John: [Grunts]

Laura: Five, four--

John: I think more than anything we look like dolphins coming up for air.

Laura: [laughter]

Chris: Like porpoises?

John: Yep.

Laura: Hold it up. Hold it up. Hold it up.

John: Oh! Oh the porpoise is out of the air! Oh, hold it, porpoise!

Laura: Three, two [laughter].

[INTRO]

John's Voiceover: Welcome back to 100 Days. So after Chris and I's aerial fitness class we had pretty good weekends. You can see that we ate fairly nutritious meals like Chris had a nice mix of vegetables and protein, I had some pretty balanced meals on day 27 and day 28 but we also both had multiple gaps when it comes to tracking and in general on the days you don't see a lot of pictures of what I'm eating are the days that I'm eating poorly.

For me that mostly means lots of late night grazing, you know, like trips to the pantry where I kind of stare into the middle distance for a while and then think, "mmm, think I'm gonna have some goldfish." All of that, of course, came back to haunt me on our day 29 workout with Laura.

Everything started out fairly normal, we did suicides and sit ups and get ups and push ups and dips. Chris got stuck while doing the roll outs. It's not a competition but finally there's something that he doesn't master immediately. We then moved on to bicycle kicks and weights and jump squats and then things started to get a little tense between us.

Chris: I ordered a pizza on Saturday.

John: Did you really?

Chris: Nicole and I split a pizza.

John: We're gonna have to decide if we're gonna--

Laura: Heel down?

John: Yeah. Refocus.

Chris: What do you mean? Refocus what?

John: Like following the rules on the diet after--

Chris: What--I am following the rules on the diet.

John: Not if you were eating half a pizza. That's more carbs than you're allowed to have all day. And more dairy.

Chris: Well you know what? I didn't have another f-----g carb all day long.

John: Alright, I'm not mad at you.

Chris: You know?

John: I'm thinking about myself--

Chris: And you know what? John, I am not gonna go the rest of my life without eating pizza, okay?

John: I'm not--I'm not yelling at you, man.

Chris: I thought we weren't doing a crash diet I thought we were trying to figure out things that fit for our lifelong term.

John: That's why--that's why I'm saying we gotta talk to Kim about what--

Laura: You guys--you guys, come on.

John: Okay, let's go.

Laura: Let's all get along now.

John's Voiceover: So yeah I don't know if we were feeling moody because of our diet decisions or if I was just defensive because I haven't been eating well. And I don't think it's a matter of one of us being right or wrong I think it's mostly a matter of change being hard.

And even though I'm the one doing the voiceover I'm not going to take this opportunity to throw Chris under the bus because the truth is in the end I'm probably having a harder time with the diet than he is. That said, Chris, I don't think Kim wouldn't like you eating half a pizza.

Laura wanted to use this workout to illustrate how disparate the calorie burn calculators can be on different devices. So on my phone app that's connected to the heart rate monitor I was wearing it claimed I'd burned 467 calories at this point. On my watch it said 269, and that's a huge difference. That's almost a full Snickers bar. But regardless of how many calories we'd burned we were definitely getting tired.

Laura: You wanna do two presses?

Chris: Yes.

John: Sure.

Laura: Or you can do three presses.

Chris: Let's do three, John.

John: Okay let's do three.

Chris, John & Laura: One.

John & Chris: Two.

John: Three.

Laura: You wanna do three roll outs too?

John: No.

Chris: Nope.

Laura: [laughter]

John's Voiceover: But we didn't quit; we did some squats, burpees, partner abs, cable ball turns and then we finished up with bicycle abs. This is all going quite fast for you, of course. If you want to follow along please check out the community tab.

Chris: Look, Rose, you're flying.

Laura: Four, three--

John: I'm king of the world!

Laura: --two [laughter] one. Alright!

John's Voiceover: Maybe our conversation motivated Chris because look at his healthy day 29 dinner! That's just beautiful and definitely not pizza! I did pretty well for the rest of the day, like I had this lettuce wrap and this banana and also this Snickers bar.

So that was actually our first and last formal workout of the week. It was a holiday here in the United States so I took some time off to go to Montana and see my brother and my adorable baby nephew. That also meant that I was basically in control of both my diet and my exercise for the next several days and I was really nervous about what that would mean for me.

I think I've benefited a tremendous amount from the accountability that 100 Days has provided. The audience keeps me accountable but so does Laura and Chris and our dietitian, Kim. But in Montana the choices were pretty much mine. And when it came to exercise I have to say my choices were pretty great. I went on a six mile run one day and a five mile run another.

Now as you may remember we're doing a 10k race in about nine weeks so this running is important training for me. I also climbed a mountain with my dad which was very taxing for me. Not for my dad who's 28 years older than I am. But I didn't make great choices when it came to food. I pretty much went totally off the rails in terms tracking meals and as I mentioned earlier the days when I'm not taking pictures of my food are days that I'm usually eating poorly.

Look, I just don't think it's honest to pretend that this is easy. Like, I've done hard things before. I know what it's like to quit smoking cigarettes; I spent many years at home and at night and on the weekends writing books after working at my day job. I know how to be disciplined. But this is hard.

I don't think it's fair to say that I'm weak or that people who struggle with this are weak. I think it's just hard. So we have a follow up appointment scheduled with Kim on Monday to talk about these concerns. I did meditate every day this week. Now, this is gonna sound like a broken record, but I don't like meditation. But I did it.

I will say that I continue to feel like I'm getting big mental health benefits from exercise, but I'm less convinced by the meditation. As for Chris he stayed here in Indianabpolis and had a pretty good exercise week. Predictably he played a bunch of golf but he also went on a five mile run with a bunch of our friends.

Chris: You know, we didn't run fast but it's, like, a great example of how you can really work out and enjoy your time. It's like the bike ride we did, you know? It's not super intense but very enjoyable and you get the benefits of working out as Dr. Aaron Carrroll has said.

John's Voiceover: But here's the only meal picture we got from him for six days so yeah we're gonna need that meeting with Kim. Thanks for watching. I'll see you on day 36.

John: [sighs]

Laura: Let's do the bicycle holds.

Chris: Woah, woah, woah!

John: Waoh, woah. I thought you said we were done except for stretching. Laura, you are so dishonest about the last five minutes of every workout.

Laura: [laughter]

Chris: I don't know why you lie. What does lying--what does lying get you in your life?

John: Yeah!

Laura: [laughter]