Weekly Weigh-in (Week 62)

Sunday once again and time for another weigh-in.

Going to be kind of a hodge-podge this week I think. Firstly, I would just like to say, in case any of you didn't know already, that Renaissance Festivals are awesome. Why does this have anything to do with this post? Well, Ren Fest has a lot of walking around and being outside involved, both of which are great for you, but the more relevant thing is that for me anyway they also involve costumes. Previous years I had gone with a nice all consuming cloak that Lara and I made, mostly Lara I will freely admit, a few years back. This year I was, as is often the case, bit by the creativity bug and so we embarked on a new costume quest. The result was a kilt and a Jacobite shirt. Mostly I brought this whole anecdote up to brag about the fact that the shirt, according to the pattern it was based off, is a size medium. Considering I used to wear shirts in a XXL, I'm calling that a hell of an accomplishment.

Secondly, I started using a new iPhone app this week to track my food and my weight. Meal Diary has served me well for a good while now, but with my food choices straying further and further from my original printed list over time, and no sign of going back any time soon, it's categories are becoming less useful. Further complicating it's usage is the fact that with my bulking phase upcoming I find myself needing to track my caloric intake and specifically my protein intake more accurately than I had been previously. For this, and because as an added benefit it allows me to enter my body fat when I make the measurements, I have switched over to using Daily Burn's iPhone app. The design is rather nice, and since I already had an account with them which I had been rarely using it was a simple setup. For any food that I eat which is packaged or from a restaurant I can just search for it, select a number of servings, and be on my way. For homemade food they also have a database of USDA food options that you can use to compose your meals, or in some cases I just find the closest thing that I can manage and call it good. So my method may not be perfect, but it's more detail than I had before. As an added benefit it tracks micronutrients like various vitamins and sends you an email every day letting you know if you are getting way too much or too little of certain nutrients.

That's about all for this week I think. Next week I'll be back with something, most likely details on the specific caloric plan I'm working with for my bulking phase, and what I'm going to need to do to accomplish it.

So what does the scale have to say this week? 202, same as last week, though my body fat trend line is now below 10% for the first time in recorded history. So while progress is slow so far, I'm also not actively into my bulking phase quite yet. So until next time, be the you you want to be.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 61)

Sunday yet again and time for my weekly weigh-in.

This week has been pretty normal in terms of my food intake. Where it has been different is my output, I went for two runs this week, up from none the previous week, so that's a big improvement, and I've been "greasing the groove" with sets of squats and pushups every time I go to use the computer.

Speaking of changing things up I've been trying to piece together a new and somewhat more comprehensive workout program to start in on, as I've noticed I seem to do better when I have a clear cut plan to follow. In trying to put together such a plan I'm torn between trying to put together something that's nicely ambitious to sate my desire to do something, see results, and challenge myself, and the desire to put together something that will be easily achievable and thus something I can stick to more easily. I think I'm going to try and find the middle ground for now and then hopefully adjust my training volume upwards from there in the future.

First, I'm going to try for getting in runs 3 days a week, 1 run of 3km with a goal of improving my average pace from week to week, 1 run for distance, and 1 run for target heart rate range. The distance run will start off at 4km and increase by 10% per week for as long as I can keep that up and by some other factor after that which I find manageable. The heart rate run will have to wait until I get a heart rate monitor, which is on my list in the near future, and will be a 25 minute run with the goal of keeping my heart rate for the duration of the run within a given heart rate range, probably between 65-75% Max Heart Rate. This run will be mostly to gauge progress over time. The further my distance in that time, and the better my pace, while keeping within the target heart rate zone the better my progress is going overall.

Second, I'm going to throw in some more dedicated resistance training to my workout plan. In addition to picking one exercise at a time to focus on by performing a set of 5-10 reps each time I perform a certain activity, most likely sitting down at my computer or reaching an hour of cumulative computer time, I'm going to experiment with Occam's Protocol from The Four Hour Body and dedicate the remaining days of the week to beast skills. Beast Skills in this case refers to skills of physical prowess involving balance and mastery of bodyweight like handstands, the human flag, and planche pushups. I'll focus on one of these skills at a time until I feel I have sufficiently mastered it such as to move on to the next one.

So with that explanation of my plans for my running and some strength training I've put together a new and somewhat ambitious plan for where I'd like to go in the future. Running further, faster, and more efficiently, and also lifting more, and with better control over my mass. So, to those who read this and have more experience with these things than I do, what do you think? Too ambitious, not ambitious enough, missing something important? I'm open to suggestions for improvement.

So, what about my weight? I've come a long way since I started on this journey, and even since the start of this calendar year. I've lost a bunch of unneeded weight, and I've also cut a lot of fat, as of this week I'm down to 10% body fat, from around 19% at the start of the year. Now, I'm entering a new stage of the journey. I'm going to be trying to put back on some weight, but making a point to ensure that I'm adding muscle and not fat. So what's the scale telling me today? 202 up a pound from last week. Starting this muscle adding on the right track it seems.

So, I've put together a nice little plan there to extract an improved version of me from what lurks inside of the current me, just one step toward becoming the me I want to be. So until next time, become the you you've always wanted.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 60)

Sunday yet again and time for the weekly weigh-in.

My diet shift has been going well, and I'm feeling better. I'm looking better, feeling fitter, and this weeks run included the best pace I've managed to achieve since I started tracking runs back in October.

Not much to talk about this week, but let's see what ends up on the  page shall we? Firstly, in health as much as in any area of life, small changes are often the most useful ones. Small changes build up and snowball into much bigger changes, and the momentum can take you to amazing places. It's important to put things into perspective when trying to make life changes, small changes are a lot easier to make and stick to. Making small changes, either together or in series, is much easier than making a big change. Each little change will put you closer to where you want to be, and help you to get the momentum to make more changes, and eventually you will get to places you never thought you could reach.

Second thing I want to talk about today is the importance of data. Changes may help you make improvements, but you'll have a hard time pinning down the degree of your improvement and figuring out what is the most effective change you've made if you don't collect and analyze relevant data. For me right now I've been trying to manage my weight, and my body fat. To collect data for that I needed a digital scale, and a caliper. If I was trying to track my blood glucose I'd need a glucometer, for heart statistics I'd need a heart rate monitor. I'm bringing this up for multiple reasons, firstly I'm likely going to expand the data that I'm collecting about myself to see what I can find, secondly it's important to remember that if you want to find what works best you need the data and the initiative to figure out what best means and how to accomplish it.

So, do the numbers say this week? 201 up a pound from last week, but I'm not worried, my body fat is moving in a direction I like and so everything is looking pretty good. So until next week, be the person you want to be, and consider tracking some data to prove it.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 59)

Sunday again, so here I am with another post.

This week my weigh-ins have fluctuated up and down, and I'll be interested to see where it goes.

This week, I found myself without a clear idea of what I wanted to use to fill this space until around Friday afternoon, and what I was left with was more a feeling that I should share a couple things here to get them out there.

Firstly, some plans for what I want to do with my diet in the future. January's experiment left me feeling great, with more energy and fewer general complaints than I can recall having had at any point in the past. Since switching back to a more standard diet I find myself with frequent low-grade headaches, especially following meals, less energy, and more instances where I feel a powerful hunger rather than just a modest hunger. Having switched back, I still feel better than I did before, but I think that was mostly due to the body recomposition that I was able to achieve while I was working in that experiment; however I'm experiencing the headaches, I'm more tired, and I get the feeling that I'm missing something. It leaves me with the feeling that I should seriously consider switching back to the primal plan long term. So I'm going to make a concerted effort to try and keep at least 75% primal going forward, and see how that works out for me. If I notice the symptoms to be connected as I suspect I will try and increase that percentage as time goes by and see where I end up. Sure, it may seem restrictive to some, but it's easier than you might think, and the percentages give me the flexibility to "forage" off of menus when I go out to eat, or make adjustments on the fly and not have to feel guilty about it.

On a related note, I think at some point in the near future I want to try 2 weeks of primal eating with some restriction on my protein, I want to see if I can make it two weeks as a pescetarian to see how the other half lives as it were. My hope there would be to come away from the experiment, much as I did from my primal experiment, with a better understanding of the difficulty faced by those who are either forced or have chosen to live a life without certain things, and at the same time to gain a better understanding and appreciation for the foods I eat, in this case primarily the vegetables I eat and the importance of high quality produce to the flavor profile of a meal. After that, I have a somewhat more "fringe" plan for another two week stint at some point, 2 weeks as a strict carnivore. That one I want to try out partly to say I did, partly to better appreciate the simplicity that it provides, and partly because the results interest me from a human-hacking perspective and an anthropological perspective. So that's where my diet experiments are heading as time goes on.

I've also determined that I really need to have clear and delineated goals if I am to achieve anything in my human-hacking activities. To some degree I already knew this, "lose weight" is bad, "lose 5 pounds" is better, work out more is bad, work out 4 days a week is better, etc. But I have been reminded recently that if I am to achieve much of anything I really need to setup clear goals that I can monitor and track progress on if I am going to have any hope of getting anything meaningful done. As such, I'm going to be trying a bit harder to figure out appropriate quantifiable goals that I can use as stepping stones to my overall goals.

Well, that's about all the general stuff I have to share right now, so on to the numbers for this week. 200, up .5 from last week. Change I can live with, even if I am going to be working on keeping it in check a little bit better going forward. So here's to the future, and whatever it holds. No matter what you may be now, always go out of your way to be the you you want to be.