Action Geeks

Four Days, Four Lbs.

I really need to start exersizing again. I started the Slow Carb diet on Monday with a weight of 260.0 lbs.  I weighed in early on friday at 255.6 lbs. Not bad, for the first short week of a diet I was skeptical about to begin with. I was pretty sure that I was going to see an initial increase due to the lack of calorie counting and full plates of food I've been packing away at every single meal.

I'll keep tracking progress. It'll be interesting to see how this diet does in the long run. But at the end of day six, I don't hate it. I actually like it quite a bit. Despite my skepticism, I'm rooting for it.

Of course, if this crazy diet pans out,  I am going to have to try my hand at several of the other chapters in The Four Hour Body. I'll need a Kettle bell for the first experiment.

Alabama Day Two and Three

On Saturday morning I met up with a group over at the Methodist church in Dadeville, Al.  We moved further down the path of the same tornado that hit the house that I had gone to the previous night. When I arrived the shingless roof was being patched and some parts of it rebuilt. The storm had lifted off the chimney and dropped it four feet from where the owners of the house sat inside of a closet.

We worked the chainsaws behind the house, cutting through limbs and trunks to clear a large area that I found out had been used during the Great Depression as a Civillian Corps work camp. There was still evidence of that camp in the form of concrete and brick slabs, old bottles and plates uprooted by the fallen trees.

Unfortunately on Sunday, most of the cleanup was put on hold so that everyone could go to church.  Day three became a trip home to meet up with Jenn, who had been helping with a clean up at Berry College where straightline winds had knocked over around 500 trees on their campus just a few days before.

Update from Alabama day one

It took longer to get here than I figured.  After having been up all night at work, I was able to get on the road, heading south on 85 with the vague idea of showing up and moving some branches or something, nebulous but well intentioned. I think this is the way that FEMA works... move their big lumbering aparatus to wherever it might be needed and then  ...  do something.

It didnt take long  before I found myself inside of a house  with no roof and a few fewer walls. Night had fallen and we were trying to empty the salvagable possessions before the compromised house became too dangerous to enter.

Tomorrow I am going to try to link up with the local Methodist disaster relief org or maybe the Baptists.  But until then it is time for sleep.

Kindle Blogging

About a month ago I picked up a Kindle for book reading while at work. Right now it is an every day use item. I have about 300 books, pamphlets, and papers downloaded. I use it for web browsing, reading and even list making. I don't use the soud related features. the speakers and mp3 capabilities are a waste.

 

and now i have tested it in bloggng.

Bandaids

Jack is three years old, or at least he will be in a month. We had a check up today which included some shots. A couple quick pokes, and we were done. On to the cookies, bubbles and promises of stopping for milk shakes.  Pretty soon, Jack was blaming the bandaids for his misfortune.

I am about 10 times Jack's age. I've been dealing with some bandaids of my own.  After a long history of knee related injuries, I had, guess what, another knee injury. It wasn't anything major, requiring little more than rest and rehab. Thankfully, no surgery this time. It turns out that I was fighting against two universal truths; humans are not meant to weigh 500 lbs, and also not meant to lift 500 lbs. Even if there is two of you.

I strained my PCL lifting a rather large patient. No fall. No accident. Just a loud pop. Thankfully I was already in an ER when it happened. Now I am getting ready to start back to a workout routine, but I've been doing some reading in my down time, and I am also going to start doing a couple of things. First I am going to experiment with TIm Ferriss' 4Hour Body diet, AKA the Slow carb diet. It is simple in it's structure and doesn't even attempt to limit total in-take.

It works like this:

Rule #1: Avoid “white” carbohydrates

Avoid any carbohydrate that is — or can be — white. The following foods are thus prohibited, except for within 1.5 hours of finishing a resistance-training workout of at least 20 minutes in length: bread, rice, cereal, potatoes, pasta, and fried food with breading. If you avoid eating anything white, you’ll be safe.

Rule #2: Eat the same few meals over and over again

The most successful dieters, regardless of whether their goal is muscle gain or fat loss, eat the same few meals over and over again. Mix and match, constructing each meal with one from each of the three following groups:

Proteins:
Egg whites with one whole egg for flavor
Chicken breast or thigh
Grass-fed organic beef
Pork

Legumes:
Lentils
Black beans
Pinto beans

Vegetables:
Spinach
Asparagus
Peas
Mixed vegetables

Eat as much as you like of the above food items. Just remember: keep it simple. Pick three or four meals and repeat them. Almost all restaurants can give you a salad or vegetables in place of french fries or potatoes. Surprisingly, I have found Mexican food, swapping out rice for vegetables, to be one of the cuisines most conducive to the “slow carb” diet.

Most people who go on “low” carbohydrate diets complain of low energy and quit, not because such diets can’t work, but because they consume insufficient calories. A 1/2 cup of rice is 300 calories, whereas a 1/2 cup of spinach is 15 calories! Vegetables are not calorically dense, so it is critical that you add legumes for caloric load.

Some athletes eat 6-8x per day to break up caloric load and avoid fat gain. I think this is ridiculously inconvenient. I eat 4x per day:

[...]

Rule #3: Don’t drink calories

Drink massive quantities of water and as much unsweetened iced tea, tea, diet sodas, coffee (without white cream), or other no-calorie/low-calorie beverages as you like. Do not drink milk, normal soft drinks, or fruit juice. I’m a wine fanatic and have at least one glass of wine each evening, which I believe actually aids sports recovery and fat-loss. Recent research into resveratrol supports this.

Rule #4: Take one day off per week

I recommend Saturdays as your “Dieters Gone Wild” day. I am allowed to eat whatever I want on Saturdays, and I go out of my way to eat ice cream, Snickers, Take 5, and all of my other vices in excess. I make myself a little sick and don’t want to look at any of it for the rest of the week. Paradoxically, dramatically spiking caloric intake in this way once per week increases fat loss by ensuring that your metabolic rate (thyroid function, etc.) doesn’t downregulate from extended caloric restriction. That’s right: eating pure crap can help you lose fat. Welcome to Utopia.

[http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/06/how-to-lose-20-lbs-of-fat-in-30-days-without-doing-any-exercise/]

Simple.

I like it.

I am going to see how it will mesh with the 4 lists of Alton Brown tonight. The big plus, though, is that it allows (in theory) for a lower level of physical activity while I get my knee back in shape.

This is why I call this blog Action Geeks. It isn't about mental prevarication about the bush. This blog is about doing, and about measuring and about being geeks with mud on our hands and grass stains on our knees.

 

Operation: MuffinTop Day 5 - Only 90% to Go!

Right now the official weigh in looks like - 4 lbs, of course it's a bit more in metric, somewhere around 5 kilometers. This is pretty consistent with my expectations, I hope to drop around 15-20 lbs this month,  another 10 by the end of 90 days and a final 10 after about the 6 month mark. Of course that will put my firmly in swinsuit season, and I might grace you guys with a few Man-kini pics. Probably not.

Today looks to be a busy day. I have a few truck related errands to run as well as hitting my day 6 workout tonight. After that, we'll be off, arriving in sunny Orlando middle of the day tomorrow and returning around Monday. I may update tonight, but if not, there will be no more updates until I return.  

Another Reason to Work Out, Or, Operation MuffinTop Day 4

Add another half an hour and some change and about 300 calories onto the tally.  I'm glad that I've been keeping this log here, because I noticed that I failed to save my first two workouts on the wii. You win some and lose some.

I was thinking while I was working out about how working out causes an increase in connective tissue formation. And there is a big bonus for those who may find themselves in a situation where someone with some  malice and forethought, and an oven, may want to eat you. So if you are going on a trip to an island possibly inhabited by a cannibal--say may be you are a Rockefeller heir--or you run a high risk of alien abduction, more connective tissue makes for less tender meat. Think about really expensive beef. Veal is a bunch of fat little cows kept in a crate. If you don't want to taste like that, don't live like that.

Sadly in the case of a zombie apocalypse, connective tissue doesn't make much difference. They are going to eat the first thing that they come across. However, Rule #1 is still Cardio. You will start out ahead of the game.

Don't forget to kill 'em twice.

Operation: MuffinTop Days 1-3

So, I have two workouts under my belt. The day before yesterday and today. Yesterday was a rest day because I work 24 hour shifts and the two day on one day off workout schedule has a good rhythm to it that matches up with the workout program that I use. For those familiar with the Yellow Blog, you'll remember my fondness for video game workouts. And while I have moved beyond using Dance Dance Revolution as a workout regimine (its a good one), my 8-bit gamer heart just won't give up on EA Sports Active. So, I am back for another 30 day challenge and  instead of setting the bar at 6000 calories like last time, I am shooting for 8000 calories in 30 days(ish). 

I say "ish" because I have a 5 day trip woked in and while I will work in a good work out or two in the middle of that, I am going to be slightly behind on my total workouts. I am also going to have to really push harder than I did last time with at least a couple of 2 work out days a week in the second half of the month. 

But for now, I am on day 3. Between the first two workouts I am at 654 Calories in just over an hour of working out total.  I was a bit sore yesterday, but nothing like the last time. Last time I started this workout, I couldn't walk right for the first week. It was rough. 

Tomorrow is day 4. Day 5 I'll do a weigh in and we will measure some progress.

 

My Big Fat Outer Geek

Okay, I'm really not fat. I know I shouldn't talk about myself like that, but I don't feel great. And being a 30 year old Action Geek, I really should feel good, if not great. I feel sluggish, and tired and you know, I didn't feel this way 40 Lbs ago.  So here is the plan:

1. Diet
2. Exersize

There is really no need for three. Actually that isn't true. Manage my stress¹  and get a regular 8 hours of sleep a night. I'll do what I can with 1&2.

So this is what I look like at 262 lbs. Cut about 50 Lbs of gut and add 10 lbs of muscle and I will look somewhat different.

Really, I am not bad off, I have a 6'5" frame, and I can crank my metabolism up pretty easily even being out of my 20's by increasing the number of meals I eat, decreasing the size, increasing the density of nutrients in my food while decreasing the total exess energy (calories)  in each unit of food. And then throwing a work out on top of it 2 out of every three days should set me to full burn.

Should.

It worked a year ago. I lost 40 lbs, and I felt great. Then things happened. People got sick, I stopped working out, work got busy, school got crazy. Excuses. Excuses. 

This year, I need to keep it going.  First off, I am not (Not!) going the eating out of a box method. It worked last year, but the trade off was I spent a good deal of cash trying to eat 1500 - 1750 calories a day. And those things are usually just bricks of carbs.  This year I am going to be doing something different. Right now we are working on some lists. Taking a cue from Alton Brown, I've been eating of of a things to eat list.  So far instead of his four lists, I only have one. 

Food to eat weekly:

• Avocados
• Oats
• Greek Yogurt
• Berries
• Red Beans
• Spinach
• Sweet Potatoes
• Pumpkin
• Flax
• Tomatoes
• Broccoli
• Almonds
• Chayotes
• Brussel  Sprouts
• Kale

Now Alton has a daily list, and I'm sure that eventually this will get added to and broken down to where I am eating off of that, and maybe even a list of things to eat 3 times a week. But lets not be too hasty. Right now, eat better and work out is enough. Refinement will be a process. BTW, did I mention that I have some yoga and fencing classes coming up?

So lets talk stats before I once again begin Operation Muffintop. I am 6'5" tall and 262 lbs. I wear an Extra large shirt and size 38 pants, though I am really almost a 40. I don't expect the shirt size to change because I have a very long torso, but the pant size will probably drop a few inches. Deus Providebit.

One more thing to keep in mind:  The Cake is a Lie

1. Yeah, on a list of most stress filled jobs, EMS comes in at about 3-5 every year and on worst jobs for 2010, EMS came in at #6 though, most EMS proffessionals would put our job near the top of a best of list.

The First Post

It's time to start a new blog. When I began my last one, I was working as a lab assistant in a nanotech facility. I was engaged and I was expecting a son in a few short months. In the next few years  I left the lab, became a father,  got back on an ambulance, finished paramedic school and nearly become a widower.

Now seasons are changing again. I am going to be leaving medicine as a career path, though I will never leave EMS as an avocation, I suppose. I am going back to school to become a biology teacher while I continue to move through the other areas of my life.

I never had a blog that focused on my inner geek before, because my inner geek is mostly an outer geek. I feel a certain kinship to Mr Wizard, Bill Nye and Alton Brown; people who did what they loved and loved what they did. Now I want to get to a point where I can pass that on to other people. What better way to do that than to become a science teacher? 

The plan looks something like this:

• Go back to school to get a teaching certificate in the biological sciences
• Become a Paramedic Instructor
• Teach

Pretty simple.

Now, I plan to work in a high school. Not really fertile ground for paramedic students, as no one is old enough to become an EMT, let alone a Paramedic. But I have this idea, and it's a crazy one.

Training shouldn't suck.

Anyone who has ever worked has had to sit through training videos. Usually (99 out of 99.1 times) the video is so poorly written, painfully acted and terribly put together that it isn't worth watching. But there is potential in the medium. If you could entertain and educate, if you could spark some connection beyond an obligatory viewing, training would be more effective.

Of course, this is going to have me going through just a bit more than just a teaching program and a paramedic instructors course. I'm going to dabble in stand up comedy, and take a few acting classes along the way. And that should just be the beginning.

This is going to be the blog that shares the journey. Hopefully the changes that happen in the next five years will be worth following along with, and even revisiting. Thanks for checking in.