212.6... oh-oh!

T-48 hours and counting to Bod Pod VIII and my weight just took it's made its move in the other direction. I just weighed in at 21.6. That is up approximately 0.7 of a pound from yesterday, and I was confidently predicting I would be around the 210 mark today.

I spiked up before the last Bod Pod test, and that test turned out pretty well. This is not a reason to panic, but it is interesting. I am seeing a new pattern of a strong downward trend followed by some temporary movement up.

I wonder about one thing: Does this signify the end of the free-fall after the breakage of the last set-point? If so, it means I am going to be stuck here for a little while. It's awfully soon for another set-point to emerge.

We'll have to see. As I go lower and lower, it would be logical for my naturally endomorphic system to fight harder and harder against further loss. Further, my BMI shrinks more and more, tightening the window for weight loss.

212.4

I know, I know, I'm starting to sound like a broken record. 212.4 was the score this morning, according to the Tanita scale. This means the Bod Pod would have me at 211.55 this morning. With nearly 4 full days to go before Bod Pod VIII, I have now lost 8.798 pounds. I might reach 10.798 in gross loss this time.

Incidentally, I just noticed a typo in a previous blog post. I am going to have to go back and correct it. I was pretty groggy yesterday morning.

Down and down I go. The size 42 suit pants I bought yesterday aught to be nice a comfy, with a loose fit.

213.0

Ever had one of those mornings where you wake up feeling like an emaciated skeleton? One of those mornings where you felt like you could see every bone in your rib cage?

No, of course not. Kinda stupid question, isn't it? It would be completely preposterous, save for the fact that I just woke up feeling that way about a half-hour ago. I woke up feeling metabolically low, but I had a gut-level feeling that tremendous progress had been made

This morning, I weighed in at 213.0 on the Tanita scale. This was one of those mornings where the scale couldn't quite make up it's mind just how much I weighed. The digital read-out flickered back and forth between 212.8 and 213.0 about five or six times. The message is clear: I'm somewhere between 212.8 and 213.0, and the scale was having some difficulty determining whether it should round up or round down.

For the sake of argument, let's say I am 212.9 exactly. You know what this means. The Bod Pod would say I weigh 212.05 this morning. This brings my progress to nearly 8.298 pounds in just 8 days. There can be no doubt that I am bursting out of the set-point now. That's just way to fast.

For the sake of argument, let's say that 8.298 pounds was entirely fat-loss. I have some serious doubts about that, but let's hope it's true. This means I should have lost 4.29948 liters of body volume, and my body fat weight should be 62.567 pounds. If my lean remains constant, by Body Fat Percentage (BFP) should now be 29.5%. Further my total body volume should now be 93.056 liters. Wow...

I should admit that I woke up this morning feeling like 3 day old dog shit, run over by a truck, and warmed up in the microwave. Well... maybe not that bad. Perhaps, that is an exaggeration, but I feel like I have been through the ringer.

I am still trying to shake off the grog. This is the reason why I am exercising my brain, writing this blog entry. I'm trying to wake up.

Folks, I still have 6 days to go before Bod Pod VIII. Down and down I go, where I stop, nobody knows. I am looking right down the gun-barrel at an unprecedented week of remarkable progress. Although the way I feel is a red-flag warning sign, things are looking pretty damn good numerically. The anticipation is growing. I am really curious to see the results of this test.

Not a moment too soon, either. One of my Leo buddies is having a birthday pool-party next Saturday afternoon.

The shape of the new Murder-Days

Intro

In the early stages of body composition testing, I decided I did not like the results I was getting. To make strides at improvement, I intensified my workout routine greatly. I began working out twice a day rather than once a day. I began doing the ROM upper body workout again. I began raising the intensity and speed of all my exercise. I added in the sauna.

Well, all that was fine in those days, but it is pretty fucking passé nowadays. I’m way beyond that level at this point. Frankly, I’m scaring some people with workload I’m taking these days. There ain’t one dude at my company who can carry the weight of my jockstrap in a cardio stress test. Perhaps BB [the black-belt holding marathoner] can battle me, but I wouldn’t bet on her if I was you.

What does the new murder-day look like? Yesterday was a new-style murder day. Let me tell you about what I did yesterday.

Morning Workout

• One minute of shake weight.
• 4 minute ROM upper body workout
• One minute of shake weight
• 4 ROM Lower body workout
• One minute of shake weight
• 90 seconds of ROM Abdominal rows
• 90 seconds of ROM Oblique twists

Lunchtime workout

• 22 Minutes of Olympic Rowing, at level 10, covering 4,650 meters 256 kcal
• 16 minutes of treadmill walking ranging between 3.6 and 4.0 miles per hour at 6 to 8.5 elevation. 210 kcals burned

Evening workout

• 12 minutes of biking starting at 160 watts of resistance, finishing at 210. 156 kcals burned
• 22 minutes of Lifefitness Crosstrainer, the mountain patern, @level 15, burning 361 kcal, covering 2.3 miles.

Commentary

Whether you realize it or not, it is the ROM that is the power gear in this workout routine. It is far and away the most difficult of these exercises, and it sets up everything else. Incidentally, the ROM is set for 210 pounds of resistance, which is far above my ideal body weight. If I wanted to comply with the easy rules, I would take my resistance down to something between 180 and 190. I am working 20 pound heavier than I have to according to the rulebook.

You might comment that the duration of those exercises trends to the short side. You are quite correct. The emphasis is on intensity and difficulty of resistance. The focus is not on duration of the exercise. The objective is to get my heart rate and respiration rate up rapidly, and stretch that capacity. If my muscles aren't sore and full of lactic acid at the end of each run, I did something wrong. I will need to intensify again next time for sure.

You can't argue with success. The new focus on difficulty and intensity is producing great results. I just experienced a fine recovery of lean muscle tissue, and new growth continues. I just shattered my last set-point and I'm racing again.

I pulled out the old Voldyne 5000 they gave me at the hospital after Gastric Bypass. This device is designed to help you stretch your lung capacity [and measure your lung capacity] in the immediate aftermath of major internal surgery. I rang the bell on my very first breath. I popped the meter all the way up to the 5 liter mark on the very first try.

Just what does that mean? It means that I have the capacity to suck in 5 liters of air (or more) with just one breath. It ain’t hard either. This means my lungs have excellent capacity. All else being equal, this should lead to an excellent capacity to do cardio vascular work. Believe me, it’s true.

215.2

The plummet continues unabated.

Just a few moments ago I weighed in at 215.2 on the Tanita scale. You know what that means. The Bod Pod would have me at 214.35. Yesterday, the score was 216.4. That's another 1.2 pounds overnight.

I am now certain I have broken through another system set-point. We have a full-scale metabolic capitulation here.

It's Wednesday, August 10, 2011. Hardly 5 days have elapsed since my last Bod Pod. Five days ago, my weight was 220.348, and today it is 214.35 (on the Bod Pod scale). In less than 5 days, my weight has plummeted 5.998 pounds. That's too fast. Team-Quilici would flip-out.

Still, it makes up for a long and lingering hang-up at the end of my last set-point. They would understand that. I guess you could say I am playing catch-up. I've gotten quite a burst of progress here.

Down and down he goes, and where he stops, nobody knows. Who knows where this next plummet will finish off. This could be my final descent. This one might take me all the way inside 200 pounds.

One thing is for sure, this next Bod Pod test is going to be a good one.

216.2

Well, I think we can say that I have officially broken through to the other side of the set-point. Just a few moments ago, I weighed in at 216.2. This means the Bod-Pod would have me at 215.35 this morning.

I should not have been able to shed 1.2 pounds in a mere 24 hours. You know and I know it doesn't happen that fast. I didn't even do a sauna last night, or get a shiatsu massage. There were no particular triggers for this sudden drop. It just happened.

The indication is that something had been going on under the hood all last week, something my system set-point was railing against. When the set-point collapses, and the system capitulates to the new reality, pounds fall off in bunches.

I have officially arrived at mesomorphic appearance levels... I think...

Not much time for considerations of what that means this morning. I need to workout.

217.4

Just a few moments ago, I weighed in at 217.4 on the Tanita scale. Of course, this means the Bod Pod would have me at 216.55 this morning. That is a new low. I doubt I have been this low since 1991, when I was a 31V10 in the U.S. Army in Europe.

The lowest I have ever been in my adult life is 192, this happened at the tender young age of 22 after Basic Training and AIT at Fort Sill Oklahoma. I have never reached that low point at any other time. Many felt I was too skinny at that point. So did I. I am not particularly driven to get there, but I may see that number again. I am only 24.55 pounds away from it.

I think the indication is that I have broken on through to the other side of this set-point. The system has capitulated. My metabolism hung-up around at 220 for more than a week, not wanting to go lower. The floor has caved in, and I am falling again.

There are a couple of downsides to this weight loss. Only my size 50 jerseys fit moderately well, and they are a bit baggy. I could stand a few size 48s. A significant number of my Jerseys are size 54. They are now much too baggy for good comfort. A couple of my Jerseys, such as my Dan Fouts jersey, are size 56. That is officially too baggy to wear in public now.

This makes me sad, and shrinks my wardrobe considerably. The jersey rotation is getting a little short now.

The second thing is that I have certainly lost a few of my favorite foods.

I tried making Chili con Carne for the second time (post-gastric bypass) last night, and I got the same results as the first time: I threw up explosively. Chili is just too rich and spicy for my abbreviated digestive tract. The system gets rid of it the fastest way it knows how. This is very disappointing.

Second, I was about the biggest rice-eater on planet Earth during my pre-gastric bypass reign. I love rice in all its many forms: Risotto, Pilaf, fried rice, rice pudding, rice balls, rice noodles, etc. Now I just can't seem to handle it. It gets stuck in my gut like a drainage plug in your kitchen sink. It doesn't allow anything to pass through until I throw up. I can't even drink water while the plug is in.

Third, any sort of raw or grilled vegetable gets stuck and forms a plug in my gut. This is much worse than the rice. I tried some grilled broccoli recently, and that was the worst sticking experience I ever had. Veggies have to be steamed or sauteed with lots of water until they are very soft and very moist. They go down fine then. If they are dry or crunchy, forget about it. You will be in hell. This is the least of my worries, though. I have never been a fan of raw vegetables.

218.9?

The body's metabolic high-jinks continued this morning as I weighed in at 218.9 this morning. That's after weighing in at 223 yesterday morning. As You know I weighed in at 220.348 on the Bod Pod scale this past Friday.

That's stock market-level volatility.

My body is going through mad mood swings, metabolically speaking. I can feel it, too. I went to the gym early in the evening yesterday, and was on the olympic rowing machine through all Marshall Faulk's (very long) acceptance speech at the Hall of Fame yesterday ; ). When I got home, I was so damn tired I hit the sack in less than one hour. As I woke this morning, I could feel every muscle in my torso. It feels as if every muscle has thickened and grown, and yet my weight is down. Go figure...

Of course, this is as it should be. I rowed for 22 total minutes, @level 10, for 4,500 yards and 268 kcal. I went fast and hard, averaging 49 strokes per minute. I went so hard I actually had to take a break in the middle. The whole time, Marshall was on the HDTV talking... And Chris Hanburger said they were given 6 to 8 minutes each... Jeeze...

Of course, I chide Marshall for the long speech, but you know I loved seeing him go in. Watching the acceptance speech inspired me to row a hell of a lot harder than normal. What would Marshall do? Congrats! I will blog about this soon!

Every instinct in my gut tells me that I am going through a key transition point these days. I am breaking through my latest metabolic floor. For those unfamiliar with set-point theory, I will give you the 101.

The human body contains a program for everything it should do. This program code is called DNA. You DNA codes a few things in a hard and fast way. It codes everything else in a more flexible and adaptable way, to flex and change conforming with environmental conditions.

You metabolism is a bit flexible, and so to is your body fat percentage. Just because it is flexible doesn't necessarily mean that it is easy to flex. Each body has preferred set-points for calorie burn, muscle levels, body fat percentage, activity level, etc. You can reprogram your set point, up to a point, but it is very, very, very difficult. The system will try to snap back to it's genetic preferences. Your genes will fight you as you go against them.

Contained in that tiny passage is every philosophical justification you will ever need for something as drastic as roux-en-y gastric bypass surgery. In order to defeat genetic programming, surgeons make drastic alterations in the metabolic pipeline. These are permanent alterations your body can do nothing about. Genetic set-points are forced to flex in conformance with a new physical and metabolic reality.

Your arrival at a new, lower, set point is just about guaranteed. 98% of all people who have this surgery hit their target weights. I did that already. For those 98% who hit their targets, 85% of the excess weight is still gone 15 years later.

Just because it's guaranteed, doesn't mean it is easy. I can testify that there have been several points in this process where my body has fought the hell out of me. This past week has presented the toughest battle thus far. My genes seem to be drawing a line in the sand saying "This far and no farther! NOT ONE MORE INCH!" Now, those genes are destined to lose. They can't win, but they don't know that. They are planning to make their last stand... and they are planning to win.

For all I know, I may have already broken on through to the other side of this metabolic barrier. This morning's crazy swing downward may be the beginning of a new and steady free-fall that takes me all the way down to 200 pounds. Let's hope so.

As sure as I am sitting here, I know that something big is going on. I can feel it. My muscularity is increasing. My fat is decreasing. My ability to exercise is increasing at an amazing rate. I will give you one example.

These past two days, I have completed 30 minutes, using the interval pattern, at level 15 on the LifeFitness Club Series Cross Trainer. Yesterday, I burned 504 kcal, moving 3.04 miles in the process. For reference, a woman may burn as much as 400 kcal in 60 minutes of Aerobic Dancercise. We're talking 252% of that intensity level. The cross trainer is one of the most intense exercises you can do, and until very recently, I couldn't do it at all. The pain in my knees was just too great. Now I have no pain at all.

224.0?

Something damn peculiar is going on inside my body. I stood on the scale this evening when I got home, and the scale said 224.0. I have to admit that my eyes bulged out of their sockets when I saw that figure.

There is some strange metabolic hanky panky going on inside my guts, and I don't quite know what to make of it. Consider the following:

• I rose a bit late this morning and got on the bike immediately after my customary trip to the bathroom and the scale.
• When I finished my morning workout, I was concerned that I would be late for a morning meeting, so I skipped my morning protein drink. I thought I had one stowed away in the frige at work.
• When I got to work, the boss was launching scud missiles, and some fool had thrown away my protein drink as part of a frige clean-out. Thanks a lot.
• I didn't get my first calorie until 12:30 pm, at which time I had a Myoplex.
• I did my lunch-time olympic rower anyway. 21 minutes 221 kcal 4,300 kilometers.
• I had half a burrito over the rest of the afternoon before standing on the scale.

How in the name of God do you gain two pounds on that program? There are a plethora of conventional answers:

1. You are retaining water, and need to sweat.
2. You are constipated, and Magnesium Citrate is the remedy.
3. It's a temporary metabolic anomaly
4. The anabolic steroids are working
5. The party is over and you getting fat again

Answer 1 is at least partially wrong. I am sweating like a pig. Answer 2 is entirely possible, but where do you get two extra pounds from in my menu? Even with a complete block, I didn't take in that much matter. Number 3 is the strong card, just because it is so bloody vague. What steroids? I cycled off the pro-hormone formula 2 weeks ago. There ain't no such thing in my current regime.

This leaves us with answer 5: The party is over and you are getting fat again. I seriously doubt that. If you witnessed the medical film and know the colossal damage they did to my digestive tract, it is bloody unlikely that I will ever be able to gain weight rapidly again. Especially this rapidly.

Let's hope that I wake up from this nightmare tomorrow morning to discover that I am at a new all-time low, like 215. I realize that this is bloody unlikely. I will deem myself fortunate if I can push it back down to 218. This will, at the very least, yield a 3.2 pound over-all loss. Right now I am starring down the gun barrel at a 3 pound gain.

Of all the Bod-Pod tests I have done, tomorrows test look to be the most fascinating of them all. Curiosity is killing me. I am dying to see just what the hell is going on under the hood here.

At the moment I can see no reasonable, or even plausible, explanation for what has been going on during the past week. The Bod Pod is the only scientific test I know of that can shed some light on the subject.

The lower body ROM workout is now a doddle.

A moment of silence please... I just kicked the Lower-Body ROM exercise squarely in the nuts. I blasted all four minutes at 210 pounds of resistance and scored 121% on the meter.

What is the significance of this moment?

The last time I rode that horse, the year was 2009. On that occasion, it ripped a chunk of cartilage out of my right knee that set me flat on my back on the surgery table. This is how I was introduced to Dr. Evan Bachner. Favoring the right knee blew out the left knee, which put me back on the surgical table less than 4 weeks later. Bachner pulled chunks of bone out of my left knee.

My last ROM ride was the beginning of sorrows for me. My body weight spiraled up due to immobility and post surgical pain. Higher weight made it hard to exercise, exercise made the pain worse, which made me more immobile, which made me gain more weight. I was caught in a vicious negative feedback loop.

As you know, this vicious cycle was only broken by a visit to Providence St. Joseph Hospital and full Roux en Y gastric bypass. This was my most dangerous surgery every. Understand that this is nowhere near as simple as pulling a chunk of torn cartilage out of a knee. They open your torso and repipe your guts. Not everybody survives this surgery. I am a member of the good and lucky majority.

As you might imagine, getting back on that horse and doing that Lower-Body ROM exercise has represented one of my greatest fears in life. There have been many times in the past two years when I wondered why I ever spent $6,000 on a $16,000 machine that cost me more than $10,000 in flesh, blood & tears.

Of course, the vicious scorpion at work has chided me about this subject...

Well guess what? I just got up on that horse and rode it again. It was a doddle. I wasn't even breathing hard until 3:15 had already expired. I didn't sweat profusely until a minute or two afterward. For some 10 minutes afterward, I kept checking and rechecking my range of motion for any signs of inflammation in my right knee. There is no inflammation in my right knee, and it is now an hour later.

You can see the exercise here. This constitutes a major, major victory. This is almost like killing Osama.

Compared to the upper body workout, the lower body workout is trivial. This was never the case in the past. I could never do 4 whole minutes, period. I had to break it into 2 minute segments. Now it is easy. I guess losing something like 100 pounds makes a difference.

If there is a greater lesson in this story, I guess it this: You never know where providence will take you. I probably would never have conquered my weight problems without Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery. Given my good blood chemistry and my heart health, my insurance never would have approved this surgery. It was only a series of letters from Bachner, my GP and Dr. Quilici regarding my orthopedic problems that caused United Health Care to approve the surgery.

Now I have reversed the aging process by 15 years at the very least, and still counting. I am stronger and healthier now than I was at 30... not to mention better looking. I'm not into cosmetics, though.

Lately, I have been wondering how much longer I may live as a result of this surgery. Of course, you can die in a car wreck at any moment, but presuming I don't, how much longer will I live? The starving mouse studies suggest I should double my lifespan. That's no joke folks. Google Roy Walford and CRON.

Popular Science magazine just published a piece called "Why you will live to be 150". They are talking about everybody, not just us starving mice who have had Roux-en-Y. Google search for Dr. Bill Andrews, Geron, and Telomerase. He is working on the cure for aging.

The men and women in my Dad's family live a very long time. Grandpa kick off at 93. Grandma kicked the bucket at 95. My dad is 69, has kicked prostate cancer in the ass twice, and doesn't quite look 60. Nobody believes I am going to turn 45.

God, I have no clue how long I will live, but I can see no reason why I shouldn't make it to 90. Frankly, I should reach 100.

Just to close the loop for you, I would not be thinking these thoughts if the ROM hadn't ripped a chunk of cartilage out of my right knee one dark day in early October of 2009. Isn't strange how this event became the next best thing to a guarantee that I will make it to 100 years of age?

218.2 on the Tanita: Another major milestone has fallen.

Just a few moments ago, I weighed in at 218.2 on the Tanita bathroom scale. Of course, this means the Bod-Pod will have me at 217.35 this morning. This means I have lost another 3.85 pounds since the last Bod Pod test. At the same time, I know I am more muscular now than a week ago. The shift in emphasis to strength and intensity over duration of aerobic exercise is paying dividends.

Call me foolish, call me irresponsible, call me a dreamer, but there is something a little bit magical about dropping inside 220 pounds. This is another one of those mythical boundary points in sports. In football, a guy who drops from 300 to 250 has gone from lineman weight to linebacker weight. A guy who drops from 250 to 218 has dropped from linebacker weight to Safety weight. In baseball, a guy who weighs over 220 might be considered fat; a guy weighs under 220 generally isn't considered fat.

There aren't many big safeties like Darren Woodson or Steve Atwater left in the NFL, and this is a shame. However, I now weigh less than either of these two legendary defenders at their peak playing weights. My body fat percentage remains a lot higher than their's was, and they are both taller than I am.

Still, you would be hard-pressed to believe that I weighed in at 330 pounds just 6.5 months ago. At least two people I've met in the past several weeks ain't buying my story. They think I am bullshiting them.

I once predicted that the 215 pound-point would be moment when people no longer viewed me as an endo-mesomorph. They would simply see me as a mesomorph. I may have been mistaken about that. That moment might have already arrived.

More importantly, I have now officially lost more than 34.136% of my body weight. Slightly more than a third of me is gone. My body volume should now be 96 liters. God only knows what it was at the start, however, my body volume has dropped 21.1 liters since 5/13/2011. That's a hell of a lot of volume. That's 10 x 2 liter Coke bottles, plus an additional 1 liter bottle, and some change. Imagine carrying all that into the Bod Pod chamber with you... and then not having it anymore.

Of course, the most important thing is that I no longer suffer any knee pain, and my mobility is great. Occasionally, I need to rub my right knee with a little Camphor/Menthol/Methyl Salicylate compound after a tough workout out on the treadmill; but this isn't all the time. Further, I have no use for the Lortab I was prescribed. I just don't need it anymore.

Incidentally, I am starting that treadmill workout out at 3.6 miles per hour and a 5.5 elevation. 21 minutes later, I finish at 4.0 miles per hour and a 9.5 elevation. I bet you can't do that. One of the guys at work bet me I couldn't do that without holding on to the handles, which is cheating. He lost his bet. I proved it. I've seen some shocked expressions when people see the incline level of my treadmill at the gym. Some never knew it would go that high.

There are other side-effects beyond pain relief. Yesterday, I saw that Taurus girl--the one I sent flowers on her birthday--in the hallway as I was leaving work. She was engaged in an animated conversation with another girl. They were positioned on the route to the elevator, so I had to walk past them to get out of the building. As I passed, she interrupted her conversation to give me a big smile, and a 'hi, how are you?'

This took me by surprising. People don't usually interrupt conversations so animated to greet a passer-by. Further, she's basically given me the cold shoulder for 3 months... ever since I sent her Carnations for her birthday. This was an unexpected event. Not knowing what to say, I simply gave her a silent nod and passed by.

Still not sure what to make of this event, however, it is theoretically possible she likes me better at 217.35 than 261.0, which is what I weighed on 5/10/2011. Of course, this far-fetched theory... I'm reaching at straws here.

60% body mass...?

As you know, I have already achieved the primary purpose I set out to achieve when I had gastric bypass surgery. I have lost more than 30% of my original mass. My arthritic knees are now fine, and almost pain free. The wheel chair has been avoided... for now. Let's hope knee replacement will make that (effectively) forever, or until my death.

Still, the weight loss continues unabated. I'm thinning out at a frenetic pace. Folks, I don't want to play coy with you: I feel plenty weird in my new body these days. I can feel my bones. I can count my ribs as I lay in bed in the morning. I can see the muscle splits between my quadriceps and thigh biceps. I can see big veins and striation in my calf muscles. My face is almost gaunt.

Pants I used to wear 5 months ago are completely unwearable, in either private or public settings. They simply cannot be tightened enough to stay on me, and I look plenty stupid with my plants falling down. The size XL pants I purchased a mere month ago, are now beginning to look a little long and baggy. I can already wear a pair of my brothers large-sized Addidas training pants. That's not XXL or XL; just L.

I found an old pair of size 44 Levi jeans as I was cleaning out my closet. God only knows how old they are. They may well be 17-18 years old. They may date back to my last days at UCLA. These jeans are a bit loose and baggy; not outrageously so, but they are a bit loose. I am pretty sure I can fit into 42, maybe even a 40. If not now, then wait a couple of days. The 40s will fit.

Members of the family, have looked me over head to toe, and suggested that I should slow down. "You've pretty much made it", they say, "You shouldn't lose more than 10 pounds more. You are a big, broad-shouldered guy and you won't look right at a weight lower than 210 or 215." These comment echos sentiments expressed by Dr. Quilici's PA, who declared that I should disregard the BMI index, and cease weight loss efforts around 200 pounds.

With that said, I think my ideal weight is closer to 200 than 210. This begs the question: with all of my primary goals achieved, what is the next logical goal? How do I finish this? When will I finish this? How will I know when I am finished with this?

Strictly speaking, my general practitioner has set the goal. She believes the ideal body fat percentage for a man of 44-45 is 17%. Very few men of this age in the United States can meet this stiff criteria. I am told the lion's share are over 20% body fat.

What will it take to get to 17% body fat? There are two ways to answer that question. I expect to have 150 pounds of lean mass as of the next Bod Pod. 150 /0.83 = 181, roughly speaking. I am horrified by the look of that number. I do not want to weigh 181 pounds. I think most of the people who know me would be equally aghast seeing that number.

The other way to look at is this: My body fat percentage is just about 35% right now, and I have 82 pounds of fat on my frame. Cut the percentage in half and you are just about at the bulls eye. Of course, you achieve this by cutting the fat weight 42 pounds. When these numbers were provided by the Bod Pod, my weight was 229.37. 229.37 - 41 = 188.37.

The figure of 188.37 is only slightly less horrifying than the figure 181. The lowest I have ever been in my adult life is 192, and this was fresh-faced out of Army Basic and AIT. That was more than 22 years ago.

So what goal shall I set anyhow? One thing is for sure. I want to concentrate on gaining lean mass more than losing fat weight at this point. I certainly want to raise my lean mass over 160 pounds. Perhaps it can never reach 190 pounds again, but I want to see it at 170.

There is another possible goal which I am considering very seriously. My big goal was to reduce my body mass 30% and reach 70% of my original mass. How about 60% of my original body mass? 0.4 X 330 = 132 pounds. 0.6 X 330 = 198 pounds. This would place me a scant 6 pounds over my U.S. Army training weight. This would be pretty damn good for a man 44 years old.

Whether I set course for it or not, I am headed for 60% in rocket ship. as I write this my weight is flexing between 226 and 228. It's been volatile in the last several days. I have seen this volatility many times in the past 5 months, and it usually foreshadows a big drop. Said drop usually comes within a week's time.

I could drop 7 or 8 pounds by next Friday. It has happened before.

I am expecting the next Bod Pod test to show me at 221-222. I expect my lean mass to be at 150 pounds. I expect my fat mass to be at 72 pounds. I expect my body fat percentage to drop to 32.4%

There is no doubt that I am finishing this process. The next 15 pounds will be decisive. Once the next 15 pounds come off, and my weight reaches approximately 214 pounds, no reasonable member of western civilization will see me as a fat guy. They will see me as a fairly robust Mesomorph. That will be one hell of a change.

When I reach 215 pounds, I think I am going to visit a local night club rumored to be one hell of a meat market. I don't really intend to "hookup" as they say. Rather, I want to conduct an experiment. It will be interesting to see the reaction of female shoppers to the merchandise.

I'll make a prediction for you: The first aggressor will be a Scorpio, and it won't go well.

Bod Pod V: Victory is mine at 229

So I went out for my 5th Bod Pod test this morning, and to make it very succinct for you, they want to hang my progress chart on the wall of fame. If you ever have a Bod Pod composition test done at the California Health and Longevity institute, you just might find my progress chart hanging on the wall.

I started this whole process at 330 pounds. Dr. Bachner claimed I needed to lose 30% of my body mass to avoid confinement to a wheel chair for the rest of my life. 330 X 0.3 = 99.0. This means my target weight, according to Bachner, should be 231.

This morning, the Bod Pod recorded my weigh at 229.37. This is victory over Europe day. This makes the all the blood, guts, pain, sweat and tears (not to mention vomiting) worth-while. I have officially passed the first big milestone. Now on to the second big target. I still need to cut my Body Fat Percentage in half.

It's interesting to note that my early projections in March indicated that I would hit this target weight in the early stages of July. My computer projections bounced around between July 7-9, based on how fast or how slow my progress was rolling, but the date always hovered around this range. Though the confirmation came of July 8, it is very likely that I hit the target weight yesterday or the day before. July 6 or 7 is the most likely candidate as victory day. We still needed the official confirmation to declare victory.

In the last two week cycle, I lost 9.291 pounds of pure fat. Unfortunately, I also lost 1.421 pounds of lean mass. The total loss was 10.712 pounds. This reduced my body fat ratio by 2.3%. I regret the lean loss. My results this cycle would have been better if I had kept my 1.421 pounds of muscle. I went a little too hard this time around. I am pretty exhausted. I'm going to ease off the accelerator a little bit during the next two week cycle.

The overall story since I began Bod Pod testing is pretty impressive. In the past 56 days I have reduced my body fat percentage 8.3%, lost 31.928 pounds of pure fat, and added 2.647 pounds of lean. My lean mass figure went down a bit this cycle, but I am still in positive territory overall. Absolute weight has been reduced by 29.281 pounds.

The most amazing figure is this: 56 days ago, my body occupied 117.111 liters of physical space. This morning, the Bod Pod measured my body volume at 102.111 liters. This indicates that I have lost 15.0 liters of body volume in just 56 days. The next time you drink from a 1 liter bottle of water or use a 4 cup measuring cup, you have to imagine 15 of those suckers distributed all over my body. Then imagine them all vanishing in less than two months.

A morph film, before and after, would have been good. Too late now.

And now we come to a very interesting moment in my life. The plan up to this point has been to make this first big weight goal, buy a nice suit of business cloths, fix up my resume, and enter the market. I had some pretty frank... nay, make that brutally frank discussions about this with my direct supervisor at work today.

Special K, as I will call him, is a good friend of mine. We are absolutely honest with each other. This is a good thing. We both know where we stand. There is never any doubt about that. It is not often in business where you have an absolutely blunt, frank, honest rapport with a coworker. This is one of those rare cases. As might be expected, Special K doesn't want me to go.

The two of us must have been brothers in a past life, maybe even several times, because I do feel that pathos. Further, this job is a mixture of wonderful and bad things. This isn't a simple story, or an easy matter to sort out. Still, the secular trend is heading in a very bad direction lately. I am extremely burnt-out on this job and this story.

I am feeling the urge to go. I feel that it is time to die to the past and be reborn to the future. This is the way you get a fresh start. No decision has been made yet, but I am leaning strongly towards departure.

Outperforming the outperformance: Blowing the lid off the Doc's head

Intro

So I had my visit with team Quilici in some 90 days today. It was a lot of fun while it lasted. Now I know how it feels to be Julio Jones and blow up the combine. Unfortunately, reports of my god-like mastery are going to be greatly exaggerated as a result of a few clerical blunders. I intend to set the record straight in this blog entry.

The Official Story

So, after spending my customary 20 minutes in the waiting room, I was directed to room 1. This is where team Quilici weighs the patient, measures blood pressure, and takes your body temperature. My weight was 237.5 today. This was very close to the reading my Tanita at home gave me earlier in the morning.

The nurse practitioner who saw me immediately thereafter could not conceal how impressed she was. "It looks like you've bee loosing a lot of weight recently; 65 pounds in the last three months. You are making very rapid progress! Much faster than expected."

Of course, I rejoiced at the sound of those statements, but I wanted a bit of clarification. "What is considered normal progress? What would Dr. Quilici have projected in terms of weight loss? What did you estimate my weight would be?"

She answered, "40 to 50 pounds is considered great in 90 days. You are moving much faster than the rest of our patients. Your BMI is already down to 33. If you keep going at this rate you're going to be all done by your next visit in 90 days."

So, at first blush, it would seem that I blew the lid off their projections. 50 pounds was considered the top. My score was 65. I shredded the roof by 30%.

Ah! But there was more. I produced my BodPod documentation from the California Health and Longevity institute. I showed her that my actual fat loss was greater by at least 4 pounds, as I had actually added four pounds of lean weight to my frame.

She was very impressed. Normally, they expect lean losses mixed with fat losses. They just hope the lean losses are not particularly great. They certainly don't expect lean weight gain. We settled on the figure of 69 pounds of pure fat loss in 90 days. I walked out of there feeling like Superman.

You see! This is proof positive that I really am better than all these weak bastards. Better by 38-72%

Bringing it down to earth

Not so fast there Mr. Roof Shredder! It didn't take too long for me to figure out that the math had to be wrong. The first crack in the picture occurred when I back-checked my weight figure. Can it be true that my weight 90 days ago was 237.5 + 65 =302.5?

No way Jose! That was not the figure 90 days ago. I remember as clear as a bell that the score stood at 281.0 the last time I stood on Dr. Quilici's scale. Somebody must have made a clerical mistake. Somebody recorded my weight at 302, when it was 281.

There is more proof. The Bod Pod clearly documents the fact that I lost approximately 18.569 total pounds of body weight over the past 42 days. That actually consists of 22.636 pounds of fat and 4.068 pounds of lean gain. In order for the 69 figure to be true, I would have had to have lost some 46.364 in the 48 days prior to my first Bod Pod.

No way Jose. It didn't happen like that.

I called Quilici's office to verify, and they did indeed have my weight as 302 on March 28, 2011. That's not the only clerical blunder. They had my top weight at 325, not 330. I know for a fact my weight was right around 330 before I began the liquid diet. Might have been a tad higher than that. There is no question that it was higher than 325.

The Correct Score

On Quilici's scale, my weight dropped from 281.0 down to 237.5 between March 28 and June 28. This is a difference of 43.5 pounds. However, we should still factor in the 4 pounds of lean weight I gained during the past 42 days. Ergo, I lost 47.568 pounds of fat weight in the 90 days between March 28 and June 28.

This is a wee bit to the high side of his projections, but my losses are within the normal range according to Dr. Quilici's predictions. I am inside the pocket.

This is an average of 0.5285 pounds of pure fat per day over the course of 90 days. This required an average caloric deficit of 1,849.86 kcal each day for 90 days. That is a total of 166,488 missing kcal during this period. That's pretty impressive, really.

All of this is in pretty close accord with the numbers I have been calculating and publishing during this time.

Projections

The Nurse practitioner is not quite correct when she says I'll be all done by my next visit on September 29. Follow my reasoning.

• The Bod Pod had me at 240.082 last Friday.
• The Bod Pod stated that I had 91.454 pounds of fat on my frame last Friday.
• Dr. Quilici's scale and my scale closely accord.
• The Bod Pod is 0.85 pounds lighter than either my scale or Dr. Quilici's scale.
• According to our scales, I have lost another 2.582 pounds
• The Bod Pod would probably call it 3.432 pounds.
• I haven't slacked off the workouts, so I'll bet that was all fat weight.
• The fat loss figure could be a little higher than 3.432, but we'll go with that estimate.
• Ergo I should now have 88.022 pounds of fat on my frame.
• Another 47.568 loss will put my fat weight at 40.454 pounds.
• If my lean weight is, say 152, my total weight will be 192.454.
• 40.454/192.454 = 21% body fat.
• I will be about 4% shy of my final goal as of September 29.

Nevertheless, things are going pretty well. I have dropped a total of 92.5 bricks of butter. I am pretty much on track for victory here.

Bod Pod 4, the War to settle the score.

So I made my fourth visit to the California Health and Longevity Institute this morning. I don't want to play coy with you folks: I was very disappointed by the numbers. Whilst the progress was positive, and everyone congratulated me on 'good' results, these were the weakest numbers yet.

This was not as expected. I put in a hell of an effort during this two week cycle. I was expecting my best result set ever.

The cycle was hampered somewhat by my vacation in SF and the food poisoning I inflicted on myself there. However, even inside these negatives, there were positives. My brother and I walked up and down the hilly streets of San Francisco just about everywhere we went. It's really the only way to get around. I worked out on 2 of the 4 days that I spent there. I would have made it four for four, but the food poisoning stopped me cold for two days. Even so, I ate nothing on those two days. I just couldn't. When I arrived home, my weight was around 238.9

So just what were the numbers anyhow?

• My total body weight decreased 5.256 pounds to 240.082 pounds
• My total lean mass increased 1.478 to 148.628
• My total fat mass decreased 6.734 pounds to 91.454 pounds
• My body volume decreased 2.784 liters to 107.38 liters
• I shifted my body fat percentage to the right 1.91%

Most people would call that a victory after a vacation with food poisoning. Once again, I defied the laws of medical science by adding lean weight at the same time I reduced fat weight. This is a hard trick to pull off once. I've done it 6 straight weeks in a row. Most would say it is even harder for a 44 year old man with advanced osteoarthritis in his knees.

I would remind them I have had gastric bypass surgery and I am using a powerful pro-hormone. I have every advantage in this battle. I should be winning by larger margins.

I just don't feel the reward is commensurate with the effort level. During this cycle, I added Olympic rowing to my regime. I now hit 20-21 minutes on the treadmill, finishing at an incline level of 9. This generally burns 300 kcal. I immediately move to the Olympic rower, nail 2.5 KM for around 125 kcal. This usually requires 12-13 minutes. From the rower, I move to the bike and finish with 20-21 minutes for around 300 kcal.

That is a grand total of 55 minutes of exercise for 725 kcal.

I walked out of the gym after 7 such workouts during this cycle. I did this cycle twice in a day on two separate days. If you invested that much blood, sweat and tears in the gym, you would be expecting your best all-time result also. I didn't just get it. It's precious little reward for so much effort. I'd be lying to you if I said I wasn't disappointed.

Still, I guess I should be thankful that I have improved 6 straight weeks in a row. I have not gotten hung up on a frickin' plateau. There have been several slow periods during this weight loss program. There are moments of sewing and moments of reaping. Sometimes it takes a week or two for your hard work to bear some fruit.

Hopeful, my biggest cycle is immediately ahead of me.

I will see Dr. Quilici on Tuesday. I have some interesting paperwork to show him. I have an affidavit from my notary public for him. It will be interesting to see what he says.

Over the past 42 days I have done all of the following:

• Reduced my body fat percentage 6%
• Lost 22.636 pounds of pure fat
• Added 4.068 pounds of lean muscle
• Reduced my total body weight 18.569 pounds.
• Reduced my total body volume by 9.731 liters

Essentially, each week I am changing my body fat percentage 1%, losing 3.772 pounds of fat, reducing my volume by 1.622 liters, and adding 0.66 pounds of lean. This is what I have done for the past 42 days.

If my next 42 days look like the past 42 days, by August 5 all of the following will be true:

• I will have 68.818 pounds of fat on my frame
• I will have 152.696 pounds of lean weight
• My total weight will be 221.513 pounds
• By body fat percentage will be less than 31%
• My body volume will be 97.649 liters

Ultimately, that isn't too bad.

Outperforming the outperformance

Last night I arrived home from the gym around 12:30 AM. It was the end of a Murder Day. For some reason or another, I could not contain my curiosity about my weight. I didn't expect anything positive from a visit to the scale.

I thought it had been a bad week. I had good reason to think that, as I will soon explain. Also, I never weigh myself at night. Only in the morning. Weighing myself at night is tantamount to busting the liturgy, and you know we just can't do that.

Nevertheless, I couldn't contain my curiosity. Last night the scale read 248.6. I just woke up about an hour ago. As usual in the mornings, I went downstairs to the bathroom to relieve myself. As I looked across the floor to the bathroom scale, I could not contain my curiosity again. This morning, the scale read 248.0. I dehydrated and evacuated to the tune of 0.6 pounds overnight.

Just 8 days ago, the BOD POD measured my weight at 252.533. My home scale is not perfect. It disagrees slightly with the BOD POD. It is slightly heavy by approximately 0.85 pounds. The BOD POD is lighter by 0.85 pounds. Unless I miss my guess, the BOD POD scale would probably say I weigh 247.15 this morning.

We are talking about a minimum loss of 4.533 pounds if we take the numbers literally, at face value. In reality, we're probably talking about a loss of 5.383 pounds. All of this in just 8 days. The moral of the story is that I am surging. My average weight loss over the past 8 days was probably 0.6729 pounds. That's phenomenal. That's almost too fast. That might even be a rate that would concern Dr. Quilici and his team of experts.

For the past several weeks, my numerical projections have stated that I should weigh approximately 244-245 pounds during my visit to San Francisco this coming weekend. It does look like I am going to hit that target. I am most of the way there as I write this. I may even out-perform that goal.

There is no doubt that it was a bad week. I had one a hell of a rotten Memorial Day weekend. I tweaked my surgically repaired and arthritic right knee during my Friday evening workout. It was swollen and sore all weekend long.

My Playstation 3 died on Friday night due to serious overheating problems. My Sony DA5400ES receiver died suddenly and completely on that Saturday morning. Suddenly 2/3rds of my home entertainment system was dead. I wasted most of Saturday and Sunday looking for replacement parts. My bum-knee prevented weigh lifting and aerobic work, through most of the 3 day weekend.

The weekend I thought would be a workout-bonanza was a complete bust-ola.

I only pulled 3 double-day workouts during the 4 day work week. Only one of them was a Murder-Day. I only pumped iron once this week.

Yesterday was that one Murder Day. I got up in the morning, hit a couple of minutes on the shake weight to wake up, warm up, and start my heart beating. I jumped on the ROM and did the standard 4 minute upper-body workout. At lunch, I did 20 minutes on the treadmill for 260 kcal, and another 20 on the bike for 320 kcal. I did this again in the evening. I also did 12 minutes in the steam sauna, and 10 minutes in the dry sauna. That was my good Friday.

I have no idea how such a short week of work can produce those kinds of results. I am going to presume that I was just overdue for a big gainer. I am little concerned about my lean weight. I look forward to next-Friday's BOD POD test with great interest. If I even maintain my lean weight at status-quo, much less increase it, this should be great two-week cycle.

Surprisingly, my knees feel great this morning. I am set to do it again today.

Dave vs. the Bod Pod: Fight!

I seem to recall an NFL Total Access episode where we went behind the scenes at Baltimore Ravens training facility with Bart Scott (when he was a Raven). I seem to recall him preparing to enter the Bod Pod, a state of the art body composition tester, and hating every minute of it. "I hate the Bod Pod," he said "The Bod Pod never tells me anything except I am fat, weak, lazy bastard who needs to lose weight."

I second that emotion.

Back on May 13th, I had my first close encounter of the ugly kind with the Body Pod at CHLI (California Health and Longevity Institute). The results were so disturbing, so disconcerting, so up-ending that I didn't even blog about this subject.

Just what was the problem anyhow? It was the lean-mass figure. This machine had the audacity to to tell me I had only 144.561 pounds of lean mass. This did not accord with the submersion test I did more than a year ago, which indicated 190 pounds of lean weight. This didn't accord with the Tanita composition test that my General Practitioner did on May 11, which indicated 165 pounds of lean weight. The Tanita figure of 165 was scary enough, but the Bod Pod? Forget about it! That was just brutal.

These figures were so wildly askew from one another that it was enough to make me question is anyone had a device that worked. If you own a couple of clocks that can tell you you are somewhere between 4:00 AM and 4:00 PM, what good will that do you? How much value can this wonderful level of detail and precision provide?

There is another factor, a psychological motivation factor, that is far more important to consider. You need to understand that the ultimate finish line for the race I'm running is entirely dependent on how much lean weight I have in this body. My ultimate goal can only be determined by dividing my lean weight in pounds by the figure 0.83. This is because I should have no more than 17% body fat at the age of 44-45, speaking in terms of grand ideals.

If my lean weight is 190, the finish line is right around 228.9156. If my lean weight is 165, the finish line is right around 198.7952. If my lean weight is 144.561, the finish line is 174.1699. You can imagine how pissed and frustrated a runner gets when they keep moving the finish line in the middle of the race. This could break the will of a guy who isn't a competitor.

They wired me awake and hit me with a hand of broken nails. They tied my lead and pulled my chain to watch my blood begin to boil. Hits like a Philips head into my brain.

This produced remarkable motivational results. You shouldn't tie my lead and jerk my chain to watch my blood begin to boil... Not unless you want to see me cut my teeth on bars and rusty chains. I'll break my rusty cage and run.

I went into turbo-overdrive mode to try to correct this situation. I re-arranged my workout schedule. I decided to pull double-days. Instead of one workout at lunch or in the evening, I did two workouts: One at lunch and one in the evening. Instead of 30 minutes on the treadmill and 30 on the bike. I did 20 on the treadmill and 20 on the bike... but I did it twice a day. This represented a 133% intensification of effort from 60 minutes to 80.

In the first week after the Bod Pod, I even invented a thing I called "Murder Days". This was the extra hard day where I would get up and hit the ROM first thing in the morning, do my 40 minutes at lunch, do my 40 minutes in the evening, and then spend 10-20 minutes in the sauna (steam and dry).

You would think that much effort would just about kill you. On the contrary, I found it quite energizing. This kind of day keeps my metabolism burning most of the time, and at a high level. There are moments of extreme fatigue during a day like that, but they usually don't last more than 20 minutes. Most of the time, my energy is quite high.

During the second week after the Bod Pod, I came to a full realization that I had to get my lean weight up. 144.561 is just not acceptable. There is no way I should weigh anything like 174 pounds. I never weighed anything less than 192 pounds at anytime during my adult life. Even then I was too light. To whit, I decided to begin weight lifting and resistance training again. I also bought a nice pro-hormone stack called Trifecta from a company called LG Sciences. It's the next best thing to anabolic steroids. It works too, as we will see.

Discussions with a number of medical professionals shed a little light on this subject. It is impossible to lose the nearly 80 pounds I have lost in the last 4 months without losing lean weight. It's virtually a scientific law that you will lose lean weight anytime you lose fat weight. This can't be avoided. It's natural and normal, and even necessary.

Consider your blood. Human blood is not fatty tissue, but a certain amount of blood is necessary to support the life of you fatty tissue. As that fatty tissue is drained, atrophies, and goes away, less blood is necessary to support the life of that tissue. The body would be foolish to waste scarce energy and building blocks producing blood cells that are unnecessary. As unnecessary red blood cells die off, they simply are not replaced. In this way, the body reduces unnecessary metabolic costs. This is efficiency. However, as you eliminate those unneeded red cells, you will also lose lean weight. Red blood is lean weight. Consider how much less blood volume you need when you have reduced your fatty tissue by 60 to 70 pounds?

The moral of the story is clear cut: You always lose some lean with some fat. This cannot be avoided, and it really shouldn't.

However, I am not entirely sure that this scientific law can explain my case. I find it every difficult to believe that I have lost something like 45 pounds of lean weight and 35 of fat. No folks, the original figures estimating my lean weight were in error. The wing-nuts who ran my original submersion test screwed it up good.

If I had lost 45 pounds of lean by this point, my doctors would have put me in the hospital for a reversal of the gastric bypass surgery. This would be a surgical failure scenario, and there would be medical red flags all over the place.

So what do you do when you have several measuring instruments that yield different results? You pick the one that is most accurate; you roll with that one and discard the others.

As much as I hate the little bastard, my research does seem to indicate that the Bod Pod is (in fact) the gold standard for body composition testing. I don't like what it says about me, but I need that accuracy. There is no use in having delusions in this life. It is what it is. The sooner you are honest about it, the sooner you can correct the situation.

Honesty has some rewards, as I found out yesterday. Yesterday, just two weeks after my first test, I decided I wanted a re-test. I paid the $65 fee and entered the Bod Pod naked once again. I guess I wasn't really naked. I had a skull cap on.

The results were very encouraging. I totally out-performed all projections and expectations. I lost 8.52 pounds of pure fat. I added 2.4 pounds of pure lean. I reduced my overall body weight 6.12 pounds from 258.651 down to 252.533. This is total combined weight swing of 10.92 pounds.

One of the most fascinating features of the Bod Pod test is that it can tell you precisely how much volume of space your body occupies. The unit of measure is the liter. On my 13th, my body occupied 117.111 liters of space. Yesterday, my body occupied 113.808 liters of space. This is a reduction of 3.3 liters of volume.

This all happened in just 14 days.

The lady administering the test at CHLI is a registered nurse specializing in exercise nutrition. Believe me, she fully appreciated what her equipment was telling her. She was astonished. She shook her head in disbelief. She said to me "Whatever you're doing it's working like crazy. Most doctors would say you can't do what you just did." If she hadn't run the test herself, both times, she would certainly have questioned these results.

Understand that you must have an energy deficit of 29,809.5 kcal in order to lose 8.5 pounds of pure fat. To do this in 14 days, you need to maintain a per-day deficit of 2,129.25 kcal. That is a deep, deep energy deficit folks. It's far more intense than most people can handle.

It gets better still. I weighed in at 251.6 pounds this morning on my own personal Tanita scale. I have noticed that there is a small discrepancy between my Tanita and the Bod Pod scales. The Tanita is a little shy to the heavy side, over-stating your weight by a little less than a pound. The Bod Pod would probably say I weigh 250.7 this morning.

I've already got the jump on my next test results. That date will fall on June 10th. Some would say I did the Bod Pod just one day too early, but I'm fine with it this way. I already have my first installment for the next test.

Now the big challenge is to do it all over again. I need this next two week phase to be better than the last. I need to out-perform the out-performance. One more big-gainer like this will make a tremendous difference in the way I look and feel. I should be a heck of a lot healthier in two weeks if I can just do it again.

There's no doubt about it, women are far more visually inclined then men are.

I regret to inform you all that women at the gym are beginning to check out my butter. Shocking though that may be, it is true. Yesterday morning, I weighed in 253.6. I have lost more than 76 pounds, but I am not yet near my ideal body weight or composition.

Still, I have transformed enough to see a 180 degree turn around in the attitudes of women.

Today at lunch, I got the clearest indication of that fact. As always, I traveled to the Thousand Oaks 24 Hour Fitness to perform my mid-day aerobic workout. After finishing with the finger-print reader, I move to my first workout station: the tread mill. Two 20-something females were walking on a pair of my favorite machines. I naturally needed to walk past them to reach one of the unused machines.

As I walk by, the 24ish brunette looks me up and down like I am smoldering pork chop fresh off the grill. This was a barefaced look of hungry lust, executed with impunity. That was quite a shock to my system. So much so, I didn't do anything about it. I was just too flabbergasted.

About 40 minutes later, she chose the Lifecycle to the left of mine, this despite the fact that there were 4 open cycles to my right. With my peripheral vision, I caught her checking me out a couple of times. The Bio-Anthropologists I studied with at UCLA would tell you she got that close so she could smell me. Whether she understood that consciously would cause an argument amongst them. Still, they would agree she got that close to evaluate the chemical contents of my sweat.

I think any 44.7 year old man would be surprised to note a 24ish brunette giving him a hungry look, but it is much more so in my case. Such looks have been few and far between in my largely overweight lifetime. Just 5 months ago, I weighed in at 330 pounds and the looks of unmitigated contempt were both visceral and palpable.

There have been a few borderline cases in the past couple of weeks, but this was the first unmistakable case. There have been a few strange cases at work, but I won't go there or mention that stuff. There was a strange honking incident a few weeks back, but I am still not quite sure what that was all about. This event today was the first indisputable and unmixed look of lust I have seen on a woman's face in quite some time. It's probably been 11 years to be frank with you. I was probably 33 the last time this happened to me.

Surely, this has to be considered a 180 degree turn-around. I'm in the midst of a turn-around almost as big as the 1999 Rams.

Now this 24ish brunette would not compete with the Taurus gallery I posted on this blog a few weeks back, but she was not ugly either; not by any stretch of the imagination. This was a reasonably good looking woman. Of course, if you know anything about the Thousand Oaks area, you know it is pretty affluent sector of Los Angeles county. These are not poor women from a disadvantaged family backgrounds in this gym. All the more reason to be shocked and stunned.

I have been cogitating this event all afternoon folks. After kicking this can around for hours, I have definitely reached a conclusion that is sure to be controversial. Women are far more visually inclined than men are. There is no doubt about it. Women are more inclined to visual attraction that guys are.

For many of you, this will seem like a completely counter-intuitive statement. Surely you have heard women complain about how shallow men are, making choices based exclusively on looks. Surely you have heard it said that women must spend unlimited amounts of resources making themselves beautiful because men demand it. Surely you have heard it said that men fall in love their eyes while women fall in love with their ears.

I want you to know that all of these statements are absolute balderdash.

Most men I know rate women exclusively on the basis of how sexually inclined they are. A hot woman is not necessarily a beautiful woman. A hot woman is a woman who will bed down with you for the night. I know guys who declare themselves to be 100% dawgs. They openly say that they do not care if the woman is ugly or not. They will put a bag over her face if necessary. If she is ready and willing, she is a sexy catch.

I have frequently been horrified by some of the ugly women described as "hot" by large numbers of guys I know. She's only described as hot because she is perceived as ready and willing. Physical beauty has little or nothing to do with it.

Guys are far less visual than women are.

I have never heard women evaluate a guy in this manner. I have never heard a woman say a guy was sexy based on whether or not he was willing to bed down for the night. Neither have I heard a woman say she would be willing to put a bag over his face if necessary; he's sexy if he's ready for action. Quite the contrary. All guys are presumed to be ready and willing. He's only hot if he is good looking.

This is only true because women are far more visual than guys are.

When a woman is evaluating whether a guy is hot or not, it is 100% about good looks and dress. Whether he is a catch or not depends on economic factors, but heat is determined 100% by looks. Many women have a tough time concealing their contempt for fat or ugly guys. Most would never be willing to date a fat or ugly guy... unless he was extremely rich or powerful. Even in the case of wealth, it would be distasteful to date a fat or ugly guy.

This is because women are far more visually inclined than guys are.

Now, some fellows are are able to overcome disadvantages in the looks department with brilliance and comic wit, but it ain't easy. Such fellows will freely tell you they had to overcome considerable disadvantage. One of my favorite actors, James Woods, is full of stories about this kind of thing. Through confidence, daring, willingness to play odds, and not being particular, he became known as something of a ladies man in Hollywood. Still, he will tell you that most women were not particularly inclined towards him as a man of marginal looks. He had buddies who were far more successful than he, expending far less effort. This is because they had the advantage of good looks.

Let's understand one thing about a woman's drive towards beautification: It is entirely internally driven. She beautifies herself because she wants to look great. It makes her feel great to look great. You can't tell her good looks aren't important. She just knows they are. She does it more to compete with her friends and rivals than for the sake of any guy. She gets a bigger kick out of a look of envy from an ugly girl than she does from a look of lust on the face of an ugly guy. That much is certain.

Women are far more visual than guys are. They visually judge each other, and they visually judge guys.

Truth be told, most women know they can get a guy--almost any guy--anytime they want. It is just a question of whether she is willing to loudly signal that she is ready to go. That's not what women are after as they compete relentlessly with each other to be the most beautiful. Nope, she is just expressing that powerful aesthetic drive that dominates her soul.

The drive towards aesthetics is everywhere in the female soul. Only women insist on a match set of kitchen knives so everything is color-coordinated. Only women describe a website as lousy based on its look vis-a-vis it's functionality. Only women describe a car as good or bad based on it's look first and functionality second.

Women are far more visually inclined than guys are.

I was fortunate that I was not born both fat and ugly. I am all the more fortunate that I have good healthcare coverage that was willing to pony up for gastric bypass. I am blessed with great drive and work ethic in the area of physical training. This is what did it for me in Football, Karate, Power Lifting and in my Army life.

Still, the transformation I have experienced in the past 5 months has already made it extremely clear to me that women do indeed make choices with their eyes. They are stereoscopic color vision animals that receive 85% of their sensory input from their eyes. Five months ago, I couldn't buy anything but a contemptuous look. Now I am getting a few lusty looks.

Looking down the corridor of time, I know I will hit my first major weight goal sometime in early July. At that point I will weigh about 24 pounds less, and I will have a higher lean weight also. My estrogen levels will be lower. My testosterone levels will be higher. My health will be better. I will be stronger. My pheromones will be more powerful. I will buy my first set of new clothing.

Just as surely as I am sitting here, I know for a fact they will be after me at that time. The few warning signs I have seen recently forecast a flood.

I say that without the slightest degree of ego or narcissism. It's more like shock, awe, and disbelief. If you knew me, you would know the word narcissist does not describe me in any way shape or form. I may be intellectually arrogant, but self-loathing rather than self-loving on the physical front.

As I sit here and ponder this astounding reversal of fortune, I can only conclude that women are far more visual than men are.

I just had a weird experience

So, I left the apartment at 3:45pm to walk down to the local car wash, detailing joint at the corner of Topanga and Vanowen. My car was ready. I purchased a nice $150 detailing job. After nearly two years of constant the use, the vehicle needed some TLC.

Incidentally, I am being introduced to Colin's sister in law this Saturday. On the off-chance that the two us might want to go somewhere or do something, I wanted my car to look nice.

So, I am walking down Vanowen and a Mexican chick in a Toyota Prius starts honking like crazy. I look over there to see if an accident was narrowly averted. Nope, she's waving her hand. "Oh she's seen somebody she knows" I immediately conclude. I continue walking. She honks again. I look over in her direction again. She points at me.

Now I just happen to be wearing my Sam Bradford #8 jersey on this draft day. Call it a good luck charm. I immediately conclude she is a Ram-fan. She drives past me waving, smiling and saying "hi." The girl is maybe 29 or 30.

A few minutes later I am questioning whether she was honking and waiving because she was a Ram-fan. Nah, that would be fucking stupid. Forget that nonsense.

I just hit 265.8 last night folks. I look very different. I have shed 64.2 pounds and counting. I have reduced my body mass almost 20%. I am nearly 65% of the way to home-plate.

Weird things are starting to happen to me these days, but this is just preposterous. I can remember female comedians cracking jokes in the 1980s about guys honking at girls. They were absolutely clear that women never do that. They were correct, right? The fact is that women never do that. It is particularly preposterous given the fact that I am at least 15 years older than that girl.

Remind me to tell you about the funny conversation my lady barber had with her buddy while she cut my hair last Monday night. They didn't think I spoke or understood Spanish well enough to track their conversation. In short, the buddy said "I think you just found your new novio". They were pretty giggly.

Also remind me to tell you about the "Win a date with a software developer" contest my MIS/IT department ran as cancer fund-raiser. I thought they were going to make $2 bucks on that fund raiser: one from each of the two girls who thought up the idea. They hauled down $198 at $1 per lotto ticket. You aught to see the no-prizes in my IT group. I was utterly stunned.

Incidentally, I am supposed to take girl named Emily out to lunch next week because of this contest. They funny thing is that Emily shares an office with that May 10 Taurus I have admired for some two years.

Weird things gentlemen... weird things.

I ate half a steak and egg burrito... shocking

As you all know, I had gastric bypass surgery on 2/4/2011. This is major surgery, not outpatient surgery. I am now a re-piped organism. They changed my guts around quite considerably.

One of the disappointments I have faced in this process is how slowly I've been recovering my ability to eat real food. Two weeks ago, I was supposed to cycle off of semi-solid foods, and return to fully solid foods. I just couldn't do it. Each battle with some solid food usually brought about stomach pains and problems.

I made several omlets, and enjoyed eatting about 33% to 50% of them. However, about 15 minutes afterward the distress would begin. After about 2 hours of burping, pressure in the gut, and mild misery, I could function again. As you might imagine, this was not fun.

I tried making a very mild, savory, and sweet Mole Negro Chili Con Carne, and I threw up on both attempts to eat it. I made a very nice Mac-n-Cheese with Asiago, Manchego, and Gruyere cheese. A few bytes laid me out unconscious in a post-meal comma. I tried eating a simple chicken burrito from Taco Bell. I threw up.

Basically, I've been surviving on as many protein drinks as ever, and I gave up on solid food for the past two weeks.

That is, until tonight. I ran out of protein powder at work two days ago. Tonight, I was so famished as I got in the car, I actually decided to draft a quarterback... er... take an insanely high risk. I went through the line at Jack in the Box and got a Steak and Egg burrito.

I only ate half. I chewed it to death. This was something like 30 minutes ago, and I feel fine. I am astounded. This is the first time since surgery I have eaten something with beef in it, and felt fine afterward. In fact, this is the first time since surgery that I haven't thrown up after eating beef or pork.

You don't know how happy this makes me. Steak and Egg Burritos ranked very high on my list of favorites before surgery. I have enjoyed none of these things since surgery. Believe it or not, this is a major milestone. I was starting to wonder if I had lost meat entirely from my diet. I was beginning to contemplate the life of a 7th Day Adventist: Lacto-Ovo Vegetarianism, with an emphasis on milk and grain.

Not now. I'm saved. I am not ready to eat a steak, but I now look forward to this moment again. I should re-try the omelette and the the Chili.