Day 35 - Life's a Bitch and Her Stripper Name is Gluconeogenesis

Do you ever learn something, but it doesn't really sink in so it slips out the other ear before it has a chance to become practical?

Once upon a time, Thomas Delauer or Doctor Boz or Ruled.me or some other corner of the internet gave me a little gem of information that sparked an "ah ha, I'm a flippin' moron" moment.

The liver, the organ that we punish all through college, has the ability to convert the amino acids that are found in protein into sugar. This process is called gluconeogenesis. 

So... last night when coming off of a fast in a way that would be generously described as "incorrect"... I was two steaks into the night before this little nugget came back around in my brain pan. Couple this with the idea that Macros should be veggies at 50%, fat at 25%, and protein at 25%, and that the protein should be no more than 6 - 8 oz of fatty meats... well... it's little wonder that when I peed on a small plastic stick this morning, I was so far out of ketosis that I'd need the Infinity Gauntlet to get me back there.

So, what did we learn today:

• Serving sizes still matter, even on keto.
• Protein is great, but it turns into glucose.
• Glucose is keto kryptonite. 

So, here we are, and here we go.

Despite all things  against it... I'm 20 lbs down. So... we move forward.

Day 2, Pt. 1 - Wagon Jumping: Decisions and Consequences

Last night I couldn’t sleep, so I spent some time watching videos from YouTube on this Keto thing.

I have 2 confessions to make:

1. I love sleep. I spent a lot on the mattress that I have because I don’t want to lay in bed and not sleep, but also that I want to treat my back to the experience it deserves. If I don’t sleep, I get cranky(er… than usual) and my mornings turn into the Siege of Vienna before the Winged Hussars arrived. (Google it.)

No sleep means, I fall back on taking as little time for prep in the morning as I can… because I want more sleep.

That said,  the workout will be this evening.

2. I’d been trying the keto food choice angle for a little while, and not being one for half measures, when I found that a single food choice took me out of the little ketosis that I was in… boy howdy did I jump off that wagon head first. This morning I am back on, because I got to learn first hand about a thing that DeLauer and Boz talk about called “inflammation”.

It’s exactly what you think it is and a bit more. If you’re not familiar with it, hit up their channels and search it out for the real nitty gritty on it. For my own experience it goes something like this:

For 10 days or so, I was doing a morning Keto coffee blend that DeLauer recommends. It’s an anti-inflammatory blend that has coffee, ghee (butter… kinda), coconut cream, turmeric, and liquid stevia. Each of these contains an element that, working together, helps reduce the bodies inflammatory response, allowing for it to repair and get back to work doing what it should instead of carrying the excess water around like Adam Sandler in a movie that is clinically proven to make you dumber. Over the 10 days, I didn’t notice how my body was starting to change for the better. Joints didn’t hurt as much, my back was starting to hurt less, and sleep was deeper and more rewarding.

Then I went off the approved food choice list.

This morning, terrible choices +1, it felt like I had arthritis when I tried to open jars, my knees were on fire, my back was a red line of nope from my neck to my nethers, and it felt like I was 12 hours out from a heavy rum and tequila night. To quote Mad Men I was “not great, Bob!”

So… what do we have to learn from this. Inflammation is a thing. The keto I was on was working… it just needs to be fine tuned (more good fats I would wager). Results are not always positive, but we learn from those and move forward.

Stay tuned for tonight’s post workout round up; it's a chest and abs kinda night.

Introduction

If you're anything like me, you've tried losing weight a bunch of times. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. When it does, you inclined to say "it's cool, I can coast for a while" and you start eating things you shouldn't missing days at the gym and find yourself a few months later back peddling. When it doesn't work, you get frustrated and give up on trying -anything- because "what's the point, it's not like I can really do this anyway."

Don't worry, you're not alone.

Part of why I started this blog was for my own accountability. I am going to be 100% up front about this; what is written here will be predominantly for me, while this is going to be published, the  viewing audience is admittedly something of an afterthought. This stuff is going to be a raw feed of what comes off of my brain before bed or after a work out and while I hope to keep the grammar and syntax in a readable format, I don't expect all of the crazy that gets poured out here to make sense. That said, I am going to open up for comments and if you have something you want to ask, please do.

Which leads me to the other part of why I started this blog; motivation. If you're ever on bodybuilding.com or any of the other fitness sites like it, or even just look into a few of the before and after galleries on Imgur or Reddit, you see stories of folks that probably weigh more than you do... who after sweating buckets and buckets and bathtubs of sweat now are... oddly enough... more fit than you are. You say to yourself "Self, we're going to do something about this" to which you find you heartily agree. But after a few weeks (days... hours... minutes?) of calorie counting and celery munching, you find you're back to your Pumpkin Spice Lattes and and pizza and asking "what the hell happened?"

The thing about motivation that is both the make and the break is that motivation is, in fact, a renewable resource.

Sure, it's easy if you can keep things going solid for 5 or 6 months and have then and now pictures to get you going back to the gym because results, oddly enough, are the best motivator for moving forward or changing directions. But when you've been at something for 2 or 3 weeks, you're dragging ass out of bed, you're sore as a mother (bad word) and have been eye-banging a cheeseburger for a few days now... you're going to need someone to help say "dude, the cheeseburger is a crazy idea and friends don't let friends (bad word) crazy".

I know more than a few people who, it seems, can flex their abs a few times and curl a bottle of water and suddenly shed those few dozen pesky pounds they've kept on from a few seasons ago. Others, like myself, require a LOT of focus, motivation, discipline, planning, follow through and support to make a change happen. I have one thing going for me, a bullet in the gun, so to speak. I know that I can do this. A few years ago some buddies and I did P90X. Well, one of us did P90X and the rest of us modified it because P90X is not for the couch potato or the person who thinks lifting 12oz curls on Friday night count as a workout. When we were done with the first go around, I had lost quite a bit of weight. I was down farther than I had been in a long time, and I loved how I felt and was loving the results. Then I moved and that support structure was toast. I didn't find a new group and today I am well past where I was prior to Tony Horton's brainchild taking hold in my life. This... this must change.

So there you have it. I am doing this for me, and I am going to put it down, hopefully, in a way that you will find entertaining and keep you coming back for more. Don't expect measurement and stats updates everyday, that is just a dumb idea for my own brain space. Expect them on Friday. In between I will try to write down my routines and then give some feedback where I can.

To give you a preview, here's what the schedule is going to look like:

Physical Activity:

Sun - Church, leather work, and rest.
M, W, F - Morning workout with 15 minute cardio warm up and cool down
T, R - Morning workout; 30 minutes cardio
Sat - Leather work and rest.

Diet:

Keto food plans, following advice from Thomas Delaur and Dr. Boz off of Youtube.

Progress Tracking:

I have a Fitbit AltaHR, JeFit app, Keto strips, and a scale. I suppose I can take measurements too... if I'm being real, I don't know that I am too hot on that idea right now.

Tonight I had a good "farewell feast" to the things that I know will be a set back and frankly, how I feel following that feast is motivation enough to not do THAT again. At the end of the day, what's going to make or break this is the knowledge, acceptance, and ownership that these changes have to be for me. They have to be something that I want, and that they are something I am worthy of having. If there's anything that will sabotage me in the long run, it's that I don't think I am at that place in my headspace and I am not sure how to get there.

Welcome to the show, folks. Let's play our game.