August 30, 2004
Back stance with a double outer forearm block

Well, I decided to lay everything out here for the world to see and make my journal. My long journey probably still has another 3 or 4 months before I am at the point that I want to be before I start bulking.

I started off in January 2003 at 195 lbs and I'm now down to 162 at what I figure is somewhere around 17% or 18% bf according to mybodycomp.com. I'm figuring on winding up around 150 lbs by the time I'm done cutting if I don't gain any more LBM.

The reason I'm posting this journal now is because I need motivation. I figured by laying everything out I would be holding myself accountable to the rest of the JSF community and they would expect progress. So this is just another reason for me to be honest.

I picked up some vanilla protein mix the other day just to get out of my chocolate rut. I can't say that I really like the taste of this vanilla flavor. It has an aftertaste that reminds me of pepto bismol and I HATE that stuff. My wife seems to like it though, she says it tastes like melted ice cream. So at least someone likes it.

In all of my cutting, I have been pondering in the back of my head just how skinny I am going to be when I get down to 10% bf or less. I remember at age 19 being 144 lbs and still having a gut. I'm convinced that I didn't have as much LBM then as I do now but even now my target weight is not too far off from 144 at 150 lbs. I'm just worried that my measurements are off and I'm really going to have to get to 140 lbs before I meet my goal.

I just worry about being too skinny. Already I'm thinner than I have been since before I got married. My ring has a hard time staying in position. It keep wanting to slide off while I'm doing normal activities like washing my hands. I have pants that fit me tight a few weeks back that are starting to get slack in them.

Oh man.

I did a little studying up on what exrx.net on how to more properly use some of the Nautilus equipment at my dojang.

Oh man.

Can I ever feel the difference. My arms are shaking right now.

I think I'll be researching the other machines later to make sure that I'm using them to maximum efficiency as well.

Got a nice jog in this morning. The air was nice and cool, and the wildlife on the trail was entertaining. There was a man that looked to be in his 60's or 70's out running the trails this morning and he was carrying a bag of sunflower seeds. Every so often he would throw down a handful for the squirrels to eat, like Santa Claus in sneakers. I guess this is a big treat for the squirrels because I kept running up on squirrels that would not move for anything. They would see me coming and stay hunched over their pile of seeds for as long as they could and at the last second they would move about six inches away from their cache of seeds and pounce back on them as soon as I had passed. I've never seen such fearless squirrels before.

Cheat meal today was at my favorite mexican restaurant, El Sombrero. They have the best food ever. I still felt pretty bad after I ate it, but dang it was good. I'm kind of bloated still. I'm going to finish the day off clean. I am sticking to my promise of just one cheat meal on Saturdays.

It doesn't look like I'm going to make my original goal of 155 by 10/9/2004. I'm down to roughly a pound a week these days and I still have 7 to lose with only 35 days to do it in. I'll be close though. If I stick to the current trend I'll hit 157ish by then, so my first cutting goal wasn't too lofty. I'm starting to think that my final cutting goal should be somewhere around 145 though. I started using a myotape for measuring myself and mybodycomp.com shows me at 20% with 33 lbs of fat with that. I also got a fat caliper and that measurement corresponds with what mybodycomp.com now shows for my bodyfat. So, I figure to get around 10% is going to put me at a little under 145. This makes sense considering that my weight was 144 when I was younger.

Ah well, the journey must continue a little further than I originally anticipated. It's ok though, because I'm eating good, I'm taking it slow and being smart about it.

In a way, I almost hate having days off of work from a diet perspective. It is really difficult to stick to my program when there is no "schedule" so to speak. Not that I have been cheating in the traditional sense, but I have been cheating in a sense that I don't eat as regularly as I should or as much as I should be eating. By 4 pm I have barely ingested 1000 calories. I just don't think about it when I'm out and about.

We went to the lake today. It was a beautiful day. I didn't feel too terribly self conscious this year. Last year I don't think I even took my shirt off. I keep telling myself that it's only going to get better. Oh, and I wore the new swim trunks that I bought earlier. They're size 32. :)

I went over to an old friend's house tonight. He is cleaning out his garage because he is going to convert it into a home theater room. In the garage he had an old "Ultra Gympac" home gym. He told me I could have it for free. So, a buddy of mine is coming over tommorow with his truck and we are going to transplant this beast into MY garage.

I'm really excited about this, because I wasn't sure how I was going to work my bulking schedule in once I got to that point. I normally only lift two days a week right now, because that's all I can fit in, and my school isn't open on Saturdays or Sundays which are the only other days that I can fit weights in on. So this works out perfectly for me.

It's a very interesting unit. It's like part lever and part cable. It goes from 10 lbs to 200 lbs with lots of attachments, so I should be able to hit the major muscle groups with it. I figure whatever it's lacking in, I can still hit at the school, but this will let me split into a three day workout at least.

I couldn't bring myself to do a night of tae kwon do tonight. I was still way too sore from my weights last night and there was just a bunch of other stuff going on. I know, I wussed out. I feel so weak. I did get out in the garage and work out on the bag some. Worked on some punching and kicking combos, jump side kicks, practiced my form a bit. I went through my form and for grins I tried remembering purple belt, but I could only get about halfway through it. I keep wanting to mix up blue and purple.

Last night was a great night for weights. I did my chest workout using free weights on the bench instead of the nautilus equipment. I didn't really feel like I was working that hard but today I was so sore. I really hit me. I think I'm going to keep using the free weights for chest workout for a while. I really feel like I got a better work out using them. I'll probably still use the nautilus equipment from time to time just to mix things up. I like to switch it up every now and then just to keep my body from getting too accustomed to one particular movement.

Tommorow is my weekly weigh-in/measurement day. I'm thinking I'll be down to 161 officially. I can't wait until I'm definitively below the 160 mark. I'll feel like I'm making progress when that happens.

Oh, I'm thinking my gee-whiz weight machine thing isn't really going to cut the mustard for me. Since getting it home and all set up, I've noticed that its missing a few parts. The movement is also very jerky on it. It's really not a very smooth movement when lifting on it and changing it over from one exercise to another is very tedious. It is definantly not a good replacement for the weights at my dojang. I talked to my wife about it and she agrees that it's not going to be good for us. She has agreed to let me keep an eye open for pieces to put together a nice bench with some free weights. I'm planning on utilizing the three way split on exrx.net (http://www.exrx.net/Workouts/Workout3TLA.html). Workout A would be on a Sunday in my garage and workouts B and C would be at the dojang on their nautilus/free weights.

Today is technically our cheat day. I'm not too excited about it, but I'm going to partake anyway. We're not sure what we want to do yet. Probably some hamburgers and french fries or something. I'm not to jazzed because I always feel like crap after I eat bad. Part of me feels like it needs to remind myself what that feeling feels like every now and then though.

I picked up a tub of strawberry flavored whey protein today. I like this stuff whey better (get it?) than the vanilla flavor. So, my wife will drink the vanilla and I'll drink the strawberry. The strawberry reminds me of some cereal I've had in the past like froot loops or something.

It seems that the more weight I lose the more exaggerated my fat around my belly feels. It has something to do with the way everything settles together when I sit down. It's weird because I know there is less of it, but it feels like more because I guess my body isn't accustomed to the way my ribs ride on my belly now. It's like my ribs are digging into the remaining fat when I sit down instead of sliding behind the fat and it makes me feel fat. I'm sure that's very disgusting sounding.

Thursday night was testing night for TKD. That makes me a brown belt now. I'm pretty pumped, but this is where it starts to get tedious. Now our belts are twice as long and the last three belts take just as long as getting to brown belt. :db: I suppose it all depends on what your goal is. For some it's just to get to 1st degree black belt, and that's it. My goal is to move on past that. Way past it. I'd like to stick with this for another 8 years or so and then move on to another form. Maybe some style of kung fu. Not sure how the change would be for me, going from a hard external style to a softer internal style.

At any rate. I am so ready to be done with my cutting. I really felt my performance suffering thursday night. I didn't feel at the top of my game during sparring. I did good, but I wasn't nearly as fast or powerful as what I was thinking I should be. I actually got knocked on my butt at one point. All of this made me realize that, in spite of being in my cutting phase that I need to really carb up the week before my tournament. Maybe I'll use that week at maintenance level to reset my metabolism a little and maybe I'll get lucky and throw on a little extra muscle.

On a totally weird and unrelated topic, I have noticed that there is roughly a 10 view to post ratio on the journals.

Ok, I got rid of the weight bench thing. My brother-in-law hauled it off for me. He is planning on using it. I bid thee good luck, brother. This clears the way for me to pick up some new equipment. My wife has been trying to get me to pull some money out of savings to get some weight gear. I'm trying to be smart about it so I keep telling her "not yet". I think it's so weird to have your wife wanting you to spend money on cool stuff (it was HER idea to get our 55" hi def TV!). I've been looking at this bench: http://www.newyorkbarbells.tv/1350w.jpg . Not sure if it's any good or not, but I've heard good things about NYB. I'm thinking it would be adequate for a number of reasons. 1) I don't weigh much nor bench much (105 right now), so the max weight on it shouldn't be too much of an issue for the time. 2) I love the fold up option to save room. 3) I have a full gym available to me every day Monday through Friday and many Saturdays, so this bench would just be to supplement my workout times, not my main source of weight training.

Well, I had an interesting time in TKD tonight. We've been training for our tournament so we've been working a bit harder than usual. I got really wiped out tonight and while we were standing getting ready to bow out I started getting sick to my stomach and felt nauseous. My hands started getting all tingly, and my vision started to grey and the room started swaying. I had to kneel down or I was going to fall down. That's the first time that has ever happened, so I don't know why it happened. Only think I can think is that my body just ran out of nutrition, which is odd because I had clocked in 1500 calories for the day already. It may be time to re-evaluate my calorie intake. I'm just hesitant because my weight loss has really been slowing down lately. *sigh*