It has come to my attention that I need a new diet. Not a crash diet to lose/gain weight, but something that generally guides my everyday food choices. This dawned on me last night after making a very stupid food purchase, and not realizing how stupid it was until it was already baking in the oven:

I made spaghetti with meat sauce the other night, and as is my normal habit, I made enough to last me 3 or 4 days if I play my cards right. Since I didn’t have the foresight to think that I might want something different for my 3^rd meal of the day, I had to eat it for both lunch and dinner yesterday. To fix this, I went to the store with the mindset to pick up something to round out my diet for the next few days. What did I buy?

Lasagna .…Friggin’ idiot.

Anyway, ever since I’ve changed gears from the fat cutting phase over this last summer/early fall, to the weight gain phase and my epic bout with the GOMAD diet, I’ve pretty much just…eaten food.

I haven’t counted a single calorie, weighed a single serving, or said no to any cravings….and haven’t gained or lost a single pound since my weight stabilized after the GOMAD diet (If you don’t know what GOMAD is, then click here to get the lowdown)

Overall, you’d think this is a pretty good thing. Overall, I’d agree. Considering my current goals are all centered on strength and the metrics are based off of my body weight, maintaining my weight while gaining strength would seem like the best scenario.

However, I want to look at fitness holistically. It doesn’t matter if I don’t gain/lose weight or put on a little fat here and there. What about my overall health? Do I maintain a high level of energy throughout the day(no)? Where are my hormone levels? Etc.

These questions are important, and if I train myself to be consistently conscientious of them at a (relatively) young age, I hope this will allow me to continue my fitness journey, and uh, life, for decades to come.

So what am I thinking? The South Beach 90210 Carbzone diet? Don’t be stupid.

I haven’t finished doing all my research on it yet, but I’m heavily considering trying the Paleo diet (or more specifically the Whole30). I’ll post more on it before I get going, but basically the Whole30 folks make the claim that all you need to do to start feeling the positive effects of the paleo diet is to dedicate yourself entirely for 30 days. After which you should of course continue with the diet, but that it only takes 30 days to “heal, recover, and reset” from all the harm that our modern diet is doing to our bodies.

If you're not familiar with the paleo diet, you can pretty much only eat that which you see here. So no dairy, grain, sugar, etc.

Is any of that true? I don’t know. They, along with all the other paleo freaks out there, sure make it sound sensible.

So that’s the current plan, but I’m not going to go on it just yet. Going to let things just roll until after my little vacation down in Savannah, GA for St. Patty’s day weekend, and then I’ll probably hit it hard after that.

In the meantime, I’ll continue my research so I can get all scientific on your ass and give you the full lowdown before day 1.

This post isn’t about getting “yoked”, “diesel”, “ripped”, or other needlessly quoted words to describe physical fitness. Why? Because I had a bad day, that’s why. I don’t feel like writing about it, and don’t think it would be very good if I did. It was one of those days at work that just don’t seem to end, and as soon as it does, you’re thinking about how you have to do it all over again roughly 12 hours from the moment you walk out the door.

Not that I don’t love you job, I do ….and if I didn’t I wouldn’t admit it online. Let’s be real: I’s got bills, and 7 or 8 different bosses that all know how to read.

Some people rely on alcohol, some on crack, and yet others on Star Trek, to pick them up after a bad day and help them escape the reality of what just happened over the past 10+ hours. Well none of this really does it for me, although alcohol shows up to play ball sometimes and sure makes a good effort, but Google…. I like this guy. He always pulls his gems out of left field when you least expect them:

....Well is he?

I’m pretty sure I was looking up some information on Paleo eating, but honestly I can’t even remember. Who cares after that one-liner? I don’t know who this Kevjumba clown is, but I wish him the best in all his bear business ventures, and thank him for being the topic of a sporadically hilarious (at least to me) Google moment. Made my day…. Hey, look, I’m easy alright.

In an effort to overextend myself, and look ahead to other challenges before I’m even halfway done with the current goal, I’ve already given my verbal “yay” to the Tough Mudder event in Virginia this coming October. What is the Tough Mudder you ask? Well it’s some sort of crazy obstacle course/mud-run/death march/party. Check out their website for a much cooler and indepth description. Look, when you have to run through fire… uh, SOLD.

Pubic hair went out of style years ago anyway

I’m going to throw it out there right now, the idea of doing a marathon really doesn’t excite me… At. All. It’s not that I don’t think I can do it, and in the spirit of pursuing complete yokehood, I’m sure I’ll end up biting the bullet and doing one sometime over the next few years; but it’s not a challenge that particularly entices me. I mean, it’s just one thing: You run… and then you keep doing it… And then keep doing it…. And then you’re done. I don’t know, that just doesn’t sound fun.

Something like the Tough Mudder though, well, this looks pretty bad ass (again, with the fire). So when my friend Chris, a pastor of all things, sent me a “do you want to do this” I pretty much immediately said yes.

All I want to know is…

Seriously, who’s coming with me… It’ll be awesome. And we’ve got Jesus on our side, pastor Chris has it covered.

I seem to have a bad habit of throwing around terms and phrases that, while they make sense to me, may or may not mean a damn thing to you the reader. Now obviously if you’re a good reader, you studiously open up another window (please don’t leave) and type in the things that you don’t understand to figure out what it means…. And then you come racing back to read more of this awesome blog (please don’t leave)

But I know you’re lazy. Don’t lie to me. You’re lazy, and you’ve got the attention span of a retarded puppy. It’s okay, I don’t blame you, so I’m going to try and start making the effort to better define things before I start ranting and raving about it.

As I push valiantly forward towards my 3 lifting goals (need I remind you that one has already fallen?), I started to think today after actually having a good cleaning session that…. Oh, wait, many people probably don’t even know what I’m talking about when I say “clean”. My housemates are probably thinking, “that’s bullsh*t, this guy hasn’t cleaned a damn thing in months.” Well that’s fine, and mostly true, but believe me I could put some passive aggressive comments aimed at you guys here too…. But I won’t.

Anyway, the clean comes in a couple mix and match flavors:

Power Clean (catch the bar high):

Squat Clean (squat down to catch the bar… I’m pretty sure this guy’s form isn’t that great, but you get the idea):

Both versions can be done from “the floor” or “the hang”. From the floor is pretty self-explanatory, the exercise begins with the bar on the floor. From the hang means you start the exercise already standing up, grasping the bar in front of your body.

Something that’s interesting about the clean in all variations is that it’s really a learned skill, like hitting a golf ball or throwing a baseball. Obviously the bigger/stronger you are, the higher your “ceiling” can be. But there are relatively tiny guys who could put bodybuilders to shame when it comes to the clean.

The man is cockier than that Ochocinco clown

After having one of the worst lifting sessions that I’ve had since converting to the power/Olympic style lifting this past Saturday (surprise, it was a clean day), Ryan has changed my training to include squat cleaning from the floor to start off every training session we have until I finally get the hang of the form.

Tonight, a few things finally started to click, and I had a couple of my best cleans to date. Not weight wise, we kept the loads low, but as far as technique they were miles above my others and I could definitely feel it: It was like hitting a baseball with the sweet spot. However I’ve got a long way to go before I can finally say, “I can clean and clean well” and am safe from getting laughed out of any Olympic lifting gym in America (they’d probably just stone me in eastern Europe).

Anyhoo, I’m not going to go into all the gritty details of “how” to clean in this post, because this isn’t a cleaning clinic. And believe me, you don’t want me to teach you how to clean, because chances are you’d either end up eating the bar or the floor. Neither of which are good indicators of a solid clean of any variation…. That much I can tell you. Also, from my experience, I feel confident saying that it’s really a lift that you should probably get a coach for to do properly. Even with Ryan there yelling at my face, day after day, I’m having a tough time of hammering it into my brain.

But hey, maybe you can learn quicker than I do, and from a creepy youtube video of Wyatt Earp in his garage:

On that note, I’m out.…. Just wanted to lay some knowledge on you so you’d understand what I was talking about when I referenced “cleans”

Don’t worry, don’t worry.  This isn’t going to be a nostalgic montage. Though… that would be sick. I’m going to note it for a later post: Moooon…tage. Nice.

Your fridge may need the GOMAD adapter to be compatible with the diet. Photo courtesy of/hijacked from: imagur.com

I wasn’t planning on writing anything more on the GOMAD diet, as I was hoping to leave it behind me for good. But I thought I should share an epiphany I had the other day as I was looking in my refrigerator for something other than water to drink:

There’s no milk in here…. And I’m okay with that.

Now for a lot of people that might be normal, but for me pre-GOMAD, I would start having withdrawal tantrums if I opened the fridge and didn’t have the option of either plain or chocolate milk. I am not exaggerating when I say that my average daily milk consumption before going on the GOMAD diet was probably somewhere around half a gallon per day (keep in mind, this was low-fat milk).

But now, post-GOMAD, my desire to drink milk has plummeted to nil. I didn’t really notice at first, because right after coming off the diet I figured it was natural that I wouldn’t want to even look at the stuff for a while. However, here we are, a solid 2 months after coming off, and I still have no cravings for it. In fact, I don’t even drink the milk after I finish my cereal these days… That used to be my favorite part. It’s a little sad actually.

All other dairy products I’m fine with: cheese, yogurt, ice cream, etc. But milk in its purest form holds no appeal.

I’m not sure if this would or should have any affect on whether or not you try the GOMAD diet, but it’s one more thing to think about.