Anyone still read blogs?
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Is this the NFL
I was watching NFL Gameday tis morning, while they were discussing Cam Newton, and his recent complaints of being teated differently than other quarterbacks.
The discussion mostly revolved around the idea that Cam Newton, as a young star quarterback, must be protected.
My only thought was “are they talking about football?” This is professional football, and the major pre game show is talking about the importance of making sure a player doesn’t get tackled.
I’m not wondering as much why ratings are down.
Rebooting Blogging?
I think I might start blogging again. It’s been a long time since I regularly wrote anything other than training log updates, and even those moved to facebook a while ago.
I have moved on (mostly) from political/current events. The older I get, the less I care, and the more I realize how little it matters to me. I’ve posted about this before, but I’ll say it again: When part of such a small minority political philosophy, you can lose yourself in frustration. The vast majority of people fundamentally believe they get their rights from the government in the form of permission; that there is no such thing as a right based simply on a persons’ humanity. That isn’t changing in my lifetime, so instead of getting worked up about which R or D is going to get elected, I refocused on myself, my family, my friends, and my clients. Whatever the government does, I can work around it; typically it’s just a financial cost, so I just work a little harder. (I feel bad for people who can’t do that – where a 20%+ increase in their ‘affordable’ health care insurance means something in their monthly budget.)
Anyway, I’m done with frustrations. Other than the Ravens.
So if I actually stick with this, I’ll be posting about food, wine, lifting, with a little Economics, and probably some other random stuff tossed in for good measure.
On Current Events…
There’s been a lot happening lately, huh? Here are my very quick thoughts.
On marriage:
All I have to say is the government has no business requiring a permission slip for anyone to enter into a marriage contract. If your church doesn’t want to marry the gays, that’s fine with me. If you don’t want to make a gay wedding cake, that’s fine with me, too. Also, the 14th Amendment.
On flags:
I think it’s a waste of time and energy. You can do all you want with symbols to which you attach meaning, but you can’t change what’s in another person’s heart. There is evil in the world, and if you think changing which flags fly where will change that, you have a view of the world I can’t comprehend. Although I kind of wish I could.
On guns:
Loaded my Glock and wrapped it in a Rebel flag. It didn’t do anything. I’m looking forward to the day the Supreme Court applies the same logic to firearms as it does to marriage, making a carry permit from any state legitimate in every state. I look forward to the President standing behind me on this issue.
On the President:
Just a reminder, he spent most of his political career working against the right of all people to marry, and he could have worked to make the court ruling unnecessary many years ago. But he didn’t. Quit giving him credit for it. Instead, give him credit for the continued aggressive drug war (more aggressive at the federal level than any of his predecessors, by the way) and give him credit for assassinating innocent people with drones. Every single person running for President as a Democrat has worked to limit marriage equality. EVERY ONE OF THEM.
On the Presidential race:
Really? This is as good as we can do?
Just curious
Is directly ordering the drone assassination of a child more, less, or the same level of murder as beheading a journalist?
Satire or Real?
I don’t pay much attention to diet/nutrition/lifting stuff on the web any more. It’s all been said, and nearly everyone talking either doesn’t know what they are saying, or they are just trying to separate people from their money.
So I heard about something called bulletproof coffee, and I just ignored it as junk science used to sell something. But for some reason, this week I visited the website.
And I have to say, I think it may be one of the most brilliant pieces of satire I’ve seen since Prancersise.
The website features the character Dave Asprey, the Bulletproof Executive. His bio snippet (which is brilliant), includes this:
Dave Asprey, founder of The Bulletproof Executive, is a Silicon Valley investor and technology entrepreneur who spent 15 years and over $300,000 to hack his own biology. Dave lost 100 pounds without counting calories or excessive exercise, used techniques to upgrade his brain by more than 20 IQ points, and lowered his biological age while learning to sleep more efficiently in less time. Learning to do these seemingly impossible things transformed him into a better entrepreneur, a better husband, and a better father.
From private brain EEG facilities hidden in a Canadian forest to remote monasteries in Tibet, from Silicon Valley to the Andes, Dave used hacking techniques and tried everything on himself, obsessively focused on discovering the answers to this one persistent question:
What are the simplest things you can do to be better at everything?
It hits on just about everything – no effort, less sleep, higher IQ, Tibetan monks. Here’s the video on the magic coffee.
Just fantastic. Of course, the character has all the social media pages, a blog, training and diet advice (foods to fear! Tim Ferris 4 hour body!) and they even set up a store where you can buy his special non-toxic coffee.
I just wish I were creative enough to create something this spectacular.
Still Here
Just busy. Our business has been more active than expected (which is a very good thing), and I’ve been focused more on some other priorities. Blogging just isn’t all that high on the list any more, especially given my recent and significant loss of interest in things political.
It’s as if it just hit me that I’m just one more voice out there clamoring for other people to completely change their personal philosophy, and that’s just not going to happen.
My training log should return shortly, and of course as things occur to me, I’ll post.
I Got Fat
Well, I did.
My bodyweight and bodyfat have been pretty happily at 230-235 pounds and about 20% for quite some time. That’s kind of a set point for me, and while I’m not Captain Health at this size, I feel good, my blood pressure is fine, I can move, and training tends to go well.
Over the past month to six weeks, though, I haven’t been feeling as well; and in the last two weeks, it’s really started to bother me. Mostly, I feel out of shape (I am), fat (I am), and I know based both on measurement and feeling that my blood pressure is up. I’ve been drinking too much (it’s far too common for me to have a cocktail AND a couple of glasses of wine with dinner or a beer or two), and eating like I’m 23, not like I’m 43.
Part of the issue was I took some time away from training because of a nagging shoulder thing. That’s cleared up now, so there’s no excuse not to get in the gym. There was never an excuse to stop everything, but I did.
Anyway, I decided today I need to make some changes, and hopped on the scale to get my baseline: 235.5 pounds (right in line, just a couple of pounds heavier than I had been running), 41 inch waist (at the navel, as big around as I can remember being). That works out to about 24% bodyfat.
Yikes.
Luckily, I’m pretty disciplined, I know a lot about nutrition, I know how to get lean, I have access to great food, I work primarily from home, and it’s a slow time of year for us. So this is a great time to get my diet in check and drop some fat.
That said, it’s also the holidays. Lots of parties, Thanksgiving, all of it. I’m not a crazy dieter, though, and can fit in fun stuff and good food/drink without losing sight of the main goal.
The Eating Plan:
Simple rules work best for me. I think one of the best fundamental eating plans for people who lift/train athletically is John Berardi’s Precision Nutrition. It is fundamentally just a set of rules, easy to follow and execute, with room for error. These are not the exact rules he published, but they are close, and what I’m going to do.
- 235g Protein every day.
- 5 servings veggies every day
- Less than 200g carbs per day on non training days, less than 300g on training days
- Carbs consumed primarily around training, and typically all before noon on a normal day.
- No Cocktails at home
- Wine only with food
- No limits on fruit or veggies
- No dessert/sweets (the carb limit pretty much excludes these, anyway).
I will follow these guidelines pretty much all the time, however, if we are going out to dinner, or are entertaining, or it’s Thanksgiving, I’m doing whatever I want. Berardi says to follow the rules 90% of the time, but I don’t include his meal frequency guidelines. Not every day will be perfect, but if I do most of these most of the time, I’ll be OK. Frankly, this is how I should be eating all the time, anyway. I’m not going to do anything signficant or drastic. While I know I can make body composition changes more quickly using a more aggressive diet, I also know that the change tends to be temporary.
The Training Plan:
I still want to get back on the platform, so I’ll stick with my Conjugate/Westside style training. I’ll walk in the morning on non lifting days, and for now, I’ll walk on a treadmill after lifting. As I get into better shape, I will replace the treadmill with the prowler.
I reasonably expect I’m going to need to drop down to 210-215 to get my waist down where I want it. There is research that points to simply your waist measurement as a predictor of health issues; keep your waist under 1/2 your height (in my case, that’s 35 inches), your general health risks are reduced. Plus I’ll feel better.
I don’t know how much I will update progress here, I’ve gotten out of the habit of posting training, I guess we’ll see.
Training, 10/9/13
Bench Press
2×15 @ 45
95×3
2×3@ 135
8×3 @ 175, 3 grips, less than a minute between sets. Good speed. Bumped the weight up a bit this week to keep it around 60%.
JM Press
45×10
3×3 @ 135
T-Bar Row (old school, with the barbell in the corner, bro)
45×10
90×8
3×8 @ 135
Seated DB Press
20×15
2×15 @ 30
These were really uncomfortable, shoulders felt tight
Hammer Curl
2×15 @ 30
Prowler drag, rows, 4 trips, 90 pounds.
Training, 9/27/13
Was running around yesterday, so didn’t have a chance to get this posted.
Bench Press
45×10
45+1 set chain x 3
95+1 set chain x 3
135+1 set chain x 3
8×3 @ 165+1 set chain, 3 grips, done with less than 1 minute between sets
185+1 set chain x 1
225+1 set chain x 1
245+1 set chain x 1
4 board press
225×5
275×4
Time to change this
Hammer Strength Row
135×10
225×10
3×8 @ 315
Pressdown
a bunch
Windy Recycling Day 