Moving (Somewhat)

To get more on track with the content goal for this blog, I'm moving my fitness quest over to a new blog.  That can be found here: http://kevinsquestforfitness.blogspot.com/

That is all for now

Momentum

Motivation that you can do anything!  I'm lost more than 10 pounds in my quest for getting into shape!  It's helping me keep going!  Even when I want to eat all of those nasty (Delicious) carbs, I'm managing to tell myself not to because of the progress I've made.

What I've taken out of it, is get the ball rolling.  Starting the ball is very difficult.  Instead of throwing all of my strength at it, and getting so tired that the ball stopped before I could recover, I had to give it a series of shoves.  It didn't tire me out completely, so after the first push, the ball was barely rolling.  But before it stopped again, I gave it another shove.  It was rolling faster now.  More rest, then shove again.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Now, several weeks later, it's taking less effort to at least keep the ball moving.  Which is basically momentum!

Whoever you are, whatever you are trying to achieve, I believe in you!  Let's get everything done that we wanna do!

Running!

So, the past few days I've started to get back into running!  It's been several weeks since I trained it, and expected to be a lot worse off.  Boy did I surprise myself!  Today, I was able to do 5 min. jog/2 min. walk, three times in a row.  Going back to planning out my running, I'd like to start by adding 15 or 30 seconds to a 4th set, every day until that is up to 5 minutes.

Then, after I hit that, every day I run, I'll cut off 5-10 seconds from my walking portion until I'm jogging for 20-30 minutes straight.  When I get there, I'll pick up from my other plan.

I'm planning on coming into work early everyday to work on my running.

As a side note, keto flu is coming and going in spurts.  Bleh.  Here's to just a couple more days.

Stage 2 of my Diet

So, for the third time, I've finally hit the second stage of my diet.  This is the stage where I've finally removed most of the glucose and glycogen that was floating in my blood, or stored in my muscles and liver.  With that, my body is now forced to look for an alternative energy source.  That would have to be my fat stores!  Now, my body will start using ketones as its energy source.

The only problem with this, is that my body isn't adapted to using it as an energy source yet.  This is where the next couple days to couple weeks will suck.  I've got to stick with it though!  Even one day of cheating will set me back at least 2-4 days.  I can do it!

1:16PM Update: I've got Keto Flu again.  Headache and tiredness.  Only lasts about a day though.  Bleh.

9/15/14 Update!

So, as I "cheated" on my diet again last Friday eating out at this delicious sushi place with my friends (Very rare opportunity, and then we went to the Book of Mormon afterward), I began dwelling on the effectiveness of the place.  In the end, it came down to being a product of how consistently you adhere to the plan, multiplied by some factor of how efficient the plan is.

Well, even with a couple cheat days in the last several weeks (Almost once a week, unfortunately), I have validation that my diet is going great.  I'm down 9.2 pounds as of this morning from my heaviest point!

9/4/2014 Update: -3.4%

I was going to post later on progress, but I'm super happy.  Today the scale informed me that I'm down 7.4 lbs.!

Temporary favorite quote

"Just because someone stumbles and loses their way, doesn't mean they are lost forever." - Charles Xavier

Moral Definition

I'm working on defining my moral views.  To my knowledge, this is under what conditions I deem an action taken to be good or bad.  As an example, this is more or less my definition of whether or not an action brings good or bad karma.  This will start really rough, and I hope to discuss with some people to refine it.

Long story short, it's equivalent exchange.  From the perspective of those affected by the action being taken, if the action results in neither a net gain or loss in resources (at the cost expended by the action), then the action is neutral.  If the cost of the action outweighs the gain in resources for the affected people, it's a bad exchange, and vice versa.

Here is the list of things related to this:

1. The ultimate resource is life.
2. This only pertains to intentional actions at the moment.  I haven't defined unintentional actions yet
3. The conversion rate between resources, for the intent of judging the action, is from the perspective of the people affected
1. There is a point where the conversion rate gets ridiculous, and I haven't accounted for this entirely.  But it will have to be taken into account.
4. Time and money are the most common resources

This is what I have now.  As I think more on this and receive feedback from others, I'll refine it.

9/2/2014 Update

So, an update!  This weekend was my birthday.  I started Saturday (my birthday) at 209.2 pounds.  That meant I was 4.6 pounds down from where I started.  Considering I "cheated" on my diet a couple times over the past week, I was still fine with this.  However, I went to my favorite restaurant for lunch, and a decent, but fattening, dinner at my father's house, and drank quite a bit.  I woke up Sunday at 215 pounds.  Ouch.  Oh well.  I have to deal with the consequences of my actions, and I'd say they were totally worth it.

Over the past 3 days, I managed to get my weight back down to ~210 today.  I also started hitting the gym again.  I'm going to try and avoid looking at my weight on a daily basis now, and see where I'm at in a few days.

There's one major change to my diet... I've removed my snacks from in between meals.  I'm going to try and eat 3 larger meals instead, while keeping my caloric intake pretty low.  With a reduced calorie diet, I'm expecting to lose muscle mass.  The two main reasons I'm going to the gym is to try and reduce how much muscle I lose, and to improve my neural connections to my muscles so that I at least have better control over them in the future.

To everyone who is struggling with their own diet, Keep with it!  I'm stumbling myself, but each time I recover, I'm getting a bit stronger with my resolve.  You'll only get better if you get back up each time you fall down.