The Most Loathed

On 9/30/2023 at 9:15 AM, DrFeelgood said:

First 10-pound milestone achieved, so this weekend I get to enjoy a pint of my favorite rocky road ice cream. 

 

On 9/30/2023 at 9:42 PM, DrFeelgood said:

I bought a 14-oz "pint" of my favorite chocolate peanut-butter variety

 

 

 

September 11 - 219.9

September 18 - 220.7

September 25 - 218.0

October 2 - 216.0

 

I got to order pizza one night just because it sounded nice and I went out for dinner on Saturday and ate anything and everything that I wanted. Those feel like the actual wins of the week. Oh, I also allowed myself 100g of a new ice cream. 

 

Although I still feel myself clutching my calories to my chest and swatting away grabs at them,

This week will be interesting as I'm headed to a "guys gaming weekend" for 24 hours and there is always too much food and alcohol. 

 

If I'm down to 215 next week I will need to add 200 calories per day. 

EDIT:

correction, I just need to not be afraid to eat all my assigned calories

28 minutes ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

I don’t know about you But I am always thinking “how can I make this better next time?” To where I forget to enjoy where I am because I keep thinking I should be better. and I am learning a lot from people who say “I’m good at this!” and just get better and better because they’re not tired from trying so hard. 

I'm definitely guilty of "how could this be better" thinking. "This is relaxing but how could I relax better"? Ah, dude, you could relax better by shutting up and relaxing.
I think that for me it's the opposite of the second half of what you said. I see a lot of people who say "I'm good at this" but they aren't. They just talk too much. Unfortunately for me I take that as a lesson to never say "I'm good at this" and just try harder. Probably not the right lesson but it's my kneejerk.

I think there's a middle ground that I'm trying to find and try to encourage in those close to me. Don't declare ones own awesomeness, let other do this for you but also, relax, just do what meets your needs both physically but also emotionally. Whatever is beyond that is just noise. So much easier said than done, at least for me. 

On 9/30/2023 at 6:40 AM, cd667 said:

 

The idea of structured play time is anathema to me. I have never really been able to do it unless it was specifically to learn one particular thing I thought was cool.

 

To my mind unless you're learning classical music you will get far better playing along with other people than you ever will trying to learn formal method. If that means playing along with Youtube/things on TV, that's still practice and it's better practice, because it's something you'll actually enjoy. If you've got a teacher, get them to do you a recording of what you're learning and play with that - it makes the learning intrinsic rather than extrinsic, if that makes sense.

 

Also, if you're trying to learn something twiddly, remember this - (a) people much prefer something that they enjoy rather than something that looks hard and (b) if you can play along with others without a lead sheet, most of the other musicians think you have a superpower.

I should probably clarify my terms a bit. Although I will also point out that my wife has a master's degree in vocal performance, specializing in opera and all of her musical friends are classical performers, so it probably is. a good read that it's a more classical style.

 

When I refer to structured practice, what I mean is something like working on a specific riff, playing in a pentatonic scale or playin through. a prescribed song. My teacher gives me a song or two at a time to specically work on. For example right now I have Brown Eyed Girl. I'm counting specfically setting out to play that, often with the video playing, as structured learning. Unstructured times means, I don't have a specific song playing, I don't have any music or paperwork in front of me but is more about trying to build the habit of picking up the guitar "just because".  So. I may pick it up an set a five minute clock but just do whatever, If I want to just play the Seven Nation Army riff, find. If I want to screw around in A minor pentatonic, totally fine. 

 

Saturday

Training

I went to Saturday at my gym. It was the C team so I had some fun but it was more of me just playing around. I paired up with another middle aged blue belt primarily because there was only one other blue belt there, the rest where white belts, one guy was on his 6th class. With the newest guy I just taught him some day one stuff. It looks like he didn't get our usual day one, which is a basic sweep followed by an Americana. With the other guys I just tried to get a diversity of submissions. Even when they handed me the same strangle twice I'd pass on it and maneuver them around for something else. My one "win" was with Army Dan. He was in my half guard and I slowly worked to feed his jacket behind his head and set up the job but I couldn't get the angle so I switched to a cross choke but he kept his head buried to prevent getting my arms on his neck. I switched back to the baseball bat and worked hard to get the angle and strangled. I've never done that live. I talked to Dan after and he didn't even see the threat coming. I walked him through the strangle so he could see it coming next time. 

 

Diet

Today was meant to be an over eat day. I had left a few calories in the bank all week because I knew we were going out to eat at a restaurant that I loved the other time we went. I didn't stress about tracked but through in some "good enough" measurements. The window was 1,000 calories and I came in way under but ate all I cared to it. It was delicious, nice cocktail, basil wings with the panko fried jalapeños, and red curry on ramen noodles.

The other time we went, right after my jiujitsu meet I was wearing a jiujitsu sweatshirt and a guy came over to fill my water and said "this guys got a jiujitsu shirt on" which I acknowledge. He said "I have a blue belt in that" and I said "so do I". He explained he had been off the mats for a while but wanted to get back. I encouraged him to do so. I tell that story because he was working again. I thought "there's no way he remembers me from last time but I wonder if he got back on the mat" He swung by once to refill water and said "I'm going to practice again next week".  we chatted some more and I found out about his training plans. It as great and I was super happy to hear he was getting back on the mat. Only half the people at the table knew me so that had to be weird to them but I loved it.

Sleep

There was a loud thunderstorm going on Friday night into Saturday. Laura was also out performing so I had a couple disturbances because of the weather and the dog freaking out then Laura coming home. I slept in until I felt like getting up then walked the dog so Laura could sleep in a little more. Then I went and got coffee and breakfast sandwiches from our favorite place. 

Mobility

No

Guitar

No

 

Hibernation Project Week 1 Kick Off

Training

• Monday - Marathon Monday. Burn 1,000 calories fighting all takers, unless professor forgets
• Tuesday - strength training, 300ish calories (30 ish minutes) or elliptical (cardio), Marathon Roll
• Wednesday - BJJ
• Thursday - strength and cardio
• Friday - BJJ
• Saturday - None
• Sunday - None

Marathon Rolls this week are no gi so I can't play with Loop, Baseball Bat, and Cross chokes. So I will focus on not letting anyone under my arms and hitting choi bars and my modified kimura from bottom. I'm trying to find my indicator on when they are available and when they are not.

 

Food

This week I will likely got over on the week overall. I will likely not track Friday night through Saturday. I 'll explain more in the Other section below. I'll plan to not push the calories on Monday or Tuesday which should leave 1K free for the weekend but I'll likely blow that and it's fine.

Oh, also, I keep forgetting,  I got invited to a whiskey tasting Thursday night so that'll cut in the there too. Yep. Definitely going over on calories but that's ok. I'll see where my average bodyweight is after this and adjust if needed. It should be impossible for me to genuinely gain 2 lbs in a single week but if I do, i'll take two weeks and diet it back off. 

 

Sleep

I've been keeping an eye on my sleep for several weeks now. I haven't come up with changes yet. The thing I'd like to go after is staying asleep. I definitely have very real wake ups 2-3 times a night but my Whoop tells me I awaken about once an hour. I don't know how to work on that but I'd like to not wake up so much. I know that by morning I usually am uncomfortable lying in bed. It's just too long and my hips feel sore. I don't know if it's just more mobility or what but I need to do some googling and thinking. So that's my homework for the week, basic internet research on how to stay asleep. 

 

Mobility

I got one extra session in last week. I'll set three total (two easy sessions at the rec and one "extra" at him) as low hanging fruit kind of goal for the week. 

I'm also going to plan to stand for 2 hours of work per day. See if it helps me start working on opening up my hips a bit. 

 

Guitar

Guitar lesson this week. I imagine we'll move on from Brown Eyed Girl. More pentatonic and working on the prescribed Hendrix-esque riff

Planning on 4 x 30 minutes of structured learning

Try to start Greasing the Groovy which I'm going to describe as a day with 3+ 5 minute sessions with no specific plan, no paperwork, just pick it up and go. 

 

Other

 This weekend is a cabin gaming weekend. I'm being a bit of a party pooper. Most of the guys will show up on Thursday but I got invited to that whiskey tasting so I'm staying here. Since I'm here Friday morning anyway I'll hang around and get a workout in and leave town afterwards. I'll be there Friday night for games, wake up Saturday to make breakfast burritos for the guys, game all day but take off around supper time so I can come home and hang out with Laura on Sunday just because I like to. I've done these gaming weekends enough to know that 24 hours is about the perfect amount of time for me and staying longer can actually make me leave feeling less good about those first 24 hours than if I just do the 24 and get out. 

It is also traditional to bring a lot of alchohol and snacks to these. Last year I broke tradition and brought Zevia and no snacks. I'll probably repeat this. I'm thinking of just bringing a big relish tray to chow down on whenever and my water flavor thingies. 

 

In other gaming news,  I found myself thinking about getting a new gaming console yesterday which is dumb because I hardly use the one I have. So I've spent a little time playing Tears of the Kingdom this weekend. I haven't beaten it yet but it's in a weird place where I can beat all the normal mobs and it feels like I'm just wandering around because the game doesn't want to point me at the final fight yet. I can beat all the mobs short of the very hardest bosses and other than making a bunch of food I don't really know how to get better at the game.  I'm going to get after it but I might decide it's just time to play something else. 

On 9/30/2023 at 5:46 PM, Snarkyfishguts said:

I'm not wearing my fitbit today. I need a break from data collection.  I'm not sure when I'm going to put the fitbit back on. Maybe tomorrow. I did count calories, but I may take a break from that too. I really want to lose weight and I really want to be healthy, but right now taking care of myself is about recognizing the areas in my life that don't come with an app.  I'm tired of keeping score, and I find myself rebelling against the apps in self-destructive ways, so I'm acknowledging that I need to take a break and will come back to the tools when I'm back in a healthier mindset. 

This is good self awareness. No one is keeping score. If ditching the data collection feels right, do it. 

 

12 hours ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

I've been perfectionistic lately, and the problem with that is that I want to stop, but I want to stop in the best way possible. 🤣 

I hear this completely.

On 9/28/2023 at 6:12 PM, Kishi said:

Sorry to hear that your back is acting up. I've had some shadows of that myself in my lower back, especially after guard-heavy days. I hope you find a way to deal with that and feel better. Is there anything to be done for it?

This appears to be different than the generalized lower back pain we hear about for two reasons, first I recall the exact moment it happened and second, it's going the wrong direction. It happened a month or five weeks ago, I loaded a barbell for bent over rows for warm ups. I got a few reps in and noticed I was looking at my toes. I lifted my head and felt it pop. For me, the usual back pain is on extension. Going from sitting to standing is the classic, you see the guy get up but he's still bent at the waist, this is in the other direction, I can't do a full sit up. I can do parts of a sit up, the beginning or end but not the middle. It's weird and I know getting off the mat for a few weeks is the obvious answer but barring what happened Tuesday it's been slowly healing and I'd rather live with minor discomfort than no jiujitsu. 

 

For me, for back pain, prevention is the best and the best prevention is some rotation, flexing, and bending in all planes, under no load, a basic mobility plan. It's not perfect but when I'm doing it consistently I seem to get injured a lot less. When I don't do it I seem to get injured in really simple ways. Last winter I threw out my back once sneezing and another time putting a plate in the dishwasher. 

Once I'm hurt though, time. I've tried STEM kits (the little electrodes that fire your muscles), specific stretches that allegedly fix it, moving alot, moving a little, epsom salts, and a bunch of other stuff. I only have an N of 1 but once I'm hurt, it takes time and it takes more and more time as I age. I do find that a heat pad helps it loosen up if it's muscle. I find that making sure I stand during the day, rather than sit for 10 hours is good. There seems to be a sweet spot of activity that changes day to day where some movement is better than no movement but no movement is better than too much or the wrong movement. 

I actually mentioned wanting to prevent future back injuries to my GP towards the end of last winter. Last year was really bad for me on this front. This year is better but not where I want it to be. He referred me to a physical therapist. Said therapist said the current thinking on lower back injuries is that the muscles around the one getting injured are weak and fail and that strains the muscle. He then basically prescribed me to do wood cutters and similar movements. I thought of my years of strength training and now a couple years of jiujitsu and thought it kind f sounded like BS. A few months later I threw my back out again so some faffing about exercises didn't seem to matter. 

 

On 9/28/2023 at 6:12 PM, Kishi said:

Also, must thank you for turning me on to MFP. I managed to get started on it and integrate my pedometer into it, and now I get to eat all this extra food while being in deficit. You have improved my life, and I thank you for it!

Credit to Nerd Fitness. When I first signed back on it was the first question I asked. It has worked for me so far. I'm ending my third month using it religiously. For me, having a number is helpful. I've tried most diets but the one that I have had the most success with over the years if calorie counting. That said, it will get tedious eventually. It helps having some habits and heuristics. I eat the same thing every day for breakfast and use the feature in the app to copy and paste from one day to the next. When I do my food prep I usually make a basic meal that I will eat one to three times a day for several days and I know it'll be about so many calories or whatever and again use copy paste. 

I hope you're able to have as much or more success with it. 

 

Friday

Training

I'll just start off by saying it probably wasn't my best day as a training partner. When everyone broke up for instruction I was stuck looking at Gregory. I literally took a second look around the room and tried to get someone who was mismatched to swap their partner to Gregory. He's a nice enough guy but he's been the same 0 stripe blue belt since I started jiujitsu and, frankly, he's over belted. He's small, physically week for his size but also, non-technical and has no urgency of movement whatsoever. You've got to have something. I've rolled against smaller, weaker guys who can wipe the floor with me. I 've rolled with less technical but stronger and fast guys who can get me, but having no attributes, no skills, I totally didn't want to train with him.

I knew he had been out for knee surgery so when I saw him I said hi and asked after the knee, well before class. When we got paired up the only thing he said is "I just got back from surgery so got easy on me". Man, I know, I brought it up plus I have to go easy on you. The movements we drilled are ones where I would normally give my partner all my weight but instead I had to sit back on my knees which made it useless.

I'm just whining but that was my mindset. I worked really hard during drilling to think "what can I get from this drill"? So I focused hard on little details like turning my body just the right way to face him, keeping my hands tucked in so he couldn't access my under arms except when the drill called for it. I knew I had a bad attitude and was trying to adjust it on the fly to be a better partner. 

I was a bad partner once again after class when I invited a visiting white belt to roll. As has happened a couple times I had teammates say "have you rolled with Chance"? No. "Oh man, he's legit, probably not really a white belt". I'll cover it more when I get there but he's definitely a white belt. Not to say a thing against him, we're all white belts at some point, but I have to stop trusting my team mates who think every visiting white belt is a secret black belt. 

 

Before class

Everyone was chatting, no one was doing anything, I was disappointed

Instruction

• Camerillo Switch - this is a term we use for a specific way of rotating around a person's body. Uke is on the ground, belly up, you're in side control (belly down, ninety degrees, chest to chest) and uke bridges in. Switch your grip to a reverse cross face and your hip side hand down where both peoples' hips meet. Walk your feet around their head, back stepping as you clear the head and the hand that was head side is now hip side so you lace it across their body and the hand that was where your hips met is now crossfacing them.
• Switch to Back Take - do all of the above but the hand that ended across their body hooks around their neck and you can use this to lift their head off the ground, allowing you to slide your leg under them, putting your belly to their back
• Switch to Back Take to Arm Bar - do all of the above but now you stuff their head so you can slip your leg over it and take the arm for an arm bar.

 

Rolls

• Gregory (blue) - I got a couple taps but was trying to not use weight, speed, or strength, so it ends up being a pillow fight
• Tim (blue) - opposite end of the spectrum. Tim weighs about the same is Gregory but is fast, strong and skilled. We had a good roll. I've learned that he loves to just stay standing as long as I'll let him. He knows I'll keep trying to take him down and it's exhausting. I've learned to take one or two good goes than do the unthinkable and pull guard, forcing him to do jiujitsu. It's still a good fight and I never got him submitted but he was in danger. I think he's competing in December and I expect to see him win stupidly easily. 
• Eric (purple) - This was Eric's first class back from foot surgery. He's our one purple belt who can reliably submit me. He's got great fundamentals, not the largest list of moves but he has all of the little instinctual moves perfect. He managed to catch me in a guillotine and I think that was the first time I submitted in over a week. I came back and gave him hell over a loose elbow that I found and tried to kimura but I was unable to finish it.

 

After Class

• Joe (blue) - I was waiting for Stan and I don't know what Joe was doing but we had a roll. Our last several rolls have gone the same. I swept him then had to do some work to successfully bodylock pass. I got to mount and while he can turn side to side, I'm totally happy to keep attacking from three quarters mount. He even made the mistake of bellying down at one point and about got strangled for it. I realized from three quarters that I was fixated on his top arm and he was so focused on defending it that the beloved arm triangle was just waiting for me, so I set it and he gave one good buck and tapped. 
• Chance (white) - I mentioned this in my opening but this guy is a visiting white belt who I had been warned was really good so I invited him to roll while I had some down time. I started seated and he practically walked into a sweep, I should have adjusted my expectations there. I did an X guard sweep to top to kimura and done, about as quickly as I wrote the sentence. I took kneeling, he took seated and I did a quick knee cut to knee on belly if I recall, arm triangle and done. It was starting to sink in that he wasn't as good as I had been led to believe, I took seated, let him come into my guard, I think I did a deep half sweep that doesn't have a name that I'm aware of, came up and did an armbar where you never roll off their body. The best image I could find online is below
• Stan (black) - stan's still working on his belt test so we ran through the whole thing twice. Then we talked X guard entries a little. The first one we looked at is basically the De La Riva entry I use occasionally then I showed him my De La Riva sweep that seems to be working on upper belts
  • My sweep starts from De La Riva (I'm on my back with my but up against their right leg, my left hand holding their right ankle, my right foot is hooked behind their left hamstring, my right hand holds their lapel in gi or wrist in no gi)They reach down to stuff my right foot (standard first defensive step) and I use this moment to pull them forward (while their head is tipped forward) they try to stand up and I switch my left leg to their right hip and (we figured out this is key) turn to face that hip and do a small hip escape away, dropping my left knee inside their right knee. I drop my right foot to hook thier left ankle, push with my left foot and they go over backwards. I'm pretty sure I was taught this in class but Stan acted like he'd never seen it and liked it so we repped it a few times and called it good.

 

 

Food

No picture today because I'm on my laptop but my phone says I have 260 calories to spare and I'm guessing I have a bit more because I made a G&T that I only half finished and don't care if I finish. 

This afternoon I got to a weird place were I knew I needed to eat, I could feel my energy waning but I just didn't feel like it. I had a little voice in my head telling me to go chow down on some low quality carbs (Captain Crunch anyone) but I also had a voice saying that if I was going to eat I should at least eat something quality. They left me with no food options I wanted. They also validated my shoulder tattoos of an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other. Eventually, since I was doing dinner just for myself I drove to the store and bought two of their premade hamburger patties and a big relish tray of veggies. I came home and grilled the two burgers and ate veggies until I didn't want to eat anymore. I figured it's the weekend and. had calories to spare so I added a gin and tonic to the log and sipped while I started this log. Now a thunderstorm has rolled in and the dog is in a panic so I did a rare thing and brought the laptop to bed so I can do this post and the dog can be glued to me in bed. 

 

Sleep

Again, no picture because laptop. Sleep last night sucked. I woke up at three and managed to doze a little until four. From four to five I was in bed, trying to go back to sleep. At 5 I started to get restless so I got up and made coffee for myself and went to work.

 

Mobility

No

 

Guitar

Yes, unstructured play time.

I had a thought after guitar time and it even came with a puny if niche name. Greasing the Groovy. 

The gist is, I've been doing some unstructured play time this week and not really logging it but I've been sacrificing structured time for it. I'm a  classic American, I want to have it all. So here is my thought. 30 minutes of structured play time per week day. But, also practice Pavel's Greasing the Groove and try to build the habit that when I walk past my guitar, at last five of those times, just pick it up and do an unstructured 5 minutes.

My guitar is right next to my desk so I probably can't do it literally every time but lots of small sets add up and I'm going to reach for that. 

 

Anyway, it's 9 pm and I don't like working on the laptop in bed so I'm going to put on a stand up comedy routine or something and lay here with the dog so she feels safe and try to be asleep long before Laura gets back from her concert since I slept poorly last night. 

10 hours ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

At some point, I forgot to stop making everything work.  I really appreciate @The Most Loathed because he helped me realize that I needed to just play for the sake of playing by sharing his own journey. I was like "Wait a minute, I need to stop working on everything and just do the thing for fun too!"  Deep breath. So it's time to just go do that. See you soon!

I have to credit my guitar teacher for this. I'm just the one floundering away at it  Let's learn to play a little more, in life, together.

Wow. I haven't posted all week. Just been busy and it's always been the next thing on my list. time for a quick catch up

 

Monday

Training

We worked on more ankle locks. This was working on a one armed lock. If you have someone's leg for a lock but they try to drive it through to avoid the lock you can use your same side hand to kind of tuck it under your bum and lean into it, breaking the ligaments with your bodyweight. 

 

Food

I had a busy day, trying to get stuff done and needing to walk the dog and whatnot and basically missed a meal leading to a huge surplus on the day. I have a big meal out coming on Saturday so I'll just count that as a wash.

 

Sleep

Sleep was oddly light Sunday and Monday. I don't recall anything in particular but obviously had some awake time right in the middle of the night.

 

Mobility

None

 

Tuesday

Training

Marathon Roll - The big takeaway - I did really well.  I rolled with both the brown belts. I rolled with all the tough blue belts. I didn't tap the brown belts, I did tap the blues and below (we don't have many purples and the one that showed up ever rolls with people heavier than him), I didn't get tapped even once. It ended up being nearly 950 calories according to my Whoop.

 

I also lifted and did some cardio at the rec for my midday break.
 

Food

I can't eat enough on Tuesdays. I didn't try to fight it. I ate as much decent food as I could feel good about eating and just called it. I'm fine with that

 

Sleep

I had a good night's sleep from Monday into Tuesday.

 

Mobility

I found out I can log stretching in Whoop so I'm going to do that to track it going forward

 

 

Wednesday

Training

Aoki Locks

It's another leg lock. I academically learned a different version of this but this is the first time I've actually worked on this. The gist of the aoki lock is that you use your own body as a backstop for the foot. You pin their hips down then use your arms to attempt to break things between your body and their hips. It ends up being like a backwards heel hook rather than a straight ankle lock. Our setup was a straight ankle lock where they have booted their foot so you can't break the ankle to you pick it up and put it on your chest then carry on with the break. When it's set you can feel it on the inside of your knee which, I guess, is where the ligament with tear from first. 

 

Rolling was started with single leg X. I was landing leg locks on my poor partner (Reed - white belt) and when he tried i'd clear his leg and drop into mount. After one round we did top-bottom-out for ten minutes. It's the extended high pulse in my data.

 

 

Food

Ate a margin of error's worth of calories over. Good enough to be 0 for me. 

I had a ton of calories in the afternoon so I was the one this time to say "Do we want to do pizza and wings"? We did choose to and it was delicious. Since I had the reins we got it from a place we used to love but haven't had in forever, Pizza Karma. They do Indian pizza. The pizzas are cooked in a tandoori over and have things like paneer on them. Really enjoyed it and it was within my calories. 

Sleep

I had a terrible night's sleep. Tuesday night, after marathon, I was struggling with back spams trying to fire off. I woke up to use the rest room and almost fell over trying to return to bed due to the spasms kicking in . I slept terrible after that. I didn't mention this in the training bit but I almost didn't go to BJJ because I was worried about my back. I did some test movements before I went and didn't have trouble so I went. It loosened my back up to do so. 

Mobility

No

Other

I went to the doctor to have another go at getting this wart off my chin. I also got my final Hepatitis A vaccine and a flu vaccine so I expect to feel crappy over the weekend

 

Thursday

Training

Based on the shots in my arm I didn't feel like lifting so I just took a 90-ish minute walk

 

Food

I currently have a little surplus left but I haven't eaten dinner yet. This should be fine.

Sleep

So-so sleep based on the back still being touchy at night.

Mobility

Using my Whoop to track stretching but three cheers for my first successful stretch at home.

 

 

I'm glad to hear that you were able to learn somethings to help you. Now you should be able to address it better. 

Welcome. Welcome!

Good to see you back. I had my moment as well where I needed some help and I'm glad to have gone through it and come out better on other side too. 

Best wishes on the life changes. A lot of folks here are dealing with some similar stuff so I'm sure they can join you in the process.

Welcome and congrats on taking the big step of posting your first challenge. I see a lot of people come through who never take that first step so you're doing great! Keep it up.

3 hours ago, Everstorm said:

Wow so much tension in her body through those kata!  I feel tired just watching her 😆 

I don't know anything about these. Is that how it's supposed to work?

6 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

I clicked off hide on that post for you.

oh! I see it. Thanks. 
So I guess I can hide but doing so hides it from me too?

Thank you

 

10 minutes ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

People love to feel smart. I think people commenting on body weight is weird itself.  Did it feel good for them to eventually notice or no? 

Mixed. People I respect and seemed happy for me feels good. Other people, usually ones I don't respect as much wanted to immediately interrogate me on how I lost it then tell me what I am doing wrong. One guy, the one guy in the gym who is obviously stronger than I am bonded over the fact that we both lost weight and are on the path to being middle weights together. 

So I tried to write a week kick-off post a couple time but I ran out of time. One I lost to reloading the page. The second time I clicked the button to hide it, thinking I'd come back but now it doesn't exists. sigh. I do wish we had a draft post feature.

 

I've got at most thirty minutes before I want to head to bed so that's my hard cap on this post. My initial thought was that this would be a genuine kick-off but as I've worked on it I've realized that I'm still thinking. This is a rough draft of my theme through the new year. Please feel free to provide feedback, whether it's regarding structure, your thoughts an opinions on the content of what I'm planning or how you have or are addressing the same kinds of tweaks. 

 

=============================================================================

 

This week is week 0 for me, for my Fall into Winter plan. I know that doesn't time out to match Nerd Fitness very well, it's fine. I'll make new threads when we move challenges but from now until January the them is the Recharge Your Batteries Protocol (name very subject to change, I've just written three different version now). 

 

Situation

I spent the summer preparing for and doing meets. I lost a bunch of weight. I definitely have some nagging injuries. I've noticed the very leading edge of burn out in the ether, not like forever burnout but the kind that can set you back months or a year. I've also got some non-jiujitsu or weightloss things I just haven't been able to make time for. 

 

Goal

I plan to keep doing jiujitsu 4-5 times a week but just pull back a little on the intensity. I skipped Akagi last week so Laura and I could spend Sunday together and I'll probably do it again this week. We've got some family visits coming and I may miss Friday and Sunday. I'm giving myself not just permission but urging myself to miss a class every once in a while. 

I've been really up front that I wanted to lose the weight that I lost and then just keep it off for a bit and that started this week. I'm feeling my drive to get my calories down and beat my goals set in. There's a voice in the back of my head that says "you know, you could just short yourself on calories less and still lose 1/2 lb per week". It's my intention to not let myself do that. Similar to the jiujitsu thing, I don't just want to give myself permission to eat my calories, I want to let myself just go crazy a few times. Have a couple days a month I don't track and just go out and eat whatever. 

I've talked about wanting to play guitar more and do more mobility but the struggle for me is finding time in my day. I have my day figured out from 5:30 am to 10 pm and there really isn't slack in the system. A large chunk is that because I'm a full-time remote worker at a company that doesn't officially allow that, I do my best to be online and productive more than any coworker who goes into the office. I don't cut out early on Fridays. I try to be the first one to offer to help when someone asks a question on Slack. Similar, I don't simply want to give myself permission to step away from fifteen minutes to stretch or play guitar, I want to make it priority. If that means I'm only available 6 hours that day, I want that. 

 

So in many ways, the goal of these next few months is to deemphasize what I have emphasized so hard for so long and to carve out space for my B-list of priorities because I think they're getting C-list treatment. 

 

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I've hit my time cap so I'm going to call it. I won't come back and edit this post because that gets confusing for anyone who is trying to follow along but you may see some reworking or refinements of this over this week at a minimum and probably over the next couple weeks. 

 

 

 

 

On 9/24/2023 at 8:04 PM, Snarkyfishguts said:

this is great advice! Your teacher is SMART. 

No no no, don’t work on it. That’s the whole point! Just enjoy playing for a while. 

When you play, you are still learning but you are taking away the structure and drudgery out of working hard and practicing and just enjoying a hobby.

As someone who can turn anything into work myself, I highly recommend you give yourself permission to goof off and just enjoy trying new things out. 

You be glad to know that my last two guitar sessions were more screw around (play) sessions than work sessions. Looping pentatonic patterns and actually switching off to chords that I like with them. Odd thing I never noticed. I listen to lost of blues and metal (minor keys, weird sounds) but when I play, I like more major keys, more like a campfire song sound. 

 

I don't know if it's bad form to call someone out for this but has anyone else noticed a user who seems has a name and a prose that seems to indicate that they might be a GPT. 

(it's no one in this thread)

September 11 - 219.9

September 18 - 220.7

September 25 - 218.0

 

The goal is to loosely hang around 220. I'm currently within tolerance but I suspect I'll need to add a couple hundred calories. I have not idea how to tell myFitnessPal to just give me 200 more calories to work with. That's a problem for future me.

 

A weird feature, before I started losing weight, about 3 months and 25-30 lbs ago I would just randomly get asked if I had lost weight when I had not. All summer, while I counted calories and macros, not a word. Suddenly this past week I'm being asked again. It's weird when I acknowledge it because they're like "I knew it dude! I knew you had lost some weight." It is weird for them to celebrate their Holmesian prowess. 

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Hibernation Plan - week 0

Somewhere  I think I referred to last week as week 0 but that's not true. It was really just me coasting on all of the energy I poured into my weightloss and training plan over the summer. I did stuff, by some people's standards it was a lot of stuff, but it was really just reverting to the mean of the last 12 weeks. Now it's time to gear up for Hiberation Plan.

 

 

I live in Minnesota and soon the leaves will change, the snow will fall and I will live entirely indoors because despite an occasional effort in that direction, I do not want to be a cold weather outdoorsman. I also have been busting my ass all summer to some slightly mixed results and I'm going to do better than I have in the past at taking my foot off the gas. So I am initiating the Hibernation Plan. If I was clever, I'd have a cool backronym here but not today.

 

Objective

The objective of the Hiberantion Plan is recovery and building resilience. 

 

Plan

Calendar - I'll likely come back and fill this in 

• Week 0 (Monday, September 25 - Sunday October 1) - This week, which will involve still thinking this through and doing some planning
• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8
• Week 9
• Week 10
• Week 11
• Week 12
• Week 13  - Week between Christmas and New Years, Gym closed, lots of stuff not happening

 

Week-at-a-glance

• Monday - Work day, BJJ class
• Tuesday - Work day, Rec Time, Marathon Roll
• Wednesday - Work day, BJJ class, Guitar lesson every other week
• Thursday - Work day, Rec Day
• Friday - Work Day, BJJ Class
• Saturday - Errands day
• Sunday - Akagi day

 

Day-at-a-glance

• 0530 - wake up
• 0530 - 0600 make coffee
• 0600 - 0730 work (90 minutes)
• 0730 - 0800 make and eat breakfast (2 egg, 2 egg whites, toast, jelly
• 0800 - 1000 work (210 minutes total)
• 1000 - 1230 BJJ or rec time, details vary slighly
• 1230 - 1400 make and eat lunch, shower
• 1400 - 1530 work ( 300 minutes total)
• 1530 - 1600 make and eat afternoon snack
• 1600 - 1700 work (360 minutes total)
• 1700 - 1800 guitar time
• 1800 - 1900 supper prep
• 1900 - 2100 supper & time with Laura
• 2100 - 2200 relax and read in bed
• 200 lights out

Friday

Training

See my previous post

 

Food

Friday night was our chef box delivery. It was halibut over cous cous for the main. I choose to not even try to track this one. I did track for the day until then and left 1,300 in the bank. Just going on feel, it was probably lower than that. 

 

Mobility

No

 

Sleep

Good night's sleep

 

Guitar

I played around a bit as we waited for our chef box delivery

 

Saturday

Training

Training was weird. I don't normally do Saturday's for a lot of reasons but among them is that there is no day at my gym where training is more inconsistent than Saturdays. Who shows up, who teaches, it's all over the map. Laura had a thing though so we couldn't run our usual errands so I figured I'd go train today and she and I could have Sunday together. I got there early and the kids class was super light on attendees. The three people coaching were our two teenagers from Puerto Rico and a kid who's got to be pre-teen who has come up through the kids program. They did a good job but I've never seen them teach a class on their own. The kids class wrapped and these were our teachers for the day, this makes me the highest rank in the room. An infrequent purple belt rolled in late but that was it. We had like 3 or 4 white belts. 

Mislael, the ranking instructor took us through a little takedown he likes and them a rolling bow and arrow. I ended up working with the kid who came up through the kid's program. I'm 44 and 217 lbs. He's like 12 and maybe 110, maybe. We got through it but then it as time to role. The combinations of weight, strength, and experience makes it not even a warm up for me. 

I go roll with Mislael and we're going along, doing fine and he's trying to pass my guard and does this little juke move and hit the part of my ankle that still hurts from last weekend. I genuinely wondered if something broke when he did that. I basically did a fetal defense until I just tapped to get a second to see if I could stand. He apologized which he didn't need to do. What he did was maybe a little overly dramatic but well within the bounds of reason. I had no idea my ankle could get bumped and hurt that much. I still don't have any idea what exactly he did. But note to self, there's still a lot of pain in there and I don't yet know what will set it off. 

Then I went and rolled with the white belts. It was entertaining for a while. I was protecting that ankle a lot, just not letting anyone near it but then I started taking submissions, one after another. It got silly, to where it was more than 1 per minute. I was screwing around with my submissions I worked on on Friday and hitting those. I brought out one I've never hit before, an Americana from bottom and landed two of those. It was just no challenge at all. So then it became a coaching session as I'd land a submission twice on someone then teach them what I was doing and try to land it again. Assuming I couldn't, then I'd see what else I could find. 

After class the purple belt and I got to talking. He wanted to know if I'd be ok teaching him my arm triangle technique. Of course I would. I learned it from a purchased video and pointed him towards that. We agreed that next time we're both in the gym we'd go over it. He's totally convinced that he's not heavy or strong enough to do it and I was trying to explain that I'm not using either of those things in it. Ah well. We'll cover it together. 

 

Food

I came in over but well within tolerances. I also was hungry in a way that suggests to me that I wasn't actually over. More on that in a near future post.

Mobility

No

 

Sleep

 It was a decent night's sleep. I'm still dealing with occasional soreness from my back and I did something to make that angry. If I recall, that wake up in the middle of the night was when I moved wrong and got that angry and then anytime I moved after that it brought me partially awake, hence, no deep sleep after. That also meant that my Whoop marked my recovery as crazy low, 33 out of 100, the red zone. My resting heart rate was elevated and my heart rate variability was low for the day. 

 

Guitar

No

 

Sunday

Training

I took today off from training. We took a medium length walk togther then walked the dog as well. Then I did chores.

 

Food

I haven't had supper yet so it's a premature estimate but I just wanted to button up the week 

 

Sleep

I had a good night's sleep

Mobility - TBD

Guitar - TBD

 

 

Getting this post out now because I need to go finish supper prep and call my mom for the week but my intention is to get back here to kick off next week and what will really be my Fall-Winter 2023 program. It's still working on the details in my mind. It's more of what I've been doing but I need to feel like I've turned a page, even though the structure will be similar and our NF challenges don't time out well to mathc. 

Props on pulling things back on target. It would have been easy to just mark the week down as a loss snd let it go but it sounds like your intuition was correct and you were able to steer the bad when you needed to.

Welcome back again.
 

Props on having a ton of will power to do all of that work. Those are truly impressive accomplishments. It sounds like you have all the knowledge and willpower to achieve your goals and now it’s time to work on finding that happy balance.

 

FWIW, I’m learning a bit of that myself right now. While my accomplishments are trivial next you yours I just wrapped up a stage of weight loss and am also trying to figure out how I just live at a weight without planning and executing every little thing are taking all the guard rails off and going back to the diet that hit me where I was.
 

So, you’re not alone, a bunch of us are working on this and we’re all finding different things that work for us. The NF community is great one for trying to find balance and how to live life in a renovated body. I hope you stick around and join in the conversation.

Friday

BJJ

 

Today's training was tailored to me specifically. Other people needed it but Professor created it to help me and made sure I got the point. I'm logging it early to make sure I get the details down.

 

Before Class

I came it with two movements I wanted to play with. I got several reps in with Josh.

• Choi Bar - This was in the meta real hard for a while but I never it. When I saw people trying it they were doing all kinds of weird inversions that I now know were wrong. From half guard, your getting smashed. Get both arms under their body then take shoulder clamp on their near shoulder. Get your inside leg out and over their head. At this point you are setting a platform armbar while squatting on their shoulder but the world is rotated 90 degrees so your are actually both flat on the ground. You need to rotate their arm at the elbow to keep the pressure on but it's a pretty scary submission, they'll feel it coming. 
• Tarekoplata - This one was in the meta some time ago, before my time but it pops up again from time to time. Start in half guard but set up up crappy kimura on the far side and let them get their grip. Free your outside leg and spin it over their head. Similar to choi bar you are now squatting on their shoulders but the world is flipped. The arm comes out really easy at this point and you can break it a variety of ways. 

 

Warm Up

• Bottom partner has feet on hips, top partner throws them to one side. Bottom partner uses their far foot to plant and turn their hips to face top partner. Bottom leg comes in to establish a foot on the far hip, allowing bottom partner to square up with both feet on hips
• Same set up but top partner closes the distance after the feet are thrown over. This forces bottom partner to bring their shin in, rather than foot, then use the shin to drive their upper body away and put their body squared up and feet on hips
• Set up the same but top partner closes all the way to chest on chest. Bottom partner places their far hand on their chest and near hand on their face. If the far elbow is under the top partner's body then shoot the hand through and take the back, if the far elbow is above the top partner's body then hip escape until it is below their body and finish as before. The near hand is in place just to prevent head control. 

 

Instruction

The cue is is their head up or down

• Head up - Half guard to underhook - this is the basic game I play so I ended up showing a lot of it to other people. Half guard bottom, Inside hand is protecting from head control, outside hand is hovering around your chest. I often rest it on my knee shield knee. As they drive in, shoot the knee shield through and take the back. Most opponents wizzer and that is called The Dogfight. We didn't cover that today but it's a big part of my game. 
• Head down - Half guard  to butterfly half to sweep away - This was a new option to me. The idea is that the person is trying a tight waist pass, you make sure their head is on the same side as their body.  Smash their face over there if you have to. Reach under their body with both arms and hug their arm in. Turn your outside leg into a butterfly hook. Use the hook to elevate them over their now collapse arm and sweep

 

Rolls

• Josh (purple) - I landed my Tarekoplata. Then we swapped. We went back and forth a few times. Josh got a lot from today's lesson, for me, most of it was in my wheelhouse so I don't think I leveled up necessarily but I'll do half guard classes all day long
• I already forgot - It's only been a couple hours but I'm totally spacing who my other roll was

 

After Class

• Ken (blue) - Stan was doing something in the locker room so professor told me to take Ken. I joked that I'd just tap him really quick then get to Stan. I pulled open guard for fun. We basically did the live version of today's warm up drill. Ken got past. I messed around looking for my two moves of the day but it wasn't happening. I swept Ken with the head down sweep we learned today. From there I set up my arm triangle and found the strangle, got the tap. 
• Stan (black) - Stan is working on his demo for his next stripe so we went through that several times. We timed it at the end and it's a 2 minute demo. I don't know how long it's supposed to be but it's pretty good.

After After Class

I walked out with professor. He was telling me about what he was trying to tailor to me for this class. He also hasn't watched the video back but felt like he was seeing me give up head control too often in the meet and in practice. I'm also to prone to let my arms get above the bottom of my rib cage. There's this idea in jiujitsu of T-Rex arms or, my favorite, one guy calls it Iron Squirrel. I need to work on a whitebelt fundamental of keeping my elbows to my ribs unless I specifically want to let them out. He had a more positive take on my outcome than I did but it's hard to know what is just to pad my ego a bit too. 

 

 

53 minutes ago, Kishi said:

So I gotta ask, how well would you say MFP does in terms of giving you "earned" calories on exercise? Would you say it tracks pretty well or does it give you too much? And does it still work even when you're on a cut? I've been thinking a lot about my energy needs and how they vary day to day and I'm thinking about trying to match my inputs to my outputs beyond "don't eat above this much."

For weight loss, it was really effective. I think losing is probably the easiest diet type to run the numbers on though. For me, I set it to "lose 1 lb per week" and just tried to stay under but let myself go right up to the number. I set my activity level to sedentary because I work from home and don't really do much when I'm not in the gym.

At my bodyweight and activity level it would start the day at 1900 calories at first and 1880 towards the end of my weight loss phase. I did not try to log every action I took. I logged cardio to match whatever the machine said. I logged a jiujitsu class as 20 minutes of jiujitsu (my class is an hour but we only roll the last 15 minutes). So an inactive day felt pretty lean with less than 2,000, Tuesday (rec time plus marathon) would exceed 2500 calories and Sundays (1 hour of hard rolling) was 2500-3000 calories. 

I generally lost 2+ lbs per week, which is the to say thatMFP seems to be undercounting calories. I did pay for premium so I could manipulate the macro goals. Someone who wanted to do a spreadsheet could do it without premium but I think it was worthwhile for me. 

As I'm moving into maintenance phase and I think the math is much harder and I expect to see more issues with the calorie counter. The idea of netting 0 calories per week is going to be tough for me. I've been wearing my Whoop strap for a little over a week now and it gives me a lot fewer baseline calories but a lot more active calories. It gives me 1900ish base calories vs MFPs 2310 but Tuesday of this week, when I barely did any rec work and marathon was a little easy it cleared 3,000 calories. 

So, yeah, for me, MFPs calorie adding for activities during weightloss was effective. I think the numbers are pretty crude but good enough.

Wednesday

Training

Toe Holds - a silly name for a good way to mess someone up

I wasn't the only person on the team to get caught with leg locks we were prepared for. The Toe Hold or the Toebar is something I had no familiarity with but it's actually pretty straight forward. To set it up you need to be essentially facing someone but upside down compare to them. From that position you place the palm of your opposite hand on top of the foot. You take your near side arm and go under their achilles and grip your own wrist. You then basically push their food backwards over your arm. There are a lot of ligaments in the foot that can snap, barring that, your ankle can break. It's foot-kimura position but works more like an wrist lock in terms of what hurts/breaks.

We worked on entry from single leg x but I saw an immediate opening that I used in rolling.

 

• Ben (blue) - No toe holds happened but I swept, I don't believe I submitted him but I held position
• Reed (white) - I hit my own toe hold entry. When I realized that the toehold position is the kneebar position I knew. I wanted to try this. So I got on top, let him have his half guard. I pressed his knee shield down and spun over his leg to the kneebar I've been dabbling with and hit the toe hold instead. We rolled more but that was the only moment I cared about.
• I forget

 

 

Food

I'm supposed to be eating all of my calories this week but I know we have our big meal box coming on Friday so I've been under eating a little thinking it'll balance out.

Sleep

This sleep graph was the most interesting yet.Not the Light, Deep, REM one, although I'm learning some things about that data. No, the heart rate graph. This is me sleeping after marathon roll on Tuesday into Wednesday. My heart rate was around 70 when I went to bed. Looking at a couple other recent nights, 60-65 is normal. You can see it decline all night to the low 50s, where I would expect it to be. I suspect this is normal for me on Tuesday nights but it's interesting to see it charted. I've had these graphs forever but never looked at them so it's interesting to learn something.

Mobility

No

 

Guitar

Lesson

My lesson went really well but I kind of accidentally derailed it early on but my teacher rolled with it like a champ.

I said something that I had said to a coworker who also plays guitar. It's something I've thought many times but I guess I don't say it much. I said to him that I never find myself just reaching for my guitar. If I've got 30 minutes and no plans, the thought never enters my brain that I want to pick up my guitar. This puzzled him. He asked if I just make myself practice and I indicated that I do. I don't generally find joy in my guitar but I practice through willpower. He was surprised by this. He indicated that has never had someone take multiple years of lessons based on practicing because they make themselves do it. 

So he encouraged me to practice less and play more. Even if I carve out the time like I do, don't make myself do whatever we're studying but just pick up the instrument and do something I like. So I said I'd work on it. I think the most interesting take away and this dovetails with my meets a bit is that when you practice you are working on a skill but when you play you aren't learning, you're just doing. It's a thing that I think I could have academically expressed but I never thought about it. I still need to think about it but there's some nugget of wisdom here I need to mine. 

 

Thursday

Training

I think I have a little bit of cold that I picked up at the meet so I took it really easy today. I took an hour walk at lunch and I walked the dog because Laura was out at rehearsals

 

Food

I think I was allowed too much food by MFP but I didn't sweat it. Laura was out so I got creative for supper but it would have been better if I had cut my meal in half and shared it with her or save it for today but ah well. For supper I roasted 1 lb paste tomates, half a head of garlic, an onion. I boiled up the linguine we had left (turned out to be two servings when I weighed it) and used the 200 g of chicken thighs left over from Wednesday night. It was really good but it really was enough food for two but I ate it all.

Sleep

no specific notes

Mobility: no

Guitar: No

2 hours ago, Kishi said:

See, we did try that, but what I found was that with my partners I was either too weak or they were too heavy for me to do that.

My suspicion is that your partner wasn't driving in enough. Their force should hit your frames and be carried past you without strength, but that's from a keyboard warrior perspective. FWIW, as someone who plays a ton of halfguard, I try to stay out of lockdown for reasons I won't bother you with and when I have done lockdown I have only succeeded at the elevator a single digit number of times.