Extra calories

Trying to eat more to shift toward weight maintenance has been interesting and surprisingly difficult. I did actually gain weight over the last fortnight but that included Thanksgiving and I don't believe that on normal days I am yet eating enough to maintain; I think the small gain is well within the error bars.

Weihnachtsstollen and koláče will make it easy to eat more calories over this festive period but into the New Year I have wondered what different choices to make. I don't want to switch from, say, poppadoms to oatcakes just for the higher calories: I want the different food to feel correspondingly worth those calories and to fit in with my other nutritional aims. My inclination at present is for us to buy more cheese and nuts, especially macadamia or cashews, for me to snack on.

Exercise-time entertainment

Our cross-trainer as currently assembled makes a variety of mechanical clanks, scrapes and clatters to accompany one's workout. I hadn't dreamt of listening to podcasts while using it and I had doubts about television reception in the garage. Today while looking at our storage containers and boxes I realized that I could download closed-captioned shows to my laptop computer and place it within view while I exercise.

The BBC are good at providing subtitles that I could read to obviate the need for being able to hear the program clearly. As for what to watch, a fallback could be, for instance, the latest World News Today but that is hardly much of an agreeable enticement. Still, something lasting not much over half an hour would be best. I shall have to look out for enough suitable short shows for a few viewings per week.

My forty-minute workouts have been going well of late: over the past fortnight I've not had one for which the machine estimated less than 850 of its calories.