DrFeelgood

It’s one of those weird things in life. I don’t want it to start, but then I don’t want it to end. Better time-management will help, as will better eating (more below). _______________________________________________ W1D6 was an okay day--I think the struggles from the previous days tainted my outlook and led to some loosening of disciplines. Plus I’ve been repeating a major mistake without knowing it. I fasted through the morning and ate my lunch at work. In the afternoon I went for a snack and overdid it with a whole box of Hot Tamales (the candy). On the way home from work I stopped at the grocery store for MFG and added another candy bar to my day. I don’t remember what she made for dinner, but it was good and I ate a lot of it. I advanced my Sunday pint of ice cream to Friday night, and then later on I added another bowl of corn flakes. That’s a red Eat day. Golf goal was satisfied with a video lesson on a drill that requires some alignment canes, which I did not have until… W1D7 was the roughest day of the week. Owing to a couple days of overages I wasn’t particularly hungry, so I kept it light for most of the day—just a couple handfuls of cashews and pecans throughout the day while I was working on projects. MFG made a potato casserole for dinner so I ate a fair bit of that. Later in the evening I snacked on some cheese. I got wrapped up watching old movies and stayed up way too late (despite having no Sleep goal), and I ended up adding yet another bowl of corn flakes (with sliced banana, one of my favorites) well after midnight. Ordinarily that would’ve been a decent day in the Green, but it turns out that corn flakes aren’t as safe as I thought. They contain malted barley syrup, which is a Gluten-Containing Item (GCI). In my GF adventure I hadn’t ever rechecked these because I hadn’t noticed issues with them. But after eating them for three nights straight I woke up with stronger symptoms that made me rethink the previous days. Then MFG mentioned to me that she was reading the ingredients on my cereal box and saw the barley syrup. Seems that I’d been on a slow gluten slide for several days without noticing it. In hindsight all the minor symptoms I’d been experiencing (sluggishness, brain fog, bloat, joint pain, sleep disruption) totally line up. So I’m writing off corn flakes and will replace them with Corn Chex, which are GF. As a reminder I’m making Eat yellow for that day. Despite the skid I piled up a bunch of wins, too. I did my Pushups on Saturday morning and got all the prescribed sets with a huge +7 on the final. That improved my confidence with the program and I’m excited again to keep pumping them out this week. I also made good progress on a few of my projects and helped MFG with stuff around the house. Golf is yellow since I didn’t actually do any drills, but I did go to the store and buy some alignment canes to help with future drills. It was just too hot on Saturday and I was busy with other things. Week 1 Check-in: 15/18 Green for the week, 2 yellow, 1 red. That’s not bad for a return to form. I was in pain for the entire week, and that made some of the other disciplines tougher, but I battled through and learned some things. The scale was way up (241.0) this week but I’m confident that’s not genuine gain. I didn’t get a progress photo since I got tagged in for church band duties at the 11th hour and needed to get up and out the door too early on Sunday morning. I’m looking forward to Week 2.

W1D5 was a bit of a struggle, but still a good day. I fasted all morning until lunch which was a leftover bowl of stir-fried pork and veggies with rice. I skipped afternoon snacking and went home for dinner. MFG made some hamburger buns with the gluten-free flour blend and Brick grilled cheeseburgers. I had one with a side of potato chips and a decent salad. Later in the evening I snacked on some cheese, then when I got hungry again before bed I ate a bowl of corn flakes. That was a mistake but it doesn’t run afoul of my goal standards, so Eat is green. Before dinner I headed out to the back patio to bask in the sun and accomplish my exercises. I was a bit more thorough with my warm-up before getting down to push the ups. Every set was really tough and I had a hard time getting all my reps. On the fourth set I fell one rep short, so that block is yellow. The extra day of recovery was necessary and my upper body was feeling decent (if weak), but my glutes and quads were absolutely screaming at me all day from Tuesday’s walking lunges. They’re still sore today. The rest of the evening started with chores and home office-ing, but I focused on getting all the needful things done early so I could play some guitar and get in a few Rocket League matches before powering everything down at 11 and getting on with the bedtime routines. I sacked out early and slept reasonably well. Happy Friday, y’all!

Why does the celery have a moustache?

W1D4 was a good day. I ate the last portion of leftover grilled chicken with roasted potatoes for lunch. In the afternoon I had a bag of M&Ms because they're on sale this month and they won't melt on the drive back to my office. Dinner was leftover pork stir fry over rice, to which I added some cashews. When the stir fry wore off later in the evening I ate some cheese for a snack. That's a slightly marginal Eat day, but it's more green than yellow. I did decide to take another recovery day before resuming the Pushups, but I didn't bail on the Move goal entirely. When I got home from work I donned The Shorts and went out in the backyard for a session of dynamic and static stretching, ending with a round of walking lunges. My right butt cheek promptly seized up and has been griping ever since. I guess I didn't stretch it enough, but it's also the first time I've asked it to do anything in quite a while. That's a green Move day. I’ve reconfigured the rest of the week to get my Pushups and golf goals done before Sunday. I’m not quite sure what’s going on with Sleep. I seem to be resisting my own goal and then staying up late out of spite. That hasn’t been an issue for me for months. Part of it is that I’ve got a lot going on right now and that’s cutting in to my game time. As the clock approaches 11:30 I can feel myself getting irritated and resentful. That’s not going to work. Last night I didn’t get to bed until well after 1am and I was still up until almost 2am. What sleep I did get was heavily disrupted by MFG tossing and turning in addition to my own waking up in a cold sweat for no reason. There may be a bit of a mild bug going through the house, too—the boys were both in low-power mode yesterday. I’ll feel it out for the rest of this week, but for now I’m calling yesterday’s Sleep goal yellow. I may change it up for next week.

Just for funsies--I got a new subwoofer for my studio today and was goofing around with guitar tones this evening when I decided to load up Audacity and play over a backing track. It's actually not horrible, so I thought I'd share it with y'all: Soundcloud link It's just me playing rhythm guitar over this backing track in a single quick take. I definitely need more practice, and once I learn the lead guitar part I'll work on a much better version, but I'm having a blast with it and hope you guys will enjoy my theme song. EDIT: Nevermind, in the time it took me to write this post Soundcloud removed the file for copyright infringement.

W1D3 was a good day. I had a smoothie in the morning, and lunch was leftover grilled chicken with roasted potatoes which was excellent and satisfying enough to stave off all snack impulses for the day. MFG made pork loin stir fry with veggies and rice for dinner, and I had a generous bowl of that along with some bbq potato chips. Solid eat day. After work I went straight to the golf course to warm up for a 9-hole round with some of the other guys from my church. We played a scramble so no individual score for me, but my swing wasn't cooperating (I'm blaming the heat and the tightness from Monday's pushups) and I wouldn't have scored very well on my own anyway. I did contribute to the team with my short game, and I still had fun hanging out in the sunshine. It was 3 full hours of golf that more-than-satisfied the goal for the day. Owing to the golf I got home very late and didn't even eat dinner until almost 9pm. I had some home office-ing and projects stuff that needed my attention so I worked through all that until about 11 when I took a break for a shower and the nightly routines. I had a bit more to do, so I stayed up to finish, then I played some games for a while to unwind before bed. Even though I didn't power down and turn the lights out until well after the line I'm still counting the day green because I did all my self-care stuff on time and I needed the extra hour or so to catch up and spool down. Not sure I'll be able to do my pushups today--everything is super sore. If it improves throughout the day then I'll give them a whirl when I get home from work; but if I feel like I need an extra day for recovery then I'll shift my goals a bit to accommodate. After all, those goals are my servants, not my masters.

I don't really miss bread at all. I had found a recipe vid that looked promising and wanted to give it a shot. The flavor was good but the texture was not. I'll keep tinkering since I still have ingredients, but I don't think I'll bother replacing them unless I come up with something really good. My cheesesteak leftovers were perfectly outstanding eaten out of a bowl with a fork. I took the rest of the GF bread I made and chopped it up to blitz in the food processor so I'd have some bread crumbs for meatloaf or fried chicken or whatever. Even the Cuisinart struggled to break it down

W1D2 was an excellent day. Since I had the day off work I stayed up late playing games the night before and then slept in quite a bit. The morning was spent helping MFG, home-office-ing, and tinkering with my guitars. I ate the leftover cheesesteak stuff for lunch and then spent an hour in the kitchen doing food preps—I portioned out a bunch of frozen fruit in to individual bags for my weekly morning smoothies, broke down a whole boneless pork loin (we go through 2 or 3 of these each month) into chops and stir-fry, and prepped a package of chicken thighs to be grilled for dinner. I did a high-heat indirect cook on my Weber kettle with a new Cuban seasoning blend MFG picked up at Trader Joe’s. She roasted some potatoes and mixed a large salad to accompany the chicken, then we all sat down to a delicious and nutritious family dinner. The only other thing I remember eating during the day was a few handfuls of toasted pecans and a string cheese at intermittent snack intervals. That’s a solid Eat day in the green. While I was grilling the chicken thighs I pulled my golf bag to the backyard and did some chipping practice. After 50 or 60 balls I put the golf stuff away, stripped down to just my shorts, and did my Pushups on the patio. Despite the heat it was nice to get some sun and fresh air. I think that’ll be my primary mode going forward—come home from work, change into The Shorts, and do my reps while evening out this farmer tan. For yesterday’s session I did the prescribed 10-12-7-7-9+ sets, taking a little more than the allotted 60 seconds between them to recover. I got +3 on the final set, and since the chicken wasn’t quite done yet I did a bonus set of bodyweight squats—a little shaky but not bad. That’s a solid Move day in the green. After dinner I helped MFG with the dishes and then played with the dog for a bit. The boys took over my living room again, so I did a little more guitar practice and then played a few Rocket League matches. I powered down the computers at 10 pm, hopped in the shower, and then completed all of my rituals before 11. That made for a nice early bedtime to put Sleep in the green as well. 3-for-3, I’m ready to start wearing this path into a nice sustainable groove.

It was a great start to my first challenge back after a long hiatus. I was very blessed to have all the kids in one place, facing (predominantly) the same direction, and (mostly) smiling all at the same time. Plus it didn't hurt (except for the actual physical pain) that I had done 20 pushups the day before. We had fun with it for sure. MFG and I are really proud of our Minions. I've tried that one and it's okay. Still pretty dense and makes for laborious eating as a sandwich. I think the GF bakers need to rethink the entire concept, but the market seems to want cosmetic replicas. I don't need it to look like bread, I just need it to properly convey sandwich fillings to my ponderous bulk without completely dominating the eating experience. I'll keep tinkering with this recipe to see if I can get it where I want it. There really is no good substitute for wheat--anything with enough structure is too tough and anything that's tender enough just crumbles. Some of the GF cloud bread recipes aren't bad, but they have off flavors (being mostly eggs).

Kick-off: This morning's weigh in has me starting at 237.7 lbs which is a 2022 low and right where I expected to be after a couple of maintenance weeks. Initial progress photo looks like this: And that's why I have to take progress photos. This is not what I see when I look in the lying mirror. The mirror says I look like Thor from Ragnarock. The camera reveals the truth; I look like Thor from Endgame. BTW I'm not frowning, I'm just concentrating on the timer on my phone camera and this is my RBF. Another caveat--I got accidentally glutened at dinner last night, so some of this is just bloat. I'm not sandbagging my photo series, there's no way I'd've done this to myself intentionally. Friday was busy so I didn't get my initial pushups test done until Saturday morning. First thing after squaring the dog and cat away I put on a Youtube cooking show and commenced a set with the strictest form I could manage. My core started giving out around 10, but I kept going until my arms were tired and finished at 20. Based on that I programmed my spreadsheet for the rest of this challenge. Hundred Pushups is a 6-week program so I'm going to leg this challenge out to finish them up at the same time. It looks pretty promising to be able to get 44 by the end. W1D1 was a good first day back. I've got wicked DOMS from the pushups test on top of the digestive issues, but I still played guitar this morning for both church services. Bubbles and Boomer drove down from their summer jobs at camp to spend Father's Day at home with me. We took some family pictures after church... ...then went home and had a nice afternoon. I made cheesesteaks for dinner which everybody thoroughly enjoyed. Mine was made with a new-to-me recipe for gluten free bread that still needs some tweaking before I've got it where I want it. The kids gave me a nice card and a present, then the two went back to camp and the other two claimed the living room while I retreated to my desk to work on my guitar rig--figuring out how to integrate a couple new pieces of gear. I really like how that's coming along. Tomorrow is a federal holiday so I have the day off work. As such I'm blanking my sleep goal for tonight. That makes today all green.

Children are designed to be raised by humans. 👍

Glad you had a fantastic birthday! Here's to another lap around the sun...

Alright, I decided that my rough draft of challenge goals up there was too rough. They were contrived mostly to support the theme of my challenge post and don't really serve my objectives. When I sat down to make a spreadsheet I pared them all down to the basics and have adjusted them thusly: EAT: Just keep doing what I'm doing, which is all the same stuff listed up there, but none of it needs to be metric'd independently. MOVE: I'm going to start the Hundred Pushups plan. That's it. 3x a week (MWF) I'll do the programmed sets and reps. I'll take the test today to figure out where to start. SLEEP: Begin nightly routines at 11:44pm, be in bed by midnight. This is more of a "spend 15 minutes on self-care" goal as opposed to a deadline. GOLF: Still targeting a break-44 round by the end, but the measured goal will just be to do a few minutes of drills on the off-Move days. That should be a bit smoother and more achievable.

I'm reasonably sure this is what I'm dealing with, but even if it's not the same treatment seems to be working. I've adjusted pretty well, actually. This is mostly how I want to eat anyway. I used to keep a small veggie garden back in Iowa, it'll be nice to get back to some of that here. I always enjoyed taking care of my plants and getting to eat the results.

I feel the need...the need for (moderately slower) speed!

So this Week Zero was meant to see if I could ramp up to the ambitiousness of that challenge plan nonsense I posted above. Half way through the answer seems to be Meh, Not So Much. The eating stuff is solid since that's what I've been doing anyway. Sleep has been reasonably close but not quite on target. Move hasn't happened at all--the times I want to do it (generally during my work day) I can't, and the times I can do it I don't want to. I'll probably end up rolling that goal back to just one thing that's already pre-programmed (like the Hundred Push-ups) so I just have to make the time. I have watched a few golf vids, no drills, and I'm hoping to hit the range tomorrow after work. I'm still feeling good and I can tell that I'm slimming down a bit at a perfectly fine rate. I've got a few projects on my desk and a lot more on my mind, so I'll need to do some mental housekeeping soon. I made on off-hand comment in someone else's thread the other day about wanting raised garden beds, and out of the blue last night MFG brought up some ideas she's had for gardening in the backyard. She's mostly looking at containers, but it opened the door to start thinking about building some raised beds. I'm also working on a few upgrades to my guitar rig (mainly adding a new MFX unit for church duties) and still practicing. I wish I didn't have to choose between playing and building, but that's how time seems to work. I've almost got the rhythm part from my namesake rock anthem down, next up is the solo. @deftona 22 October is still 4 months out. Would you like to request a continuance?

I wish, but no. Even if I could afford to drive down there's no way our family schedules would align for a road trip. As it is I'm going to be lucky to have them all home for Father's Day. But I intend to get another picture with them all, and I'll share it here.

Wait 'til you see them this year.

You can dance if you want to. You can leave your friends behind. To be fair, they won't be the same Shorts. All of my old skinny-guy stuff got handed down to the boys. I can't believe how big they've gotten. This was almost a year ago: Hey buddy!

Strong work!

Following along, brotha! But I'll be avoiding the waffles, pancakes, French toast, and all other wheaty evils that make my insides want to be on my outsides.

Well, would you look at that? This is apparently my 44th challenge post, and my first since turning 44 six months ago. I think I'll build on that confluence and make a challenge that's all fours. Currently I'm focused on nutrition and weight loss. Digestive changes have spurred me to vigilance with my food intake, and that's had some positive side effects. For most of this year I've been able to lose a few pounds over 2-3 weeks then take a break and maintain for a while. It hasn't been very structured; I'm mostly just taking it one week at a time and feeling it out as I go. But the trend is definitive and the gradual stair-stepping seems to be working for both my waistline and my disposition. I'll keep it up. As you might imagine I already possess way more physical speed, strength, flexibility, and stamina than my 9-5 office job requires. Still, I could stand to add a few points to the body stats, and it wouldn't hurt at all (hopefully) to ease back in to a program as gently as possible. I'm going to try to do this at home with just body weight work, so we'll see how it goes. I've been sleeping much better for quite a while, but I could certainly tighten up my night-time routine. I'll put it on the clock. That's my typical challenge: Eat, Move, Sleep. This time around I need a fourth goal in keeping with the theme, so I'll make it a fun one. By the end of the challenge I want to have played a 9-hole round of golf in which I shoot under 44 strokes. It has happened before but not lately, so that would be a return to form, of sorts. GOALS - EAT: A. Stay 100% Gluten Free (the gut demands it); B. Drink only Water, at least 2 glasses per day; C. One morning per week have a nutrition bomb fruit smoothie; D. Treats: no more than one candy item (<250 kcal) per day M-F, plus as much ice-cream as I want on Sunday. - MOVE: A. Push-ups, work up to a single set of 44 by the end of the challenge; B. Squats, same as push-ups; C. Planks, hmm...44 seconds is too short and 4:44 is too long, so how's about 2:56 (0:44 x 4) for a single hold by the end of the challenge; D. Bridges, 4 sets of 11 by end of challenge. - SLEEP: A. Power down the guitars and entertainment devices at 11:44 pm; B. Dental hygiene (brush and floss); C. Prep for the following day; D. Lights out at 12:05 am. - GOLF: A. 4 minutes of swing drills 4 times a week; B. 4 sessions at the driving range; C. Watch one YouTube video lesson per week; D. Break 44 on the front 9 of my home course. I'll track via my usual Spreadsheet o' Fun, with periodic screencaps posted here. Kind of an ambitious return, but I think that could be a good thing. I'd be willing to bet that I can successfully drop 4.4 pounds over the course of this challenge. I may even resurrect my old series of progress photos (return of The Shorts) to help keep me in the groove.