Bod Pod VIII: Victory spoiled

So today was Bod Pod VIII day. Just what were the results?

• My body weight went down from 220.348 to 209.34.
• This is a loss of 11.008 pounds
• 8.452 of those lost pounds were fat
• 2.556 of those pounds were lean tissue.
• My fat weight dropped from 70.865 to 62.414 pounds.
• My body fat ratio dropped 2.4%
• My official BFP is now 29.8%
• I am now over 70% lean.
• My body volume dropped from 97.356 liters to 92.042 liters
• This is a loss of 5.314 liters of body volume
• For what it is worth, my BMI is now between 29 and 30. Few medical professionals take BMI seriously.

There are reasons to be excited, there are reasons to be disappointed

• I was hoping to go inside 60 pounds of fat.
• I was hoping to go inside 28% BFP
• My BFP dropped 2.4%, which is 0.4% more than we would expect under the benchmark average.
• I lost 1.452 pounds more fat than we would expect under the benchmark average
• This came at a high trade-off, as I lost 2.556 pounds lean more than I should not have lost
• I also failed to gain new lean, increasing the negative.
• The net difference in terms of body fat percentage is negligible. If I had simply kept my lean and been 2.556 pounds heavier, my BFP would be only 0.34% lower.

As always, I was hoping for better. To make it short and sweet, it was an exciting week of rapid loss, spoiled at the very last minute by lean weight loss instead of lean gain.

The next Bod Pod will be on my 45th Birthday. Yep, that's right folks. We are officially 2 weeks away from the moment when Dave turns 45 years old. Shocking, isn't it? Where has that ocean of time gone? How have I dissolved half of 90 years already?

There has to be a greater metaphor in this, somewhere

When not at work, it seems that I only do two things these days:

1. Workout.
2. Sharpen my knives.

What about watching football? I do that whilst working out and sharpening my knives. It seems that I only watch football these days whilst on the elliptical, or bike, doing the shake weight. Either that or I am polishing or stropping some knife I own.

This is a funny thing when you stop to consider it. Most people only work out to look good at the night club on Friday or Saturday night. I never go to the night clubs.

Most folks only attempt to sharpen their knives every once in a blue moon, and they only do so after countless meal preps. I rarely cook anymore these days. When I do, most of it goes to waste. I just can't eat a lot of solid food right now. It retards my progress and injures my workouts.

I know that someday I will go to a night club. I know that sometime in the future I will cook gourmet meals again for guests. Hopefully, there will be a 3/12/1986 Pisces on that guest list. In the meanwhile, I sharpen. I sharpen my body and sharpen my knives.

I'm a little like the Shaolin super-monk who goes on top of a mountain to train incessantly, for a battle that doesn't ever seem to come, due to the fact that he is committed to the way of peace. He still trains relentlessly and polishes his kung-fu.

Each time I work out, I feel my capacity to do work increase. I get stronger and better each time. The ferocity with which I train grows. I run angry, not scared. The tasks get easier, and I have to increase the resistance. The Bod Pod says I am getting better and better.

Each time I put a knife to WorkSharp 2000 wheel, or sand it with a belt grinder, my skills in sharpening improve. My hand grows steadier and more confident. My angle-judgement is improved. The knife grows sharper.

Yesterday, I ripped 23 minutes on the Olympic rower burning 272 kcal. I averaged about 48 strokes a minute. The resistance was set for level 10. There were several power lifters training nearby. I caught them looking at me several times. They had the bug eyes. They were bugging out over how hard I was training.

A few minutes after I quit, a middle-aged woman [perhaps 50] took over the machine. She rowed slowly. She might have ranged between 15 and 18 strokes per minute. The power lifters were laughing at her. This was among each other, not in her face. That wasn't particularly nice, but I understood the reasons why. You have to wonder why she would take a seat on a machine unless she planed to train hard. That pace was not going to avail her much.

She must have had another agenda in the gym.

Most folks who cook every day, don't have any knives to compare to mine. Most of my knives will turn a copy of Sports Illustrated into a pile of confetti in 10 or 12 strokes. I can slash through the whole magazine with one quick stroke. The cut is clean and true. Some of my knives are better than others, but all of them can do this. They all have mirror edges that can reflect light. I reflect the evening light from my window onto my wall after stropping a blade. This is one of my tests to ensure I have a good mirror polish on the edge.

Carrots, onions, celery, bell pepper, garlic and parsley have no chance against my blades. I can mince them to a fine powder in relatively little time. The funny thing is I rarely cook, so I rarely prep food stuff. Still, I sharpen anyway, knowing eventually the day will come.

Most people workout to look good. I mostly workout to improve my health, but I am interested in looking good also. I know it is better to be good than look good, however. I try to ensure the substance is there.

The substance does seem to be materializing.

Last night I had a minor dumping incident. I felt like was having a heart attack around 6:00pm. It was over after about 90 minutes. Around 8:30pm, my buddy Colin showed up. He surprised me by telling he wanted to begin training on the ROM machine again. Of course, I was happy to oblige him.

We started out by weighing him on the Tanita. The Tanita says Colin weighs 230.0 pounds. I was shocked. I am now officially 18 pounds lighter than Colin. I used to be 100 pounds heavier than Colin. This is a 118 pound swing.

We set the ROM resistance for 165 pounds, and Colin did the ROM upper body workout. He looked to me like he was going to have a heart attack. He almost passed out on my couch. I gave him about 10 minutes to rest, and suggested that he do the lower body workout. He was still winded, and almost unresponsive as he nodded his head "no".

I got board. Despite the fact that I had done the full ROM cycle in less than 20 minutes that morning, I decided to do the lower body workout again. The lower is a doddle. I can do four minutes at any time. I knocked off the four minutes yapping about how easy it was the whole time. I wanted to shame him into getting the other half of his workout. It didn't work. He was too overwhelmed by the upper body workout.

I decided to do the abdominal and oblique exercises again also. That wasn't quite enough for me, so I got on the bike and executed one of my 12 minute escalator cycles. This is where I constantly escalate the bike resistance from 160 watts to 210 watts over the course of 12 minutes. That's a butt whupper. It will get your heart rate to 160 bpm and make you sweat.

Colin was fairly appalled by how easily I handled all that work. He was surprised at how fast my heart rate and respiration returned to normal.

I didn't have the heart to tell him an hour earlier I had just finished recovering from a dumping event. I could have done better, if I hadn't had an adverse reaction earlier that evening.

There seems to be plenty of substance developing. I think I am a lot better than I look, and I don't look half-bad. I think I would surprise a lot of people if they put me to the test.

My knives are a lot sharper than they look as well. Many an Iron Chef would be pleased to use they knives.

It's funny that I've developed an obsession with knife sharpening skills lately. On the other hand it makes a lot of sense. Knife sharpening is a skill that requires a lot of concentration. Developing skill takes time. Real-time concentration on a skilled-task focuses my mind, and takes my mind off the fact that I rarely eat solid food these days.

Still, it seems strange that I seem use neither of these great capacities. Although my capacity is greater than that of many, I have not arrived at the level I want to be. I continue to train in both disciplines. Sooner or later I will arrive at the super expert level I wish to achieve.

Then it will be time for a show.

Come to think of it, a friend of mine is having a birthday pool party and BBQ this Saturday. I just may cook a Paella for the crowd there. This will give me a chance to show off what my knives can do. The pool party ... well... you know what pool parties are like.

The Dumping Effect

For those who have Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery, the dumping effect is probably single most fearsome side-effect.

Just what is a dumping effect or dumping reaction? A dumping effect/reaction occurs when you pocket stomach releases carbohydrate--most often refined carbohydrates--into the lower intestine too quickly. Remember, the first three feet of your upper intestine are gone. The carbos go straight into the lower intestine.

Biologists don't understand why, but for some reason, this wreaks havoc on your metabolism. You begin to sweat profusely. Your sweat has a strange and abnormal stench to it. The smell is disturbing. You get cold chills. Your body can't heat itself. You may feel cramps in various and sundry places. You heart races. You get nauseated. You feel gas pressure in your gut. You want to throw up, but you can't. You just gag. Perhaps you will burp a few times, if you are lucky.

I am told it feels like you are having a heart attack. The symptoms are said to be similar. I wouldn't know. I have never had a heart attack. I don't plan to have one either. Given my level of fitness, I doubt I will.

When the whole thing is over, you feel like you have been through the ringer.

Believe it or not, forcing yourself onto the exercise bike will make you feel much better. Elevated blood sugar is one of the several reasons for this reaction. Reducing your blood sugar by burning it helps you to recover quite considerably.

Based on what I have been told, the dumping effect only occurs during a relatively brief period of time between 5 and 12 months after the surgery. My first dumping effect occurred earlier than that.

I had a minor dumping effect last night, which was very strange. I just had my last one this morning. It was pretty fucking awful. One of the worst yet. It lasted more than 2 hours.

Let me tell you about two things that will cause a dumping effect; things you will probably never hear about anywhere else. To the best of my knowledge these two substances appear on no Gastric Bypass post anywhere.

1. Liquid or foaming Dawn dish washing detergent
2. USPlabs Jack3d (Pre-Exercise CNS-Carnosine-ATP Augmentor)

I happen to rely on both these substances quite a bit. Dawn is my detergent of choice for all my dish washing needs. Jack3d is my most preferred pre-workout drink. Still, you have to be careful in how you use them. Let me tell you about it.

This morning, when I began prepping my breakfast protein drink, I realized that I hadn't run a load of dishes in a few days. I don't have many dishes to do, so this isn't unusual. Unfortunately, I didn't have any clean Magic Bullet mixing cups left in the cupboard.

I decided to do a quick rinse job on one of the dirty mixing cups. This involves a little water, a squirt of liquid dawn, and a little time on the bullet blender. This should disinfect the cup.

Unfortunately, I was not as diligent in rinsing the cup clean as I should have been. I should have rinsed it several times, and wiped it down with a paper towel. Trances of the detergent remained in the cup, and gave my protein a funny taste. No matter, I thought. Liquid Dawn is a inert and non-toxic. I should be fine.

Less than 10 minutes later, all manner of unpleasantness ensued. This was the second worst dumping event ever. It was pretty terrible.

Never has a protein drink invoked a dumping reaction. I've been living on Muscle Milk for 6 months now, and it has never given me a problem before this event. It had to have been the traces of soap that upset my delicate digestive system.

The moral of the story is simple: Use the dishwasher. If you wash manually, rinse very clean. Any traces of soap will upset you something terrible.

USPlabs Jack3d is one of the best workout energizers available on the market today. It works so well that the FDA is considering taking it away from us. The fucking bastards... If you ask people around your gym or vitamin shop for advise on a pre-workout drink mix, Jack3d is sure to get a lot of favorable reviews.

There's just one problem: By design it is meant to clear the stomach and dump into the intestines quickly. This is not a problem if you drink it by itself, as it is meant to be used. Mix it with a protein drink or some source of carbohydrate, and you will get an instant dumping reaction. It's a ferocious dumping reaction as well. Worse, if you should drink Jack3d too close to a meal, you could trigger a dumping reaction of sorts.

My first, and the worst ever, dumping effect was created in this manner. I was using the Watermelon flavored Jack3d at the time. This is a particularly offensive and unpleasant flavor for me. I tried to sweeten it and add some carbos by putting a teaspoon of vanilla sugar in the mix.

This was a serious mistake. Within moments of drinking the compound, I felt like I had been poisoned. I swear I must have sweat off 2 liters of fluid in the following hour. I couldn't stop shivering and groaning. My heart pounded away the whole time. That was agony. It ruined the whole day.

Use it, but not with any source of carbohydrate.

A dead cell phone battery... Are you kidding me?

Wanna talk about a stunning reversal of fortune?

Sometime in the morning hours, I got a call from the placement agency that wanted to put me together with the defense contractor. I was at work when they called. I didn't pick up the call. Didn't much like the idea of discussing the debacle, and I certainly didn't want to talk with a placement agency at work.

I called them back when I was on my way home. The conversation was not what I expected. The recruiter apologized profusely on behalf of the deputy director; the fellow who screened me yesterday. The deputy's cell phone ran out of juice during our conversation. Evidently, this was not an intentional hang-up. It was a technical difficulty.

The recruiter assured me that the DD was interested in me, and wanted to complete the phone interview. He wanted to know if he could call this evening. Naturally, I agreed.

I don't want to go over the conversation in detail, because that would take quite a bit of space. We talked for nearly 90 minutes. The conversation revolved around Dos and Don't in the management of a programming team. We talked about two-horned dilemmas. We talked about cardinal sins. We talked about cardinal maxims.

In short, I explained my point of view pretty well. A programmer manager is a head coach. He's a veteran of the wars who is a profound expert on how the game is fought and won. He does hands on code review to monitor progress, identify problems, and make on-the-spot correction. If you cannot write excellent code, or read code with excellent comprehension, you have absolutely no business managing programmers.

He seemed to like what I had to say. He likes the fact that I am American citizen and veteran of the U.S. Army even better. Better still, he loves the fact that I was a 31V10 who handled KYK-13 and KYK-15. In order to do this, I had to have an active Top-Secret (TS) clearance. That TS clearance is dormant in good standing.

This is the bargaining chip that gives me leverage in negotiations.

What a difference 24 hours makes. There was a simple Japanese Haiku that went something like this:

Now that the tide has come in,

I see the boats floating and bobbing in bay.

You would never know that a few hours ago,

they lay beached on a dry harbor.

Just lost a professional opportunity with a noteworthy defense contractor

I'm going to have make this short and sweet because I don't have much time to blog about it.

Last night I had a first-phone interview with a noteworthy defense contractor here in Southern California. We are talking about a billion-dollar organization. I was being interviewed for a IT directorship in the info-tech section of their firm. I was being phone-screened by a fellow who was the right-hand man and proxy for their CIO.

The first question out of his mouth was very interesting: "So tell me why a nearly 45 year old man who has been in a comfortable slot for 4 years is interested in making a profession move in this economy?"

I wondered if he had been reading my blog. Obviously not.

I told him about the dead-end position, and I told about the high-jinx we are witnessing in my professional environment.

"Do you know that we have customer facing apps and no QA team here at my company?", I said rhetorically.

[Dead silence on the phone.]

"That's... a little hard to believe. You're telling me you have customer facing apps, and no QA team? What is your release proceedure?" He questioned me.

"Nothing you would recognize as a release procedure. We have no test book or formal testing methodology as you would recognize them."

I explained our code yellow/code green system to the guy. There was more silence on the other end of the line. I got the distinct feeling he didn't believe me. I was hearing the silence of an incredulous man.

"That's not the only thing incredible about this firm either. How about this fact: The COO recently tried to install a SCRUM system and he made a glorified data entry clerk the SCRUM master... er... mistress."

There was dead silence on the other end of the phone.

"Ah... well... I'm sorry, but that's a little too much to believe. "

"I'm sorry to tell you this but it's true."

"Ahh.... mmmm... I doubt any COO is stupid enough to misunderstand scrum that much." He said, sounding profoundly uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry to tell you it is true." I replied

[Cick! BEEEEEP!]

He hung up the phone on me.

I am still processing that one emotionally. The phone interview terminated abnormally with a thud. Without saying so, I am sure this fellow though he was talking to a fork-tongued lying asshole who was slandering his former company.

So this professional opportunity is now gone, and presumably gone forever. It is gone because I told the truth about my firm, and the hearer of the true story could not believe it.

Incidentally, in case you were wondering, SCRUM is a system in which there is a morning meeting of the programmers, every morning, conducted by the most senior [and presumably most skilled] programmer in the shop. The senior coder and architect offers his help to junior programmers who may be hung up on a bug or thorny coding problem.

Naturally, it is pure foolishness to install a glorified data entry clerk in the roll of the SCRUM mistress. Such an individual cannot offer advanced technical assistance to the junior programmers. Only a fool who has completely misunderstood the process would ever mistakenly to do such a thing. Nevertheless, this is precisely what has been done in my firm.

A big-shot at a serious defense contractor hung up the phone on me, because he could not believe that this story was true. He believed that there are no such fools among the COOs of the world. It was fundamentally unbelievable to this fellow. I had to be a slanderous liar. This was the only conclusion he could reach. He didn't want to any further communication with me after this point.

Wow... I am still processing that one emotionally. What do I do now? Do I omit any references to why I want to leave this firm?

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.

The end of the Colts as we know them?

Folks who have read this blog for awhile will know that I am no hater of the Colts. I am a Raider hater and a Patriot hater, but not a Colt hater. You will probably find 30 or more posts on this blog where I say terribly flattering things about Bill Polian, Tony Dungy, Peyton Manning, Dallas Clarke, Reggie Wayne, et al.

The Colts have been a model organization for the past 12 years. They have not had a single losing season in that time. They have been a model of consistency, continuity, and sportsmanship during this long run. Like their quarterback and President, they are a class act.

With that said I am wondering if 2011 is the year of the breakdown for the Colts. I've watched the Colts first preason game from stem to stern, versus my Rams, several times now. I can't tell you the sense of shock I experienced watching the footage, over and over.

Essentially, what I saw was this: I saw a big, mean, physical, fast Ram offensive and defensive line beat the shit out of a bunch of smaller and weaker Colt linemen. I saw the Rams line knocking the Colts 4 and 5 yards off the line of scrimmage--and with velocity--on almost every running play. What I saw was the Rams playing big-boy football, a-la the Ravens and Steelers. We stood their punching the Colts in the mouth, with impunity, and it didn't seem like there was anything they could do about it.

I know... I know what you're thinking:

1. The Colts didn't have Manning
2. The Colts didn't have Dwight Freeney
3. You just can't tell much from the first preseason game
4. The Colts are a quality team, and they don't get excited about a preason game with Rams

All that is fine and good and true, but you need to have a look at that film footage. If you look at the way those two lines were utterly dominated, you will have to admit that there are red flag warnings flying during this game. A team that is coming up from the depths should not be able to physically destroy the elite Colts in this fashion.

The defense is particularly an issue, as it often has been for the Colts. During the Colts many quality years, they often suffered defensive breakdowns, and often at the worst possible times. Jim Mora was fired and Tony Dungy hired to fix this problem. Dungy often had to work miracles to resuscitate a dying Colt defense. Sometime he succeeded, sometimes he did not.

This is now the Colt's third year without Tony Dungy. In their first year without him, they fired on every cylinder, never missing a beat. Last year, the Colt defense began to crack and crumble. The Colts stumbled greatly on their way to a one-and-done playoff exit. Now in this first preseason game of 2011, I watched them get punched in the face relentlessly by a Rams team that has not had a winning record in 7 years.

I felt like reality was melting down and disintegrating. Folks, the Colts are now officially on my suspect list. I don't know if I can pick them to win the South. I am wondering if this is the year the tires fall off the waggon.