Back! Day 3 HST and Low Carb

My day 3 of HST, 15's, was awesome. I made a concerted effort to keep the pace up throughout the workout, and the pump was great in that old I just did an hour of aerobics and feel awesome kind of way. Everything went well, even lunges, which I didn't think I'd be up for 15 of when I started. I skipped doing too many single muscle isolated moves, like bicep curls, because I hit those muscles so much already with pull-ups, rows, etc... I think I've been over training them for years now. We'll see how this round of HST goes with skipping the isolation exercises.

Weight is back down to under 234... wait, or was that 233? I think it was 233, but I can't recall. Yeah, it must have been under 233 because I remember thinking "Wow, that's 8 lbs under my weight-in at work!". See, we did a weigh-in a few weeks ago for a Biggest Looser content sponsored by 24 Hour Fitness. I was wearing clothes and drank a bunch of water before the weight-in, so I was 240. I think the contest ends in September, so if I keep going, I'll probably weigh-in about 10 lbs. lighter. We'll see how that compares with everyone else at that point, but hopefully I'll do well. Hey, one more thing to keep me motivated and on track doesn't hurt right?

Switched over the Mint Chocolate Whey protein powder, and I'm liking it, especially when I mix it with Vanilla Casein protein powder post work-out. I've also started including Wheat Germ and Ground Flax Seed with my protein shakes, giving me extra nutrients (potassium, omega 3, etc.) and the all-important fiber one needs (let me tell you, I've definitely noticed the later! :P). I top that off with fish oil and some creatine pills, although I wonder if the creatine in pill form really does what the stuff you take with juice does... the box says it does, and GNC would never exaggerate or outright lie would they?!? :P Oh, and I may have mentioned this before, but I'm doing my best to eat plenty of greens, namely frozen broccoli throughout the day while at work. Fills you up, has lots of nutrients AND the carbs in it absorb slowly so I don't get a blood sugar spike to knock me out of ketosis. Sugei! (Japanese for Sweet!)

Favorite area on my body right now are my trapezius. After my workout they actually pop out so much that they surprise me.

Least favorite are abs, because they are still covered with a nice layer of flab. Dammit.

Back! Day 1 HST and Low Carb

Catching up since my last post, I worked for a couple of weeks on hitting a few strength goals, while doing a low carb diet that included one day off a week where I enjoyed myself.

I hit my goal of squating 225 lbs. for six reps. Yay! Felt good. I was hoping to get my bench up to 215, but I failed, only being able to do 205 for 4 or 5 reps :( Dead lift, I hit the goal of 225 lbs., yay, but I still worry about my form... I think this is still a relatively new exercise for me and by body is still getting used to it. Another round of HST will hopefully reinforce my weak areas and I'll go past 225 on dead lifts after this round of HST. Finally, hanging straight leg lifts, I'm pretty happy with being able to do 16; my new goal is 20. Curls, I'm still stuck at 40 to 45, but honestly, I think doing those after a full workout (after doing all those back exercises) is silly... I strongly suspect I've been over training them. Finally, while my pull-ups are only slowly making progress (5 reps at 50 lbs. assisted is all I am able to do), I'm up to 160 on the chest crusher exercise. Oh, and calves, I'm up to the same.

I was at San Diego Comic-con and then on a press tour in NYC, so it was the perfect time to do some strategic deconditioning before starting up a new round of HST. BTW Comic-con is so freaking fun that I plan to go every year from now on... from all the comics, toys and movie related stuff, to the True Blood panel, to the celebrities (I met Lou Ferrigno, saw a bunch of Star Trek and BSG people, and then I flew on a plane home with Amanda Tapping sitting next to me!!!). In NYC I also met Shawn White, a fellow red head and one of the nicest celebrities I've ever encountered (Amanda Tapping was SUPER nice too).

Anyway, so seven days off, and I'm back at the gym doing my HST 15's. After doing max weights on sort of a split routine, doing so many reps feels weird, but I love the pump! Going from exercise to exercise (back, legs, chest, shoulder, rinse, repeat) without resting long between them is super aerobic intense and fun! The only down-side is the embarrassment of how little weight you're lifting. Doing 125 lbs. squats when you can finally pump out the same at 225 sucks! The only exercise today that was tough was the lunges; at 50 lbs (one 25 lb. dumbbell in each hand), I had to stop at 10 reps., but after having done squats and deadlifts already, this is probably not surprising.

Low carb is much more enjoyable now that I've switched to the one day off a week program. I've also starting eating more healthy slow acting but very healthy foods like broccoli, while at the same time doing the six meals a day approach. Works great!

Off to work now.

Carb Day

Yesterday was my carb day, the one day a week you reload on carbs. I ate most of a pizza... it was sooo good.

Hitting the gym this morning should be fun with hopefully lots of energy stored in my muscles again. We'll see.

Still tracking my food intake on Fitday.com. Pretty cool.

Fit Day, Low Carb and Work Outs

Fit Day is turning out to be interesting. It is a bit of a pain to log all your food, but it's also kinda fun when you do it. So far I haven't been eating out much, and when I did, I ordered a bunch of sides that were easy to track (two eggs, and four pieces of linked sausage). At 237 and moderately active ("Mostly Seated With Some Movement"), I was surprised that Fit Life decided that I burn 3,330 calories a day, but then again, it also classifies me as Obese! Okay, so it may not be calibrated for someone 6'1" high and into weight lifting, so I'm assuming that I burn about 2,500 calories a day (probably more, but whatever), and so far in my food tracking I'm under that. My average is 2,100 calories per day and I tend to try and overstate what I've eaten when I'm not sure rather than guess lower so that my total calories fall on the high side. For instance, I had just over a cup of blueberries this morning, but how much over, I'm not sure (I need a measuring cup!) so I just put two cups.

Even if Fit Day is correct about 3,330 calories per day, I don't understand what that means because it changes when I enter activities. For instance, I sleep 8 hours per day, and if I enter that activity, my daily calorie burn drops quite a bit. Work-out for an hour, and bam, I'm up to 3,900 calories per day. Seem suspicious, and I can't find any info on the site for the basis of this calculation. Rest assured that I will do more research.

I've been back on the low carb diet since Sunday. This time around I'm going to cycle it more, doing six days on, one day off, six days on. And my total daily carb intake is going to be a bit higher (around 40 or 50 grams), as I'll still be eating some fruits, especially bananas, to keep my potassium and other nutrient levels up. I need to do more research on the best way to cycle and to spread out my meals (so far, it's about every two to three hours).

My first low carb workout was on Tuesday, and it went well, although I may not have been totally in Ketosis yet. I lifted my max weights (like day 6 of 5's on HST), and had no problems. I'm still doing 215 squats, 205 bench, 120 clean and push, and 50 assisted pull ups. I did increase my back extension weight to 45 lbs., I upped my dead lift to 205 (it can go higher, as I'm not having any problems lifting this, I just want to keep going up slowly so I don't damage myself; I don't have back issues, and I don't want them!). I also upped my incline bench to 145, and I think I can go higher... not sure why my max on this suddenly jumped.

I want to start doing bar-in-front (can't remember the proper term for this) squats to warm up with, because I've found when I do these, I squat better at my max, at least the couple times I've done them. Then I get in the gym and forget up until I'm about to squat my max :P

Oh, and finally, now that I'm doing max weights, I've discovered a weakness in my shoulders that I need to address. When I'm taking two 55 lb dumb bells and lifting them up to my shoulders to do say Arnold Presses, there is a slight pain in my shoulder as I swing them forward and up that feels like a muscle that can't handle that weight. I think Kettle Bells or similar style exercise movements will address this, so I'm looking into it.

This morning I did 20 minutes elliptical (320 calories), three minutes of jump rope and two minutes of jumping jacks.

Then I weighed in at just under 235.

Round 2 Reboot - 5's Day 6

Last day of HST went relatively well. A couple of personal bests (actually, pretty much had personal bests on all my exercises but these were the ones I really cared about):

Bench 205 lbs. - Only three reps :(
Squat 215 lbs. - Five reps, but the fifth was a bit wobbly :P
Clean and Press 120 lbs. - Eight reps, then followed up with five more. Felt good, except for the first lift when I smacked myself on the chin with the bar while lifting it over my head.
Curls 45 lbs. - Only two reps, but I didn't expect I'd pull off any, so booyah!
Assisted Pull-up 50 lbs. - four reps, which was one more than I thought I'd manage, so happy.
Seated Pull-up (machine) 250 lbs. - six reps, coolio.
Lunge 50 lbs. dumbbell in each hand - six lunges each leg. Interestingly my right leg seems weaker than my left on this exercise.

Anyway, so I'm going to keep going with strength building for awhile, but I'm also switching back to low carb, which may make strength increases hard, at least it has in the past. We'll see.

Today I made an account on FitDay to track my food intake. We'll see if I keep it up.

So what's next? I'm going to do day 6 a few more times until I figure out what routine I want to do next. I wouldn't mind doing a split routine, but I haven't found one I really liked, mostly because they don't usually include full body motions like Dead Lifts and Clean and Presses, and I'm loving those.

Heading off to Google to do some split routine research.

I weighed in at 237.

Round 2 Reboot - 5's Day 5

Great workout today. I did eight squats at my previous best of 205 lbs. and it felt great. I don't think I'll have any problem doing 215 lbs. next time and beating my personal best, then perhaps going even a bit higher. It would be awesome to be doing squats with two 45 lb. plates on each side of the bar. HUGE! :P

Also matched my personal best at bench, doing 195 lbs. for six reps. This didn't feel as strong as the squats, but I'm pretty certain I'll be able to do 205 lbs. on day six for five and set a new personal best, and hey, a 45 lb. and a 35 lb. plate on each side of the bar isn't horrible.

I laughed at two things today:

1. After the awesome squats I jumped on the calf machine and on my first rep of 145 lbs. BOTH my calves cramped up! I need to eat more bananas, or stop doing jump roping on my non-lifting days (I did cardio yesterday, followed by about 3 and a half minutes of jump rope).

2. My goal for both squats and bench is to be working out with my body weight, which I'm a ways away from, but I was stupidly happy this morning when I realized that hey, at least I'm working out at my ideal body weight! That's not bad right?!? :P

Actually, I'm no longer sure what my idea body weight is. I have two free personal training sessions and a free evaluation at the gym I should take advantage of and get some opinions on where I should be. I have the feeling my body weight should be anywhere between 205 and 220 lbs.

In other parts of my workout, I did my personal best on Clean and Presses, working out with 120 lbs. I'm back up to 135 on incline bench, and should have no problem doing day six at 140 lbs., then going beyond that. Cool. Deadlift, I'm still only doing 180 (this is another exercise I should be doing at body weight), and I'm not super happy with my form, so I'm still not pushing this one too fast... perhaps a couple sessions with a personal trainer will help my form. My goal was to be doing 45 lbs. dumbbell curls for biceps, but I'm not going to make that, as I'm still not able to do more than five or six reps at 40 lbs. This might be different if I wasn't doing a bunch of back exercises first and wearing out my biceps. Speaking of back exercises, I'm having no problem with any of them; I'm on track with chest crusher, seated pull-ups wide and normal grip (this one I do my body weight), and seated rows (did 190 lbs. today for nine reps in very good form, so I'll probably go past my personal best of 200 lbs. on day six and then a bit beyond, cool). But regular assisted pull ups, I'm not quite hitting my goal of five reps at 50 lbs. assisted (I did four), so I'm not even doing my ideal body weight yet :(. Just gotta keep at it.

Good workout. Very happy with most of my progress. Now I gotta eat some bananas and blue berries so I don't cramp up next time!

Weighed in at 137 lbs. today.

HST Round 2 Reboot - 5's Days 1, 2, 3 and 4

So, E3 in Los Angeles was a blast, and it turned out that the hotel actually had an okay gym in it (for a hotel) with no only cardio machines, but several weight machines and a set of free weight dumbbells that went all the way up to 50 lbs., so I hit the gym three out of the four or so days I was in LA.

Wait, backing up a bit, so we actually left for LA on Friday night, arriving there late-ish, picking up a rental and then driving down to Orange County where we checked into our hotel around midnight. The big bummer was that I was totally ill on Thursday night, as in food poisoning ill where you just lie in the shower suffering until there's nothing left inside you... yeah, not a pretty picture, but I was feeling just good enough to still go into work on Friday morning because I had waaaaay too much to do, especially since I'd been out of the country for weeks before. I grabbed a nap or two during the day to try to recover, then passed out in the boarding area at the airport for about an hour before the flight, and when we finally got to the hotel late that night I was ready for, no in need of, some more sleep.

The hotel ended up being pretty nice, we had a one bedroom suite that she managed to find for only $89 per night, and it was only a couple of blocks away from Knott's Berry Farm, where we went on Saturday morning. I was feeling much better, although my appetite had not yet really returned, so we went on pretty much all the roller coasters before heading back to the hotel in the early afternoon for a long happy nap. That evening we debated what we wanted to do, and ended up going to Midevil Times, which as you know from the Cable Guy movie, is pretty silly, but it was actually a LOT of fun. The show was very well done, with lots of horse back riding (jousts and fights), battles and knightly endeavors. The food wasn't bad either, and I enjoyed a large beer which very much relaxed me. She wasn't too excited to go Midevil Times, but once we were there she had to admit that it was pretty fun. It was the first time for both of us.

After a great night's sleep Saturday, we headed back towards LA and ended up stopping in Manhattan Beach for lunch and shopping. I've changed a bit since I lived in LA some six or seven years ago, and while I didn't much like it then, I think I could actually be happy living there now. Why? Well, when I used to live there I was not that long out of college and was used to have one or two very close friends, but LA culture is not suited for that as much as having several or more good friends, and hopefully a partner how is a close friend. Not sure if that makes sense, but nowadays, I tend to have the later kind of relationships anyway, becuase you know lots of people through your partner and work, and just don't have the time it takes to develop one or two super close friendships. Anyway, it was a typically beautiful southern California day, and we enjoyed the afternoon near the beach before she jumped on a flight back to SF. From the airport, I took a shuttle to the hotel and began getting ready for E3.

As I already said, E3 was a blast, as well as a success for my games, and I managed to get three pretty solid workouts in during my week there, which I think maintained me. I flew back to SF on Thursday night and then went back to the gym to restart the 5's. Over the past week I did days 1, 2, 3 and today, 4 of the 5's and I feel really good. 5's are fun because you are approaching your max and feel like a bad-ass lifting heavy weights again.

Today I was able to a nice set of bench and squats at 185 and 200 respectively (with eight reps each) that make me think that I'm going to be able to blow through my maximums on day 6 of 5's. I'm hoping I'll be able to hit a bench of 215 in a week or so and a squat of 230 (5 reps of each). If I can't just do them, then I'm going to change over to splits and work on increasing my max weights for a few weeks before I do any strategic deconditioning. In general, I'm feeling strong and want to capitalize on that for awhile until I plateau. Then I'll decide what routine I want to do next, HST again or something new. I may actually hire a personal trainer for a month or two and try something completely different. I've been watching a couple of the trainers at the gym, and there is at least one that I think could teach me a thing or two.

Anyway, really enjoying the end of this HST round, although falling off the diet kinda sucked. My weigh-ins have been fluctuating between 234 and 239 since I restarted after Japan, which means I haven't lost any weight. I don't look much different, so I don't think I've actually put on any fat, but since I doubt I've put on 6 or 9 pounds of muscle, I don't think I've lost any either. I hate dieting, but I'm going to have to go back on one shortly. God. Damn. It.

Away

I was in Tokyo for what turned out to be three weeks for work, and I did not work out. However, I did work, drink and eat a lot, which means I've put on about 8 pounds. Crap.

Anyway, so I came back last Saturday, and started hitting the gym again on Tuesday after I'd recovered a bit from the jet lag and spent a nice weekend with the girl. I did a light workout, going about 20% lighter than where I was before I left and not doing as many exercises. For instance, I only did one set of bench and incline for chest rather than my full routine. I also skipped a few exercises, like I did squats and a couple of light lunges, but I didn't do dead lifts. This seemed about perfect because the next day I was able to go in and do some light cardio, and then today I went it and did a slightly more intense lift followed by more intense cardio.

I'll get one more workout tomorrow before I'm off again, this time to Los Angeles for E3, for another week. Hopefully the hotel there will have at least a small gym where I can do some maintenance lifting and exercise. Actually, I just checked the web-site and the hotel has a pretty good gym. So maybe I'll be back here with some better news than this time.

HST Round 2 Reboot - 10's Day 2 and 3

Did day two of 10's on Saturday afternoon, which went fine. I was especially careful of my lower back and I didn't so much as feel a tinge. I did a less steep incline dumbbell set which left me actually feeling a tad bit sore in my chest, which I haven't had for awhile. Also did a nice set of regular seated pull-ups (versus the set of wide grip and even wider griped pull-ups I usually do) which also left the muscles in my upper back feeling sore. I know you're not necessarily supposed to feel sore after a work-out, but it feels good once in awhile to know you've hit a muscle group differently enough to surprise it. Of course, the soreness could have been more due to the infrequent work-outs due to travel, or the lack of sleep/rest with having to catch up with stuff when I got back. Friday night last week I actually slept 12 hours, which NEVER happens for me. Then Saturday I slept 9 and took a nap on Sunday. Hopefully, I'm all caught up now.

Today was day three of 10's and it went well. I was still feeling a tad sore in the chest and back, so I didn't push them crazy hard, just hard enough. I also think I helped my legs a bit today by doing more warm up squats and lunges in between other lifts before I got to those exercises. I may need to add a note to my work-out plan to do those warm-ups, as they left me ready to lift heavier. I may need to add a chest and back warm-up too... but of course that's just what I need, more time in the gym :P

I wrapped up today with a quick five minutes on the elliptical machine at level 13 and then a record three minutes of jump-roping. I could have kept going on the jump-rope, but I figured I'd leave some room to set a new record for myself next time.

Half way through this round of HST and I have to say it is nice to be finally lifting semi-heavy weights again. I know I shouldn't care, but until I'm finally putting those 45's on the barbell to do squats and bench, I feel kinda silly.

HST Round 2 Reboot - 10's

I managed to finish off the 15's after my reboot right before having to run off for business to Tokyo for a week. I did some light working out in my hotel room there, but it was effectively a week of deconditioning. To be honest, with the jet lag I didn't sleep well at all there, so working out probably would not have gone well anyways.

Anyway, just got back yesterday and hit the gym this morning to start off the first day of 10's. Still feeling the jet lag, but it was good to feel my body work again. Overall I felt strong and all the weights were pretty good except I'm thinking I may need to up my bench press weight as I blew past 10 reps and probably could have kept going to 20.

I'm feeling a tinge in my lower back in the gym that has me a bit worried. I really don't want to hurt it as I know too many people with back injuries from lifting. I've always been really careful because of that. Gotta watch my form.

Off to work now. Super busy there, but having fun and it's REALLY nice to have a job in a city I love. Oh and she finally found a job she loves. She just started, and for now it's a temp position, but I have no doubt that they'll hire her full time and if she wants to, she'll move up quickly in the company. Yay!

REBOOT HST Round 2

Well, with lots and lots of stuff going on (traveling, significant vows taken by people, conferences where lots of friends came to visit, family in town, etc.) I skipped a week of HST and rather than pick up where I left off, I decided to do a reboot. I did day 5 of 15's yesterday and it went great, probably in part because I had to skip two days while I was up in Vancouver for business (so I had an extra day of recovery in there, although I did do some cardio in the hotel gym the day before). I just got back from doing some light cardio in the gym this morning, including a new record of 2 1/2 minutes of jump-roping (hey! it's f*cking hard!) and I'm looking forward to day 6 of 15's tomorrow morning.

Work is getting VERY busy with travel and the season push to get products out, so making time for the gym is getting more challenging, but I've been through this before and I think I can keep it up.

What I haven't been able to keep up is low carb - it's just tough when you are traveling so I'm "trying" to eat right, or at least eat reasonable portions. But it's difficult for me becuase I'm such a food lover, so I have my doubts I'll loose anymore weight. But not running a carb deficit does make the work-outs easier, and maybe I'll pack on more muscle this way.

I'll do some pics soon.

Round 2: HST Day 6 and Low Carb

Day 6 was rough. About half of my exercises I barely did 15, a few a didn't quite make it, and a few I was able to do more, but overall I felt the steam drain out of me about 2/3rds of the way through. Well, I wanted more intensity this time around, and I guess I got it. And I guess today was supposed to be the most intense of the 15's... Okay, it was awesome, but man, it was tough and it left me tired all day.

So it's been two weeks since I last ate carbs, and today with guests in town I decided to enjoy some. I also think you need to take a break every once in awhile so that your body doesn't get too used to being low carb; just like you have to keep working your muscles in different ways, you have to keep your metabolism adapting to different ways of feeding it... okay, that doesn't totally make sense, but I have found that I do better on low carb when I mix it up once in awhile. Anyway, the carbs didn't help me feel less exhausted, or maybe they did and I would have been waaay worse had I not enjoyed. I'm really looking forward to a good night's sleep tonight and having two days off from lifting. But I'm also looking forward to my first days of 10's.

Round 2: HST Day 4 and 5

Okay, so the new routine is proving to be extremely intense as I enter the second and final week of 15's. I was barely able to finish 15 in about half of my exercises, lunges being one of the really difficult ones (I do these last after squats, deadlifts and clean&press). Chest starts out pretty easy with bench, but rapidly gets harder as I go through dumbbell chest, incline bench and finally dubmbell incline chest. Behind lunges today, clean and press were the most intense, followed by dead lifts, as they use a ton of different muscle groups. Assisted pull-ups were perfect, as I hit 15 as I'm just starting to hate them. I go up a notch (actually down 10 pounds, as they are assisted) for the final day of 15's and I'm excited to see if I manage to pull them all off (or should I say "up" :P).

I meant to do a set of regular machine pull-ups (I generally do wide-grip), but I forgot... just added that to my work-out chart so next round of HST I include that exercise. I did do a new exercise today, twists and wood-choppers I believe they are called, where you hold a cable and twist your body around to hit your core muscles (mostly abs). They were cool. I've been doing barbell twists, but they feel a little funky and in comparison these cable twists feel more natural. In general, I feel like I need to mix up my exercises for different muscle groups more so my body doesn't have a chance to really adapt fully to any.

Post work-out, I had some very yummy frozen blueberries that I got at Costco. I drop them in a glass of water and they are a bit like eating ice cream. They are actually really good, tasting better than any fresh blueberries I've ever had. Go figure. I went to Costco last weekend to pick up more, and I did, but it's a different brand. Hopefully they'll taste as good as this last bag. On day 4 I also had a banana, but it will have to wait until I get to work later to have one of those as I'm out at home.

I'm now taking Whey before and after my workout, then a combo mix during the day (a back of mixed kinds of protein I got at Costco) and finally some casein protein, which takes longer to digest, before I go to sleep. I've found I'm recovering faster with this mix, but I've also been sleeping more, so not sure if I can credit the new protein mixtures completely.

My weigh-ins the last three days (did Day 4, then a light cardio day yesterday, then Day 5 today) were all around 233 lbs.

Oh, and I went to the doctor yesterday for a check-up and he said my blood pressure (which I forgot to memorize) was REALLY good. I'll be doing some blood screens a few weeks, so we'll see how those are, but since I've always been good, I'm hoping that will still be the case. At the doctors office I weighed in at 232 for some reason.

Round 2: HST Day 3

Well, I did in fact make it into the gym later that day, and it was awesome. I felt really strong but challenged throughout my entire workout, even doing very close to my full set of lunges. Interestingly enough, I found that by the end of my workout I was pretty thirsty, despite drinking a fair amount of water before and during my workout... I'm going to need to watch that moving forward as the last thing you need when hitting the gym hard is to get dehydrated.

Later that day, I could feel how I destroyed myself in lots of great ways, but the next day, today, I felt great, like I could seriously go right back into the gym again. I didn't of course, but it was nice to see my body had adjusted to my routine again. Oh, and I took a nap yesterday, then got lots of sleep last night, so I'm sure that helped, AND I finally bought some casein protein that I'm using along with Whey, the later for quick protein hits and the later for longer term absorption, like for right before I go to bed. New protein and lots of rest, as well as a week into a routine seems to be a good mix.

Both yesterday and today I've been pretty solidly in ketosis... actually yesterday evening when I checked (a few hours after the work-out) I was in crazy red-stick ketosis. The cool thing is that this time I don't feel much weaker than before. Of course, I haven't been not in ketosis or on the verge of being so for months, so what do I know about feeling weak or strong anymore?

Yesterday's weigh-in: 234 exactly. I may have still been a bit dehydrated, but I didn't hold back post-workout in drinking as much water out of the fountain as I could before I weighed in.

Skipped today to really rest the body (even though I REALLY wanted to go in because I felt so good), but tomorrow morning I'm planning on do something light cardio to take advantage of being in ketosis (and wake me up; I find I don't fully wake up during the day, or at least it takes a much longer time, if I don't get a work-out in).

Round 2: HST Day 2

It's actually day three today, but I won't make it to the gym until a little bit later as I'm showing off the car to a prospective buyer. This is the second time we are showing it to him, as he was here last night, but I think he wants to see it during the day and take it for an actual test drive before he makes an offer, which is fine, but did he have to pick first thing in the morning after a night a friend was spinning at a local bar/club? And seriously, when that local bar/club has a backroom with Karaoke, and I put my heart and soul into a tear wrenching rendition of "Careless Whisper", how am I supposed to get my exhausted ass up the next morning and act as a sales-man?!?

I don't know either, but here I am sipping Green Tea and trying to wake up.

Anyway, Day 1 of HST kicked my ass so hard that I had to wait two days before doing Day 2. I was was just too sore to wait only one day. And even with two days rest, I was still feeling a bit sore, so I only did half the prescribed lunges. Most people would probably conclude that with Lunges, Dead Lifts, Squats and Clean-Pushes and inner and outer thigh machines, I'm over-doing the number of leg exercises on my HST plan and I should probably cut back, but that would be crazy talk :P And I know it may even be a tad bit underproductive for muscle growth to be over doing it, but I'm hoping my body will still gain muscle while loosing fat on this intense HST routine. And frankly, the intensity is part of the fun; about mid-way through HST, when your body gets used to it, the work-outs get kinda boring, so I wanted to make sure that this time around it was always exciting to go in and do each day. Well, so far that's the case!

I did Day 2 in just about an hour, and it was fun. I barely had time to catch my breath as I pushed myself through each exercise, and I found that doing 15's on some of them were already straining my muscles. F*ck yeah! This time around, I want that last day of 15's to be nearly impossible. In fact, I wouldn't mind if as that day gets closer, I'm not quite able to do 15 reps, but instead am only able to do 13 or 14, so when day 1 of 10's comes, I'm already challenged by those too.

Anyway, so except for the full 15 reps of lunges, I did everything with a gusto and wrapped up with a little jump roping. Later I tested and found I was hard-core in ketosis, which explains my weigh-in:

Wiegh-in: 134.2 (same the next day, when I just did some light cardio on elliptical, the day between HST 2 and 3).

The Day After

Good lord yesterday's workout kicked my ass hard! The lunges especially have left me pretty damn sore today. I can only hope that I'll recover enough to do HST Day 2 tomorrow.

I was slightly in ketosis last night when I checked, but this morning it looks like I didn't quite make it. If I wasn't sore, I'd have hit the gym and probably managed to get there, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. I'll check again tonight, and maybe day two of low carb will get me there, but if I do Day 2 of HST, I can pretty much guarantee I'll be in ketosis again as it will burn off any remaining glucose I have stored.

Strategic Deconditioning, HST Day 1 and Low-Carb

After a week on vacation in Seattle and Whistler Canada, basically my version of Strategic Deconditioning but with a lot of Snowboarding thrown in, I hit the gym this morning for Day 1 of HST. Ouch.

I've adjusted my lifting schedule so that the exercises I got stronger in were heavier, and overall, I've adjusted almost all my lifts from 5% down each day from my max to 4%. The result of this was that on Day 1 my work-out was intense, and on some of the lifts I barely managed to do my required 15 reps. I'm hoping the later is because it's day 1 and my muscles really are deconditioned, but if I find over the next few HST days that I can't do 15, I'll probably need to recalibrate my schedule and start over.

I start back on low-carb today as well. Have two pounds of roasted turkey from Costco thawed in the fridge and ready to go, while the woman is prepared to cook me low carb meals again for the next six weeks. Fun!

Totally put on weight during my vacation, hopefully a good portion of it water. Weigh-in this morning was back up to 238 :(

Final Day Before Vacation

Weighed in at 131.5 lbs. I'm thinking that I might be a bit heavier today despite still being in ketosis and not having eaten enough yesterday because I was either more hydrated this morning (or less dehydrated after my workout, which was less intense than my lifting days) or because my muscles are still pumped up from yesterday's lifting (which also means more water). Anyway, a little over a pound a week over the last six weeks is not a bad run. I just have to do this three or four more times :P

HST 17 & 18

Finished up yesterday with my max 5 rep weights, and discovered a few where a little too light, but most were just about right. Also did what I believe was a personal best 205 lb squat at 5 reps. My right wrist complained on my 195 bench and I couldn't do my reverse wrist exercises/lifts at all because of the injury in my right hand (which I think is the same as the wrist one). Bummer.

I may just jump back into HST again now, but we'll see...

Final weight over the last two weigh-ins: 231 lbs

Not bad. Now I'm off for a vacation to Seattle and Whistler in Vancouver!

HST 16 and low carb

Somehow I missed a day in there... not sure when, but it must have been in the last couple of weeks as things have gotten quite busy at work. Anyway, today was day 16 and I made it through, although I have to say it started out slow. I didn't have a lot of drive to power through my lifts until towards the end. The lifts are getting heavier, so they are harder, but you don't always feel ready to do lifts unless you've warmed up with lighter weights. By the second half of my work out I was definitely warmed up and things felt good, but... well, I just didn't have as much power today for some reason. Anyway, about two hours after the work out I did a ketone test and it was redder than I've ever seen one. I was in super-duper ketosis, that despite having a couple bits of pancakes at breakfast a few beers last night. I guess whatever glucose I had was burned off during the work out (they are getting pretty intense now that the weights are within 10-15% of my max five reps).

Anyway, 5 minute elliptical machine warm up, followed by lifts, including continued extra sets on the seated cable pull-up machine, then I did two minutes of jump-roping, one minute of jumping jacks and finally 10 minutes on the bike.

Weight-in - 233.5 with very damp cotton t-shirt but nylon shorts

HST Day 13 and 14

Good workouts, obviously getting heavier and harder. I'm really feeling them in my muscles the next day now. Haven't been doing front squats because I don't think legs can take it, but have been doing seated pull-ups to hit lats more than one set of assisted pull-ups seems to be doing.

Fell off low-carb for almost a week, but back on.

Day 13 - 236.5
Day 14 - 234.5 back in ketosis (clearly water-weight)

HST Day 11 and 12

Monday's HST workout was okay. I cheated hardcore on lowcarb this weekend with Beer, Burgers, Nachos, Ice Cream and Cookies, so by Monday morning I actually felt kinda crappy... who knew that junk food sometimes makes you feel bad? Anyway, despite the large amounts of carbs, I was feeling a bit lethargic and unmotivated, but I made it through anyway. I could still feel the workout on Tuesday, so I didn't go to the gym, and I realized I was low on potassium because some of my muscles came close to cramping up a few times, so I picked up a bottle of the the stuff from Wallgreens.

Today, day 12 was my last day of 10's and I'd say about half the exercises were challenging... I should pull up my graph and go through them now before I forget... okay, in reviewing them, there are actually few exercises where I maxed out at 10 reps, but most were at least challenging, and doing them quickly back to back is definitely a pump. It's also fun because the weights are finally starting to get respectable as I'm starting to approach my max weights. It will be interesting to see if any of my max 5 weights have gone up or down.

I capped my workout off with 10 front barbell squats with two 25 lb weights on a full barbell (total 95 lbs), which is up 30 pounds from my workout on Monday, and it felt good. I'm going to keep adding weight to this exercise and figure out where my max is, but I don't want to rush it because I want to A) let my body adjust to the new exercise (tendons and such need to be allowed to grow stronger) and B) I want to make sure my form remains good.

I also added a seated pull-up exercise to both work-outs (been doing this for awhile), doing 160 on Monday and 170 today.

After my weekend of debauchery I weighed in at 138!
But today I weighed in at 134

HST Day 10

Should have skipped one more day, but I did HST lifting today anyway because I want to switch over Mon-Wed-Fri so I can do Yoga at night with the woman on Tues. and Thurs.

Good workout today, but I could feel some fatigue. Pretty strong in everything, including pull-ups and lunges. Did some 45 lb dumbbell squats and still having trouble keeping that left one up on my shoulder. Did some forward barbell squats with no weight on the bar to practice later and found those to be cool, although the weight on my shoulder muscles definitely feels uncomfortable. I'll try a pad next time.'

Didn't do a warm up today because I'm going to meet some friends for breakfast and cheat on my diet! Yum! And tonight I'm cheating too because I'm going on a red shirt brigade run in Hayward where there will be too much beer tempting me, so might as well accept it and enjoy :)

132.5 wearing nylon shorts and cotton t-shirt. Perhaps weight loss in not a fluke?

Friday Morning

Ten minutes on the stationary bike at level 10, and was surprised heart rate got up over 130 bpm. Switched over to walking on treadmill for ten minutes at 14 degree angle at 3.0 and 2.9 mph, and was surprised to see my heart rate go up over 150! Despite wanting to do more, I stopped at that point, weighed in and just came upstairs to have blueberries. Going to skip most of the other supplements this morning, although I did already have protein, wheatgerm and glucose earlier, so not really skipping :P

Weighed in at 133.5 - wearing cotton shirt and shorts too. Perhaps today's weight loss is a fluke?

Busy - Day 9 HST

Work has become pretty busy all of a sudden, which is great because not having signed projects makes Jack a little worried about his job. Apparently, I didn't didn't have anything to worry about as they just moved three people and five projects under me. And the projects are actually pretty damn cool, so I'm excited.

On the workout side, my big inspiration to post an updated before I forget to do so, I did about 35 minutes of cardio on Wednesday, keeping it light. ten minutes on the elliptical at, crap don't remember, but I think around level 11, ten minutes walking on the treadmill at angle 14 and 3.0 to 3.1 mph, then five minutes on the bike at level 9 and 10. At the end of the day, I felt the workout in my legs, but I was mostly good to go yesterday morning for day 9 of HST.

But I wasn't super great to go on day 9. I could definitely feel a bit of fatigue had built up, but I was able to power through all my leg exercises fine (although I didn't do the dumbbell squats again). I was fine, but I knew I would need to take a day or two off to allow my body to repair. Oh, and near the end of my workout, I could definitely feel my muscle close to cramping, especially my calves. I haven't had a banana for over a week, so I think my potassium levels are down. I made sure I ate some blueberries after my workout yesterday hoping those would help. I've been skipping some of the normal fruit intake because I wanted to make sure I got back in ketosis, but I'm there, so now I need to remember to eat good stuff.

Back to lifting, did 10 straight leg lifts and then 10 curled, had to switch to alternating forward lifts and bicep curls, and I barely finished the 10 assisted pull-ups (although I think I may have done 11 total). I also added machine pull-downs at 160 because I want to hit my lats more. I can't do unassisted pull-ups, and that's embarrassing, so I'm inspired to work those muscles a bit more. I wrapped up the workout with five minutes on the bike, and was amazed to find that I had no problem keeping my heart rate up around 150 bpm, when usually I have a hard time keeping it over 130 on a bike ride. I guess when your body is destroyed after a good work-out, it's just easier.

I think I need to break down and just buy a new pair of wireless headphones. My last pair is dead and I'm missing music and entertainment at the gym. Yes, I could use wired headphones, and did on Wednesday, but my nylon shorts don't have pockets, so I had nothing yesterday.

Going to go in and ride the bike a bit this morning - a VERY light cardio work-out. I've promised myself I would not push it for at least one day. Saturday we have plans to see an old friend for breakfast, so I'll probably skip a day there, which I'm sure my body needs. Why is it so hard NOT to work out?

Wednesday weigh in - just under 235
Thursday weight in - 234

Ketosis

Ketosis, I has it :) Going to do a light cardio workout this morning and hopefully burn some fat.

Boring: HST - Day 8 and Low Carb

With the weekend snowboarding trip, which I'll write about in another post, I missed doing my Day 8 HST lifting on Saturday. In fact, my legs were not ready even yesterday to get back in the gym, so I didn't do day 8 until today, five days after my last workout, which part of me is bothered by because the whole point of HST is a regular increase in load. Will messing up my schedule ruin this round of HST? I don't know, but I'm guessing not. At least I'm hoping not! Either way I decided to keep going on it, which is what I did this morning.

I did the full workout again because it's just way more fun. I just really love to do full body exercises like Dead Lifts, Squats and Clean and Pushes on the same day because... well the intensity just rocks! I'm hoping I can keep this up, in fact I'd almost like to add even more intensity to my work-outs, but I know that I'll have to go step by step and cut back if I find myself on Day 9 or 10 with muscles or a body that is too fatigued. Once again, it's the balance of pushing the body, but not pushing it so much that it gets burned out. To do this, I'm going to keep my non-HST days at a low intensity and rest at least one day a week (even though I really don't want to). We'll see how it goes.

On Saturday night I fell off the low carb diet when the beer and mashed potatoes at the very fancy restaurant we went to just looked too good to pass up. Sunday, I continued to enjoy carbs, after all, I was still on vacation, and yesterday I just couldn't bring myself to go full non-carb yet. But I promised myself that I would start again today, a promise I've kept so far. God I love carbs. Saying goodbye to them is so hard and I can't wait to eat them again.

Okay, back to the workout this morning: I didn't eat anything before going because I figured I already had plenty of glucose stored up, and if I want to kick start myself back into ketosis, I need to burn it all off. And mostly, probably due to the glucose, I had a lot of energy this morning. My legs were still a tad tired from snowboarding, but they held up quite well. In fact even the usually challenging lunges went very well and felt easier than usual; my legs didn't start to really fail until the very end of my set of 20 (10 for each side). Arnold Presses, even after doing Clean and Presses, felt almost too easy, my incline dumbbell presses felt easier and I did 10 straight leg lifts followed by 10 curled legs with no problem. Basically, everything was a couple degrees of difficulty easier. It's a "No duh!" but carbs do wonders for athletic performance. I'm probably going to miss them.

After my workout I took my normal whey protein, glucose, vitamin, fish oil and creatine supplements, and I ate a few blueberries, but a bit less than I normally do (because I want to kick start myself back into ketosis). The rest of the day I plan to stay extremely low carb as well, and I'll do a P test tonight and in the morning to see (hopefully) if I'm back.

A couple of things that are interesting (at least to me):

1. I've noticed that my motivation to get back in the gym drops after two days of not going, which is one of the reasons I hate the two day rest period you are supposed to take when doing HST. Basically, I get up in the morning and rather than being excited to get dressed and hit the gym like I usually am, I actually consider not going. This morning I considered watching some TV shows that E doesn't like that I want to catch up while she is either out of the house or still asleep (we have wireless headphones I can use so the sound won't wake the other of us up). This lack of motivation seriously doesn't happen when I skip just one day; the motivation and excitement are still there. But for whatever reason after two days it's harder to get going. Add dropping off of your diet to the mix (like I did this weekend), and my motivation is even less. I have no idea why that is, but if this is typical behavior or a typical reaction then it must be really hard for out-of-shape or overweight people with bad eating habits to get themselves to the gym. And if this is a normal reaction, then when designing a work-out program for someone new, I'd want to do one that gets them in the gym at least every other day, but probably every day with only one or two days (split up) rest a week.

2. Despite falling off my low carb diet this weekend, I didn't put on any weight, or at least not as much as I would have expected given that I should be holding more water. Even after enjoying carbs for two days, my weight didn't go up. Did I somehow continue to loose weight even while doing carbs? Did I burn off the water doing my work-out this morning before I weighed myself again? Did I loose weight on Friday and Saturday when I was still on low carb, then gain it back on Sunday and Monday when I did eat carbs? Does it take more than two days of eating carbs to gain back the water weight? No idea, and frankly, my weight this morning could be a fluke, but yeah, weird. I really expected to have gained back at least a pound when I got on the scale this morning.

3. If I manage to get back into ketosis today, it will be interesting to see if I drop any water weight when I get on the scale tomorrow.

Weighed in at just under 236 with all nylon clothes.

Boring: HST Day 7

Have I been getting the days right? For some reason Day 7 feels like a numerical jump or something... whatever, it's definitely day seven, AKA first day of 10's, and it was good.

After two days off, I woke up just a tad late (I guess my body started getting used to sleeping in... or perhaps this we due to staying up too late playing Fallout 3? It's hard because I'm really in the home stretch) for getting dehydrated fully before hitting the gym to do the work out I wanted, which was the full list of exercises (like last day of 15's) because realistically I'm not going to be able to lift again until Monday, four days from now :( So, I got into the gym about 20 after seven and jumped onto the elliptical for a short 5 minute warm-up, then hit all my exercises as quickly as possible.

Bench, bench dumbbell rows, barbell bench, seated rows, incline bench, chest crushers, incline dumbbells, assisted pull-ups, squats, calves, clean and presses, lunges, Arnold dumbbell presses, dead lifts, and on and on... everything was pretty easy, with the lunges and incline dumbbells as always feeling the most challenging. Pull-ups also felt just right. Did eight strap hanging straight leg lifts before doing 10 curled leg lifts, which felt good, oh and the back extensions with 20 lbs. felt really good today. I have to day that I can't wait for the clean and presses to get more challenging, as that whole body hit/pump/heart rate increase you get is awesome. I got that on the last day of 15's but in dropping down to 10's, I've lost it.

So, it was simply a good work out. If I'd had more time, I might have jumped on the treadmill for some sprints, but I simply didn't, so instead I grabbed some 45 lb dumbbells, lifted them to my shoulders and did a set of 10 squats. It felt good, but even with them being 10 lbs. lighter than last time, the left dumbbell kept slipping off my shoulder. I've really got to concentrate on proper form as I suspect I'm letting that shoulder lean forward more than the right. At the same time, I may just not be as strong on that side, so I'm going to focus on keeping that arm up correctly from now on. I think I'll keep throwing these into my work-outs going forward, staying at 45 lb. dumbbells until I'm doing them perfectly.

I have a bodyfat monitor that I keep meaning to start using. I think on some level I'm waiting to drop a little more weight before I turn it on because I don't want to see the truth about my body fat percentage. But as much as the truth can hurt, it's better to know, so perhaps tomorrow I'll "remember".

Low carb is going well as I continue to stay in ketosis. I'm fairly certain that I was running a calorie deficit on my two work-out days off. I just wasn't that hungry, and I did a better job of eating a small meal every two hours or so. Hopefully, I can keep that up.

Weighed in today at 235 with nylon shorts and wet cotton t-shirt, so weight loss is on track.

Not Going to the Gym

Taking two days off from the gym to recover has been surprising difficult. I've actually had a harder time not going than I do going, as I find myself really wanting to hit the gym when I wake up in the morning. I really miss the way a good work out wakes and warms you up, and I find myself worrying that I'm not making the most of being on a diet because I'm not burning the extra 300 to 600 calories per day at the gym. On the flip side though, I haven't been as hungry as days I work out, so I've been able to eat less, and that may balance things out. Still, I'm really looking forward to hitting the gym again tomorrow morning for my first day of 10's.

I'm also considering doing more high intensity cardio on my lifting days, and then doing fairly low intensity cardio on my off days to see if I can limit my long term fatigue a bit more... you know, that's silly and just me trying to figure out how to hit the gym everyday when I know that I really need to take a day or two off a week for optimal results. *sigh*

My routine is going to get a bit disrupted this week as we are heading up to Lake Tahoe to meet my sister for the weekend. We'll do some snowboarding on Saturday, when I should be doing Day 2 of 10's, so I'll be getting some exercise, so Day 2 is going to slip to either Sunday evening or Monday morning. So I'm going to start off day 1 of 10's tomorrow with some extra exercises, a bit like I did on my last day of 15's, given it will be two to three days before I do a true lifting workout again.

We gave notice that we won't be needing our $200 per month parking spot anymore, so we need to leave the car down at my Dad's house when we get back from Tahoe. We also need to sell the car. I need to do some research and make some calls to figure out the best way to do that, whether we should sell it privately or just go to Carmax (which is way out in Modesto) and see what they offer. What a pain in the ass. I can't wait to not have a car again. At least we have a place to park it for now.

Went to an IGDA mixer last night and hung out with some interesting guys. One was an artist at everyone's favorite Star Wars company, the other was a programmer behind the procedural drunk guy in GTA IV and another was the owner of a DS developer. It was fun to have drinks after work again. Oh, and they had this lamb burger that was really good! I'll definitely be going back sometime.

Boring: HST Day 6

Today was the final day of 15's, and I "cheated" by doing all the exercises on my list. What that means is that instead of doing only bench press today, which I do every other workout by alternating that exercise with a barbell bench press, I did both the regular bench press and the barbell bench press. Technically, you're not supposed to do that, as the point is progressive load with one set per workout, but I wanted by final day of 15 to be a blow-out, especially since I'm going to take two days off from lifting now before starting in on the 10's.

So this morning was a bit intense, especially when doing big full-body exercises like squats, lunges, clean and pushes and dead lifts on the same day. I also finally remembered to try and do front squats instead of my normal squats (I'm really trying to mix it up so that my body is forced to adjust in different ways), and I just couldn't do them. I've never really done them before, so when I walked up to the bar I had to try and figure them out, which I couldn't. As I mounted the bar on my chest, I think I had the right positioning and form, but it felt really weird and I didn't feel comfortable doing the exercise at the weight I was supposed to. I quickly realized that I should have tried front squats sooner when I was still at a lower weight, so perhaps after this current round of HST I will.

But, not one to give up, I decided to try doing squats with dumbbells instead, something I did when we were moving cross country and still living in hotels between apartments. The gyms only had dumbbells, so I made due with them, which resulted in something I had not expected: despite the dumbbells being significantly lighter than the amount I did with regular barbell squats, they were challenging. Something about having the weight further forward forced my muscles to work differently than with squats AND they definitely forced me to use my core muscles more, which was cool. Then, the big surprise came when I went back to doing regular squats in the gym and found that my max weight quickly went up. My theory is that the dumbbell squats were challenging my body differently, and that allowed me to break through my previous squat weight ceiling. Good stuff.

Anyway, so the problem with doing dumbbell squats right now is that it's difficult to hold the 55 lb. dumbbells at shoulder height while I'm doing them. My arms and shoulders get tired well before my legs do, so the dumbbells start to slip and fall off my shoulders, especially might left shoulder. In fact, I'd say that 55 lbs. is about the max I'm going to be able to do, as I barely pulled off 10 squats with them today before I had to stop, rest, and try again (I did 7 more on my second set). So, I'm not going to continue with dumbbell squats this round of HST, but next time around, I'm going to make them part of the 15's.

I'm trying to work abs into the HST thing too by doing more hanging straight leg lifts with each workout. I think I started HST doing like 4, while today I did eight straight leg lifts before my abs gave out and I wrapped up with 10 more bent leg lifts (basically, you hang by the straps, bringing your knees up to your chest rather than lifting your legs straight up and keeping them straight in front of you). That said, I barely did 8, so I probably won't be able to progressively load much more.

A note for future rounds of HST, my bench press weight of 105 lbs. was too easy - I could have done several more than 15 reps, while my incline bench of 75 was just about perfect. Dumbbell chest of 45 lbs. was not bad, while dumbbell incline of 40 lbs. was too much (I wasn't able to to 15 reps straight through - perhaps this was partly do to this being my last chest exercise though and I was simply tired). Clean and press at 65 was a bit easy, but man my heart and core were feeling it by the end. Dead lift of 95 was too easy too; I should increase these next time... perhaps I'll try dropping only 4% from my max each work out on the next round. Calves were too easy too, but I hit them in other ways (running and jump rope) on my cardio days, so I'm not worried about them.

Weight today wearing all nylon gear was just under 136 lbs.

RPG's and Fallout 3

I'm officially sick of Fallout 3, but I'm not going to stop playing until it is finished. So obviously, I still like it, but there are a couple of aspects that are starting to bum me out.

The first is that you stop gaining levels at 20, which we hit a week ago. I should have known there was a level cap, but for some reason I thought it was 30, so when I hit 20 and that was it, I was especially dissapointed. I suppose it would have been a little better if I had expected it to end at 20, but even if I had, I think I would have been disappointed because we were only about half way through the game when we hit that level. And we were just playing through normally, not trying especially hard to get extra experience points. Granted, we were trying to solve most of the quests, but even so, maxing out when you are only half way through the game seems broken.

Anyway, so one important aspect of RPG's your character growing more powerful, mostly went away about a week ago. Yes, we can still find bobble heads and books that give some bonuses, but we also didn't realize that skills maxed out at 100 either, so many of ours have already been at 100 for over a week too. I think they should have balanced this better as maxing out has taken a big chunk of fun out of the game. The same thing happened to me when I played Baldur's Gate years ago; I was really enjoying the game, so much so that I was trying to get the most out of it by doing all the side quests and dungeon crawls, but then I hit the level cap right before entering the final city area (forget what it was called). I tried to keep playing to finish the game, but I just lost interest and never wrapped it up. Kinda sad.

The second aspect of the game that is bumming me out is the amount of time it is taking to finish the quests, largely because they have a lot of back and forth elements to them, where you travel to this location, then back, then back to that last location, then back. This is a problem with a lot of RPG's for me, and comparably Fallout 3 does a good job of keeping the quests interesting, with lots of story threads going at once which give the world a feeling of depth, but I guess I'm just looking at the amount of time spent on the game so far and feeling like it's too much. Honestly, I would have been happier if the game was about half as long.

Combine the time sink aspect with the level cap, and it feels like I'm putting a lot of time into the game still, but no longer progressing, which takes much of the fun out of it. At this point, I'm playing simply to finish the game and get the remaining achievements. That said, it's still a VERY good game that I would strongly recommend to anyone who is a fan of RPG's or who has wondered what it might be like to live in a post nuclear holocaust Washingon D.C.

Fatigued

I read it over and over, and I know it from lots of personal experience, you have to give your body time to rest, period. Today was one of those days where I could really feel that truism becuase I barely pulled off 10 minutes of level 14 elliptical before my legs were done. So I switched over to the rowing machine, which I haven't done in years, and after 5 minutes of that my legs and arms were done. Then I wandered over to the seated stationary bike and did five minutes before I finally got it through my thick head that I was done. None of my muscles are really sore, they are working fine, and my overall energy level is high (thus the strong desire to work out), but my muscles are simply fatigued. I just can't get a lot out of them, and I swear I can almost feel them breaking down as I push them to keep going (which is probably what's happening).

So, I had to make due with a crappy 20 minutes cardio work-out today. I probably should have just skipped the gym all together and given my body a break. Oh well. I have day six of HST lifting tomorrow, so I'll skip working out on Tuesday and give my body the break it needs.

Weighed in wearing a sweating cotton tshirt and was 237.

VERY Boring: HST Day 5

Had dinner and drinks with C and J, joined by N later just for drinks, two nights ago, and consumed some carbs in beer and Chinese Food form, but I was pretty good. Drank a bit more than I should of for a work-out day, but didn't go overboard, and felt fine enough yesterday to hit the gym hard for some cardio, 10 minutes on the elliptical at level 15 (yes, I dropped down a level), then three sprints on the treadmill at 14 angle and 3.2 mph walking and 9.0 mph sprinting. I actually did the sprints sooner than usual, starting at 4 minutes, then doing the next at 8 and the next at 12... I almost decided to do another sprint at 15 or 16 minutes, but figured I shouldn't push it; there is a fine line between pushing it and going overboard so that you can't work-out the next day.

Finally, I finished off my workout with a couple minutes of jump-roping and jumping-jacks (100 of the later - not sure how many minutes of the first because the class-room was full and I had to do these in a corner without a clock). I'm still having a hard time doing the single leg jumping-jacks, but I'll get there.

Oh, I called in sick yesterday, as I really was bleah in the morning, but my work-out cleared the cobwebs out and I felt good afterwards... at least until we spent four hours at the DMV getting our licenses and attempting to get the car registered. Since she'd only been out of California for a couple of years, she was able to renew her license, but I've been gone longer, so I had to retake the driving exam, which I am happy to report I got a perfect on. Unlike most places, they don't make your license then and there, so I have a print-out temp. license and the real one is supposed to come in the mail at some point. I say we attempted to register the car because after two hours waiting in line and doing paper-work, it turns out it financially makes more sense to just sell the damn thing with out-of-states plates still on it. Waste of time.

Afterward, we ran by the Apple Store to see if they would replace my iPhone with a cracked screen, and they won't. I'm going to try asking an old friend who apparently works at an Apple Store in Palo Alto if he can do anything, but I'll probably have to live with it or find another route to get it repaired.

Last night we went over to T and L's place for dinner and drinks. P and R met us there too, and we had a... well, lovely time. Fun conversation, not entirely about video games either, good food, the girls got along great and we took a look at their rooftop deck which was awesome. Hopefully, we'll be hanging out with them more.

Of course, I again ate carbs, in fact I positively splurged when they served a fudge cake with ice cream on top. Definitely a cheat day. So I made sure to really hit the gym hard this morning on my 5th HST workout day.

It was crowded at the gym again, but I managed to work all the exercises in. Only did 5 minutes at level 15 on the elliptical, as my legs were still feeling yesterday's sprints. The assisted pull-up was perfect, where I"m just starting to find the last couple hard, the clean and push was great in that my core was really feeling it, and the squats felt very nice. I'd meant to do front squats today, but I plumb forgot. Maybe next time.

I wrapped up with 10 minutes waling at 14 angle and 3.2 on the treadmill, doing a minute of really long strides at the end, and this really go my heart rate up. Then I got on a bike to wait for E to finish her Yoga class. On the way back to the apartment we ran into a girl that lives on our floor, and we introduced ourselves to Kate.

The big bummer is that my wireless headphones seem to be dying. I can't get the base unit to charge anymore :(. I need to figure out if I can mix and match one of the other pairs I have in because I really don't like having wired headphones on at the gym (they get caught up on everything).

Weight today 236 (down two pounds... felt a bit dehydrated today, so I'm guess this is a combination of water-weight lost and the fact that I was wearing all nylon, which is lighter than the sweaty cotton shirts and underwear I often have on when I weigh in). We'll see if this weight lasts for a few days.

HST Day 4

This morning's work-out went great! I think my body has mostly adjusted to low-carb now and not using the NO-Xplode feels much MUCH better. About half an hour before going to the gym I had lots of water (need to rehydrate after a good night's sleep), a cup of green tea (two bags), and a small serving of Wheat Germ mixed with one scoop of vanilla whey protein (about 20 grams of protein). Then, I took 8 BCAA capsules (4.4 grams of BCAA and 200 milligrams of caffeine) right before walking out the door.

Started this morning with a 5 minutes warm-up on the elliptical machine at level 16, and then after putting on my work-out gloves, walked over to the main free weight room where I realized that there were a LOT more people working out than usual, like probably twice what you would see on a normal day. I looked at my lifting chart, saw I was starting off with barbell bench presses at 40, looked up to find those weights and a bench to do them on, and found that they were already taken. This was my story for the entire work-out today; check chart for weight, and then wander around trying to find it or a machine that was not already taken. For most of the lifts I was able to improvise, like I used 25 lbs plates to do my Arnold Dumbbell Press , but in a few cases I just had to wait for people to finish, which was annoying.

Hopefully, today was a fluke and there won't be this many people at the gym in the mornings in the future. It will also help as I get to the second half of my HST lifting plan, as the weights I use will go up and therefore not be the ones EVERYONE else also wants to use too.

Anyway, no problems today with my lifting plan except for two exercises:

1. 15 Lunges (which I did with 25 lb. plates in each hand rather than dumbbells) was fucking hard! Not looking forward to my next lunge working.

2. Palms Down Wrist Curls hurt a little so I stopped at 13 reps. I hurt my right wrist a few weeks back while trying to put spin on a bowling ball using muscle rather than leverage, and it hasn't quite healed yet. It's mostly doesn't bother me, but when I started to feel it towards the end of this exercise, I figured I'd listen to my body and hopefully avoid an injury.

Beyond that, everything went very well. I left the gym almost wanting more, but I know better than to push it. And hopefully my legs won't be destroyed again from the lunges and I'll be able to do some cardio tomorrow.

Random thoughts:

I love Wheat Germ. On a low carb diet, this stuff does a great job of not only giving you a good amount of protein and a feeling of fullness, but it also helps keep you regular. I highly recommend mixing Wheat Germ in with your morning protein shake.

I really like having some carbs in the form of fruits right after my work-outs. I generally eat a banana and some handfulls of blueberries. This much fruit does not knock me out of ketosis and I think it helps my muscles recover faster than they would without any carbs. And in general I recommend eating blueberries, as they may not only help you physically, but they may also help you mentally too! Check this blueberry article out.

I forgot to check my weight this morning. I'm such a dumbkoff.

Supplement mixing

I've been taking No-Xplode as a supplement on an empty stomach about 30 minutes before my workouts for over a week, but today I decided to skip this stuff to see if I noticed any change, and I found that my work-out went a little better. It's hard to describe, but I just felt more connected to my body and less head-rushy when my heartrate went up. I originally thought the problem was my switch to low carb, but thinking back, I'd couldn't recall feeling quite this way ever before, and after reading an article on how you shouldn't mix NO-Xplode with caffeine, I decided to try skipping it today. My work-out, even though I was a bit tired, felt a lot better. I'm not sure why that is (could be a one time fluke - I'll know for sure after a couple more work-outs), but I'm guessing that it is in part due to the amount of caffeine in No-Xplode, an amount which the manufacturer won't disclose. Yes, you read that right, they actually refuse to say. This is actually what their website's FAQ says:

"Q: How much caffeine is in N.O.-XPLODE™?

A: The amount of caffeine in N.O.-XPLODE™ cannot be disclosed due to the fact that it’s part of one of the proprietary complexes that make up the complete N.O.-XPLODE™ formula, namely the Ener-Tropic Xplosion complex, which contains methylxanthine, a specific form of caffeine."

Seriously?!? You won't say how much caffeine you put in your supplement which I'm taking in the hopes of improving my work-outs and ultimately my health? Wow, well fuck you then!

Yeah, the way it was making me feel was a little like when I've had too much caffeine, which is possible given that I often drink green tea to wake up before my work-outs and take a BCAA supplement that also has caffeine added, which definitely give me a nice pump, a pump people also describe getting with NO-Xplode. But yeah, perhaps twice the pump is not a good thing! Still, I'm not sure it was that exactly. But I do know that whatever it was that was making me feel kinda funky during my workouts, I definitely wasn't enjoying it, and it definitely went away when I didn't take NO-Xpode. And given the totally unhelpful data on the manufacturer's web-site, I'm probably never going to know if it was the caffeine or not, but I do know that I'm never buying this stuff, or any other BSN product, again!

Boring work-out-log-stuff: This morning I did 10 minutes, five forward and five reverse, on the elliptical machine at level 16, then about 2 minutes at 3.4 mph and 14 angle on the treadmill, but I got off the treadmill when I could feel my leg muscles were still tired from yesterday's sprints. I wanted them to be somewhat rested for lunges on day 4 of HST tomorrow, so, I moved over to the stationary bike and did 10 minutes at level 9 to 11 on that instead (which brought my heart rate up to the mid 130's, perfect!), followed by two minutes of jump-rope, two minutes of high intensity jumping-jacks and 20 straight front leg-kicks (the sort of sprinting exercise to top everything off, but which you want to do in a room by yourself because you look silly doing them).

Today I was exactly 238 (down a little from the 238 1/2 or so on the previous days).

Stuff, Day 3 HST and Low Carb

Turned out that the lunges I complained about on Day 2 really kicked my ass, as in made my ass hurt like it had been kicked over and over and over by some sort of sadistic soccer player. When I woke up the next day I was definitely hurting like I had not hurt for awhile, so I decided to take the day off from the gym to let my body heal. Days where you don't go to the gym are a bit odd because without aerobic rush you get from a workout, you don't quite wake up completely until much later in the day.

And on the day I took off I very rarely left the couch because I was busy playing Fallout 3 with the little woman, who has really gotten into it since my last mention of it. Yes, we pretty much played games ALL day! We only got up for a little while to shower, do some cleaning, go down to the store to grab food for dinner and to cook. I think she also got up to do some laundry. I'm actually a bit disgusted by spending so much time in front of a game, but it was pretty fun and holy crap the cost vs. entertainment time is crazy good. We haven't spent this little money on a weekend... well, probably ever! Even so, I don't want to spend all our time playing games, even if we are enjoying them together. We live in a vibrant city now, with tons to do, so we need to make sure we take advantage of that.

Anyway, so yesterday was MLK day, and after spending part of the morning playing Fallout 3, I went to the gym and then later we drove down the Peninsula to have lunch with my grandmother and father. I was a bit worried that we would end up going somewhere I'd have to special order some low carb version of a plate, like a burger but with no bun, and that my grandmother would inquire as to why I was doing that, which would lead to me having to justify a low-carb diet to her, which wouldn't work and I'd be left feeling guilty because she would be left worrying about my health, but happily that didn't happen because we ended up in Max's, where they have a huge menu that includes a dish that is literally a one pound beef burger with brie cheese and no bun on a bed of greens (and potatoes, which I didn't eat). Wow, that was a long sentence, and wow, that was a perfect dish for my diet! Max's also had some non-sugar deserts, which tempted me, but I kept strong and didn't have any because I figured they were probably still high in carbs (like the sugar-free brownie... duh!). I was very close to getting some ice cream though...

After lunch, we hung out with my grandmother for a couple of hours before we hit the grocery store down there. Now we are lucky to have a good grocery store in our building, but it doesn't have quite the same selection as you find in the larger stores out in the suburbs, so we were able to pick up a few items we have been missing. For me, it was low carb ice cream and wheat germ. For her, it was pizza crust mix. We also hit Target for a few things we needed too. You know, after remembering that, I'm no longer sure we actually spent our least ever this weekend, but I could claim that since we went on Monday, it wasn't technically the weekend anymore. Whatever, even with the Monday expenditures, we've been good about spending this past couple weeks.

So, back to the boring part of this post, the day 3 of HST. Thanks to low-carb, yesterday morning was one of the hardest work-outs I can remember having. I started out with five minutes on the elliptical machine at level 16 to warm up, and already feeling low on energy. I felt fine through the chest and back lifts, but when I topped those off with pullups on the assisted lift machine, I found myself winded and struggling to find the energy to keep going. I literally felt levels of exhaustion like I usually only feel towards the end of a overly long work-out. Even my brain was struggling with what felt like extremely low blood sugar levels. But I pushed on, found enough Go to get me the next couple big muscle group/body exercises, squats and clean & presses, but man it was really hard. The end of my lifting consists of small muscle groups, like biceps, forearms and triceps, which didn't tax me too much, so I found enough energy to get on a stationary bike for five minutes at the end, but that was it. Working out while doing low-carb just sucks!

That general trend continued into this morning, in that I just don't have near the energy levels I have during my work-outs when I'm eating carbs. I woke up this morning and found that I felt great, as in no soreness left over from my lunges three days ago, nor the squats I did yesterday. So I went to the gym to do some cardio, starting with 10 minutes at level 16 on the elliptical machine (16 felt harder today than it ever has) and finishing with 15 minutes uphill (level 14) walking on the treadmill with two 15 second sprints at 9 mph. The lack of energy sucked, but there were two bright spots this morning:

The 1st is that Obama's inauguration was on TV, which was awesome. I didn't actually watch his swearing in there and then, I did that later at home with the woman, but watching the setup to it, with various leaders walking out on their way to the event, was a positive reminder that not only did our guy win, but that his win and his campaign are already historically significant events. I was reminded of my hope, or perhaps it's better to say that the hope I've had the audacity to feel again was stoked by what I saw, a record number of people out in the cold to see Obama sworn in as the President of the United States.

We watched the actual swearing in together, my arms around her, she holding her laptop on her lap (we watched in streamed live over the internet, as I couldn't get the TV to receive a clear broadcast signal - going to have to look into why that is) and crying. At one point, with Diane Finstein making the introductions at the podium, I looked out of our big windows at a beautiful day in the city and was very happy to be there, in that moment, in a city full of other Left-Coast San Francisco Democrats. Fuck Yeah!

Weight yesterday and today was 238.

Final Word: I've been taking fish oil supplements. I don't suggest taking them on an empty stomach before your workout as the burbs are horrible!

Boring: 2nd Day HST

I'm going to start adding "Boring" to the tittles of my work-out logs, so anyone who happens to be reading this (which is probably no-one) will know to skip over these posts because they are pretty much going to bore you to death.... Lifting, dieting, HST, blah, blah, blah.... :P

My second HST lifting day went off pretty smooth. I think I've divided my exercises up just about right, including splitting Squat days and Lunge days up, because this morning I was all gung-ho to do both on the same day (even though the plan I put together said otherwise), but when I actually finished my lunges, I remembered why it was wise best not to combine them... my legs were shaking and I still had Dead-lifts to do (which use a lot of the same muscles as squats). Yeah, I'd have to say that Lunges were by far the most challenging of the exercises today, but I'm guessing that will change as the weights on all the others go up. Perhaps next time around I need to adjust the percentages on the lunge exercises, because if they are this hard to do 15 on the second day, I have no idea how I'm going to get through the last day of 15's on my sixth day!

In previous HST plans I had a hard time with assisted Pull-ups where my max weight at 5 reps did not correspond with my max weight at 15 reps. Basically, the formula I use where I find my max 5 rep rate and then drop 5% per workout down literally to the first day of 15 reps didn't work because I simply couldn't do 15 assisted pull-ups at the weights I came up (well, maybe for the first few 15 rep workouts, but not for the last half). But I made an adjustment this time around that seems to have done the trick. I've dropped 6% per work out from the max rather that 5%. I'm finding that while I can already feel the Pull-ups (so they are not too easy), I also feel like I can keep adding on weight for awhile and still do 15, which is how I feel with pretty much all the other exercises I'm doing, except maybe lunges. We'll see how lunges go and if I have the same problem, I'll adjust them down 6% next time around too.

Oh, I kicked off today's workout with 5 minutes on the elliptical at level 16. Not sure why level 16 feels a ton harder than level 15 (15 doesn't feel that different than 14, or even 13), but it is. So of course, that's my new challenge; to get comfortable with level 16 and have that be my normal workout level.

I forgot to weigh myself again this morning. I know I'm around 138 or so, but I need to measure this on more than one day to get an average, especially given the variance in water weight I suspect I have (or had?). I'm going to get my work-out plan out right now and write a reminder at the bottom to jump on the scale at the end.

Still in ketosis. Need to buy some more ketone sticks. It's funny, I did low-carb for a year or more before I discovered ketone sticks, and I did just fine, so I know I really don't need them, but good lord they are fun to check on a regular basis. They're sort of like Daily Affirmations, which I'd post a link to on Youtube, but I can't find the Stewart Smalley ones (stupid copywrite!).

First Day of HST

Yesterday I did my first day of HST lifting, which means I was doing pretty light weights for 15 reps per exercise, and not surprisingly it was really easy, as well as a bit embarrassing. See the way HST works is that instead of doing the traditional 3 or so sets of each exercise on a given day, then doing that again around 4 or 5 days later (which is about how long you really should wait if you want to make gains in your lifting), you do one set per day, every other day, three times per week (you give yourself a workout weekend every week), adding about 5% more weight to the exercise with each workout. The idea is that you are doing roughly the same number of sets over time (three per week), but you are always increasing the load you are lifting, and this progressive load stimulates your muscle growth more efficiently.

Anyway, so you start with two weeks of progressive loading doing 15 reps per exercise, then drop to 10 reps for two weeks and finally finish off the program with two weeks of 5 reps per exercise. But remember that each day you go up in weight by about 5%, so by the end of the program, on the very last day, you are lifting the maximum amount of weight that you are able to for five reps.

So HST starts off deceptively easy, with the first day feeling very light, and as I already mentioned, you feeling a bit embarrassed. I mean, here you have been lifting for awhile, built up to heavier and heavier weights, until you are no longer the newbie lifter in the gym, then suddenly you drop to a weight below even where you started! For instance, my max squatfor 5 reps is currently is 205 lbs (actually, it's more than that, but while I'm doing low carb I'm weaker, so I figured I give myself a realistic goal), but yesterday I was doing only 85 lbs. for my first day of HST while a girl next to me was doing about 30 lbs. more than that. WEAK!

Anyway, but the nice thing about doing HST is that I enjoy full body workouts, and that's what I'm able to do in under an hour on this program. I get into the gym, do everything quickly, hit every muscle group and then I'm done. It's also great (did I say this same stuff in my previous post?) because while I'm on low carb, my body can't do more than about an hour anyway, much less find the energy to push each muscle group to lift near max more than one set. So it works out well.

Speaking of low carb, I pulled out the sticks Wednesday night and I was already in Ketosis, which was still true for the first HST workout yesterday (and my cardio work-out today). I was able to get into Ketosis so quickly because I did cardio (10 minutes) , sprints (15 minutes) and a jumping-jack/jump-rope combo (3 minutes) in the gym on both Tuesday and Wednesday, so I must of burned up all my glucose stores. So, it's all gravy (or actually fat) from now on.

Yeah, this was a boring post... perhaps I'll have more energy for more creative writing later, but right now my blood sugar levels are just too low :P

Today at the Gym

Today at the gym I started with 10 minutes at level 15 at full ramp height (20) on the elliptical machine. I was listening to the Above and Beyond Trance Around the World podcast, and it was an especially good week. Well, maybe not as good as the weeks they spent in Singapore (or am I confusing Singapore with Thailand? It may have been Thailand) which had lots of great female vocals mixed it, but the energy in this particular week's episode, which was based on sets done in Eastern Europe (Poland?) was really high. I wonder if that's that pattern, Eastern Europe = high energy, deep base mostly non-vocal tracks, which Asia = female vocals and a more trippy trance-like sound.

Anyway, after I finished forward and and reverse patterns on the machine, I switched over to the treadmill for 15 minutes of walking and sprinting. I had the incline set to around 11 (not sure if this corresponds to degrees or percentage) and the walking speed at 3.4 mph, and for the three 15 second sprints I upped the speed to 8.5 to 9 mph. It probably takes between 10 and 15 seconds to get from 3.4 to 8.5, not just because the belt has to speed up, but because you can't just push the increase speed button and have it go up to 8.5. One press and hold of the button will cause the speed to only increase by a maximum of 1.5 mph or so, probably as a safety mechanism, but this is really annoying when you are trying to push the button until it finally gets up to a challenging sprint level AND run at the same time!

Anyway, this is pretty much the most boring post EVER! How can I spice this up a bit? If I mentioned that after my run I did a couple minutes of jump roping, would that save it? No, probably not...

Fuck it, it's too late and this is my blog after all, so I'm just going to keep going.

When I got in the elevator up to the apartment, an attractive girl got on at the same time with her dog, which she directed to "please sit", and because my father recently got a new dog that we've been working on giving positive training feedback to, I immediately responded "good dog!" when it followed her directions. I think she took this as some sort of flirtation because she started telling me how beautiful of a day outside it was... and in my post-sprinting/jump-roping state all I could muster in response was "Is that right?". Then we enjoyed several long seconds of silence punctuated only by my continued heavy breathing. She quickly got off on the floor beneath mine, probably thankful that I didn't follow her off...

So the awesome part about doing sprints is they stimulate your metabolism (something to do with mimicking flight-or-fight modes) so that your heart rate stays up long after you finish your workout, you continue to burn fat and they supposedly stimulate more muscle growth. The not-so-awesome part is that you run hot for long after too, which means, at least for me, you sweat, which sucks if you have to get ready for work right away. So to minimize the chance of showing up for work in wet clothes, I literally take cold showers to cool down. It's either that, or I have to sit around cooling off for about an hour before I get dressed, which I simply don't have time for most days. So, it's cold showers in the morning for me, which I'm guessing that everyone will agree just sucks, the cold part that is, not the showers. And the worst part is that even though I take a cold shower, about five minutes after I get out, I still tend to start running hot again, and that was true this morning.

So I got on the bus still sweating and plopped down to listen to the latest podcast of This American Life, a radio show on NPR that is generally pretty funny (I like it enough that I sent them money). But the last two episodes or so have been kinda depressing. The end of last week's was a story about a man falling in love and how it ended, and the first part of this week's was about a man in Afghanistan who fell in love with a woman that he couldn't afford to marry, who then got money from some Western Aid workers, but it turned out the families dissaproved so he ended up using the money for an arranged marriage. WTF? I wanted to hear funny or at the very least thoughtful stories, not ones that would have me arriving at work bummed out! On the other hand, the people on the bus proably prefer the later, as that means they don't have to wonder if the big sweaty red haired guy laughing in the seat next to them is going to do something... well, odd I suppose.

Low Carb and HST

I've managed to put on a fair amount of muscle and up my max weight in all my exercises this past six weeks or so in the new gym here in my new home town, but I've also put on some fat, my work-outs are taking a little too much time for my schedule, and from experience I know that when you reach your max, you're likely to plateau there for awhile unless you mix it up. So, it's time for a change. Today I started in on a low carb diet and am switching over HST work outs for the next six weeks or seven weeks.

I say low carb, because I still plan to still eat some carbs in the form of fruits (mostly bananas and blue berries) and vegetables, and some of my supplements contain enough carbs to technically violate the induction phase rules for Atkins. But I found last time I did this that I still managed to go into and stay in ketosis, probably because my work-outs were intense enough to burn off any glucose I was accumulating, which was nice because you simply feel better (and I'm guessing it's just plain healthier) when you eat fresh fruits and vegetables on a regular basis.

I haven't started my HST workouts yet, as I still have a couple of more days of strategic deconditioning before I start lifting again. I'm guessing that I'll either be in ketosis by then, or I'll be just on the edge and the lifting will put me over. But since I'm still doing fairly intense cardio at the gym, it won't surprise me if I get into ketosis sooner. We'll just have to see.

I'm really hoping that combining HST and low carb, along with keeping my work-outs very intense, will be the magic bullet in terms of fat loss and no muscle loss. Perhaps it will be extra extra magic and I'll even gain some muscle too (conventional wisdom is that you can't "cut" and gain muscle or strength at the same time)! Yeah, I'm not holding my breath on that last one, but it would be nice and I have heard more than once that high intensity work-outs stimulate the body in ways that allow for muscle growth even when dieting.

It really is time to loose some fat though, both because I want to look better, but also because I've apparently started snoring. The snoring could very well be the result of something else, but I'm guessing that if I loose 15 to 20 pounds that I'll stop. That said, I'll be very happy if I loose 10 pounds in the next six weeks, so if I'm going to hit my goals, I'll have to keep on going past my current plans. But I've found that for me (and in game development) six week goals work well; six weeks is short enough that you can visualize and feel the finish line, but are long enough that you can still set significant milestones to aim for. I'll set a new six week goal once I finish this one.

Jacuzzi Bioshock

We finally finished playing Bioshock this past weekend. We actually started it about nine months ago, but then we moved, and moved again, then moved yet again, and it's only now that we are settled in SF that we decided to get back into it. I say "we" not because I like to refer to myself in the plural, but actually as in my girl and I, as we have been playing together. Yeah, I know there is no co-op in Bioshock, but it's an adventure game that can be entertaining for even those not playing, and these next-to-you-on-the-couch-drivers can actually help sometimes, especially if they want to throw out ideas of what to do next ("try shooting an electric bolt at that broken door panel"), or point out to the person playing stuff they may have missed ("there's money on the floor right there"), or just help when you're trying to hack stuff ("the bendy piece you need is right there! ").

We actually had a lot of fun playing through the game together, and I credit her being there for getting as many achievements as we did (46 out of 51, or 840 points out of a possible 1100 - not bad for one playthrough). Now the challenge is going to be finding another game she can enjoy watching me play and participate at that level in getting through... I've tried Fallout 3, Left for Dead, Dead Space and Rock Band 2, but none of them have captured her imagination like Bioshock did. They just don't have the same pacing, compelling presentation and/or feeling of a backstory. I'm going to try the New Prince of Persia next to see if she digs that, but I'm thinking I may wait a few days or a week before I try, as I think her love of the Bioshock look and feel may need to fade a bit before she is ready to commit to a new game world.

I have to say that I'm kind of enjoying Fallout 3 so far. I don't easily get into RPG's anymore because I often can't help but see through the game and characters to the database driving its system, but the post nuclear war scenario is interesting enough to keep me curious, I like the fact that there is an alignment system that affects the way the game rolls out (at least it feels like it does, which is good enough) and so far I haven't grown tired with the exploration aspect of the game (probably in large part because you can jump to places you've visited before rather than having to walk or run there again across the hugeness of the world).

Deadspace is a nice adventure game so far, but I've only just started it, so we'll see how it turns out. My first impression is that it pretty cliche, but well done enough to keep playing.

Left 4 Dead I'm also just starting, but my first impression honestly was, well two impression actually - 1. Crap, this game really wants me to play co-op, and 2. These zombies offend me with their running! Don't get me wrong, co-op and multiplayer games rock, but for whatever reason my initial reaction to them is often like first getting into a pool; jumping in is hard, but once I'm in, I know I'll get used to the water and totally enjoy myself. I just need to have a few hours to devote to it and then I can take the plunge. On the running zombies, I just wasn't expecting them... I loved the fast zombies in 28 Days Later , because they were different, but when I sat down to play Left 4 Dead I was expecting the slow moving kind that I would require me to stay calm and think tactically about how to defeat or get around. The running kind combined with pistols with infinite ammo immediately forced me to be more twitchy about my game play style. It doesn't help that I just finished reading "Day by Day Armageddon", another slow moving zombie novel.

Rock Band 2... well, I'm not convinced I can't get her hooked yet. I just need her to find a song she likes that she can do well on. But I may just be doomed as she is more of a dancer than a musician. Even on New Years, when I brought Rock Band 2 up to my sister's friend's cabin and everyone (pretty much all non-gamers) played it for like six hours, she just didn't get into it, so it may be a hopeless cause. I think I'm going to give it one more shot and ask her to play a bit on her own, so she can practice without anyone watching or comparing her abilities to theirs. Maybe I'll spin it as a game where she could conceivably become better at it than me since our experience playing these kinds of games is virtually the same. Yeah, that might be the ticket.

Speaking of New Years, my sister called on Monday to inform me that her friend had caught some sort of skin infection from the Jacuzzi we all hung out drinking in that night. Folic-cue-lite-ous (no idea how it's spelled) was what it is called, and the symptoms are red spots all over your body. A skin infection? Fabulous! That's exactly what I need! But it turns out I didn't have it. In fact, it's apparently one of those things that everyone pretty much has, the bugs that cause it I mean, like staff infections, but sometimes people's immune systems can't handle it, or they get a strain they've never encountered, or whatever... I was just happy to not have red spots all over my body and to not have to find a doctor here yet. I mean seriously, if you are going to get a disease that you need to see a doctor for from being a jacuzzi, then you want something more interesting than that right?!? Well, er, on second thought, perhaps not if your sister was one of the people in the jacuzzi with you.