Body Status:
About a month ago, I tried out HGOMAD (Half Gallon Of Milk A Day) for a couple weeks to try and build some muscle. Funny thing was, I kept up enough discipline to drink all the milk (1200 cal/day), but not enough discipline to hit the gym even once in two weeks. The result is a little bit of flab, and no more mediocre abs.

I'm fixing this with the "slow-carb" diet:

• Rule 1: Avoid "white" carbohydrates (or anything that can be white). 
• Rule 2: Eat the same few meals over and over again. 
• Rule 3: Don't drink calories. 
• Rule 4: Don't eat fruit. 
• Rule 5: Take one day off per week and go nuts. 

Rule 1 stabilizes blood sugar by relying on the glycemic index: "white" carbs get absorbed really quickly, blood sugar spikes, insulin spikes, fat cells see insulin and start making fat. Rule 2 is just for simplicity and will probably help me a lot during finals, less than 2 weeks from now. Rules 3 and 4 are for avoiding fructose (here's a damn good UC lecture on why fructose is killing us, but it's 90 minutes long). Rule 5 is fun: it induces the insulin spike that you've been avoiding all week, which keeps your thyroid from getting used to the lack of spikes, and keeps your metabolism cranking at a higher rate than it would be at otherwise.

Basically, the only carbs I can eat are beans and lentils, aside from cheat day. I'll stay on the slow-carb plan until I think it's time to start gaining again, and I'll try to hit the gym at least twice a week during that time, using the general G2F full-body 5/5 to failure workout plan.


Supplements:

Yerba Mate: A tea that kicks harder than coffee. May have the same benefits green tea is so hyped for.
CLA: Conjugated Linoleic Acid. Really only present in grass-fed cattle, and that stuff is expensive. When I take 2g/day of CLA for 2 weeks, my meabolism goes so fast that 4 hours without food makes me woozy.
ALA: Alpha Lipoic Acid. Controls blood sugar, it's complicated. Supposed to help. We'll see.

The Food Feed is back online for morning body weight measurements and body fat measurement with calipers when they come in the mail.

Let's see how this goes.

Reboot?

In my trademark style, I ran out of money and motivation, and abandoned the G2F plan and blog for three months. Let's try this again.

A lot's happened. Last weekend, I went to San Francisco with some engineer buddies of mine to participate in Robogames BarBot 2012, a fundraiser for Robogames. The idea is to build robotic bartenders that mix cocktails. We spent the preceding 11 days welding, soldering, hacking and coding, and I'm really proud of the result, Santa BarBot. Here's a pretty good video of it in action:

The forearm holding the iPod drink menu is none other than Zach Rubin, whose blog covers more tech details and links to coverage from Make Magazine(!). We got a couple hundred people a little too drunk, made some money for a non-profit, and had an absolute blast the whole time.

Week 1 Recap

Tonight marks one whole week of Geek to Freak!

I'm still not adhering perfectly to the plan, but I'm getting a little better every day. Week 2 will be much better than week 1 was. And week 1 wasn't half bad:

I'm assuming my weight on 11/9 was off a bit because I had to replace the battery in the scale the next morning, so I assume I gained about 2.5 lbs. Considering that my weight normally varies about 2-3lbs up or down month to month, this isn't spectacular. I'll need to push harder next week.

Lessons learned:

• Don't experiment with recipes in bulk, especially if you invented the recipe based on "intuition".
• Nothing (NOTHING) beats eating within 30 minutes of getting up in the morning. Skipping or delaying breakfast will put my appetite in the shitter for the rest of the day.

Tomorrow I'll be getting blood drawn to establish baseline values for triglycerides, cholesterol, liver enzymes, and whatever else my physician approved. Apparently Testosterone, HGH, and IGF-1 are all expensive tests to get done, and the data isn't worth to me what it costs. 

I'll also look at blood levels of the heavy metals lead and mercury, for three reasons: 

1. I've been melting leaded solder onto mercury-containing devices in my various bedrooms for the better part of a decade.
2. Many studies show the presence of heavy metals in dietary supplements.
3. Alpha lipoic acid is purported to be a chelating agent (removes heavy metals from the body).

In fact, the quality of dietary supplements on a whole is apparently appalling; incorrect stated quantities, significant impurities, and occasionally the presence of unintended toxins like heavy metals are very common. I would support an FDA takeover of the completely unregulated supplement industry, but there doesn't seem to be much political will behind that movement right now.

Week 1 Recap

Tonight marks one whole week of Geek to Freak!

I'm still not adhering perfectly to the plan, but I'm getting a little better every day. Week 2 will be much better than week 1 was. And week 1 wasn't half bad:

I'm assuming my weight on 11/9 was off a bit because I had to replace the battery in the scale the next morning, so I assume I gained about 2.5 lbs. Considering that my weight normally varies about 2-3lbs up or down month to month, this isn't spectacular. I'll need to push harder next week.

Lessons learned:

• Don't experiment with recipes in bulk, especially if you invented the recipe based on "intuition".
• Nothing (NOTHING) beats eating within 30 minutes of getting up in the morning. Skipping or delaying breakfast will put my appetite in the shitter for the rest of the day.

Tomorrow I'll be getting blood drawn to establish baseline values for triglycerides, cholesterol, liver enzymes, and whatever else my physician approved. Apparently Testosterone, HGH, and IGF-1 are all expensive tests to get done, and the data isn't worth to me what it costs. 

I'll also look at blood levels of the heavy metals lead and mercury, for two reasons: 

1. I've been melting leaded solder onto mercury-containing devices in my various bedrooms for the better part of a decade.
2. Many studies show the presence of heavy metals in dietary supplements.
3. Alpha lipoic acid is purported to be a chelating agent (removes heavy metals from the body).

In fact, the quality of dietary supplements on a whole is apparently appalling; incorrect stated quantities, significant impurities, and occasionally the presence of unintended toxins like heavy metals are very common. I would support an FDA takeover of the completely unregulated supplement industry, but there doesn't seem to be much political will behind that movement right now.

Reboot

I'm back, albeit not exactly in a timely fashion. Let's catch up.

I healed my cramping trapezius with some combination of time and trigger point therapy. I highly recommend reading about trigger point therapy if you have muscle pain or cramping, because my limited experience with it has been extremely positive.

I had my first workout on Monday, 11/7/11, three days ago. I went with a friend who has been doing the Geek to Freak program for several weeks now, and he showed me through a G2F workout. After trying the different workout, I decided to discard Occam's Protocol and go all-out with Geek to Freak.

The idea behind G2F is also simple: work as many muscle groups as possible to failure within a limited period of time, and your body will respond with a massive hormonal shift that favors muscle gain and fast metabolism. Work every muscle to failure in one set with 5/5 cadence, then go home, eat a ton and only go back for another workout after the soreness is gone.

Here's a list of the exercises I did, which will change slightly (*) due to some minor shoulder joint issues I have:

• Leg Curl
• Calve Raise
• Reverse Curl (palms facing down)
• Chest Fly*
• Assisted Dips
• Leg Press
• Barbell Pullover
• The "Yates" Bent Row
• Bosu Ball Crunch

Leg exercises are great for shifting hormone balance because they're huge and command a lot of body resources, and are also probably the most useful muscles in everyday life (duh). 

I'll be replacing the chest fly with the chest press machine. I honestly prefer the fly for the range of motion it covers, but unfortunately my left shoulder can't take much lateral torque. I'm not sure why because I don't recall ever injuring it, but it needs to be worked around anyway.

The "Yates" bent row is a great multi-joint exercise, but form is especially important with this one. I'll spend a few minutes rowing just the bar next time to get my form right before putting any real weight on.

Bosu ball crunches are awesome and I'll recommend them to anybody who just does normal crunches. I was only able to do about 12 of them, after which my abs felt way more used than they do after a set of normal crunches.

I've got an appointment with a physician in a few hours, where I'll explain what I'm doing in the hope of getting approved for some Student Health Insurance-paid blood tests for enzymes, hormones, etc. I've also received a tip that NO-Xplode can cause temporary liver problems in some people, so I'll be looking at liver enzymes as well. I'll try to get as many tests done as they'll let me have, partly because I'm concerned about my liver and partly because data turns me on.

In the next post I'll tabulate my vitals over the past few days, and try to set up some metrics other than sheer weight.

Intermission

My first workout didn't go exactly as planned.

My recurring, debilitating Trapezius cramps stopped me from reaching my set minimum on any exercise. I'm going to take a week off from any upper-body training and get a massage or two this weekend.

Words can't describe my frustration with this setback, so to compensate I'm replacing Occam's Protocol with the Geek to Freak plan. Geek to Freak uses only full-body, untargeted exercises to create a larger hormonal response and hopefully work a bit faster than Occam's does.

Square One

I'm about an hour away from my first gym session. I spent the weekend figuring out my starting weights for each exercise and preparing for Occam's Protocol. The beginning is upon us.

Starting Body Weight: 147.8 lbs
A little more than expected. Hmm.

Starting weights per exercise:

• Overhead Shoulder Press: 60 lbs.
• Supinated Pulldown: 95 lbs.
• Slight-incline Chest Press: 130 lbs.
• Leg Press: 100 lbs.

Now comes the part all you ladies have been waiting for.

BEFORE

Such unbridled masculinity! O, rue the day this image had been taken, for surely none after it could so uplift the aggregate sexiness of the Internet

Tonight I'll post about my workout, and introduce the ignorant among you to the best thing on the internet.