Indefinite Hiatus

My apologies to everyone, but I'm going on an indefinite hiatus while I work on getting my life back in order.  There are many things I need to take care of.  I still have a desire to get this off the ground, and to get back to the roots.  I will wait until I can do that in a quality manner, and consistently, before starting up again.

Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me so far.  I hope you have a great Thanksgiving.

Motivation

Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do something.  Not even yourself.  If you've got a dream, you can accomplish it.

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.

8/29/2014

An update!  While I stumbled a bit last week on my diet, I've done some research, and can say that I'm doing strong on this third go.  I've modified my diet a bit in my attempt to achieve maximum fat loss.  I'm doing that by trying to get my body into a state of ketosis.

A brief overview of Ketosis:  When your body doesn't have sugars (Or a ton of protein, which can be transformed into glucose), it has to find a new way to produce energy to sustain the body.  It does this through ketosis.  Long story short, it uses fat as it's primary source of energy.  The neurons in your brain cannot process the fat or proteins in your blood to give it energy.  Therefore, it relies on two other forms of energy.  When it's present, glucose.  When glucose isn't present, the body tells itself to form ketones, which the brain can metabolize.

Long story short, minimal carbs for me.  A diet high in fat, medium in protein, and tons of filler vegetables so I don't get hungry.  It's already day 2, and I can already feel some differences.  The main one being what I can only say is a more consistent awareness.  Other than that, I don't feel as hungry.  We'll see how it goes, as it's supposed to take 3-10 days for my body to fully go into ketosis.

8/22/2014 Update

Yesterday was hell.  It was release day.  I wanted to rip some hair out.  I survived, but looked pretty bad in the process.  Although, I'd much rather take the slow path that I took and only got a little out, instead of going much faster and putting out errors.  We'll see how that reflects on my one-on-one today.

As for my weight, which is the big thing I'm watching the next 25 days... I'm back down to 209.8.  So, I'm back down to almost 4 pounds under where I started.  Considering that I'm starting a new diet, changing up my regiment, and starting to creatine load, I think I'm doing fine.  I'm hoping that I've retained as much water as I will in my cells, and that I'm back to actually losing weight.  We'll see where I'm at come Monday!

It would be super encouraging to see the scale tip back under 200... That'd mean I'm no longer carrying 10-15 pounds when I'm running!

8/21/2014 Update

So, yesterday was a weird wash.  By not having bananas, and by missing my protein shakes, I kinda screwed myself over for muscle repair and also cut back a lot of calories.  The calories were evened out because it was Sushi Night!  And I had that instead of my normal plans.  Between eating a heavier dinner, and because the creatine supplement that I'm taking initially increases my water weight, I woke up today to 211.6.  I'm fine with this small bump.  I'll just have to keep monitoring it, and keeping to my diet.

Also, I managed to go to bed early last night, and had tons of sleep.  I had some fun dreams, and one not so fun one where I was stabbed.  I don't remember a lot of details about them, so I'm going to work on my dream recall.  This is going back to my goal of lucid dreaming!

8/20/2014 Update

Day 2 successful!  Gym, diet, lack of extra food, all great.  Here's where I stand now: 209.4 pounds, with 28.9% Body Fat.  That puts me at 60.51 pounds fat.  Makes me think that my scale isn't the most accurate when it comes to body fat.  I'm just going to look at the longer trends, and weight at the moment.  I'm 4.2 pounds less than beginning (In only 48 hours).  Again, I know this is mostly excess weight stored in my intestines, but either way, its 4.2 pounds I'm not carrying around!  Every pound I lose will make it easier for me to run, which means that I'll be able to run further!

12 Days until checkpoint 1, and 28 more days until Phase 1 is complete.  At this rate, I think I can do it!

8/19/2014 Update

Whooo!  I beat out (most) of the temptations of bad food, and managed to stay within my calories yesterday!  It clocked in around 1600 calories.  I also probably ate the most broccoli that I ever had in my life.  And... I didn't hate it.  So, I'm doing well!

It's also showing.  Since I didn't stuff my mouthface full of food, I'm down to 211.8 pounds.  I'm completely aware that this is probably waste, as my BF% went up to 28.2%.  This puts me at 59.7 pounds of fat.  I also know that I didn't gain two pounds.  I'm just mentioning it for trend-sake.  My first checkpoint is after 2 weeks.  We'll see where I'm at then.

(FAIL: I forgot to post this yesterday after I wrote it xD)

Day 1 Diet Status Updates

I'll just be updating this through the day
~9:30: Hungry.  Resolved through drinking of water

Update: I was hungry in the evening, because I didn't take my evening protein shake.  Did fine the rest of the day otherwise.

Second Restart

Here we go.  I'm prepped.  I have a 30-day supply of healthy foods.  I bought some supplements, a crap top of protein powder, and a complete ban on alcohol.  With my baby-step method, I've managed to get to the gym, and slowly increase the number of vegetables I'll eat.  However, as I improved in one area, I'd slack in another.  In the end, I've achieved negative results these past couple months and even these past couple weeks.  It's time to change that.

COMPLETE OVERHAUL OF SOME OF MY PROCESSES!

Strict diet.  I've got a plan, and on top of that plan, I'm going to work on accountability by recording what I eat and posting it.  I had started doing that personally, but stopped because I was discouraged on what I ate.  I did do well with my diet at times, but I would get bored of it because it would just be a salad at lunch, or just a sandwich.  Now, with this new meal plan that I bought to get me kick started, I'll have variety, portion control, and plenty of vegetables.

My core diet:
Breakfast:
3 Eggs: 210 calories
One piece of Toast w/ butter: ~120 calories
Sausage/Bacon: ~150 calories
Mid-morning protein shake: 170 calories
<Lunch> 200-400 calories
Mid-afternoon protein bar and banana: 245 calories
After-workout protein shake: 170 calories
<Dinner> 200-400 calories

Total: ~1465-1865

Now, for the record, I'm going entirely for cutting.  I'm aware that my working out will probably not net me much muscle.  This month will be for me to A.) Cut a chunk out of fat and encourage me that I can do more, and B.) Get into the habits of working out 5 times a week, a vegetable at every meal, and smaller portions for lunch/dinner.  I'll evaluate how I feel for a couple days and make any modifications that I need.  I'll do this by taking notes about any time I'm feeling hungry/off.

This first stage will be about 30 days, but I'm kicking off a 3 month plan this time instead of the 6-month one. I wasn't ready for it.  I'll be working on before/after pictures as well as weight/Body fat %.  As for those... embarrassingly, I'm at 213.6, with 26.8% body fat.  That's a total of 57.25 pounds of fat.  Time to finally make a change.

Confidence

If we don't have confidence in ourselves, how can we expect anyone else to have confidence in us?

Here

I'm here, floundering about.  It looks like my first process I need to work on is my time allocation processes xD.