Crunched some numbers tonight

As of this evening, despite it being March 18th already, I have completed 27.240 MC in my long journey towards a healthier version of myself.

Over the course of the project I will require a rate of about 3.83 MC per week for the entire 5 year duration. Yes I'm counting Feb 29, 2012. So far, 45 days into the reboot I have averaged 4.24 MC per week.

So I'm about 10% up so far. However by duration I am less than 3% of the way through. By time it's only 2.5% so progress is being made.

Again, and this has become a daily occurrence, the sheer magnitude of the undertaking is at once agonizingly slow and dauntingly massive. In some way I feel like a prisoner digging a tunnel with a spoon or a patient engineer melting a glacier with a blow torch.

Guess I'll just keep at it and keep my records as I go.

An interesting bit of trivia though. During the last 2 years of high school I was averaging 15 miles per week of swimming. Those 104 weeks, if I had been tracking my expenditures at the time, would account for about 800 MC.

Granted I was younger and had a LOT more free time so that sort of activity level is no longer practical. The GC project only demands 200 MC per year instead of 400+ like my rage fueled aquatic endeavor.

All I can say now is bring on the endorphins and neurotrophins, baby.

Gigacalorie Update

25790 be the final count for Week 6.

That includes an unprecedented 5.8 Mc for the week. This should be considered doubly impressive considering the misery inflicted on Nat and me by this freaking cold that's going around. And considering the rather lamentable performance last week I feel pretty confident that Week 6 can and will be duplicated in the future.

I mean that I will be able to turn this from an outlier week to a sustainable burn rate. This may prove problematic, or perhaps just take longer than I would hope. I suspect this because of the anomalous quantity of exercise I was able to perform this week.

Part of the success may or may not relate to the quantity of cough syrup consumed lately. Each dose contains a giant belt of acetaminophen. Standard dose is equivalent to a few Tylenol. Might be artificially expanding my threshold of pain and allow extended duration of activity.

It's nice for this week but also worrisome as it may prove to be a temptation in the future.

Week 5 Update: Ragged patch, low point in the project so far

I know it's Monday and I never really posted a week 4 summary but here's the current count.

As of yesterday, March 8th 2009 I have completed: 19.974 MC

I cracked the 20MC barrier this morning, though it caused great distress for a number of reasons.

Here's the general outline of the events.

Woke up at 5am (FUCKING daylight savings time!!!) drove to gym. Ate toast in the car. Puked up toast in the parking lot, joyful. Tried to do my regular workout but after an hour or so I nearly fainted and puked a few more times in the family locker room.

So I left in a hurry and in my haste I left my wedding ring in the drink holder of the elliptical. Had to swing a hard U to drive back and reclaim it. Ring was found but no longer possesses the power to make me invisible to other females. Drat.

Came home, puked a few more times and tried to get back in bed. Dozed for a little bit. Phone rang, some yakoff wanted to sell me consolidated student loans. Kept phone on speaker while I threw up a few more times. Telemarketer hung up. Called in sick to work and clawed my way back into bed.

Slept til noon, tried to eat something and almost barfed it up. Managed to hold onto some prison food (bread and water) and slept again until 3pm. Got up, took shower and brushed teeth. Watched a little TV and started to feel normal again.

Later, call it 445 I decided to update the GC spreadsheet and write this post. Hopefully I will be able to function tomorrow.

Week 3 Update, somehow still on track

So the final count is 11.743 MC.

This includes 4.130 from this week which by Friday was starting to look a little bleak.

See I knocked out a huge workout Tuesday Morning before heading down to Gastonia for the big install. That went all the way until Friday which meant concurrent 12 hour days for most of the week. Luckily I had enough steam to make it Friday, Saturday and did another monster workout today.

Pretty good all things considered. I hate having to play catch up but I am definitely feeling the results if not seeing them just yet. Natalie and some family members swear I look like I am losing weight but I still don't see it.

Maybe it's the 'you see yourself everyday and it's too gradual to notice' phenomenon but who knows. I did a weigh in and clocked 240 while wearing sneakers, boxers, khaki shorts and one of the new lightweight Tshirts. I suspect all the stuff weighed at least 5 pounds which would put the actual figure around 235.

I can live with that for now. I'm starting to see a little more tone and my energy levels are miles ahead of where they were a month ago. Just in time too or that install would have flattened me like a 12g power dive into Jupiter.

Only two days of onsite work next week so perhaps I'll fare better. And maybe I shouldn't talk crap since I was doing a good bit of pacing, lifting and grunt work during the week. Maybe that counterbalanced some of the awful eating but time will surely tell.

Gigacalorie Project: Reboot!

In case you missed the travails of my sadistic quest to burn 1 million kilocalories last year here's what happened.

I made steady progress over the months and the last post ended up with me at around 37 mega calories. Then the wedding/honeymoon/my relapse into smoking pretty much obliterated the gains I had made and for months I languished. This is where I ended, with a whimper.

07/24/2008, 245lbs, 36.23Mc

What little tone I had was gone, what little weight I lost surely came back. It was pathetic.

But 2009 begins anew and I have canceled the progress so far in favor of upshifting the date to February 1st, 2014.

So I have five years (less 8 days at the time of this posting) to burn a million kilocalories.

After all a semantic 'calorie' is in reality a kilo calorie and calling a 400 calorie work out a 400,000 calorie workout is a little misleading.

Hence, the name remains the same and yet we start over at 0.0 MC. The only other notable difference is that I am rejecting the idea of weighing myself at each report since this will essentially profit me nothing and just discourage me.

The goal is not to lose weight but to lose fat and fluctuations in water, bowel and muscle content are sure to discourage me at first. Once I have made visible progress I may begin tracking but for now all you get is the 'before' stats.

Feb 1st, 2009
Weight: 236 pounds (urgh)
Progress 0.000 MC

Sad sad day. Interestingly enough my weight is considerably lower than it was at the termination (fizzle) of the last gigacalories quest by about 10 pounds. However there's really no cause for celebration as I attribute this to muscle atrophy and loss in bone density. I don't look or feel any better starting this time around than I did last time.

Then again, it's tough to say whether or not the added stress of being a new dad caused me to put on some extra poundage. 10 lbs could get lost pretty easily in my roundish physique pretty easily.

While we're on the subject the 236 figure comes from a recent physical for my life insurance. It's a little disheartening since most people guess that I only weigh around 200-210. It's not that I'm walking around on giant gelatinous sausages and waving sails of flabby man breast tissue around I just don't know where the disconnect comes from.

I suspect a lot of it, nay most of it, is in my gut which as of now is fairly prominent but there's quite a bit kicking around my thighs and legs. I usually say I have fairly dense bones since I have consumed ungodly quantities of milk for my entire life but there may or may not be any correlation.

At any rate the ideal weight for a man my age and height is roughly 170 pounds so it seems reasonable that I can at least get into the 190 range over the next year or so. The caveat being I don't give a fuck how much I weigh as long as more of it is muscle than fat, at least to the untrained eye.

This is the time when having a Zombie switch would come in handy.

Fiber Tea!

This is one of the posts that ranks in the "Happiness is only a turkey sandwich away" types.

Today I will teach you how to make a tasty beverage that will help purge the nastiness of everyday life, as well as some fecal logjams in your intestines.

You will need the following:

A pitcher
A large tupperware container (or a pot if you don't wanna use the microwave)
4 Family size tea bags, I use Lipton ice tea brew but others are certainly acceptable.
1 Cup of Splenda or 1/2 cup of the Splenda impregnated sugar (it's twice as sweet but only half the calories of sugar.
1 Container of water soluable fiber supplement. Fibersure is the best, hands down.
Water and Ice
A slotted spoon for stirring

Procedure: Being by filling up the pitcher halfway with warm or room temp water. Transfer to the tupperware container and place in the Microwave for 9 minutes or until it boils. While the water is heating up add a small amount of room temp water to the pitcher and add the splenda and your Fibersure.

I typically add 8 servings to a one-gallon batch but you should probably start with 4 until you know how you'll react to the extra bulk in your GI tract. At this point it'd also be a good idea to unwrap the teabags and throw away any messes you might have made so far.

Once the water is hot add it to the pitcher and stir for about 15 seconds. The existing small amount of water/Splenda/Fibersure should turn murky gray until the solids are dissolved. Once the water is clear or mostly clear plop in the tea bags and make sure each is submerged or at least soaked to maximize flavor release.

Steep for 4 minutes, and 4 seconds not a second longer... or you'll feel the back of my hand!

Now remove the tea bags and give it another stir. Add ice or water to cool down, stirring to even out the temperature. Chill or serve over fresh ice.

Your poop will thank you.