Lover of trading, tacos, 3D/AR/VR, cryptos, and most things Japanese

The gym is my battlefield and I enter it with swords drawn.

Focused intensity.

Singularity of purpose.

To go as hard as I can, every time.

What’s your vision?

It’s been just over a month since I started training hard again and the results are pretty impressive. I’ve added 20 pounds of lean body mass (LBM) and, while I haven’t leaned out any, I haven’t added any fat either, so my body fat % is dropping. I’m doing a clean bulk – eating 250-300g of protein a day, keeping the carbs around 200g/day, and fat about 100g/day. In order to hit these macros, I’ve had to up my caloric intake from my typical 1800 or so to about 2700 a day. Five weeks in, I’m really starting to feel the difference.

Back in the days of living in L.A. and working out with Rich five days a week, I had put on some serious muscle. We didn’t keep a scale in the loft, so I really don’t know what I weighed in at, but given this morning’s weigh-in and that I’m not as big or strong as I was back then, I’m figuring I had to weigh at least 250. I was 247 this morning. That means that I dropped about 65 pounds of muscle in nine days when I had my accident. Uff. I’ve never been able to get back to the size and strength I had back then, but I’m off to a good start so far now.

I’ve added at least an inch of muscle to my chest, thighs, calves, neck, and upper arms. I’ve added just under an inch to my forearms. My waist circumference has dropped an inch and, curiously, my hips have gained half an inch – may be the glute tie ins?

This is why I track my measurements. I only feel bigger in my arms and sometimes my chest, depending on what shirt I’m wearing, and I don’t notice any difference really in the mirror. But the stats don’t lie – I’ve made some great gains in the last 35 days. Getting bigger in the right places, and smaller in the waist.

The plan is to finish out the remaining seven weeks of Jim Stoppani’s Shortcut to Size workout program from bodybuilding.com and then switch focus from gaining muscle to losing fat. I have been lifting four days a week and doing some low-intensity cardio the other two or three days. If I keep gaining muscle at this rate, I’ll be 260 by the end of the year. As long as that body fat percentage doesn’t start creeping up, I’m perfectly happy with that. Then, with the start of the new year, I’ll start focusing on the shred, with the goal of getting down into single digit body fat percentages. I’ve always wanted to have that shredded look, and have dropped almost 20 pounds of fat in six weeks once before – going from 20% at 220 to 13% at 195. I know what I need to do to get it done again, and am looking forward to getting the jump on a new bod for the new year.

I’ve made similar gains in the first month back to regular training before, so these results are not unexpected. I think the fact that I had trained hard in my youth makes it easier to get a chunk back right away. My TRT doesn’t seem to be having that much of an effect yet, other than perhaps the muscle weight gain. I’m not crazy bigger or crazy stronger, all seems to be in line. I’m inclined to believe my gainz are more from a return to regular training than the therapy. I haven’t noticed any significant differences in mood. My energy levels seem to be a bit higher come late afternoon, and I’m falling asleep naturally around 10:30 or 11pm. But again, these may be more attributable to eating clean and regular training. I’m due for a blood draw Monday to see where my levels are, and expect that we’ll be upping the dose again at that point.

All in all, a very productive month. I’m happy with the progress I’ve made so far, and am eager to see what the next month brings. 🙂

From time to time I like to pause, reflect, and be grateful. This morning’s thoughts have been brought to the forefront by yesterday’s terrorist attacks in Paris. It saddens me that things like this still happen in 2015. It doesn’t surprise me though, every living thing on this earth has fought for itself since time began. People fight every day, that’s not going to change any time soon. What does bother me is a lack of compassion, recognition, and even acceptance of views that may not match one’s own. Everybody is carrying something with them through life, it’s so much better when one can occasionally share the load with others. Working together makes the burden less onerous.

It has been almost a year since I got out of the hospital. So much has happened, so fast. And so good. I am grateful to be alive and doing better than I probably ever have before, and it blows me away when I think about it. I am living an actualized, intentional life.

I am grateful for my family and friends, who have supported me through my trials and tribulations. My immediate family has really been amazing, thank you all. I love you. I am grateful to be reconnecting with my son after a prolonged absence at such a critical stage in his life. We went to the Avs game last week – thanks to tickets from my boss – and had a great time just hanging out. We work out together when his schedule allows it. His life has gotten exponentially busier, balancing school and a part-time job, and I am grateful for every minute I get to spend with him. My friends (that means you 🙂 ) have been there for me the whole way. Every “like”, every post, every share, connects us and sometimes gives just the right amount of support at the exact right time. I appreciate every one of you. Thank you for being my friend.

I am grateful to have the love of the most amazing woman I have ever met. We.are.the.same. Words can’t convey how special and important she is to me. We text every day and talk every night, for almost two years now. Every day. The only thing that would make it any better was if we lived closer to each other. We are both going through major life changes and the distance may actually be helping us grow closer. Each of us are strong enough that we would have navigated our personal shifts on our own, but to have the love, support, caring, and understanding of another who is going through a similar transition at the same time makes it so much easier. I wouldn’t be lost without you, my love, but I wouldn’t want to be without you either. Thank you for being such an amazing force and for sharing your life with me.

I am grateful to have a job that I love at a company that is just awesome. Everybody at Cliintel walks the talk and it’s fantastic to be surrounded by such a great group of people. It has the spirit of a startup with the security of an established corporation – exactly what I was looking for in a company. I’ve been with them for six months now, and am looking to expand my role into something more executive/strategic, and they’re fully supportive of that. In the meantime, I get to keep coming up with new ideas, doing analyses, writing killer code, and even creating the occasional stylin’ graphic or video. Good stuff!

I am grateful to be making new friends. As we move along in life, making new friends becomes more difficult than it was back in our school days. Work and family take up most of our time and unless we make the specific effort to get out, expand our boundaries, and meet new people, our circle of friends will shrivel up over time. There are those who have had the same friends their whole lives, from preschool to present day. I moved around too much as a kid to have those type of friends, but my Lexington friends are my oldest, and it’s been great to keep in touch with them over the years. I am glad that Tom has lived in the same town his whole life, and has that consistency. I also know people who stopped making friends after college. They’re satisfied with the friendships they have, and aren’t looking for anything new. I don’t quite get that. Perhaps a result of having a fixed mindset? I love meeting interesting people and my poker play has expanded my circle of friends substantially the past six months. We all love playing poker competitively, but there is a strong undercurrent of intelligence and supportiveness as well, at least in league play. We’re all trying to beat each other, but we’re all rooting for each other to do well too. Just a wee bit worse than ourselves. 🙂 I’ve made 20 new friends in my main poker league, with two or three having the potential to expand beyond the felt. In Dutch Boyd’s Twitch stream and poker league (Both are free, btw. We’d love to have you if you’d like to play), I am making a bunch more friends, notably including Dutch himself, and again it is a great, supportive environment.

I am grateful for my health. I’m slowly weaning off my meds for a variety of reasons, not least among is that they’re the wrong meds for bipolar and too low a dose to be clinically effective anyway. (Wait, a state-run institution got something wrong?? Say it isn’t so!) I remain sign- and symptom-free, for three and a half years now. I started TRT three weeks ago and am back in the gym every day. I’m starting to see results. I’ve gained 10 pounds in the last month and dropped four percent body fat. I figure most of that weight is just water, and frankly I don’t care about the body weight gain, just the fat loss. I am getting stronger, bigger in the right places. I can’t really feel the effects of TRT yet, but I am getting some physiological changes that suggest it’s starting to work. It’s funny, for some illogical reason I was expecting a more immediate response. But of course, treatments take time to produce results. Dammit, I want results NOW!

It’s an interesting thing, rebuilding my self and my life. I’m sure part of it comes from increased maturity, but I think more of it comes from intentionality. I had a long time in the hospital to figure out what I want from life, and I am no longer willing to sit back and wait for things to come to me. I finally realized that nobody is going to give me a thing. I was not born into privilege, I have had to work for everything I’ve achieved. And that’s where the satisfaction comes in. It’s rarely easy. In fact, the hard is what makes it good. I tend to minimize my efforts in hindsight, downplay how hard I’ve worked to achieve something. In reality, I’ve been working hard my whole life, and really feel that it’s all coming together now. Finally paying off. With that comes a twinge of fear, perhaps, that it will all go away, be taken from me by some force outside of my control. I accept that no thing is permanent – it will all change, again, at some point. Growth is, by it’s very nature, a painful process. But when we stop growing, we stop living. Just one year ago, I couldn’t allow myself to dream of the life I have now. Now that I have made it this far, I am taking this moment to acknowledge it and express my gratitude for it.

If this much was possible in the past year, who knows where I’ll be a year from now? I am ready for whatever comes, and am looking forward to continuing the adventure. Bring it! 😀