230 and a lot of updates

 Got divorced, split households, started dating Amanda Oct 30, 2022.  Competed a bunch of times, generally sucked at at it.  Won a couple individual matches, came in last against every brown belt (only guy I beat were purple belts bumped up to our division).  

Trying to refocus life after everything coming crashing down.  It's been a difficult and very disorganized time, but also so much opportunity.  I just need to starting taking advantage of it.  

238

 Have struggled with keeping a consistent diet.  Definitely feel like I'm maintaining muscle, not sure what an ideal weight would be.  But 200 seems like a good goal.  

Started TRT

 Got a hormone panel, was on the low end of the acceptable range.  But trying TRT to see what that does. Just did my first injections.  Still feel conflicted about it.

227.8 - in ketosis

 After the 22 rounds workout, my weight dropped 3+ lbs, but it came back a day later.  So I feel like 227.8 is still a good sign of progress.  Also, I've been in ketosis for a week.  People are commenting that I look thinner and my pants are noticeably looser, so something is happening that the scale isn't registering.  

It's an odd feeling, I have more consistent energy and I don't seem to be suffering in BJJ performance, but it feels like I'm about to gas out during exercise.  The wall just doesn't come, I get to the point that I feel spent and hold there.  Hopefully I can get to where I don't feel almost burnt out, even if it doesn't seem to hurt my performance.  The feeling isn't much help.  

It's been surprisingly easy to be carnivore-ish.  I'm having very few cravings and have been in .5 ketosis range most of the time using my test strips.  A few times I've been at the 4.0 level, haven't totally figured out why it kicks up and down so much.  Might be nuts and creamer in coffee, etc., adding up to more carbs than I'm realizing.  

227.6 after 22 rounds

 Last night for Veterans Day we did 22 rounds of 2 minute rolls.  I think 30 or 45 seconds rest between. About half way through I was really feeling it, and I thought I was going to throw up during several of the last rounds.  I got a huge lump on my shin and had heartburn so bad I had to skip the chili dinner I’d made. But I was in 4.0 ketosis when I came home and tested.  I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck, but I survived without injury.  Good times. 

229.8 - Trying Carnivore-lite

 Have kept up a decent lifting routine, hitting squats and deadlifts at least once a week.  Tonight I did about 6 sets of 8 squats, with the last set being 135.  I'd like to get that up to 185, but I'm mostly happy about the pain free range of motion and my back feeling good after.  Took this many years to realize it was all about my upper back posture. 

I'm trying a carnivore-ish diet, mostly meat with some leafy greens and cucumbers.  Felt weird at first, but I might have also gotten slightly sick (the kids got coughs/runny noses at the same time).  Now we'll just see if performance or weight loss follows.  

230. - first stripe on brown belt

 Been struggling to keep motivated over the last couple years.  I’ve been on a good workout rhythm for a few weeks now, but diet and cardio still aren’t coming easy. 

228.8 and 23%

Just grinding along. Weight was slowly inching up, got to around 233, have been trying hard to move it back down. Feeling like I’m on the right track right now, but time will tell.

231.4 - trying Keto

Got down to around 220 calorie counting, then fell off the wagon. I’ve always wanted to give keto a go, so we’ll see how this does.

225 - getting back in gear... again

With no phone app, it's hard to remember to update this thing. 

But it's been a bit rough over the last year.  Since Mars came, I basically haven't worked out or done anything consistently.  Everything went out the window and scheduling was a day by day thing.  I'm just getting it back in line and feeling better than I have in a while.   Now I just have to keep it up.

My weight got up to 231 at one point, that was a wake up call.  Right now I'm just attacking it, working out every day, did BJJ the last 2 days in a row, and I'm calorie counting to around 1800 per day. 

I want to get back under 200 lbs.

I had signed up for that 50 mile race and right after I signed up, I started falling apart.  I think I increased my mileage to rapidly, because after I did 10 miles for the first time, my joints and tendons rebelled.  I didn't really hurt, everything was just stiff.  I couldn't get a smooth running gait and after a few attempts, I stopped running completely.  I kept waiting for it to feel better, but months went by and I still didn't feel right.

So now I'm only doing elliptical for a while.  I want to drop 20 lbs before I start running again, and maybe keep it to 3-5 miles runs.  I still want to do an ultra in the next year, but I think being light is a bigger piece to that than putting in a lot of miles.

223 - running is going well though

My weight just doesn't want to budge.  I've gone on and off the calorie counting wagon, but even when I'm off, still eating pretty well.  So I'm not sure what's up with my weight.  My clothes are fitting better.  I've decided to just keep focusing on the running and give it a couple months.  I feel like the weight will have to start to come down, since I'm now doing pretty long runs at least once a week, and a couple shorter runs mid-week.

It's been raining all week (and probably will continue to rain for the next few months) up here in Oregon.  I've done some runs in the rain, but I tried my first long-ish run on a treadmill ever.  I don't think I've ever done more than a mile or two on a treadmill, but I did an hour.  I didn't even note the exact "mileage" at the end, because it seems like treadmill mileage isn't real.  I was just going for an hour and keeping my heart rate above 150.  

I've always thought of treadmills as easier, but after this long run, I realize they are just different.  Maybe a high-end treadmill would be another story, but I'd say I got a better workout in this 60 minute run than I would running outside, because it forced me to keep up the pace.  It's also much harder to keep going when you can just stop at any time.  When I run outside, I always run away from my house, so that about the time I'm wishing the run was over, I have no choice but to keep running to get home.  

Only thing I really don't like about the treadmill is the little bit of slipping and shifting when my foot lands.  As a bigger guy, I've always felt that, a little tug on the motor and the belt sliding.  It's just for a fraction of a second, but I felt myself using extra effort to stabilize as I ran.  Good news is that my knees and ankles felt a bit better than usual after.  

226 - signed up for 50k

My weight was down to 224, but I slacked off a bit the last week.  I'm getting back in gear and trying to cut my intake down to 2,000 calorie, because I wasn't seeing much movement on the scale at 2500. 

I signed up for the Wy'East Wonder 50k in June, 2019.  So that gives me 8 months to prepare, which is more than enough time, assuming I'm not 2 weeks away from having a 4th child and life being very unpredictable.  But none of that should stop me. 

If I can get my weight down under 200, I don't think I'll have any problems completing the 31 miles.  I ran 5.2 miles this morning and it was slow but not difficult.  Something has been pinching in my lower back, but I don't feel it until after I stop running.  I'm trying to sort that out with foam rolling and stretching.

229 - Going back to calorie counting

I tried Intermittent Fasting with no specific dietary requirements other than not eating outside of a 3pm to 7pm window.  It worked reasonably well, however, my adherence slowly deteriorated.  It didn't seem that the fast alone was enough to get me where I wanted to be.  And with my weight holding steady or moving up, the will to keep to that strict 4 hours window weakened.  It could certainly have been made to work, I just did do it. 

I felt very energetic, almost wired, when I kept to the 4 hour eating window.  Only problem I found is that I would have to eat so much in that window, I basically trained myself to binge.  I was eating as much as I could, sometimes until I felt uncomfortable, and I didn't seem to have a normal hunger/fullness sensation.  And at the end of the 4 hour window, the fear of how long I'd have to go before I ate again would have me looking for anything I could eat before I hit the cutoff window. 

I think I was also eating too much fruit in that time, since I could "eat whatever I wanted" within that window.  And I've always found that when I start going heavy on fruit, I fall off the wagon soon after. 

So as I started to completely fall off the IF program, by weight jumped up several pounds.  Then about a week ago I suddenly felt much fatter and I weighed myself and was surprised to see 232 on the scale.  I mean, I guess I wasn't surprised, because I just felt like I was retaining a lot of water. 

So that's the heaviest I've been in a long time, and I've felt like crap, and there's just nothing good about it.  It's depressing and I feel so far from where I was a few years ago.  I need to get things going in the right direction. 

Baby #4 coming in the next 6 weeks just adds another piece to our hectic lives, but I have to find a way to keep myself on track regardless.  It only gets harder if I don't. 

So, the goal is a 1,000 calorie daily deficit with 2 lbs lost per week, so that I'm 185 by January 9, 2019.  The last 15 lbs will be the hardest, but I'll be very happy to be back in that fight. 

218.4

Still doing intermittent fasting, enjoying it.  I have some days where I pack a little too much into my eating window, and a few days where I've stretched the window by an hour or two, but overall it's a very simple basic guideline to keep. 

I feel better, haven't had any issues working out at the very end of my 20 hour fast.  I think the next step will be to limit fruit.  I've been eating whatever once 3pm hits, and I think I'd see faster results if I could keep to meat & veg.

Also got bit by a dog, doesn't look like I have rabies, so that's good.

220.8 - intermittent fasting

Haven’t felt good for a while, weight crept up to 226.  Needed to do something and fasting seemed like a good idea. I’m 2 days in of only eating between 4pm and 8pm. Doing ok, feeling pretty tired when I fanally do eat, but I’ll stick it out a bit longer and see if I can function like this. Dropping 6 lbs in 2 days is a nice encouragment. .

222.5 and 23.5%

I've been feeling sluggish and weak for a while now, basically about a year.  I started to feel like there was something off nutritionally or hormonally.  So I loaded up on all the things I thought might help.
Thorne Elite Multi-vitamin (2 bottles, a morning and evening)
Vegetarian Glucosamine (no shell fish) - 1 to 2g
CoQ10 - 100mg
Krill Oil - 1000mg
DHEA - 25 to 50mg

I started taking all that about a week ago and felt an immediate improvement.  Pretty crazy actually, I felt stronger almost immediately, did better at BJJ, etc. 

So I'm going to stick with this and see if I can get my BF back down into the mid teens

226 - Been a while

Well, weight is back to being an issue again, along with stress and nagging injuries.  Kind of a bummer, but I've been doing better the last couple months.

I'm back to training BJJ 2-3x a week and I'm doing a metabolic circuit class 3x a week.  The missing piece is a diet plan.  I was doing an intermittent fast with a general attempt to limit carbs, which felt great for a couple weeks, then I started to tank.  I got looser and looser with it, to where I was snacking randomly all day, eating a bit later, etc.  So I think I just need to get back on a calorie count.

I still feel like I "just" got my purple belt and was "just" running Spartan races, but that's been a couples years.  Time to get back to going hard and doing shit that's worth doing.  

No app, harder to update

The iPhone app for blogger.com was not really working for a long time.  It would let me login, but would often crash before I posted.  I finally looked into it and found out that Blogger pulled the app.  That sucks, definitely cuts down on the odds that I'll keep this updated.  I hope it isn't the first sign of Blogger.com disappearing entirely, I'd hate to lose this 10 year record. 

I was sick a couple times recently, but this latest one has actually helped get me back on track.  I couldn't eat much for a few days and didn't have any coffee, so I feel like it reset me. 

I want to get back to running and am lining up some races.  Maybe another Trifecta and a Half Ironman.  If I can get through those, then a full Ironman in 2019 would be cool. 

223.4 & 23.5% BF

So, a whole lot has gone down.  Can't believe it's been almost a year since I last posted, but life with 3 kids will do that sometimes.  

I hurt my back, which crippled me for a while.  I got fairly functional, although my back is nowhere near how it used to be.  Then my dad had a heart attack, and moved in with my sister (who then moved to Texas).  So suddenly I had a vacant house I needed to sell.  I thought it would be a 6 to 8 week renovation, but that turned into 4 months.  I stopped training, stopped going to the gym, stopped everything.  I just worked on the house.  

Well, I finally finished it this week and so I'm trying to kick start my regular routine again.  Working on the house has actually been good for my back, just being generally active all day without any heavy lifting.  But I don't know if I'll ever be able to lift like I did before.  It's too early to tell, so I'm hoping to sort out this back issue and get it stronger than it ever was before.

Got my purple belt last night

Was my first time back after being out sick for a week.  Felt sluggish and honestly that took a bit away from the experience, since I wasn't rolling that well in the 30 minutes of continuous drilling that preceded it.  I was congested and couldn't breath that well, and it ended with me unable to escape the half-assed knee on belly that my coach was trying to let me escape, while the whole class watched.

But, I think I'm just not good at accepting praise or congratulations.  Just an aspect of my personality that I haven't figured out yet.