20%

This is day 9 of my 45 / 45 / 4.5 plan, and it's going all right.

I've gone to three hourlong dance-based fitness classes. On four days I combined brisk walking or elliptical time with yoga. One day I did a 45-minute yoga video. I lifted once.

The fruit is easy to fit in but the vegetable serving sizes are kind of dumb and frustrating. I am sympathetic as to the difficulties of writing usable public health content. You have to speak to a broad audience; you have to be reasonably specific and reasonably flexible. If you're writing for US-based readers, you're writing for people who mostly think kitchen scales are arcane appurtenances. But COME ON, what is a cup of broccoli spears, exactly? I keep thinking about using the Archimedes method -- filling a pint measure halfway with water and then adding broccoli spears until it's full. But that seems ridiculous as well as messy. 

ALSO why does a 2-cup portion of salad greens count as 1 cup of vegetables? I mean, I sort of know but also I find it irritating. If you're going to switch from counting servings of varying sizes to counting allegedly consistent measures of volume, then why are you being inconsistent about the measures of volume? 

I looked at the British guidelines, thinking they would be measured in grams, and in places they are even more annoying. "Three heaped tablespoons" -- pfft, I say. 

There's some utility in measuring because it does highlight for me that my default level of vegetable consumption is lower than the recommended level of vegetable consumption. The recommended level isn't unmanageable, but I do have to pay attention. I've been starting at breakfast, adding a half-cup of spinach to a smoothie or a half-cup of pumpkin puree to a cottage cheese or yogurt bowl. Then it's just a cup of veggies at lunch and another at dinner, which is doable but not my default setting.

And how is working? I am not exactly a wellspring of good cheer and impressive equilibrium, but I'm hanging in there in the face of a substantial grading load, a bunch of lingering around-the-house tasks to catch up on, and an impending holiday dinner for 16. I'll take it, I guess. Onward we go.