Mocha, bitter pills, and old hearts.

Diet

Wt was 264.4 this am. After a brief discussion, were dropping one high carb day to a med carb day. Still trying to figure out how my body handles carbs...

Medium carb day: had to turn down free potbelly subs at lunch today... Seriously, THAT was willpower...

Optimum nutrition mocha cappuccino arrived... Tastes like neither mocha nor cappuccino.  Tastes more like burnt marshmallow.  It does mix well with water/coffee and isn't repulsive....


Medicine

Times magazine : Bitter Pill  from March 2013... Read it.

Seriously, if you want to know why we are broke/broken as a healthcare system.

Also got to watch a TAVR procedure today... This is replacing a heart valve through a catheter ( like stenting a clogged vessel... But wedging a valve in there instead....).

Cost of the valve? $35,000...  After deployment, it was leaking... So guess what? Boom.
Another $35,000 valve was deployed on top of the first one. $100,000 on this procedure/ hospital stay alone for a person who is expected to live less than 2 years.

No longevity data on these valves, either. So we don't really know how much time we're buying these folks... Who are already expected to live less than a couple years anyway...

At what point do we say that enough is enough, and we as a society shouldn't pay for things like this? These minor temporizing interventions done in 85+ year old people...

When I reach 80, I'm eating nothing but pizza and ice cream until I die. Fuck it.

Dignity. There are worse things than death.




Lifting week2 upper1 tempo/hypertrophy
Super set pairs

Seated military press 6x6. @. 115 tempo'd
Pull-ups (6 sec eccentric)  6x6 @ bw- only used bands for the last 2 reps of the last two sets...

Wide bench 225 5x6 tempo'd with pauses...
Underhand row 135 5x6  5 sec contract at the top.

Band push-ups 3xfail
Band pull aparts 3xfail(20's)

Shakes and squats

Medicine:   Parkinson's clinic today... Good day in clinic, all of the patients were well treated and doing well on their meds, so its actually hard to tell they were Parkinson's patients... (Get it, shakes?)

Diet:
Matrix 5.o orange cream and carnivor protein... With oats... (And more shakes? Ha!)
Lunch.  Grilled chicken breast & salad...
Dinner: chicken chimichangas... Wife tried a healthy baked recipe.  Awesomeness.



Lifting:  week2lower1: tempo/ hypertrophy
Superset pairs:

Front squats 6x8 4 sec eccentric and pause in hole:  145 all sets felt so much more comfortable. Still limited by thoracic fatigue... Not leg strength.
Band hamstring curls tempo'd

Snatch deadlifts 5x8   4 sec concentric @275
Wide good mornings @135 tempo with pause.

Split squats
Glute bridges

Band walks
Zerk holds 5+sec holds at 135... T spine shot by these...


Buddy ran the Boston marathon today: thankfully he finished 30 min before the bomb...  Strong run, Kyle.

 Fucking cowards.




Welcome to my dungeon.

Babies, man purses, and pressing.

My daughter, who just turned 6 mo, is pretty angry after her shots. She's still not really keen on the idea of lifting weights with me out in the garage. I'm finding myself rushing the workout because she is screaming... Or like today, I'm going to have to break it into 2 sessions, maybe add some bonus Olympic technique work in.

Additionally: I'm looking for a man purse. I love the look of saddleback leathers briefcases, but at $400+... It ain't happening on a resident's salary. ;) I need something for the hospital to carry various neurology tools, blender bottles of protein, papers, and a tablet...

Searching around, copper river bags seems comparable in quality(warranty too!), very stylish, and less than half the cost of saddleback... Maybe I'll pick up one of the 10" camera bags and give it a whirl...


Lifting:

Week1upper2 tempo/hypertrophy block
Super set pairs

Multigrip chins 4xfail
OHP 1.25 reps. 4x6-8 (2sec pause at the face, drop to shoulders then full press). Only made it to a measly 115 lbs due to being rushed/no rest as above... Not to mention the quarter rep pause was brutal.

Band pull downs 4x12 with pause
Seated ohp lockouts 4x8 @145

Cobra presses
Band pullaparts.



Diet: bw: 262.5
med carb day
shakes and oats abound!

Seizures and squat pain

Medicine:
Spent all day at lectures about seizures, rather informative... Still realize I have quite a bit to learn about these...



Lifting:
Week1 lower 2 continuing with tempo hell.

Deficit deadlifts 2 plates + oly shoes. 275 5x8. Supered with
Hamstring curls: elitefts light band 5x8

Front squats: had to cut these early due to a strange hip pain, definitely not a nice feeling. I'm very weak at front squats, largely due to me not doing them often. I'm already feeling more comfortable under the bar with these.
155 2x7 supered with
Rom. Deadlifts 225 5x7 multiple second concentric/eccentric.

Sled drags supered with
Step ups with 25lb plates

Heavy prowler sprints supered with
Glute bridges

Decent workout: quads were screaming by the end.



Diet: bw: 262.4
high carb day: post workout meal was a dinner out with the wife: Mediterranean: rice and chicken kebobs..

Here chubby chubby chubby.

Starting photos... wt 261.8

I'm embarrassed (to say the least) at my current level of physical fatness. How much you can lift doesn't mean shit if you're a fat fuck.

Apparently I can't be trusted with my own body... Being a previous collegiate and professional athlete/fighter, I've sustained some significant injuries: bilateral ACL, MCL, and meniscus all status post hamstring graft repair... So... I'm missing part of my most vital pulling muscles...

Diet:

Medium carb day.

2 protein shakes with oats
Additional 60g carbs post workout
Minimal carbs otherwise.

Approximately 50g protein/meal 300g goal daily... regardless of carbs level of the day...

Lifting:

(upper body 1 today...considering the daughter crushed my workout yesterday...)

Everything has crazy tempos... Which pushes the difficulty level through the roof.

Seated mil press max 115. 5x7 supered with
pull-ups (6 sec eccentric-had to have band assist after the first 2 sets).

Bench 205 5x7 supered with
Underhand rows max 115. 5x7. 5 second contract at the top.

Band resist push-ups. 7,7,6 supered with
Supine grip band pullaparts 3xfailure (15ish reps) elite monster mini bands on both of these



Steady state cardio (not fasted):30 min dedicated walking around the hospital/stairs... my current role on this hospital rotation is redundant, so breaking away for this walk was possible...

New diet, New goals

Since roughly Christmas, ice been running carb nite. Great diet from DHKiefer. Pretty much a cyclic ketogenic diet (30g of carbs/day with one night of a re feed). I dropped from 285lbs to about 255. Good results as far as weight/fat loss is concerned, unfortunately there was a marked loss of strength and work capacity.

Frustrated with my strength level, I decided to work with Brandon Crabill, a fast rising star in the power lifting community. I've seen him drop 50lbs of fat, while nearly doubling his big lifts over the last year or so (700+/600+/700+ @ 200)

He's running my diet and lifting/conditioning... 

Diet seems based on carb cycling, with 2 high carb days, 2 medium carb days (these 4 carb days occur on training days) and 3 low carb days.

Just trying to settle into the diet, which is rather difficult, as I'm used to fasting must of the day. Thus current scheme has me eating very often, which ends up with me drinking various zip lock bags full of oats and protein powder that I procure from my white coat all day while rounding...

I need to plan my meals better, as I can see myself getting tired of this quickly if I'm not careful.

Lifting is currently based on tempo lifts done in super sets of seeming antagonist muscle groups. I'm trying to keep rest periods low,

Long gap in my posting.

Just started my 7th rotation as a neurology intern. 'Family Medicine'.   What a joke. They have a pretty rough time with all the random ass shit they encounter, but this rotation is 'tarded. At least I get the holidays off, right?

My zeal for learning and dedication to doing neurology readings has all but halted. Lots of things going on in my life (new baby: Adalyn, New lifting crew, Family issues, etc.). And reading has just not been too high on my list of things to do.

Medicine:

I'm disenchanted with modern medicine for the most part. The litigious atmosphere is bullshit. I've noticed a lot of what my attendings do is based on 'not getting sued' rather than what is best for the patient.  "Oh, the patient has a headache? Better get a CT, CTA, MRI, and prep them for a 4 vessel angio... Normal neuro exam? Can't be too cautious, ya know." 

Example:  We come upon our HIV patient who has PCP (PJC?) pneumonia. He's completely encephalopathic, agitated and lashing out. My attending, being fearful of intubating this patient because of the overall risk of death of intubating a patient with PCP PNA, delayed intubation. What he failed to understand is the risk of death is in tubing a patient BECAUSE of PCP PNA, not because they are unable to adequately protect their airway. The patient had sats dipping into the 70's, not responding to any intervention they tried. This persisted far too long, until I got an Istat that showed PO2 in the low 50's and an O2 sat in the low 80's. At this point I had to take it upon myself to call anesthesia to get the patient tubed, and the critical care unit for a transfer.

It is unacceptable to have a situation deteriorate in this manner with someone who, fearful of the outcome of one intervention, withholds all interventions and puts the patient at an even more immediate, grave risk.

Sometimes a little knowledge is dangerous... especially when it paralyses you and interferes with your judgement.


Lifting:

Found a new couple of guys to lift with. One is on my level as far as strength goes, the other is a bit stronger than I am ( and 70lbs lighter.) 

We have been doing "The Cube Method" for the past couple months. LOTS of volume, (bench, squat, and deadlift sets in the 10-20 rep range.)   It's pretty intense, and I already have felt my strength get considerably increased.

Recently:
Did reverse band bench press with ~30-45lbs off at the chest, did 395, and had a bit more in my tank. 3 board presses with 275x11+ and other ridiculous exercises were done as well.

Squats have been lacking because of a nagging back injury. These guys do a lot of Safety squat/Yoke bar training with squats, which is a new experience. Sets of 10 with 225 is pretty rough, where sets of 365 for 10 were doable with a standard bar... I maxed at just under 500 a couple weeks ago, but once again, I think technique is the problem, not strength...  I keep collapsing forward... and I can only goodmorning so much weight...

Deadlifting has been pretty good.   Most notably getting a 505 conventional pull last week was pretty good for me... considering it was after some snatch grip deadlifts ( 3 sets of 15 at 315, and one set of 11 at 405)...   Speaking of Snatch grip DL's...  These light up the glutes like you would not believe.


--I look forward to making some gains with these new guys... as Long as my schedule will let me lift with em... Lucky bastards are able to work and lift at the same place, so their schedule doesn't always mesh with mine... Schade.


--Hope to update this a bit more often nowadays.

---Merry Christmas, all!

--Darktide