New Layout!

Changed the layout to correspond with my latest diet tracking. I have a white board at home that I used to use for DnD when we'd fight, but since Laird made the laminated graph paper stuff we don't need it, so I drew my very own leveling graph, complete with rewards and quests.

My current quest is to do my weight training every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday during March. I will receive a dinner out (I only eat at home nowadays) at Outback Steakhouse. I can never find a good enough reason to justify spending money on myself, so I figured small steps would be good. Some of my rewards include an "Epic Mount" and a "Dungeon Raid for Epic Gear". A new car and a shopping spree, respectively.

Pain, Pain, Go Away

My back has been killing me for the past two days and I don't know why. Maybe it's sore from drinking, or maybe it's sore from sleeping on it wrong. I don't know. But there's this spot on the left hand side of my lower back that is just dying. Why me? :(

I've edited my diet a bit. I've added in more carbs, because the cravings were killing me and I kept cheating and binging. So now it's less than 100g of carbs per day. As few starchy carbs as possible, as little fructose as possible. Every few weeks I'll lower this 'limit' by 10g until I'm at an amount I'm comfortable with and don't constantly feel "deprived." I am in this for the long haul after all--I'm not going to do something I wont be able to keep up long term!

Here's what my exercise schedule looks like:
Monday, Wednesday, Friday: Couch to 5k. I'm currently on my 2nd go of Week 2.
Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday: Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe.

Except I'm going to start actually exercising now. I'm still hovering at 187-188 from 193. I've been stalled for too long too soon, I'm kicking myself into gear!

Also, I've finally managed to get a camcorder (well, a bloggie...) from my sister and the badass transformation video is underway. Sure, it's going to take 6-8 months, but it will be so worth it.

No More Downward Trend

Finally, my weight loss chart went back up in weight. Not that I'm upset at all about losing a pound a day, I just was wondering when this reality was going to come to a crashing halt, and I didn't want to get my hopes up and have them crushed by the soulless mechanisms of my body. Or something like that. I'm thinking about changing the color of the purple center column to dark purple or something when I'm on my period. Or maybe I'll go with an obvious and hella bright red. Haha.

I ended up with 39 net carbs last night. :( May be just what I needed, because I feel a lot better today, but urgh! I'm annoyed with myself. I didn't eat until about 5:30PM because I just didn't get hungry. Then all of a sudden I was starving. I had 2/8ths of Linda's Mexican Spinach Lasagna. For dinner I had a Carl's Jr. Jalapeno Burger sans the bread (and onions, I didn't want to eat them alone. Ew.) and then I snacked on some sunflower seeds before finally heading to bed. I only got 4 or 5 cups of water.

So I'm going to be really strict today and make sure I'm monitoring what carbs I put into my body before I eat them. I'll continue to do this until the end of March. I'm sure by then I'll have finally remembered to grab Ketostix when I'm at the store. Speaking of the store, I need to go shopping. Bacon, eggs... Any suggestions for low-carb snacks and meals? I have lots of chicken, cheese and ground beef. Looking for a bit of variation.

Ugh, my period

I'm at 187 this morning, and I'm on the 2nd day of my period. I hurt. I just took two ibuprofen and that's doing alright. The trendline on my Google Chart looks fucking awesome. I hope this trend continues, but I'm sure it wont. I'm working on disproving the 2000 calories a day - 500 calorie deficit - 500 calories of exercise = 2lbs of weight lost a week. A calorie isn't just a calorie. More important is what your body does with that calorie, as explained by Dr Lustig in Sugar: The Bitter Truth. It goes into a lot of chemistry and can get hard to get through, but do it. You wont be disappointed.

I'm going running as soon as this ibuprofen kicks in. I'll be doing Couch To 5k Week 1 Day 3. I can't believe I'm almost on week 2. I'm nervous about week 2, wondering if maybe I can't do it or something. But I guess I'll get there when I get there, eh?

ALSO note to self: take before pictures! I need my girlfriend to take some so I can add them up. They'll be in tomorrows entry for sure, and possibly even on the sidebar. :) See you later/tomorrow.

What this BAMF-ing blog is all about

I have so many goals and projects in mind, I don't even know where to begin. But I figure the first post would be the most convenient place to start, so here I am. Please keep in mind that while this post will be pretty tl;dr and full of advice and information, most of my other posts will be about my progress and etc.

First things first:
My diet will be the most important part of this. You cannot out-exercise any diet, unless of course you're a marathoner. I am not. So I'm choosing a low-carb diet. More specifically, I'll be doing a ketogenic diet. There's a link on the sidebar for those of you who want to know more about it. To sum it up, I'll be eating no more than 20g of carbs a day until I enter ketosis. Once I'm in ketosis, I'll up the carbs by about 5g every few weeks to see how many carbs I can have and still stay in ketosis. I'm hoping to end up with about 30-40g, because that way I don't have to worry so much about cutting stuff out. (At 20g, I really have to watch what I eat because my house is filled with so many people who are all doing their own thing.)

Carbohydrates and possibly specifically carb fructose are not good for us. The documentary Fat Head (linked in the sidebar) and Sugar: The Bitter Truth (also in the sidebar) explain this concept far better than I could.

I'm aiming for 50% Fat, 45% Protein and 5% Carbs.

On Monday, Wednesday and Friday I'm currently doing couch-to-5k. This may evolve to the OHR program once I complete it, but it will remain a cardio day. Probably running.

On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday I'm doing the starting strength program. Sunday is my rest day.

I may adjust this as necessary. If you're a diet and exerciser like me, follow me! Comment! I want to read about your journey as much as I want to share mine.