Okay, not technically a new diet/exercise plan, but pretty funny.

An Irishman was terribly overweight, so his doctor put him on a diet.

“I want you to eat regularly for 2 days, then skip a day, and repeat this procedure for 2 weeks. The next time I see you, you should have lost at least 5 pounds.”

When the Irishman returned, he shocked the doctor by having lost nearly 60lbs!

“Why, that’s amazing!” the doctor said, “Did you follow my instructions?”

The Irishman nodded…”I’ll tell you though, by jaesuz, I t’aut I were going to drop dead on dat 3rd day.”

“From the hunger, you mean?” asked the doctor.

“No, from the f**kin’ skippin”

Any time I start seeing “cure” talk, I’m always a little wary (but hopeful) but the BBC news reported last month on an interesting study done by Dr. Terry Strom and others.  Apparently Dr. Strom was able to add an enzyme to a drug cocktail created a year ago that not only stops the immune system from attacking an individuals insulin cells, but allows for the regeneration of those cells.  So far, he’s only done it in mice but apparently they’re moving forward with human trials.

If nothing else, this should help other researches better understand how the disease works, which could lead to all sorts of things.

I was just looking at my poor old belt and realized I’ve been wearing a pretty decent little progress meter. I bought this about a year ago (yes, it’s time for a replacement). While it is getting a little scruffy looking, I’ve managed to move from the 2nd hold to the last one over the course of a year. Not too shabby.

I was just reading an article on T-Nation.com by Craig Weller (here it is).  One section of the article is titled “you are what you repeatedly do”.  Before I started reading that section, I had to jump to my blog and write this (in fact, I haven’t finished reading the article yet).  As soon as I read that section header, I understood something that both holds me back when I don’t make progress and propels me forward when I do.  Once some activity or thought process sets in and starts to repeat, you (or at least I) become something as a result.

In the article, Craig is talking about the squat but that one section title struck a chord with me.  I will be thinking on this theme for a while and hope that it will help me continue to develop the good habits which will propel me forward to my goals and help recognize the bad ones before they set back in and become repetitive.  Thanks Craig.

Okay not really related to losing weight or diabetes but I thought this was pretty cool. I just stumbled across a web page that I’m going to start visiting more often.

The site is Pandora.com. It’s essentially a web radio but rather than just playing music from genre’s, the service has you enter an artist or track name. They have (according their site) spent 7 years analyzing all sorts of music (looking at “400 distinct musical characteristics”). Based on what you provide, they find music that is similar and create a “radio station” for you. The service then streams music it thinks matches what you are looking for. You can do a thumbs up/thumbs down on each track, you can look up info on each one (album info, artist info, song info, etc.) and you can buy music from either iTunes or Amazon.

It has some limitations but I’m like it because I can put in a song or artist I like and let it play in the background. I’m then exposed to music I probably wouldn’t have otherwise heard. Maybe I’ll find some new stuff to like as a result.

I just saw a blog entry on sportsgeezer.com that sounded interesting.  A mom and son have created a company in LA that custom makes power/protein bars for customers.  You can either purchase some of the popular “models” or you can design your own.  One of the things I like about their web site is that they provide you with an online method for building your own power bar and then get an approximation of the nutrition info that will be in the bar (calories, fat, carbs, etc.)  I don’t know accurate it is, but I assume it’s simply adding up the individual details based on quantity/bar.   The price is about $2.50/bar but I don’t know if the price goes up when you make your own.

I’m not currently eating a lot of these but I think they might be good if I needed to go on a trip or something and I wanted to bring some extra meals along that could be stored.  If I do try them, I’ll follow up with a comment.

I’ve been a John Berardi fan for quite a while.  He provides lots of good info backed up with real world suggestions and ideas, rather than extreme or nutty stuff.  It’s also really well researched so it’s more than just an opinion.  I like that something I’m reading has references, I think it adds to the value of the material.

The plan is essentially good nutrition and exercise along with realistic measurements to track progress.  Since I’m just coming off the velocity diet, I think the timing to move into something like this is perfect.  And, considering he’s having a sale on the new version, I had even less reason not to do it.  You can check it out for yourself here if you like.  It’s not really fair of me to summarize the whole thing in one sentence, there’s more to it than that.  I’m already enjoying several of the recipe’s in the cookbook I bought a few weeks ago and I like that part of the plan allows for individualization for people with Diabetes.

It’s arriving Monday, I’ll let you know how it goes.

I found a few new workout ideas on the Men’s Health web site.  I gave workout #4 a try and wanted to endorse it for anyone interested in getting some serious cardio activity in a quick workout.  It’s pretty simple and can be done at home (if you have a pull-up/chin-up bar and a jump rope).

This is copy/pasted from the link above:

1. Skip rope 20 seconds.
2. Do 8 walking lunges forward, then turn around and lunge back to the starting position.
3. Skip rope 20 seconds.
4. Do as many pushups as you can (to failure).
5. Skip rope 20 seconds.
6. Do pullups to failure.

That’s one round. Complete 4 to 6 rounds, adding 10 seconds to your rope-skipping time each round.

I was only able to get through three sets of this, not the 4-6 recommended.  I like this as a weekend workout or when I have 3-4 days between gym days.  After doing this, I jumped on the treadmill and walked for 30 minutes.  I’m going to keep trying this one, probably once per week until I can do 6 rounds.

Today marks the last official day of the Velocity Diet.  For the past two weeks, I’ve been eating 2 solid meals a day and three protein shakes a day.  I continued to stick to about 1500 calories for non workout days and 1800 on workout days (the extra 300 was from a post-workout drink).

As expected, I gained a few pounds after coming off the strict diet.  However, I’ve now started back down again and this morning, I was below my final Velocity Diet weight by a pound.

Supplementing meals with protein shakes is actually pretty handy so I’ll be continuing that, at least for breakfast.  On workout days, it’s nice to get up in the morning and only have to spend a few seconds shaking some protein powder in water on the way out the door.  Consider my love/hate relationship with mornings (I love to hate them) the more time I can stay in bed, the better.

I’m also finding it a lot easier to stick to a low-carb meal plan.  Choosing meals for their nutrition content and taking my current activity level into consideration is becoming much easier.  Scheduling a workout for a Saturday morning so I can have a bagel afterwards is a great way to reward myself with something I like and yet keep it reasonably healthy by consuming the carbs after a workout.

I’m also exploring quite a few new recipes.  I had a salad last night that had Salmon, asparagus, blueberries, spinach and a few other veggie’s.  The dressing was a tablespoon of honey mustard that was thrown into the veggies as they finished the saute process.

I’m not a big fan of honey mustard so I’ll probably change that part of the meal the next time I eat it but other than that, it was great.

Now that I’m out of the transition phase, I’m moving into a strength building workout phase.  I’ll be doing low-rep/high weight workouts for a while to pack on some extra muscle mass.  Kind of a tricky process.  On the one hand, I want to get below 200 pounds (I’m at 205 now) but on the other, I want to add muscle.  Adding muscle means adding weight.  It also means increasing my metabolism, which leads to more fat loss.   I’m not going to go into a “bulking” phase like a typical body builder or power lifter.  I’m not going to start consuming large amounts of calories to try to pack on the pounds.  I’ll keep the calories under control and try to add muscle without gaining fat at the same time.  Probably a tricky proposition, we’ll see.

Hi,

Sorry I haven’t posted much in the last few days.  I’ve been busy at work and the only time I’ve had a chance to write has been late at night.  I haven’t been getting enough sleep so I’m forcing myself to turn off the TV/Computer, etc. and get into bed.

I’ve got a bunch of stuff I want to write about, posts on Luceine, Cortisol, staying motivated and nutrition should be coming soon.  I also have some ideas for adding a couple new pages to the blog but I’m not sure how quickly I’ll get to that.

Write to you soon.