Weekly Weigh-in (Week 96)

Sunday once again and time for my weekly update.

Missed last weeks update, was busy with life and didn't get around to it. So this week here we are.

Finally back to running in my Vibrams after the toenail procedure. I'm definitely down a bit in terms of my overall fitness but I seem to be regaining it steadily. Hopefully within another week or two I should be back to full and working on increasing my fitness beyond it's recent peak. My sleep has been improving of late as well which is always a bonus. Hoping to increase the rate at which I'm complying with my planned resistance workouts by moving them from Monday and Friday to Sunday and Thursday, so that in coincides with as few other recurring events in my life as possible.

So what else have I been up to? Today it was cookery. Trying to find some replacement options for the smoothies we've been doing for breakfasts. Made up a batch of the Primal Energy Bars I've done a couple times before, playing around with things trying to find a good match. Also tried out two new recipes, some Primal sausage balls and some hash brown omelette "muffins". Both of them seem pretty decent so we'll have to see how things pan out. For the sweet tooth we whipped up something a bit odd, cookie stuffed brownies, chocolate chip cookies contained within fudge brownies. Those were indeed rather delicious.

So what does the scale have to say? 210, up a pound from last time. Gonna cut back a little and try to get that back down a bit. Bodyfat holding pretty steady. So until next time, keep being the you you want to be.

Weekly Weigh-In (Week 85)

Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.

Not much to tell this week. Kept eating about as normal, the benefits I've attributed to the flaxseed oil have kept up, as has my supplementation with it.

My weight has been trending slightly higher this week, but my body fat has been trending lower so I'm not concerned. Haven't done quite at much running as could be hoped, but what I did was good quality runs. Picked up a dehydrator online that should show up later this week which will help with the 50+ pounds of apples I got yesterday. Dried apple rings and apple leather are in my future, and plenty of other wonderful dried fruit options as well. Not to mention the jerky related potential.

Well, that's honestly most of the update I have this week, I won't bore you by rambling further. So what does the scale tell me this week? 209, which is where I've been shooting for the past month or so. Body fat down as well, meaning most of that weight I gained was muscle just as I've been shooting for. Until next week, be the you you want to be.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 84)

Sunday once again and time for an update.

Simple week this week, work continued along it's chosen path, my diet choices were slightly less good than they might have been but still good overall. So what are the lessons this week showed me?

Firstly, my flaxseed test has been going better than expected. By Wednesday my lower back pain, which has bothered me for large portions of the past year plus, has disappeared almost completely. Previously it had improved with changes in my work/non-work split, which is as much as I can tell related to how much time I spend in regular shoes vs barefoot/vibrams, and when I had switched mattresses to one both bigger and made of memory foam. This is the first time I can recall that my back pain cleared up so completely. I attribute it to the flaxseed oil, because the flaxseed is high in Omega-3s which help reduce systemic inflammation, which is likely one of the root causes of my backpain. Since the only major change I made to my diet in the past week was the introduction of the flaxseed I think it's safe to say that is highly likely to be a major contribution. In addition to that my gums have improved in color and tenderness, and my toe is both less swollen and in less pain. It's enough that I'm going to continue with the flaxseed for the foreseeable future.

The other thing that I've decided this week is that I need to focus more on my speedwork if I'm going to get to my goals for my race in January. As a result my training for my long runs is going to shift, instead of being strictly based on mileage I'm going to be working on increasing my speed and distance in tandem each week until I hit my target pace, and then focus on making sure I get where I need to be in terms of distance. Which is not to say that I am in doubt about my ability to complete the distance, the doubt is that I can finish it in a time that I'm not ashamed of. That and the continuation of my weight training are the goals for my fitness for the near term. Long term I'm hoping strongly to be able to get back to doing some martial arts in the future, we'll have to see what I can find for that though.

So, what does the scale have to say this week? 208, same as last week. Staying nice and steady, and I'm ok with that. I'm feeling better now than I have in a very long time, and that's the most important thing. Until next week, keep being the you you want to be.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 81)

Sunday once again and time for an update.

Smooth week this week, nothing really to report overall.

There was one thing that struck me today while I was at work that I felt deserves mention here. I realized today that I've managed to succeed in retraining myself in terms of my food cravings. I can't recall the last time I had a craving for soda or chips or various other junk food, instead I have cravings for a steak, or fish, or last night when we went out to pick up food so I could get a salad. Sure Lara gave me some crap for going out on a lateish at night food run so I could get salad, but you know what? I'm happy with that choice, though I do wish we actually had what I needed at home to have made it and not gone out at all, but baby steps I suppose.

It's a big sign of progress to me that I have cravings for healthy, primal even, foods rather than junk food or processed stuff, similarly it's nice that when I think of things to do to fill time at work practicing pistol squats comes to mind. I've come a long way on my journey so far, and I've got plenty of places to go yet before I've uncovered the ultimate expression of myself, but I'm excited to see where my exploration takes me.

So what does the scale say this week? 207, same as last week, though my bodyfat is apparently down a half a percent. Progress is progress, no matter what form it takes. Until next time, keep being the you you want to be.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 71)

Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.

Weight has been trending a little low this week so we’ll have to see what comes of that later on in the post.

The ups and downs with my weight, especially when my daily calorie intake is taken into question along with other factors, has lead me to the conclusion it is probably time to look into changing up my nutritional composition again. I’m thinking something similar to the Primal Experiment from January.

This time around, due in part to my increasing running mileage, I’m going to be keeping some more carbs in my diet, but I think I’m going to limit them to rice, and tubers. Other than that to flesh out some calories and load up for my long runs I’m going to be trying to keep to lean meat, veggies, nuts, seeds, and some fruit like before. It’s tasty, it’s not bad for me, and if my research pans out to be true may actually improve my times in addition to helping me lean out and put on some muscle.

The other thing that’s been tumbling around in my mind of late is trying to see what I can do about putting on some more muscle and seeing what I can do about some abs. So far it looks like my 6-minute abs is having at least some impact on my gut, and the circuits that I’ve been using to accompany it are doing pretty well all around as well. So, with some inspiration from going to watch Thor, I found the best information I could about a number of celebrity transformations for movie roles, Hemsworth for Thor, Bale for Batman, Craig for Bond, Butler for Leonidas, etc. I’ve been comparing what I could find about what they did to prepare for the roles, and there are a lot of similarities in their methods. Exactly what similarities I noted I’ll save for next week, but suffice to say I think that with a little work and some dedication I think I can probably replicate at least some measure of the results, albeit reduced because I don’t have 6 hours a day to work out and a staff of dietitians, trainers, and chefs to keep everything about me humming along smoothly. With what I do have though I think I can probably get good results, though it’ll take me longer than it did for the celebs.

Well, further details on that to come later, for now though let’s take a look at the numbers shall we? 209, down a pound from last week. So as I suspected, I dropped a bit over the week, but with some increased caloric intake I think I can remedy the losses with some more muscle. Body fat is down, if only slightly, so at least the spread is moving in the right direction even when the needle itself isn't. Until next week, keep working toward being the you you want to be.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 64)

Sunday yet again, so here we are for the weigh-in.

This week has been an interesting one. Started work at a different location, lots of things different but many the same, or at least eerily familiar. In addition we've gotten mostly unpacked at the apartment, only the office remains and that because we don't yet have a desk. This week I had some time off, and now access to the fitness center with a weight machine, so I started in on my workout program.

So, for those who don't know yet, which is probably most of you, I came upon a book a while back called The Four Hour Body, written by a one Tim Ferriss. Not entirely unlike myself he is a self-experimenter, but he's been doing quantified experiments using himself as a subject for nearly ten years now, which has resulted in this book. So I'm taking some of the things he discusses and testing them out on myself. My Primal experiment is sufficiently similar to his Slow-Carb diet that I can say with reasonable certainty that it seems to work about as predicted, though since I didn't try that when I had the dramatic amounts of weight to lose that most of the people who have tried it out had I can't quote such impressive numbers. The 4HB is also where I got the idea to try my icing experiment, which also worked out pretty well for me.

So now, with my weight under control, and my body fat sufficiently low, it was time to try something new, adding muscle. Being the kind of guy who finds extreme claims worth testing, I latched onto the idea behind the chapter in the book called Occam's Protocol. The premise is that by doing a single set to failure of a weight lifting exercise you will stimulate more growth in less time than by doing endless reps broken into multiple sets and with almost certainly lower weight. This honestly makes sense to me, even more reason to try it out. Further, under the idea that the larger your muscles get the more time it takes your body to recover from major strain to them this protocol uses a startlingly low frequency, starting with 2 days off between the A and B workouts, and then building up to 4 or more days between as time goes on. This part leaves me a bit dubious, but I can't say I don't find the idea attractive. Thus, I felt the need to test this out, as the worst case is that I make no progress on putting on muscle, and the best case is upwards of 20 pounds of muscle in a month. I don't expect I'll get results anywhere near that good, but I won't know unless I try, and the "typical" 10 pounds of muscle a month isn't bad either.

So how does it work? Well this is gonna get a little jargony so if you don't know or care about some of it go ahead and skip this knowing that it's essentially 2 types of exercises plus a little extra work each workout. Workout A is composed of supinated close-grip lat pulldowns, followed by shoulder presses, that's the minimum for the workout, I'm throwing in the optional ab exercises which means adding myotatic crunches and something referred to in the book as "the cat vomit exercise", which can be summed up as a gravity assisted resistance exercise for the TVA or corset muscle. The first workout, which I did this week, took me around 40 minutes or so, due majorly to the fact it included the establishment of the baseline values to work up from. The B workout consists of an inclined bench press, followed by leg curls (it was supposed to be a leg press in the machine version of this workout plan but I don't have the equipment to make that workable. Having to choose between Curls or Extensions on this machine I picked curls as the information I got from the book suggests the leg work is mostly to increase overall muscle involvement in terms of volume, and the curls worked the glutes which are some of the largest muscles in the human body.) and the optional exercise here that I added was the two-handed kettlebell swing to work the lower body even further. The B workout finishes up with 3 minutes at 85 rpm on the stationary bike "to minimize leg soreness". The B workout took me also about 40 minutes due to establishing minimums and the fact there were other people in the gym when I went this time around, and only one machine.

For now, I'm going to try this protocol out, keep track of my data the way I have been before, and get weekly photos to track my progress. Between all that I should have a decent ability to figure out what results I get from this plan. I think the hardest part for me is going to be eating enough, a problem I never thought I'd have, as getting nearly 4000 calories per day is not something I'm used to anymore, and getting enough protein in my diet is not proving easy either. As a result this week I'm going to be picking up some protein powder to add into the mix as that should help with both those problems.

So, what does the scale have to tell me this week? 202, same as the last couple weeks. What's not the same as the last month however is my bodyfat percentage, it had been holding steady at 9.5 for most of March, but this week, the day after the A workout in fact, it dropped to 7.3, and the following day to 5.5. It has since leveled out again at 7.3, suggesting to me the 5.5 was a fluke, but that's a fairly sudden change that seems promising at least at first glance. Luckily, I've got lots of data left to collect that will show whether it turns out to be significant or not. Until next week, do whatever it takes to be the you you want to be.

Sunday Sludge the 6th

Alright, after today's more serious post it's now time for a more humorous post. It's once again time for a link dump. It's been a while since I've done one of these so some of the links in my dump folder are probably a little old, and you may have seen them already. If so, feel free to send me better links to share with everyone next time.

On the Origin of Circuits - A story about how a circuit that could learn taught itself to do amazing things.
Gaping Plotholes - An article from Cracked about movies.
Culinary Kurios - A strange story of stranger food.
Fusion Reactor - A story of a homemade fusion reactor.
Built a Time Machine - Watch out for the plutonium.

And there you have another Sunday of Links. See you next time.

Playing with Biscuits

    Being a fairly busy college student I don't always have time to make everything I'd like to make from scratch when cooking dinner. As a result I was often finding myself buying and making biscuits from a tube, something I was hoping to avoid out of a desire to be more aware of what's in some of the things I eat.
    One solution to the tube problem is frozen ready made biscuits, you just buy a bag, throw as many or as few as you want on a baking sheet and bake them up. This is a great idea. Saves me a lot of time and is closer to what I wanted, but they still came from the store, and biscuits are pretty simple. All you need to make a good biscuit is some fat, some flour, and some liquid; and sometimes those ingredients get merged together to make it even simpler. I decided that I'd duplicate these freeze and bake biscuits so that I could make them at home and have them whenever I wanted a hot homemade biscuit.
    They really ended up being pretty simple after some tinkering with the recipe, and a lot of batches of tasty biscuits that just weren't quite up to snuff.

• 2 1/4 cups "Pancake and Baking mix" - comes in a yellow box, you've probably got it lying around
• 1/2 tsp. Baking Soda - you can leave this out if you really want, but if you do they won't rise well
• 1/3 cup (5 1/3 Tbs.) Butter
• 2/3 cup Milk - I suppose you could use buttermilk or something like that but I find the "mix" above does a pretty good job of that

1. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly
2. Cut in butter
3. Mix in the milk
4. Mix by hand until the dough comes together, you may need to add more "mix" by spoonfuls until it stops sticking to the bowl and your hands
5. Roll out to 1/4-1/2 inch thickness and cut into rounds; you want to try and get as many rounds out of each rolling as the more you roll it the more melted the butter gets and the tougher the biscuits will get
6. Bake any that you want to bake immediately at 450° for 8-10 minutes
7. Any that you don't want to bake immediately, put on a plate and place in the freezer. Leave them in the freezer until they are frozen solid, then put them in a plastic zip-top bag; if you through then into the bag before they freeze completely they will turn into a big lump which is just a mess.

    When you want to bake any of the frozen ones, just take the ones you want out and put them on a baking sheet while you preheat the oven. Once the oven is preheated you can bake as per the normal directions. Hope that someone else out there finds this useful.

The Bacon Explosion

    In June I got bored with just working and going to class all the time and decided that an experiment in food was well called for. Really it wasn't so much "experimental" since I was following a method, not really a recipe, but it was new for me and everyone else involved.

    We decided to make an event of it and had the Heart Attack Dinner. Served would be one whole bacon explosion, a double batch of my grandmother's Sour Cream Biscuit recipe, personal-size macaroni and cheese casseroles, and Chocolate Peanut-Butter Brownies.

    First the simple things: the Mac and Cheese and the Brownies were just like normal recipes for the same thing except I split them into a muffin pan so that all of the dishes for the night would come out around the same size. The brownie recipe was modified by adding peanut-butter chips, like chocolate chips only peanut-butter flavored.

    Next, the Bacon Explosion. The method of making a bacon explosion can be found multiple places around the internet, so I'll be brief here and include pictures as I have them.

1. Take your raw bacon and weave it, like a basket, into a tight lattice around 5 strips in each direction. It's very important that you get a tight weave or you'll run into problems later.
2. Apply to the top of this your sausage in a fairly flat layer, making sure to leave some space around the edges for when you roll it.
3. The first deviation that I had was now. I added a pound of shredded cheese, because cheese is delicious.  I also added some dried minced garlic, a little bit of salt, and some ground black pepper.
4. After that I crumbled some previously cooked bacon on top of it. Shown here with a handy T-Square provided by one of my friends, and dinner attendees, Julie.
5. After that it was a complicated matter of rolling it. When I said earlier to make a tight weave and leave room around the edges, this was why. If you didn't do those things it's gonna be really big, bursting at the seams, and just not very nice looking.
6. After you manage to get it rolled up into a nice log shape, you bake it. Most recipes call for adding BBQ sauce inside before you roll it and brushing it on the outside before smoking it. I didn't have any BBQ sauce, don't really care for the stuff, or a smoker, so I used what I did have: the oven.
7. Once it's finished baking let it cool some to set the grease juices before slicing it into rings and serving. 

In that last picture you can see the Macaroni and Cheese bites on their plate, and the bowl containing the biscuits.

    The results of this dinner were amazingly delicious, if horribly unhealthy. This is not a food for the faint of heart. I may make this again in the future using what I've learned, but probably not for a while.