Whatever you decide to do we support you as long as it's not cliff diving at low tide . Now, get some sleep. Mwah!

A Geek's New Life

Day 3, done. 67 to go.

Here's a preview of what my days look like:

Mon Training day
Tue Training day
Wed Day off
Thu Training day
Fri Training day
Sat Day off
Sun Day off

Day off (3 days/wk):
5:45 wake up, coffee
6:30 45 minutes fasted AM cardio
8:00 meal 1: 38g pro, 0-4g carb, 14g fat, fibrous green veggies
10:30 meal 2: 38g pro, 0-4g carb, 14g fat, fibrous green veggies, or protein shake with flax oil
12:30 meal 3: 38g pro, 0-4g carb, 14g fat, fibrous green veggies
3:00 meal 4: 38g pro, 0-4g carb, 14g fat, fibrous green veggies, or protein shake with flax oil
5:30 meal 5: 38g pro, 15-25g starchy carb, 0-5g fat, fibrous green veggies
8:00 meal 6: 38g pro, 0-4g carb, 14g fat, fibrous green veggies, or protein shake with flax oil
10:30 sleep (hopefully)

Training Day (4 days/wk):
5:45 wake up, coffee
6:30 45 minutes fasted am cardio
8:00 meal 1: 38g pro, 0-4g carb, 14g fat, fibrous green veggies
10:30 meal 2: 38g pro, 0-4g carb, 14g fat, fibrous green veggies, or protein shake with flax oil
12:30 meal 3: 38g pro, 0-4g carb, 14g fat, fibrous green veggies
3:00 meal 4: 38g pro, 0-4g carb, 14g fat, fibrous green veggies, or protein shake with flax oil
5:00 meal 5: 1 apple (15g carb)
5:30 Resistance training
6:30 meal 6: protein shake, 29g pro, 70g carb (pure sugar), 0g fat
8:00 meal 7: 29g pro, 70g starchy carb, 0-5g fat
10:30 sleep (hopefully)

Rinse, repeat... ... ...

All said and done that's only 3-4 hours in the gym per week and 45 minutes a day on my stationary cycle which is parked right in front of my tv in my garage. It's not that tough. The hardest part about it is making sure I have enough fresh food on hand to make all my meals.

There is a reason for every single one of those meals. Yes, I am ingesting 70g of pure sugar (that's like 2/3 of a cup) at 6:30pm on training days and 70g carbs at 8:00pm, which is like a humongous a$$ plate full of rice right before I go to sleep. Fastest ripping protocol I've ever seen work for anyone, and I've seen a lot of different programs in action.

Oh and one day a week I pig out and eat whatever I want. This is to stimulate my thyroid and keep it from slowing down my metabolism. This would be the day I'd get wasted too if I could stomach the thought of imbibing alcohol, we'll see.

edit: these macronutrient amounts are specific to me, they'll only work with someone who is very close to the same build I am.

So happy for you Lo0p!

If you're managing a restuarant, how are you gonna keep up with this crazy diet regimen? It's probably silly for me to even ask, because you never take the 'normal' route. I know you'll find a way to move mountains (probably between meal 3 & 4?) - we should start a pool! Best wishes Geek Man - we all love you.

Tupperware!!

No really. It takes a lot of preparation and tupperware. You get so used to it it just becomes habitual. I used to weigh my food but I rarely do anymore. I know that 123g of cooked chicken breast = 38g of protein and 170g of raw top sirloin = 38g of protein and I can cut them to within a few grams bye eye. Plus the protein shakes are a lifesaver. Whole food is always better but if you don't have the time you can replace every other meal with a protein shake with the same macronutrient amounts (59g powder = 38g pro and 1 tablespoon oil = 14g fat [flax, olive, fish, doesn't matter]).

You do a lot of precooking and batch cooking. Six pieces of chicken on the barbecue will last a couple of days. Cook rice or roast potatoes for 3 days at a time.

On top of that, managing a restaurant is EEEEZZZZ. Well it's not easy, but you can skip out and take 5 minutes to scarf down some steak and avocado whenever you want. It's a lot different than waiting tables where you might not even have 30 seconds to spare, much less 5 minutes.

The most difficult thing will be the ingenuity and flexibility that I'll have to employ. For instance, if it's a training day but I have to work that night and can't go to the gym, then I'll have to move my gym time to the morning and skip cardio. This is okay but I have to change my macronutrient amounts to reflect the fact that I'll be burning 500 less calories that day. So I'll still have my high carb post workout meals but I'll bump the last 3 meals in the day down to 32g protein and 12g fat.

Anything is possible, especially without uncle AL whispering in your ear all day long...

Loop,
Congratulations on the new job and all your progress! Glad you will keep us informed of everything going on with your progress. A lot of us depend on it. Especially with the added Baclofen which is something some of us may need to look into for ourselves. the only thing I really know about Baclofen is that some doctor treated himself with it (obviously many others too), so I was wondering if you had considered taking it alone instead of in conjunction with the Nal? Just curious why you decided to combine them and whether or not you think the Baclofen would work alone? Do you have side effects with the Baclofen? You may have already talked about that on another thread where I missed it, so sorry if I am repeating!
Thanks.

No worries calikime. We've talked about it a little on here and some over on MWO.

There is no way I'd ever consider ditching TSM and using baclofen alone. Baclofen is great for me and it keeps me from drinking quite easily. The problem is that it's just a "band aid." TSM is the cure for alcoholism and eventually, when I'm ready I'll start reincorporating AL into my life to continue the extinction process. I want to do it soon just to get it over with but I also want to whip myself into shape and I know I can do that in like 2 months. So I'm not sure what the next couple of months are going to look like but I'll be keeping track of it all and let you know what's up.

If you read through my progress reports over the last couple of months you'll see I definitely needed a break. Baclofen has proven to be just the break I needed but it is in no way a long term solution like TSM is.

SE's for me were mainly sleepiness and wooziness, all of which have pretty much subsided. In retrospect they were more severe than I remember reporting, but I wasn't working so I could tolerate them easily. I titrated up extremely quickly, so fast in fact that I'd feel irresponsible revealing how fast in a public forum.

It is overwhelmingly obvious that with the addition of baclofen an exponential trendline such as is used by Dr. Sinclair does not provide the best fit for my progress. Note the R squared values. This is forecasting an AF week this week, which is only half over, though I am confident that it will be.

Loop

you can't simply try a range of equations and choose the one with the highest R-squared value. There has to be some scientific significance behind the choice - i.e. the shape of the curve has to have an underlying meaning.

Three other points:

1) The intercept needs to be set to the level of your pre-TSM drinking
2) you effectively have two regimes here - as you've started taking baclofen during TSM, so you can't expect the same relationship to hold
3) your progress is fantastic, so who cares about the above anyhow!

AF Week 1. Dun.



I finally noticed the benefits of opioid receptor upregulation earlier this week.

One of my training days is leg day, and we all hate leg day. Your legs have some of the biggest and strongest muscles in your entire body. The difference between training your legs and any other part of your body is this: your legs will do what you ask them to do. If you are training something like your chest doing bench presses, there comes a point at which after 8 or so repetitions that you just cannot physically push anymore. This is called failure. With legs it's different. I can load up the barbell with my weight in plates and do 4 sets of 12 reps of barbell squats and call it a great exercise, and it is. A barbell squat is where you place the barbell on your shoulder blades and lower yourself down as though you were sitting down and then stand back up. It is a brutal, full body exercise. It feels like you just sprinted a 100yd dash. But you can also do more. I can load up the same weight and go 4 sets for 20 reps too. This intensifies the exercise by a factor of way more than 2. By the time I'm done I'm begging for life and feel like I've just climbed Mt. Everest in 12 minutes flat.

When I finally finished I limped back to my car and started sipping on a shake. I didn't really think it was safe to drive for a while so I just sat there trying to catch my breath and relax. Then my whole body got warm and a state of extremely pleasurable deep relaxation set in. Five minutes later I literally thought I was floating. I knew that I had to get home soon to eat on schedule so I broke my own rule. For the first time, in a very long time, I drove intoxicated.

Why do this? When you put your body in a state of shock by doing extremely heavy full body resistance/endurance exercises it responds as though it's been injured (it has). When you go to sleep it stimulates the production and release of Human Growth Hormone. This stuff is literally like drinking from the fountain of youth. It promotes fatty acid oxidation and lean mass synthesis. It stimulates the destruction of old cells and the production of new ones. These alone are huge but they are just a couple of the effects of HGH among a myriad of other extremely beneficial processes.

6 AF days, 1 TSM day. Zero complaints. I did try to halve my baclofen dosage for the 3 days prior to my TSM day and it finally caught up to me. The cravings came back, they weren't unbearable but I figured it was as good of an excuse as any to have a TSM day.