A fast is fast

Entering my third week of Ketogenic meals and time restrictive eating the biggest surprise has to be my enjoyment of consuming all calories within an eight hour period. I begin calorie intake at noon each day, which allows me to enjoy dinner with my clan. The meal selections need work. Right now most pairings consist of lettuce, red meat or dark chicken meat, cheese, eggs, and bacon. Lots and lots of bacon. Oh bacon, how I love thee. Bacon is the carnivore gods’ candy. I need a moment… Ok, I am back.

Going into this dietary challenge, the eight hour window gave me great concern. Four days a week I wake at 4:30 a.m. to put in 90 minutes of swimming, and a fifth day I am up at 5:30. Challenges don’t scare me, but there were serious concerns of failure to launch when The ODJ prescribed this diet. I have been known to gnaw on shoe leather if food ain’t in my belly shortly after climbing out of the pool. To witness me in full panicked desperation for sustenance by 9:00 a.m. is to witness a man on the verge of a lizard brain coup d’état. In the past, I would be stripping off tree bark in my business park well before 12:00 p.m. However, the hunger apocalypse has yet to come. These past few weeks have been mind expanding. Noon comes with the calm passage of time. There have been no guttural cries. No full-body tremors. No wild-eyed predator outburst in breakfast meetings. Just a daily stomach growl that comes a calling mid-morning, but with a shot of cold water the beast returns to sleep.

Time restricted eating is alright by me. I won’t ever guarantee success of the keto part of the challenge. Carbs have a gravitational pull on me greater than seven pissed-off black holes. At least there is the reassurance if (more like, when) I fall off the “no carb” wagon I won’t be sucking down their sweet goodness until after the noon hour.

In the beginning there was stability

Working out gets serious when the gym sauce mixologist concocts a witch’s brew of stability. It also means the return of the fitness kingdom’s court jester… Stability ball. This freaking rubber globe is the heckler to my fragile ego’s chronic stutter. So jolly looking. Innocent and juvenile. “Bounce, bounce, bounce.” Says the Pied Piper. “Come out and follow… I’ve brought the big fat squishy orb to brighten your day.” Yeah right! Ask the rats how that lemming’s song ends.

Constructed of $.35 cents worth of high grade PVC and has a non-slip surface, this unassuming jokester aggravates the humanity out of me. The Eddie Haskell of the exercise world will pull a chair right out from under me before affixing the halo of cuteness for the world to see. I once drop-kicked a stability ball across the room in justifiable rage – by the scowls shot in my direction from my fellow patrons, you would’ve thought I had just punted the Pomeranian of a wheelchair-bound blind widow.

Let’s begin the precarious tightrope walk of public humiliation by inflatable sphere and gaining greater strength, agility, and most importantly, stability.

Chest / Triceps

3 x 12 Stability Ball Chest Press – 50lbs dumb bells

3 x 12 Cable / Rope Tricep Press Outs

3 x 12 Stability Ball Pushups J

3 x 12 Plank Pushups

Legs

3 x 12 each leg Machine Leg Press with one leg

3 x 12 each leg Bench Step Up Pee-Wee Hermans – 20lbs dumb bells

3 x :45 seconds Linebacker Squats

3 x 12 Donkey Calf – 125lbs

Back / Biceps

3 x 12 Deadlifts – 155lbs

3 x 12 Narrow Grip Rows – 120lbs

3 x 21 Bicep 21’s (full / upper / lower)

3 x 12 Reverse Flys – machine – 105lbs

Core / Shoulders

3 x 12 Stability Ball Plank Rollouts

3 x 30 Stability Ball Mountain Clibers

3 x 12 Hanging Knee Tucks

3 x 12 Shoulder Press – machine

(Rest 60 seconds between each round, and then 20 minutes of cardio)

Voices from the pantry... Part Two

There are some things I should never laugh about during a nutritional challenge. Carbohydrates are one. Don’t let their sweet fulfilling disposition be mistaken as goodness. Carbs have a mob boss’s sense of humor. I’ll crush your diet, your wife’s diet, your kids’ diet, your neighbor’s diet, and yo greasy greasy granny’s diet too. Breaking up with carbohydrates is the only thing worse than laughing in their general direction. Quitting the mob is easier… turn state's witness, leave your old life behind, break blood oaths, and forever be watching you six. Carbs just haunt with guilt and bullhorns.

When Jaron decided the first nutritional challenge should follow the Ketogenic philosophy, I knew my life was about to become very complicated. The Carbs crime family would not be pleased. Oh man, my constitution is weak and family bonds are strong. Jaron did not holster his diabolical pen with the food intake challenge. In addition to ketogenics “keto”, he added time restrictive eating. All of my 1800 – 2000 calories are to be consumed within the same eight hours, daily. Starving for the first six waking hours before eating all high fat low protein no carb lunches, snacks and dinners; then no boredom snacks at the end of the night. For a bonus agony, the constant mental Chinese water torture of carbohydrates reminding me who I am is omnipresent. You can’t survive without us Jarvis. We are family. You are turning on the family. You don’t want to make us mad. We own the pantry. Just dandy.

On the brighter side, I get to eat tons of pork rinds.

Voices from the pantry... Part One

“I’ve gotten used to ignoring them and I think, as a result, they’ve kind of given up on me.”  - John Forbes Nash

I only tried psilocybin once in college. I have been clean of distilled drink and THC for fifteen years. To ensure a trifecta of soberness, no caffeine in a decade. Each day my mind is lucid the moment the alarm clock buzzes at 4:30 a.m. There is little escape from reality with a head free of chemical vice. So why are there voices coming from the pantry?

I should bring the readership up to speed on my latest revelation. Recently, the thought came to my head, “What if I took control over food?” Luckily the pondering came to my head first, and not to my stomach. See, if that thought had entered my stomach first, this post would never be. Just writing the words “control” and “food” in the same sentence has set the beast within my gut afoul. Brutal dictators possess a softer disposition than my stomach scorned. A cunning overlord to the brain, hands and mouth... manipulating the four senses at the slightest hint of hunger. It should come with no surprise to find out I experienced full body dread when my neutered brain became cavalier and confronted stomach.

He could have tried it first unconsciously. No, not idiot brain. He left the intercom on when he called the stomach via the central nervous system. 

Uh… hello…brain calling… um yeah so, Lord Master Stomach I was just up here thinking. Uh..mmmm…uh, what if we laid off the muscle guys for a spell? They can’t even do one pull up or run a mile without a ten-minute union break. Uh, um, uhhhh. I was doing more thinking, and we could stop consuming copious amounts of the crap you force hands to shove into mouth, then the skin could take a rest from constantly stretching... Ok. I said it. Hope we are still cool. I will be up here daydreaming if you want to discuss. 

Stomach did not likey. Did not likey one bit. Thank goodness the creator did not give a factory reset button as an optional upgrade to the belly button. My stomach would have pushed that button. Might have even burnt this body down. Civil War. Ugly divorce. Dogs and cats. Coke and Pepsi. Yet... I likey. I likey a lot! Chill out stomach and get back in your lane. 

Born was the idea of focusing on food consumption as my challenge. And who else better to concoct a twisted set of dietary challenges? THE ODJ!... What will the master blaster of pain exploitation come up with? No clue. But it’s going be huge. Epic. Game changer. And a plethora of other clichés. Or, it’s just gonna suck and cause me to complain all the way through. Either way, the resulting reactions should make for quality fodder.

(I will get to the voices next post.)

Library card and $9.99 gym membership

We don't need no education 

We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone

                                                “We Don’t Need No Education” - Pink Floyd

“You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on an education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.”  -- Good Will Hunting

Recently, I toured UNLV’s Student Recreation and Wellness Center. A Massive 184,000 square foot exposed steel beam and masonry cathedral to co-ed fitness. An early 21^st century high-bay laboratory to self-preservation in the modern age of predestined indentured servitude. Six stories of offset multilevels with open air basketball courts, indoor soccer rinks and racquetball courts. Even the underutilized lap pool is of the highest quality and standards. The television walled cardio room projects silent images of corporate sponsored mental palate cleansing cocktails of talk shows, reality tv, and cable news.

Sharp lines pull the eyes down corridors lined with the best money can buy exercise equipment. Our handler pridefully notes the machines get heavy use during the bustling fall and spring semesters. But today the student population is light following the start to the summer term. Yet, the ghosts of exercises past are present -- stationary cardio workouts motivated by endless streaming tracks mixed by unrepentant hip-hop wordsmiths. Hey young ladies, it ain’t misogyny if you can dance to it.

A chemically enhanced uber-happy college ambassador bobs past. Not glancing once to his six. A freak of nature. Comfortable strolling backwards with the ease of a safari tour guide riding on imaginary rails. His jazz hands pointing out the facility amenities included in the massively overpriced experience of state school tuition. In tow, prefroshes and their parents. The eyes tell the tale. These are the damned. Time-share fresh fish sucking down the hook. Enthusiasm completely sucked out after the walk from the university book store to the dining hall, and through the immaculate dormitories.  Mindlessly shuffling past us, daydreaming their debt infused futures in the American Dream of the next generation having things better than the bygone ones. Doubt takes hold somewhere between the stair-masters and sexual assault response campaign posters.  

At least the federally subsidized cool air provides reprieve from the oppressive early summer Vegas midday furnace and distraction from decades of loan slavery. It’s a dry heat folks, and the gym provides free towels.

The Mormon and madman

“There he goes. One of Earth’s own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and to rare to die.”

 Jaron, the beast known as The ODJ around these parts, has departed the great desert meadows for grander adventures along Huntington Beach, California. SoCal’s tweaker Riviera. He shall be missed by Las Vegas barkeeps and aimless suburban socialites avoiding strings. May the cool ocean breeze not turn you soft my friend. You are UNLV stock… U Never Leave Vegas.

 

As for my workouts… now that the conductor of the pain train has taken an out of state work assignment I expect to be a more obedient gym rat. Unlike most trainers, Jaron did not charge me for work outs. I got what I paid for. Cheap laughs and half-hearted effort. And that was what I brought to the table. We spent more time creating back stories for our fellow gym patrons than actually working out. (See My name is, what?) We were the fattest people in the gym, but knew more about fitness than the certifieds on staff.

For nearly 25 years of sailing away on conversations of the odd and askew, Jaron’s latest sojourn will be my gain. Or, my loss. If keeping score in pounds I will take the latter. 250 miles of Mojave separates us for the next 3-5 years. Peace be with me. Grateful is my humor, because our conversations will continue via text. With the thumb typing speed of hyperactive 15 year old gossipy girls and the Monday morning whit of Winston Churchill after a weekend bender at Stalin’s, the Mormon and madman will be alright. Now where are my workouts?!?!