Weekly Weigh-in (Week 68)

Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.

This week brought with it some big changes to my workout plan that I'm exploring for various benefits. It also brought some good preliminary numbers in terms of body metrics and very delicious food at an event we got invited to yesterday.

So, what have I done to my workout plan? Well, as I mentioned last week I finished up my bulking phase and have decided a combination maintenance phase and some dedicated time working toward a six-pack was in order. As such I decided to experiment with the 6 Minute Abs chapter of 4HB. It's a pretty simple set of exercises, short as the name implies, that leaves me feeling like I've put in some hard work. A set of 10 myotatic crunches, 10 12-sec TVA exercises (the humorously named cat vomit exercise), and 75 2-handed kettlebell swings. You do this twice a week and when combined with a diet that allows you to stay under 12% body fat it is supposed to yield pretty impressive results in the abdominal region. We'll see how that pans out.

This week also saw Lara decide to join me in the gym, yay Lara!, with some stationary biking. As a result, I needed a plan that would keep me busy a bit longer than 6 minutes at a time. To help with that I decided to add on to the 2 6 minute abs days with some bodyweight circuit training. A circuit comprised of 20 squats, 10 pushups, 10 lunges on each side, 10 dumbell rows on each side, and 20 jumping jacks gets my blood pumping pretty well and presents a good full body workout in a short time. Last time in I completed 2 full circuits, working my way up to 3 and then increasing the weight on various exercises to increase the difficulty and get a better burn. Because I was in need of a 3rd day a week to workout I'm going to fill that day with some work on beast skills, right now trying to work on pistol squats, and then some treadmill work at or near my vVO2max to help increase that threshold. Better cardiac health, better respiratory fitness, and better running speed, all from a fairly short workout overall. I can live with that.

So what does the scale have to say this week about my efforts. 210, up a pound from last week, combine that with a .2 drop in body fat and I'm not doing terribly. I'm going to be shooting for keeping my weight fairly steady for now, or at least not actively trying to put on or lose weight, and see what happens. Until next week, keep striving to be the you you want to be.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 67)

Sunday yet again and time for the weekly update.

This week saw the completion of my first race, the warrior dash. For those who don't know it's a "mud run" with an advertised 3.4 mile course and a collection of obstacles along the route. Runkeeper tells me the course was closer to 3.3 miles than 3.4, which fits up with the rather different course layout that we ran compared to the posted map. The obstacles were also different from what was on the map. Regardless, it was a blast and I'm likely to do it again if I get the chance. My time came in around 48 minutes, which is slightly higher than I was expecting but not a problem, my goal was to finish plain and simple and I did that.

This week also marks the end of my bulking experiment, so it's time for some results and some analysis. I put in a total of around 3 and a half hours of total gym time over the course of the experiment, which is even less than I figured I'd end up at. Over the course of the protocol my weight values went up consistently as represented by this helpful list:

• Close-grip lat pulldown: 75 -> 105 (40% increase)
• Shoulder Press: 45 -> 85 (90% increase)
• Chest Press: 85 -> 115 (35% increase)
• Leg Curl: 45 -> 75 (66% increase)

Some good numbers, consistent increases across the board. The numbers would possibly have increased more if I had been better about my caloric intake, about 80% of the time I made my overall calorie goal, but I only made my protein goal perhaps 30% of the time, and that's being somewhat generous. Even despite that I made good strength gains and seem to have made some reasonable mass gains to go with it.

So where do I go from here? Probably going to do some testing with Slow-Carb mixed with testing out the 6-minute abs stuff from 4HB. I'm really not needing to add more mass now so much as redistribute what I've already got so that it looks better. 

So what does the scale have to say about all this progress? Today the numbers came up at 209, up 2 pounds from last week, and 7.1% body fat, down half a percentage since last week. Since the start of this experiment I've gained 12 pounds of muscle and dropped 5.2 pounds of body fat. For the amount of time I put in I'd say those are some pretty fine results. Only time will tell what the future holds. Until next time, be the you you want to be.

Addendum: Sadly, due to a couple issues this didn't get posted until Monday morning. Sorry about that. Look for pictures to show up by Wednesday.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 66)

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

Been a fairly smooth week this week. Managed to keep my calorie intake close to what I was shooting for most of the week, even kept my protein fairly high, and tried out a few new restaurants that I hadn't been to yet. Tried out a great pizza place a couple miles down the road, and found a pub that has beer floats made with lambic. An interest culinary week all told.

Kept up with my workouts this week as well, made steady progress with increasing weights and so far haven't had to increase my rest days due to stalling, though I suspect that will happen fairly soon. Need to make sure I get in 2 runs this week in preparation for my race next weekend though.

I'm not really overflowing with information to fill this space today for some reason, so this will be a fairly short post today. Next week there will be some final results from my muscle building experiment, and hopefully some information related to what my next experiment will end up being.

So, what do the numbers say this week? 207, up 3 pounds from last week. Body fat is down meaning that gain is all muscle. Not dropping fat that much any more but I'm putting on muscle at a pretty good clip. So far since I started this trial I'm up 8.6 of muscle and down 4.1 of fat, which is a pretty good rate of return for the amount of time I'm putting in.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 65)

Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.

The bulking experiment continues as planned, with this week including 2 workouts and the introduction of some nutritional supplementation to help me achieve my goals. Firstly, I added protein powder to my daily intake to help boost my protein content toward where I'd like it to be. One scoop straight into my morning smoothie, which also includes the second thing I added, a scoop of creatine to said morning smoothie. Some of you may have a negative knee jerk reaction to that, but trust me when I say I've done the research into it, and I have determined that I have no reason to worry and that the benefits are well worth it, especially as I have not experienced any of the side-effects thanks in part to my not using a loading phase.

So, what all have I been doing? Well, one workout each this week of my lifting routine, and one run through the nearby neighborhood, which allowed me to get some better distance and pacing going on than the run down the major street I had tried the last time. So far? It looks like I've been putting on some muscle and either dropping or not adding any new non-visceral fat. I feel great, and am starting to look more like what I wish I did, so all in all doing pretty well. Trending on my weight and body fat look good.

While I'm talking about trends and tracking, I'd like to mention a few things. Firstly, a website called CureTogether. It has listings for bunches of medical conditions that you can track symptoms with severity, treatments you've tried, and things you suspect cause it. I've been using it for a little while now to track the severity of things like various persistent aches and pains, headaches, and some various other things. They also provide graphs to help visualize what treatments people have found most effective so that you can figure out things that might be worth trying yourself. Which leads me to my next little update. Since the move Lara and I have got a new bed, a queen sized compared to the previous full, and I must say I love it. The memory foam is entirely worth it. Due in large part to the changes to my sleep quality and patterns related to the move and the mattress my back pain has nearly disappeared, my neck is less stiff, and I'm feeling better all around. That plus some other trends I've noticed have been leading me to believe that a number of my minor complaints of aches and pains in life may all be connected to one or two root causes that I just need to track down. Thank goodness I track "everything", should make it easier to find out what's causing the little stuff.

So, now that the semi-digression is over, what do the numbers have to say today? 204, up two pounds since last week. My body fat is down 1% since last week, which combined means I put on about 3 pounds of muscle and dropped a pound of fat in the last week. One of these days perhaps I'll actually manage to combine things in such a way as to have visible abs. For now, I'm going to follow my own advice, do something every day to make myself the me I 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.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 63)

Sunday again and time for the weigh-in.

Well, this weeks post is gonna be short, as the weekend has been consumed by moving.

Kept working on my pushups by greasing the groove this week, and I feel like I've made serious progress on that front. Went for a nice run early in the week as well. Starting next week I'm going to be working on Occam's Protocol in the fitness center here at the apartment, equipment permitting of course. Past that it's all gonna be about how much I can manage to eat and of what. I'll probably increase the frequency of updates a bit in some form, posting a quick blurb with how the workout went when I do a Protocol workout, weights, reps, and a summary of the caloric intake of the days since the last workout. Each week I'll likely through in a section at the bottom of this post with the update calorie goals for the following week, and possibly some tape measurements of various muscle areas. We'll have to see how this evolves as time goes on.

For now, let's just get you the numbers for this week shall we? 202, same as last week. Stalled a bit it seems, but at least it's not dropping. Body fat is still hovering around 9.5% which I'm fine with. As for caloric goals the Protocol reccomends 20 calories per pound of lean mass for 10 pounds more than your current weight, so that's 3845, and further it suggests 1.25 grams of protein for each pound of lean mass, so 182g per day. We'll see how well I can manage that going forward. Until next week, be the you you always wanted to be.

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.