Ketosis? What's that?

This morning I tried to test my urine for ketones using some urinalysis strips my wife provided me with. I don't know if the strips didn't work, or if I used them wrong, or if I am not in ketosis, but I didn't see any recognizable change.

Granted, I'm only a few days in now, but I was expecting at least a tiny reaction, particularly since my diet consists of about 2 grams net carbs.

The only thing I can think to do at this point is get some more strips and test again tomorrow or the next day to see if there is a reaction. This time I will buy a pack specifically for this purpose so as to eliminate the strips themselves as a factor. If this still comes up negative then I may have to start looking for reasons as to why my body is still generating a lot of insulin.

I'm also having a bunch of other semi-related health issues right now. I'll just enumerate:

• Good: Weight appears to be down 1kg since Tuesday. That's probably mostly water though, let's see if it holds till the next official weigh in.
• Bad: Sleep is still off. My insomnia isn't really improving much, if at all. I'm aiming for 8 hours a night but even then still only managing maybe 6.
• Good: My recovery from yesterdays workout is much improved in relation to Monday's workout. I actually feel like I could go again today, but it's scheduled for tomorrow, so let's do that.
• Bad: Slight bit of nausea this morning, not sure why. It may be passing. Also, my wife seems to have the flu, so... let's just cross our fingers here, shall we?
• Good: Food prep is really working for keeping me on the straight and narrow in regards to diet. Definitely I am going to continue this for next week. 

Overall, it's a mixed bag this week so far. I think I'l have to seriously consider how I'm doing after the weigh-in on Tuesday. I am certainly aiming for a 1kg a week weight loss, which shouldn't be impossible with my current diet and exercise regime. Overall, I'd like to lose about 9kg's in 8 weeks if I can manage it, or about 20lbs for any American readers. I'm not sure that this rate of weight loss is really sustainable or not, but given that I started at 27kg overweight, I feel like 9kg relatively fast like that is do-able. I accept that it will more than likely slow down after that.

Tonight I am going to go shopping for food for meal prep. We're going to be doing mostly the same meals, but switching it up slightly. Dinner meal will move to lunch and Dinner will be replaced with sausage, onions, garlic and green veg at about the same calorie/carb ratio. Overall my macros nutrients and calorie content will not change much, so this is simply a case of adding some variety.

After that, on Saturday, along with my scheduled work out, I need to do some meal prep (my wife will be helping) as well as drive to a mall to pick up some olympic weight plates (1.25 and 2.5kg varieties) as well as a weight belt. So much to do, and somewhere in here I need to find some time to continue practicing my Japanese!

StrongLifts 5x5, Week 1, Day 2

The soreness in my legs finally abated enough after a 2 day rest for me to continue my StrongLifts program. Here are the results below:

Week A

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (20kg)	Squat 5x5 (22.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (25 kg)
Bench press 5x5 (20kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (20kg)	Bench press 5x5 (22.5kg)
Barbell Row 5x5 (30kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (40kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (30kg)

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5
Overhead press 5x5	Bench press 5x5	Overhead press 5x5
Deadlift 1x5	Barbell Row 5x5	Deadlift 1x5

Today's workout was pretty short. This is probably due mostly to the fact that I'm only doing one set of Deadlifts instead of 5, but also I suspect that I'm not resting enough in between sets. I'll investigate more.

Anyway, felt worked out and sweaty when I finished, so the effort was definitely there. I'll be hitting up the gym on Saturday for workout #3, but I'm going to go to the local sports store before hand to purchase a weight belt (I'm quickly going to need it as the lifts go up) as well as some incremental olympic plates - I checked thoroughly today, the gym I go to doesn't have any lower than 2.5kg and even those are hard to find.

Tomorrow I'm going to test my ketone levels... I'm curious what it will look like!

Hey, this hurts

The soreness from my Monday workout hasn't really diminished yet, in fact it feels like it has amplified. This probably has something to do with the fact that for the last two nights I have had horrible insomnia. So, I imagine it was something like this: Monday work out and rip muscles, Tuesday morning wake up totally exhausted and sore, sit in office all day, Wednesday morning wake up slightly more rested, but sore as hell.

Anyway, I've decided to give myself 2 days to recover from this first workout instead of 1 and pushed my lifting back one day. I literally cannot bend my legs low enough right now even after stretching to be able to squat. So, right now my schedule is going to be Lifts on Thursday and then Saturday, then go into Week B on Monday.

I'm going to be reading on the interwebs on any tricks to help muscles recover (other than vitamins, protien and sleep, all of which I am trying to do).

The thing that really kills me about this is that even just a couple of years ago, I wouldn't be this sore from that workout. This is middle age people - don't underestimate it.

Tuesday Weigh-In, Start of Keto Diet

Well, the results are in from last week's "Lazy Keto" and they are... not so hot. Evidently I was lazier than I thought. I literally lost only 100 grams (down to 97kg), which could even be a scale fluctuation. I suppose I'm happy that it didn't go up, but at that rate it would take me weeks to even lose a single kilogram.

Well, it's a good thing I started a much more structured Keto diet plan this Monday.

Keto Week 1 Front. 

Keto Week 1: Side

In other news I woke up with a mid-strength case of soreness in my body, primarily my legs. It's obviously the after effects of the 5x5 workout I did on Monday. I'll make sure to drink a lot of water today to try and recover in time for my workout tomorrow morning and of course, take my vitamins which I've forgotten about until now (nothing like pain to make you remember things like this).

In addition, since this is the second day of doing strict Keto, I'll be looking to test my ketones by the end of the week and hopefully see that I'm at least starting proper ketosis.

Japanese Class

Japanese class went pretty good today. I felt like I was on-top of the material, maybe even a little ahead. That's cool.

My pronunciation is pretty horrible, but I found a good resource that will hopefully correct that. It's called Easy NHK - As far as I can tell, it's Japanese news for dummies. The announcer talks very slow, the article is written mostly in hiragana and where kanji is present it has furagana to help. Pretty much exactly what I need to improve my listening skills. The obvious problem is my "reading" is waaaay behind. If I listen to a passage several times, I can start to follow the words, but it's a laborious undertaking.

I suspect it will get easier once my vocabulary starts to increase and I go from recognizing "characters" to recognizing complete words (just like english - our brains actually parse entire words and not the letters in them).

Also, our teacher showed off and recommended a good application from the Japan Foundation for memorizing hiragana. The main feature that I saw was that it both tested you, plus allowed you to practice your strokes in writing (on the ipad) as well as pronounced the phonetic sound for you as well. I'm going to download it to my wife's ipad since I don't own any apple devices!

Our next class is delayed a week due to a holiday and scheduling conflict, so we will be meeting on October 10th. I'll make sure to practice a lot between now and then!

StrongLifts 5x5 Week 1, Day 1

Had my first StrongLifts workout today. The results are below:

Week A

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (20kg)	Squat 5x5 (22.5kg)	Squat 5x5
Bench press 5x5 (20kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (20kg)	Bench press 5x5 (22.5kg)
Barbell Row 5x5 (30kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (40kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (30kg)

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5
Overhead press 5x5	Bench press 5x5	Overhead press 5x5
Deadlift 1x5	Barbell Row 5x5	Deadlift 1x5

First noticeable thing is that I failed the Barbell Row sets. I got to the final set and then gimped out on the final row. The rows prior to that were awfully shallow as well. The Bench Press was no problem at all, quite easy actually, but the Squats gave me a tiny bit of trouble. It wasn't the weight in so much as it was the form - I had to stretch out really hard for a minute or two before I could even get the form correct!

Another thing I noticed - doing some exercises (Squat and Barbell Row) my gut is in the bloody way. Ha! It's like - I know I have my back perpendicular for the row when my gut is squeezed up between my torso and my thighs. Ugh!

All in all it was a good workout. I'm still sweating actually and I feel that sore/weak after workout muscle feeling all over my body. It's pretty amazing considering it barely took me over half an hour to do the entire workout.

Now my next challenge is finding 1.25kg plates in that crappy gym. I might need to buy my own!

My 5x5 StrongLifts Plan

I'm going to follow the "Generic" 5x5 alternating week plan. For me, this looks like:

Week A

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (20kg)	Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5
Bench press 5x5 (20kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (20kg)	Bench press 5x5
Barbell Row 5x5 (30kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (40kg)	Barbell Row 5x5

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5
Overhead press 5x5	Bench press 5x5	Overhead press 5x5
Deadlift 1x5	Barbell Row 5x5	Deadlift 1x5

The plan is thus: Each workout where I can complete all 5 of my sets, I add 2.5kg to the next workout on that exercise, with the exception of the Deadlift where I will add 5kg. I am starting mostly with 20kg which is the weight of a normal bar but adding a slight amount for the barbell row and the Deadlift.

I'll be keeping track of my progress in a diary and then posting the results here.

Keto Meal Prep Sunday and Last Nights Regrets

As mentioned previously, we went to that house warming/birthday party last night. Food wise, I did pretty good - didn't really eat anything atrocious (or anything at all). Drink wise... well I had a few beers that I shouldn't have, and I mean that, I really shouldn't have.

I haven't been much of a drinker for a long time now and then I loaded up on beers on a nearly empty stomach with predictable results - praying to the porcelain god.

Anyway, with that out of the way, today started off with a slight hang over (my wife much worse than me, poor thing) and an early morning start on our meal prep for the week. We're trying to stick with a 100% Keto diet and meal prepping 6 meals a week with 1 day of "eat something different" to keep ourselves sane (mostly my wife who can't tolerate eating the same thing every day as well as I can).

For breakfast we are doing 2 hard boiled eggs with bacon:

A weeks worth of bacon for 2 people is a sight to behold.

For lunch we are doing 2 chicken thighs, marinated in garlic and with a cup of steamed vegetables (no potatoes or starches):

Eggs in the plastic bag, chicken in the containers.

Then for dinner we are doing hamburger rissoles with sauteed onions, green paper and garlic with another cup of steamed vegetables:

Beef rissoles with veggies.

It took my wife and I about 4 hours to complete all of the meal prep. That's 3 meals a day for each of us for 6 days. In the end I think we'll save a lot of time in normal cooking as well as cleaning (less dishes) and it should be cheaper than what we were doing before as well (we were able to buy in bulk, plus I will no longer be buying lunch at work). The calorie count here should be approximately 1,500 per day and less than 2 grams of net carbohydrates.

All said, I'm really looking forward to weighing in a week from next Tuesday (and slightly dreading this upcoming Tuesday!)

Life Pro Tip: Don't pee directly on urinalysis strips.

Yeah, this probably goes without saying unless your a moron like me. I went to check my urine for keytones today and first thing in the morning I try to take a whiz on a urinalysis strip. The force of my early morning spray was so violent it actually tore the testing paper off the strip!

Yeah, I'll do it the right way from now on. (Capture mid-stream into a cup, dip in cup, wait, etc).

Even though I'll rinse it out, I should probably put a sticker on the cup if I leave it in the bathroom so that my wife doesn't do something horrible with it. She'll kill me (or herself) if she finds out she rinsed her mouth with my pee cup.

In other news I found an acceptable diary for my 5x5 progress log. I'll work out the plan this weekend and post it.

Following on from that, tonight I am going to the shops after work to buy some inexpensive shorts and t's to exercise in.  My current plan is still to go early morning 3x a week. In preparation for that I've been going to bed earlier than I ever have before (and waking up at around 5am).

It feels like I'm doing the right things so far... the next challenge is what to do about that party tomorrow night. STRESS.

Keto, 5x5, Upcoming party on Saturday

I got into a snit with my wife this morning. It turns out she was invited to a birthday party/house warming from a work colleague sometime recently and just informed me this morning. First off, I was kind of annoyed because I wanted us to spend some time together on Saturday and secondly I was annoyed because when she said "You're invited too!" it didn't really make me happy.

The reason for this, should be obvious - Parties usually contain food and beverages that someone trying to lose weight really shouldn't be consuming.

Anyway, I'm going. I just need to buckle down now and work out a plan to survive 3-4 hours of this party on Saturday night without being miserable and putting everyone out. I'll think of something.

On a positive front, I was browsing the /r/keto subreddit today and came across a post by a guy following something mysteriously called "5x5". After a little bit of investigation, it looks like a relatively simply weight training regime focused on building strength (and through strength, fitness).

If people are interested, you can read more about it here: StrongLifts 5x5. I already am fairly familiar with these exercises (I was doing most of them fairly regularly a while back when I was healthier) but I wasn't following a specific plan.

Since I already have a membership to a gym by my house, I think I will start going there in the morning and following this plan. The gym opens at 5:30 am supposedly, so I should be able to make it by 6 or 7 at the latest. The workout should take about 45 minutes, which then gives me an hour or so to shower and walk to work. Luckily all of this (home, gym, work) takes place within a small 5 block radius. One of the nice benefits of living in the city.

So wrapping it all up, these are the things I need to do right away:

• Bring some food/drinks to this house warming party that will allow me to avoid stuff I shouldn't have.
• Get a diary of some sort to track my 5x5 weight training progress.
• Buy some clothes to workout in (none of my old workout clothes fit my current fat ass).
• Shop on Saturday, do meal prep on Sunday for next week's keto diet.

Somewhere in here I also need to find some time to continue practicing my moon language skills.

Ganbatte ne!

Japanese Class Today

Had my second official Japanese class today. Technically it's the 4th one of the "semester" but I started late. It was all fine though because it was relatively easy to catch up and our teacher, Masako-san, spent some time with me after class to review the earlier chapter.

My take away so far is:

Things I can evidently handle well

• Rote memorization of numbers (I was really fast compared to everyone else)
• Learning hirigana (I'm using a flashcard program which seems to have given me a leg up)

Things I suck at

• Listening - Hell, even when I know what the teacher is saying I have a hard time following.
• Pronunciation - As expected, this is horrible. This is compounded by the fact that I have a stutter that I've managed to successfully hide through years of speech therapy as a child.

Next week our teacher is supposed to bring in an app to show off that basically is a combination of hiragana flashcards with phonetic pronunciation built into it. I'll keep an eye for something like this that I can download to my computer or phone. I have a sense that if I focus on thinking about everything as phonemes (ergo, か  = "ka" sound) and then restrict myself to only speaking these sounds, I might be able to slowly conquer my pronunciation problem.

At the very least, I'll be able to read and speak hiragana (even if I don't understand the word I'm saying... vocabulary is entirely another matter).

Learning Japanese

Last week (before I started this blog) I had my first Japanese class.

I've always been interested in this because I enjoy reading manga, but have been limited in what I can read due to having to rely on English translations. However, the thing that really made me get off my ass and work towards this was a Birthday Present I "gave" my wife last year.

Basically, it was a promissory "note" if you will for her 30th birthday that stated that I'd attempt to "grant one wish" that she had.

She thought about it for a few days, and then came back with what I thought was an excellent idea - She wants to go to the 2020 Olympics in Japan.

Three new wild goals have appeared:

• Learn Japanese 
• Plan a 2020 Japan vacation for the Olympics
• Save up enough money to go on above trip.

I probably have the third point covered right now with our savings, but I'll talk more about that later since there are some other financial related goals I need to deal with between now and then.

Ketogenic Diet

Ketogenic Diet's are quite the fad, but I'm proud (??) to say that I got on board that train before it was popular. It's how I initially lost that first 60kg. Anyway, the problem with diets (all diets) is that people tend to put on weight when they go off them and I've certainly done that. I stopped eating ketogenic and started gorging on carbs and beer (more carbs). This went on for about 6 years now, causing me to put on an average of about 4kg a year.

Obviously this is a trajectory that I'm going to try to reverse, so I'm heading back on the keto train.

This week I'm going to "eyeball" the calorie content of my food, but be strict about keeping carb/sugar consumption to a minimum. In addition to this I had a long discussion with my wife last night and we're both going to start following a strict ketogenic diet starting next Monday.

The terms of the diet are this: I will meal prep 6 days worth of meals for us on the weekend. We'll eat those meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner, then on the 7th day we shall rest (basically cook whatever we want - within reason). Then back on a 6 day pre-planned meal schedule.

This entire "strict" phrase of meal prep is supposed to last until the New Year (101 days from now, or about 95 from the start of our diet). I want to lose 12kg by then, at which point I will move to a more "maintenance" type of meal plan cooking (still following keto) but focusing more on exercise for weight loss (running and some cross training with weights).

I should be fine with this. Believe it or not, I'm a very "boring" person when it comes to eating - my habits are more around convenience than anything else. I'm notorious for eating the same lunch every day for years. Basically I am banking on using a strange personality quirk of mine to help lose weight.

It worked for me once, right?

Sleeping

I struggle with insomnia. When I'm working (like I am now) I have a tendency to sleep 4 hours or less a night. Now, this isn't good for a variety of reasons other than just feeling tired - lack of sleep has been related to both elevated stress levels as well as problems with weight.

So, in that light, one of the things I have been trying to do is sleep more over the last couple of days. It turns out... I can't, at least not that much more.

In light of that - a new goal appears: Sleep 8 hours a night for 7 contiguous days.

Health Goals

Health and Fitness. Bleh. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE has goals around these two subjects, don't they?

To me, this is fairly important because I'm getting older. I guess the reality of the situation is really starting to sink in now that I'm past 40 and realizing that "tomorrow" isn't necessarily a bright and happy day filled with possibility, but more of a thing to dread because it's part of a downward spiral into death. 

Cheery, huh?

Anyway, I did pretty good on this front a few years ago. I used to weigh about 130 kg and got down to 70kg through diet and exercise. Since then I've ballooned back up to about 97.1kg as of this morning.

Here are some pictures to prove the carnage on my waistline (enjoy the manboobs)

Side view carnage.

Full frontal?

I'm going to keep a picture once a week. Maybe I'll be able to do a photo collage at some point, won't that be exciting? Anyway, this is old ground I've tread on before, so I do know what I need to do - I just need to do it.

That being said, my fitness goals are as such:

• Drop from 97.1kg to 70kg.
• Be able to run a half marathon (21km) in under 2 hours and 30 minutes.
• Benchpress 110% of my weight (this is 90th percentile for my age group)

Depending on how you look at it, these are either impressive goals or "realistic goals" for someone who puts in a lot of effort. Anyway, first - I need to focus on diet and nutrition. More on that later.

Why a blog?

All of us have goals, or things that we want to accomplish, the primary thing in our way isn't usually outside influence, but instead our own commitment to these goals. The idea behind this blog is simple - I'm going to lay out a variety of goals that I want to accomplish and then use this blog as a way of keeping myself "honest" about the progress towards those goals.

Basically, I figure that if I can annoy myself with having to write down what I'm doing and how I'm progressing towards my goals, then it'll both help me be mindful of what I'm trying to do (instead of ignoring it and waiting till tomorrow) as well as put some pressure on myself to keep moving forward.

We'll see how this experiment pans out.