb Korean food, eat a meal, then train back to Seoul. That might work. When I do my big walk later this year, though, I plan to be more permissive with myself because I know how low my blood sugar goes when I walk all day, day after day. I won't sugar up every day, but I won't say no to the occasional snack.

stairs:

I am right on schedule for mid-July: halfway up the staircase. By the time I go for my hospital appointment in mid-September, I'll be doing 1.5 full staircases (B1 to 26, then B1 to 12*).

weight:

Way ahead of schedule. When I plotted out the original graph, I posited that I'd weigh 113.5 kg by now. Ha! I'm down to 105.5 already.

blood sugar (fasting glucose):

I'll have to get back to you on this. I expect that my blood sugar is still somewhat high, despite all the exercise and the caloric reduction, because I drink sugary SlimFast every morning, and there's also something called a "morning effect" in which your body preps you for the day by producing more blood sugar, causing you to have high BS readings at that time of day.

resting heart rate:

I think it's around 60-something when I'm lying on my back at home, relaxed, but when I checked it just now, I got 72. The stair work is probably responsible for the lower heart rate. My original graph put me at about 85 for right now, so again, I'm ahead of schedule.

blood pressure:

I haven't checked this in a while, so I'll have to get back to you with this, too. I suspect it's still going to be a bit high; there's a lot of work yet to be done. Maybe I'll check my BP tonight.

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*Why not to 13? This is because, from B1 to the 5th floor, several of the floors are double-sized, comprising four flights of stairs instead of the usual two. After the 5th floor, everything is just two flights of stairs—18 steps total, 9 steps per flight per floor. So technically, going to 13 would be beyond the actual halfway point. Even by stopping at the 12th floor, I'm still going beyond the halfway point, but I don't want to get too lazy. The actual halfway point is somewhere around the 10th floor.