JamesSlusher.com

Roughly 2 and a half weeks in and I have lost 10 pounds so far. I’ve been hovering right at 205 for a couple of days. I’m enjoying my body shape much more, the workouts have really tightened up some muscles that had gotten flabby.

On a side note, I’m pleased to find out that I haven’t weakened too much over the past few years. Though this new workout doesn’t do a barbell bench press (or any isolation exercises for that matter), i was curious to see how much I could press. So after my workout last night, I put 300 lbs on the barbell and tried it out. I pushed it up easy. I was tempted to do 4 or 5, but my spotter was a bit nervous and that is a good way to get yourself hurt. Seeing as how I maxed out at about 350 a few years ago and 385 as an all time high, I’m glad to know that I still have a bit of the old muscle to me.

Another one of my many pet peeves is people that complain when a non-English language is spoken around them. I hear these complaints all the time ranging from “It’s all jibber-jabber” to “they could be cussing me out and I wouldn’t know it”.

First, if you really want to know what they are saying, trying learning the language. There used to be a time when people recognized their own ignorance and tried to correct it. Now it seems that everyone else should just dumb it down for them. Either step up or shut up, I say. Learn or sit quietly in your ignorance. Your choice.

Second, if you think that chances are good they are cussing you out in a different language, you might want to stop being such a jerk. If your jerkiness is crossing language barriers, you might want to try some behavior modification. I think you should take it as a given that most English speakers are cussing you in their heads already and you don’t know that either.

Third, almost everyone I have ever heard make these complaints had a fairly limited grasp of English. At least by taking up another language and sucking at that, you can use the “second language” excuse. Con fuera de ella una cierta excusa, usted es justa un moron.

So I’ve finally given in to the combined pressures of my doctor, the dieting industry, my friends and my own fat (yet still vain) backside.

I started a low-carb diet (this one specifically) a week ago. I’ve lost a few pounds, though I’m not exactly sure how many. There aren’t many people in this world that will start dieting without knowing how much they weigh, but there is at least one. Me. I’m going to go with a conservative 3 or 4 pounds.

I finally weighed myself on a reliable scale and came up with 210. Which seems about right since I weighed in at 215 once at a doctor’s office. My goal is to get down to 190. That should be about my ideal weight considering my physique. I’m not terribly tall (5′9″ish) so it sounds like i would still be in the lardish arena. But I’m fairly muscular so that adds a few pounds, I like to think. I would love to think of myself as Athletic, but I’m pretty sure you have to be able to run better than a 15 minute mile to qualify for that.

The hardest part of the whole thing is the food preparation which is a bit more involved now. That, and finding food I can eat. Unsurprisingly, the stuff you just “heat and serve” tends to be pretty carb heavy. In fact, almost everything in a supermarket is pretty carb heavy, which might explain why we are a nation of porkers. To get an idea of what I eat now, take away everything that has added sugar in any form (corn syrup, dextrose, etc, etc) and white flour. Now take away anything that is naturally high in sugar like fruits, corn, carrots and potatoes. So that leaves me with meat, cheese, eggs and veggies, pretty much. Now this phase only lasts another 3 weeks and then the fruits and whole grains get to come back into my diet. But for now I’m making lots of omelets and salads and such things. Good thing I like omelets and salads.

The second part of the diet is the exercise plan. It’s designed to cover an entire body workout in about 30 minutes, so there are no isolation exercises. You don’t curl anything. A sizable portion of them are body-weight exercises that include pull-up and push-up variations.

It had been quite some time since I had been in the gym and it’s very nice to be back. I’ve always enjoyed working out, but I had managed to tell myself that I didn’t have time or energy or blah, blah, blah for it. It comes to the point that eventually you have to think up more reasons to exercise than excuses not to. My personal vanity is one of the biggest reasons I have going now. I have a 20 year (!) class reunion coming up next May and I’m not going sloppy. I’m just not. Period. I’m not trying to be the best looking guy in the room, that’s probably not even in the realm of possibility for me. I’m trying to be as good-looking as I can be. Which, quite frankly, shouldn’t be all that hard.

I was initially quite scared of altering my carb intake because of the changes necessary in my insulin intake. It has been actually quite easy for me to change over and I’m very happy so far with my blood sugar control. That and I’m using about half the insulin I was using. Which is saving me money. Nice side benefit, eh?

So all in all, I’m pretty happy with my diet and it’s progression. I will try to keep you updated on any progress I make.

My firefox browser has gotten pretty crappy of late. It has been very very slow and has taken to unexpectedly dying lately. Safari, OTOH, has been doing just fine and lightning fast. Thus I’ve taken to using it for the time being. I will see if FF needs to be updated or patched, but I think I’m fairly up-to-date on these things, so we will have to see.

I’m sick as a dog and miserable as can be.  In that spirit, I thought I might share with you 20 things that really set me off:

1. Having a runny nose you can’t feel running.  All of a sudden you’ve got snot on your lips.
2. People saying, “I’m sorry that….”.  Everything after the “that” always boils down to “you’re too stupid to understand me” or “you’re too sensitive to take this right”.  People that are really sorry just say, “I’m sorry”.
3. Old people driving.
4. Something trying to eek it’s way out of your digestive tract and you can’t tell whether it is solid, liquid, or gas.  No matter what you do, you have a decent chance of ruining your whole day.
5. People that start sentences with, “You’re probably gonna get mad, but…”.  They always have the nerve to act surprised when they are proven right.  If you didn’t want to make me mad, then you probably shouldn’t have said it, huh?
6. Being sick.
7. People who tell you what they would do if they had kids.  “If I had kids and they were doing X, I’d ….”.  BS.  You don’t know.  I’ve got kids and I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do about the good stuff they do today, let alone any future mischief.  And you are gonna go 20 times easier than you tell yourself, chum.
8. People whose only social interaction involves the CVS Pharmacy cashier.  Pay for your lithium and move on, Gramps.
9. Tires and anything involved in the building thereof.
10. Did I mention being sick?
11. Old people being impatient.  If you haven’t gotten it done in the last 70 years, no sense rushing now.
12. Anti-science stuff.  I might listen if you are Amish, otherwise, you are full to the brim of it.  When your heart stops, I hope they remember that you don’t recognize the value of science and put the defibrillator down.
13. The Electoral College.  It was a great idea in 1776.  Nowadays, not so much.
14. Cold.
15. Builders who brag about “building to code”.  Great, you’ve done the absolute least the law allows.  Proud of that, are we?
16. Reporters that use the term, “some people say”.  Some people say you only got into journalism because you are too unimaginative to do anything but stenography.  That and newsrooms don’t drug test.  How about them apples, Katie Couric?
17. Celebrity gossip.  Anybody that cares what or who Britney or Lindsay or Leonardo is doing should be put into huge gerbil wheels and made to run in order to provide clean energy for those of us that think.
18. When people throw perfectly good milk out because today’s date is the same as what is stamped on the bottle.  Smell it.  Good smell= good milk, bad smell= bad milk.  It’s not rocket science.
19. Talkative medical office staff.  The last thing I need is to sit in your boring waiting room and listen to you gossip with your little nurse buddies.  Go save a life.  Or get one.  Just shut up while you do it.
20. Chilean peaches.  They taste like watery peaches with the texture of pumpkin innards.  It’s disgusting.