This term I learned: Hire good finance people

 lol so yeah Finance and HR are done.  I definitely learned a TON in finance -- but the biggest learning by far was that for anything more important than whether to make that next Amazon purchase, I should hire somebody more competent to advise me.   I suppose the slight difference is now I know both what questions to ask, AND I have a slightly better chance at understanding the answer.  I have also thoroughly ruled out any finance-based job (says she who works at a bank ;-P).

Also - huge shout out to the few finance people in my life - Warren and Melissa in particular - who took time to explain concepts to me and help since the prof was entirely useless *sigh*.  Lovely woman who genuinely wanted to help, but couldn't give a straight answer to save her life.   

HR was fun.  I'm not convinced I actually learned anything given that it's both a topic that interests me - which means I've randomly read a lot more than is reasonable about it - and one that I've had experience with in real life.

The prof here was also excellent, which made it even more interesting (good thing as the course material was brutally boring!).  Which, on the one hand, nice to have an awesome prof in a course I was already inclined to enjoy.  But on the other, I could really have used good teaching skills in Finance ;-P   

Ah well.  Tis done.   And plus side - I'll have the HR prof again for my AI course that I'm super excited about in a few terms.  I guess HR is his real life, but AI is a pet project so he teaches that course too.   lol why not?

Double plus side - Finance prof also teaches Corporate Governance (next term) but NOT the Canadian classes.  lol woohoo!  Don't know who I'll have instead, but it's not likely to be worse.

VR Mindfulness?

So the Supernatural app that I'm quite enjoying has an accompanying phone app that has your stats, info on every workout you've done, etc.   It is also where you set goals and it tracks your "streaks".  So I set a goal of 4x/week.  Week one - each day I did got a dashed gold circle around it, and when I had four gold circles all the lines turned solid.  Sweet.  Extra circles got stars in them :)    So this is week two now, and I had two done, and then I had one day where I was *really* not feeling well.  I had a headache, was frustrated with work, and all other randomness.  But somehow I decided it would be a useful time to try meditation? And I recalled that SN had that too, so figured I'd give that a go.   All good - not my favourite meditation for sure, but not horrible.  I spent more time looking around the pretty scenery than listening to the dude talk, but I guess that's it's own form of meditation.   I also played Tripp - another meditation app - for a bit and it was... different ;)   lol but I'll do it once more and then give it its own post.  Definitely interesting.   Anyways - back to SN.  I don't remember why I went into the app this afternoon -- I think somebody might've followed me or something -- but when I was there I noticed that yesterday had a blue dashed circle???  hmmm it appears meditation counts for something?   So then I was curious if it would also count as one of the days toward my four-day goal.  So when I completed today's workout (of the normal variety), I went into the app...  

And sure enough, all the circles are solid!

And what interested me is that my first reaction was "meh - that's not exercise, it shouldn't count", but then it occurred to me if what I was going for was health rather than just workout, it's arguably as, if not more, important and they're absolutely right to count it.   So now I'm both bemused and surprisingly motivated that on a crummy day where I just don't have a workout in me, I can keep my streak alive by a few minutes of mindfulness.   So I'd say that's a win to the SN developers.  And for me.

Part of today's workout was a failure due to the fact that my batteries died :(   That is one thing that never happens irl.   So I'll try and repeat it tomorrow or the next day cause it was a *riot* but not easy.

And my other mental exercise -- I've been experimenting with my trial month for the Spanish lessons I'm going to use for boot camp.  So far I've been really disappointed, but I'll wait till the end of the trial to see if that changes.  One thing that is good is that lessons are available any half hour between 5am and midnight EST and you can book at literally the last minute (I have absolutely tested and been successful at booking a lesson for 8:30 at 8:29 ;)   Anyways - in today's lesson, which was conversation based, the feedback was that my comprehension was really good but my accent was horrible.  lol and honestly, this is a huge win because, well, I've heard that my accent is horrible before -- I'm hoping that's what March Madness (aka boot camp) will help address -- but this is the first time ever I've heard that my comprehension was good.  Woohoo!!!   I've been doing a lot of focused work on comprehension - maybe that's actually helping???  Of course this teacher I've never spoken with before, so no comparison.  But I'd like to pretend it is ;)

Some days you just don't want to workout. So play games instead :)

So once again, I have to say one of the benefits of VR fitness is how little commitment it can take.   I did *not* want to work out today, but the shortest Supernatural routine is 8 minutes and the shortest FitXR is 3...   So really, "I'll sign in and do one" is enough that it makes me feel like I've accomplished something without actually committing to a full "workout".  

So I dragged my sorry ass downstairs.  I did at least put on workout clothes, so I *could* potentially do a real workout if I became inspired.  My thought was I'd do the week's team challenge on FitXR and at least knock that off and then be done.   Except that when I went to use FitXR it needed an update.  *sigh*  That's an issue I've never had going to a real gym lol.   So okay, it's cold in the basement so while it was updating, I did an 8 min Supernatural round, which was fun and I was warmed up.  Then did the boxing round - this week's challenge was a 15 min class.   Okay fine.  So I got that done, and was pretty pleased with my score...   Which meant I went back into SN and loaded up a 15 min one - chose country music for a change of pace.  lol and it was a really solid workout, by the end I was definitely struggling.   I'm not sure if that's cause of the workout itself or if it was cause it followed 15 mins of boxing at full power, but either way, good workout.  So then I was having fun and wanted to keep going, but was also spent, so just did an 8 min cool down one (on light) to round it out.

Seemed an appropriate local for a country workout :)

But all in my "few minutes" that I convinced myself I could do, resulted in a 48 min workout, solely because it's fun.   And I was in such a better mood after too - so much more energized.   Win :)

Day 3...

Okay so yesterday was day two of Supernatural, and I had a really good time playing (other than the one that crashed *mutter mutter*).  Although even the one that crashed I got a “partially complete” in my workout history, so that was good (showed up a few hours after the fact.

Anyways - after the workout I was sitting for a couple hours due to work and then realized…   I wasn’t sure moving was even an option?!?!  I was SO stiff and SO sore.  On the *same* day.  Definitely not a good sign.  So I did a couple calls on the treadmill, on stroll pace, just to make sure I could move.  

Then I remembered SN has stretching routines too…   So I signed back in, but it’s cold in the basement so I did another (short) round to warmup again, and then did a stretching routine.  Remarkably helpful.   Actually pretty pleased at at.

That night, I took some Aleve and off to dreamland I went.

Pretty sore this am, and was pretty sure I wouldn’t be working out, except two things: one, today is the day my scores are due for the team challenge for FitVR, and I won’t be *that* person to not contribute to the team.  So at very least, I *had* to box.  And two, Supernatural comes with a streak counter.   😂 it’s amazing how motivating such a completely pointless tool is.   Like nobody cares about my two-day streak on a trial subscription, but look at me go.

lol my streak ;)   Kinda sad, but it's a start.

Okay so I did boxing first and gave it everything I had.  Actually got a good (for me) score and felt amazing.  Go team!   lol doesn't involve the same muscles as Supernatural so didn’t hurt at all, and, well, I have a lot more practice with boxing.   So all good.   Then I wanted to keep my SN streak so went in there, but those muscles DO hurt, so I figured I’d be smart and pick an 8 min “low” (aka easy).  Except I couldn’t find an 8 min one I wanted to do that wasn’t the same one I did on day one, but did find a 13 min one whose playlist was SO fun.   So okay.  I was warmed up and feeling good, this should be no problem.

And here I learned how much easier L is from M, which I’ve been playing.  Which makes me really look forward to H ;)    I bebopped along to the music, and tried to get as close to a perfect score as I could.   I also learned how the triangles are actually supposed to work (eg actually move your feet!) as some of them were way on the left side of my mat and some were way to the right.  😂  The coach for this one was also WAY more useful.  There’s one who drives me insane, the rest I’ve tried have mostly faded into the background.  But this one was helpful.   So noted.

End result - I learned some things that will be useful in the faster level, and got a nice stretchy routine that wasn’t nearly as entertaining but totally appropriate for my capabilities today.   Look at me setting the bar at a reasonable height for once ;-P  Although honestly, it's been a few hours now and I kinda want to go play again...   

Spanish immersion steps it up a level

 So as some of you may know, I’ve been doing Spanish immersion month in Feb to prep for my week of boot camp the first week of March.   Partially, this involves significant dedicated listening practice (about an hour a day of active listening with more casual listening - tv or music - when I have time for background noise), and partially this involves making as many things in my life Spanish as possible.  

I started by making FB Spanish — that’s not really all that much of a challenge given I could prob also navigate reasonably successfully in Greek ;)   I loaded a Spanish novel to read on my kindle — also not super challenging as I picked one targeted to B2 learners, which is exactly the level I’m “officially” at (usually when I read I go up a level, so this feels v easy, definitely nowhere near as challenging as the “real” novels I’ve read - even if they target tweens ;).  Note, I don’t actually speak anywhere near this level.  I just test here cause online tests don’t involve speaking *g*  But for the other three parts of language, it’s actually correct.

But then I also made my phone Spanish.  And I admit, I had NO concept of what that would mean to my life.  To recap, since then I’ve had:

• Alexa in my car, now speaks Spanish.  Which I love!  Cause really, awesome practice with instant feedback on whether it was understood.   But yeah, was a surprise, and a disturbing number of things I have to think of other ways to say.   Eg - in English I tell her “skip this song”, but I don’t know how to say ‘skip’ so now in Spanish I tell her “next song”.  Pretty much the opposite of fluent, but slowly slowly becoming competent.
• Wikipedia is in Spanish.  Yeah that was thoroughly unexpected ;)   And made my “quick lookup” much slower than anticipated.
• My Fitbit is now in Spanish.  The app, the physical watch, AND the email report they send me every week.  lol this was more challenging than otherwise as I had only *just* gotten a new-to-me fitbit the week before.
• On social media, when people post in other languages (I get posts from a fun number of countries/cultures/languages), instead of those other languages automatically translating to English, they now translate to Spanish.   I honestly was fairly oblivious how much behind-the-scenes translation was happening until now.
• Bitmojis are in Spanish.  This one makes me sad, since nobody I send bitmojis to understands Spanish.   Also, it very much highlights my complete lack of colloquial Spanish as I have no idea how to search for things — and they’re things Google Translate isn’t going to help with.   Like I know lol = jajaja, but what does WTF translate to?   I really wanted that one today.   Because often there are images with no text that would still suit, but I need to be able to search for the text I want.  So this is proving to be a frustrating exercise, but I’m disproportionately pleased when I get it.  I found a good teacher one for C’s first day, so I was happy about that :)
• Work email and Webex Teams...  You got it: Spanish.   I had a definite moment today when it told me I had a P&PM Reunion.  I was like 'Really?  That project only ended on Friday, do we actually need a reunion so soon?'   Until I remembered....  Reunion in Spanish translates to meeting ;-P    And it was one I could cancel *because* said project finished on Friday ;)

And today’s adventure…  Google maps.   By this point, I didn’t even really notice the app itself being in Spanish, like with FB, I can pretty much navigate the app without any of the written cues.  Connected to the car and started driving and…   Directions in Spanish.

This is what the first few seconds felt like...
But it got better :)

Sigh, followed by an eye roll, and eventually a laugh because well, I wanted immersion and here it is.   Fortunately, I know the words left and right and they don’t sound anything remotely like one another, so even if rapid-fire Spanish syllables get lost, I still knew which way to turn.  Unfortunately, one of the gaps I’ve noticed in my listening exercises is the ability to accurately recognize numbers.  Even when I’m listening for them, I get them right maybe 50% of the time.  Which makes the distance to the left or right turn a bit of a question mark.   And then the HUGE challenge is that Spanish Google Lady does *not* read English street names in any way I could even pretend to understand.   Like even leaving my block, where I knew fully well the name of the street, I couldn’t pick it out.   So I was relying strongly on a combination of my faulty ability to understand numbers, and the fact that Google Lady always reminds you right before it’s time to turn ;)

However, Spanish Google Lady and I made it where we were supposed to go on the first try, so I was pretty pleased at that.  And the new pizza place was very much worth the challenge ;)

Entering the supernatural world

So I've mentioned before that Supernatural, one of the most highly recommended fitness games, is one I'd yet to try, due to its subscription costs.  I've seen videos of people playing and kinda thought meh - it's like Beat Saber and, well, I already have Beat Saber ;)

I honestly really didn't see what the big deal was, or how it could really be *that* much better of a workout.  And definitely not worth the price.

Except for the moment, the price is free.  Lol they're doing a one month free trial.  Well okay - may as well have a look at it then, esp as my fitness scores this week were, ummm, less than spectacular *sigh*  More on that later.

Well.  Honestly, I'm *still* not sure how it's such a better workout, but I can tell you, it definitely IS.  lol So it follows the same basic premise as Beat Saber -- moving to music, hit the floating things in the direction they're pointing with the bat of the correct colour (have to admit, the light sabers are way cooler).  Instead of the occasional wall to duck under or around, Supernatural has triangles that you duck through.  So depending on how the triangle is oriented, they're either low squats or lunges to one side or the other.  I admit, I wasn't proving coordinated enough for the lunges so they tended to be more of squat and side-crunch lol - but honestly, that's a great workout too, so I'm okay with it.   They also have long streams to follow -- you can feel in the controller that you've got it (yeah haptics!) -- these can cause quite the vertical stretch if you happen to be short.   So between the squats and the reach I'd go from almost on the ground to standing on my toes and back multiple times in a few mins.   And the arms are everywhere.  And then on top of it all, it has *stunning* scenery and the game itself is both fun and addictive (as per Beat Saber).

The music was fun AND the location was amazing

Also, I suspect I'm right in their target demographic cause the amount of 90s music to pick from was moderately amusing.  I did a 90s Pop run and a "Prom Night" -- which definitely had music from my prom days.  Tells me they're not going for the current prom audience ;-P   Certainly a decent amount of $ from their subscription cost is going for music rights.

The other thing the $ is going toward is the coaches.  Who, honestly, I could probably do without, but they do certainly add a "workout" vibe.  There's a warmup before and cool down after every round.  Which got annoying very quickly when instead of one long workout I wanted to do multiple short ones.  Fortunately FB saved the day and told me how to skip those ;)  They also comment as you're playing the game but since I ignore them as effectively as I ignore Josh (sorry Josh!), I have no idea if they're useful or not ;)   Also, new workouts daily?  This seems slightly excessive -- I'd prefer they drop it down to once or twice a week and lower the cost, but not my call.   

This was my coach in Iceland

I've only played the light and medium level.  Medium seems about right atm, but will prob move up to hard before too long.  Just cause, well, me ;)  There's also a leaderboard so you can compete against friends.  Unlike Beat Saber or Oh Shape, it doesn't give you the whole world of scores, only those people you're "following".   I didn't know about this so I had a very empty leaderboard.   A quick post on a FB forum garnered me a whole collection of new competition though so my leaderboard won't be empty tomorrow.  When I checked this afternoon I was somewhere in the middle, which is pretty well the most motivating place for me to be.  At the top is boring, at the bottom is frustrating or overwhelming.  In the middle means room to get to the top ;) 

There's a phone app that goes along with it that tracks your history etc.  I haven't done enough to see if it'll be at all useful or not; I suspect not, but look forward to being proven wrong ;)

Now as for the less-than-successful...   Last week's FB stats came in and they're all red.  Boooo.  I blame a complete lack of meetings at work and two papers being due at school.  There was a lot of sitting still and moving only for the bare minimum 250 steps / hour.  Sometimes not even that.   Also - I've discovered it doesn't count about 1/3 of my workouts?  So random.  Don't *really* care (esp as it does seem to count those steps) but have learned not to stress too much about the exercise count cause it's so inaccurate.

Room for improvement next week!

On the plus side - both papers submitted!!!  Now we wait...  

If you listen, you may learn something new...

So the Spanish adventures continue - was watching TV and went to do a quick google of something and...  Wikipedia is also now in Spanish?!?!    Lol so random.  Also, makes it way more challenging to look up that “quick thing”!  That being said, I'm disproportionately proud of myself when I can get Alexa to do what I want in Spanish.  lol and getting slightly more confident about talking to her.

This month I’m focusing on improving my listening skills — a key part of conversation and solely lacking — in hopes of setting me up for my bootcamp week that will hopefully address the speaking part of conversation.

I have multiple “intermediate conversation” courses available to me, collected from a variety of sources over time.  The general concept is you’re given an audio clip of people speaking Spanish, a brief blurb to set context, and a transcript.  Theoretically you listen to it a few times, then read and listen together, then if needed, just read.   All good right?  

Except that I hate repeating myself - in anything.  So once I’ve listened once, even if it was a complete failure, I zoned out for half of it and didn't really get the other half, I still don’t tend to listen again.  And as a result, this really wasn’t proving helpful.

Amazing skills!

But now I’ve gamed myself into learning.  So step one is I don’t read the context.  ALL the literature about improving listening practice says you should, so this is prob a mistake lol, but - for me it’s important.   Because - the first time I listen, it’s with a goal of being able to tell somebody what they were talking about.  Essentially - I write out what should very closely align with the blurb, and any details I can remember.  I do this in blue.  Then, I listen with purple pen in hand, and as they’re talking, write down as many details as I can.  I listen through as many times as necessary until I think I’ve got as many details as possible.  I intentionally banned the pause button to force me to listen more (it’d be too easy to pause, write it down, listen to the next sentence, pause, etc.  Arguably still listening but not quite as useful).   When I’ve gotten as much as I can - THEN I listen and read and, in red, fill in anything I missed.   Since my reading is WAY ahead of my listening ability, I’ve yet to need the “just read” option, but if I did it would probably need an even angrier colour ;)   Orange maybe?

This has made SUCH a difference.  It’s on my iPad (*love* my Goodnotes app) so I’m not wasting a ton of paper ;)  so I can scroll through and see what’s up.  And some interesting trends:  

• I’m writing in both Spanish and English lol.   No rhyme or reason - my guess would be whatever’s fastest at the time.  
• Time of day makes a difference — I’m *much* better in the morning than in the evening.  Which if you’d asked me, I would’ve reversed for sure.   Esp as I do 90% of my Spanish learning in the evening.   Also, the evening practice the notes are almost entirely in English.  
• I also seem to find it easier to understand men than women — all but one of my Spanish teachers (I’ve had 4 total) have been men, so that likely contributes to that.  And I cannot understand children.  Like, not at all.  lol  I’m not particularly concerned about that atm tbh, but figure I’d make a note of it so in a year or two when I look back and suddenly *can* understand littles, I’ll know I’ve gotten somewhere. 

But the best part of this is that I’ve gamed myself — because now it’s a challenge to have as little red as possible.  So I listen more intently, my mind wanders less, and I’m more likely to do “just one more” than my half-assed once through I was doing.  So I’m deeming that a win.   But it’s evening and my last one had almost as much red as purple, so I’m calling it a night ;)   I’ll try again in the am.

A virtual sport I won't be taking up ;)

So it turns out I'm even worse at VR Table Tennis than I am IRL.  lol and let me tell you - I was definitely setting the bar low (for the curious...).   As per IRL, I want to hit the ball WAY too hard.  lol and unlike IRL, it's not nearly as entertaining when you're playing against a computer who not only doesn't try to return your wild serves (thanks Abdul!) but just stands there completely blasé until you manage a decent one.   I can't even imagine how bad it would've been if I'd set it to match me with a live person.  Yikes.   Also, completely unrelated -- it is a really bad idea to lean on the table to reach for the ball when playing on a virtual table.   lol  I managed to catch myself before face planting on the basement floor but graceful it was not.   A quick google taught me that the "pros" in this game, play in front of an actual table or their bed.  Apparently it's a standard hazard.   It does say something about the quality of the graphics and the immersive environment though.

This is where I was playing
I definitely bounced a ball off the TV
and landed another in the closet ;)

Lol Suffice to say that game was returned quickly.

About that - for anyone interested -- it seems most Quest games don't have a demo version to try, but they do have an amazing refund policy.  Basically if you've owned it for less than two weeks and have played for less than two hours, they'll take it back and refund your money.  I've returned more games than I've kept -- some because they made me motion sick and some because, like table tennis, I was just too horrible at it to enjoy it and definitely did not care enough to get better.   On the flip side, I've bought a couple games I otherwise wouldn't have because they had the option to try them first and I decided they were worth the cost.   Table Tennis was the deal of the day today so I thought I'd give it a try, but no go on that one.

I did pass my second Expert + in Beat Saber ;)  Unreasonably pleased about that.  I had to work up to it, playing it on slow first and then on full speed, but I got there.  Win! :)   

Stepping the exercise up a level

So in an effort to make my workouts slightly more intense, I've been trying different ways of incorporating weights...  I tried both weighted arm bands and weighted wrist bands, which were both a failure.   As soon as I had to punch down or sideways the weighs would shift and either pinch or become too loose and interfere with the controls and movement.  They also couldn't be worn with a fitbit.  Complete fail.

I honestly hate actual boxing gloves,
but these ones have open fingers and palm so it's all good ;)

However, today I discovered weighted GLOVES!  These are awesome!!!  lol only a pound each, but it's amazing what a difference they make.  They are open palm, so they don't interfere with grip, and they do up with a tiny wrist band that's narrow enough to fit between my hand and where the fitbit sits.  So win.

There is  NO point to this image except that it made me laugh ;)
The ultimate Beat Saber bitmoji! 
AND I found it in Spanish.  
lol accidentally, but we don't need to mention that.

Used these and my scores across all three platforms dropped by 1/3.  lol So clearly impacting my speed and movement.   My scores in dance weren't noticeably impacted, but I think that's more due to my incompetence in dance.  Lol when the bar is lying flat on the ground, it's hard to go lower!   

Even this bar is higher than I've set for dance!

But I definitely felt sore by the end, and a couple hours later, lifting my arms above my head is now a challenge.  So I'm deeming that a win.

Virtual January Results are In

Virtual January is over...   And the question of can virtual fitness create real results...  It would seem they can :)   Although I would argue, that depends on your starting point...   For the super-fit, it's probably not going to do too much for you.  For the rest of us average humans though... Read on :)

Pluses:

- it's FUN.  The last couple weeks I've been less good about riding the bike, mostly cause when I get down there I want to go right into boxing.  And by the time I'm done boxing, I don't have time left to bike.

- because it's fun I do it longer, and put more effort into it, than I otherwise would.  Especially the bike games -- the riding one toasts my cardio in < 15 mins because I go all out to catch the bad guys.  Like buckets of sweat and barely able to breath.  It's awesome ;)   Unless I'm lazy and just go for a ride - that I can do without breaking a sweat

- there's a great online community that makes it even more fun.  Weekly challenges, other people to work out with, and just constantly reminding you that this is here and other people are doing it, so why aren't you ;)

- it can be as long or as short a workout as you want.  Also, as intense or not.  You can totally cheat the system for sure, but if you're actually in it to get the workout...  For instance, in FitXR (boxing) I find myself constantly swinging harder or faster to try and improve my average punching score (about 6.1 now - up from 4 something when I started).   I'm really good at hooks and uppercuts.  Lol those are usually in the 8 plus range.  Unfortunately I absolutely suck at straight punching.  They're usually 4 or less...   So yeah - average meh.  But I get a very good workout trying to get that average number up.

- lots of games also involve squats in an effort to get lower body workout in too.  And there are definitely days I feel this after.

- there are multiple games to choose from that all involve movement.  So if you redefine exercise to mean "it got me off the couch for 30 mins" there are a TON of options.

- super flexible -- want to work out a midnight?  No problem.   And yes, I have literally done that.  

Minuses:

- your core will get a workout only if you go out of your way to engage it.  Upper cuts and hooks are great for core, IF you intentionally engage those muscles.  But it's just as easy to score highly without.   Dancing does slightly better at forcing core engagement, but nothing like a solid plank will do.

- no weights - if you're strictly looking to build the kind of muscles you get by lifting heavy stuff up and putting it down again, this probably isn't for you.

Other notes:

- Holofit is now a thing -- this is for use on the bike or the rower.   Since we have a rower, I'm partially interested in trying it, but I can only afford so many subscriptions and atm I like my bike subscription better (AND it's cheaper :)

- likewise, the game that pretty well everybody I've spoken to raves about for VR fitness is Supernatural, but it also comes with quite an expensive subscription service (more expensive than either of the others), so I've refrained from trying it.  By all accounts it's sort of a cross between boxing and Beat Saber but apparently a far better workout.  

- I did add more walking into my day, so that may or may not have contributed to the end results...

The Results:

Sorry it's in Spanish - if you read the rest of the blog you'll know why ;)

Okay so from a Fitbit perspective, compared to last week I was up in everything except flights of stairs.  So that's all good.  Again, not sure it's super sustainable, but at least I have a new target to beat.  And my resting heart rate has been the same for two weeks - although that's higher than it was at the start of Jan, which is pretty much the opposite of what we're going for?  So not sure what that's about.

Otherwise - I lost the weight that I gained in Dec, so that's good.  Not down any beyond that, but at least back to neutral.  I also lost 3" which is lovely and BETTER than the start of Dec, so pretty stoked at that.  I did *not* lose any arm inches, but what's there is definitely feeling firmer than what was there before, so I'm deeming that a non-quantifiable subjective win ;)

So for Feb I will continue to track.  I'm going to bring my Stealth and my ab-chair back into play so those two between them should help with the abs.  Will continue with the VR games I've been playing but make a point to incl 3x/week on the bike with actual cardio.  That's the goal for Feb.