I'm closing in on 7 weeks on a carnivore diet. This morning, I thought I'd take a picture of what I generally eat everyday: 2.5 oz of post-cooked bacon coupled with 1 pre-cooked lb of ground beef with 2 tbsps of bacon fat on top. I eat that 4 hours after waking up and eat another lb of beef 4 hour after my first meal.

(image removed)

I really do have to credit Kelly Hogan's myzerocarblife for this diet. It's been simple and so...well, I just need to stand outside Castle Grayskull real quick to show you!

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On my Resolutions page, I've been linking to a Google sheet that records my workout sessions. It's all still in progress, of course, but I like to plan ahead what I'm exactly going to do and what actually happens. It's both motivational and helpful in tracking progress. While a resistance routine cuts an easy path, I wasn't sure where I wanted to take my endurance regimen. I mean, it's easy to do what I've done, an hour on the treadmill here, another on the elliptical there. But, 2021 is a different space: I'm training to run in seven 5Ks.

Up 'til now, my focus has been to lose weight and then worry about a program when I got there. Well, I'm basically there now, not the sub-200, but...well, please refer to the above with my Battle Cat.

So, I'm going with a Couch-to-5K program to ramp my progress up, something very similar to this example. In fact, I did session #1 this morning. It wasn't difficult to do with my phone holding onto the stopwatch as I'm used to double+ of the amount of sets at 3 times longer through my heavy bag routine.

The challenge is for my lower body to get up to speed and to find a breathing approach that I like the best. I've been trying out a 2-2 approach, that is, breathe in for 2 steps and release for 2 steps. I'm also trying out a 2-3.

It's now less than 6 days before I climb atop the scale to weigh in for The 17th Expedition: The Carnivore. I'm hoping for a 9.1% loss which would be the top mark for 2020, but I don't know if I have it in me since I've been losing weight since June. To put into perspective, it's been:

• The 13th: 8.3%
• The 14th: 4.5%
• The 15th: 4.6%
• The 16th: 2.9% - This would have been 1.2% if I hadn't started Carnivore for its last 9 days—yes, I lost more in 9 days than the prior 33. The weird thing is that, until The 17th came around, I worked the hardest in the gym during The 16th—I even made its playlist specifically for training!

At any rate, a 9.1% loss would be around 20 lbs for me, putting me at 217. I feel fantastic and notice visually my sudden, physical changes; I dropped out-of-nowhere into XL shirts. Crossing the 220 milemarker is huge as I've only done that twice since 2018 and those two points were followed by a LONG ride up the scale. Unlike those two instances, I don't feel deprived and more importantly, I still feel like I'm just getting started. Which...I am, in context of being an athlete. I'm an old hand at being a fat guy. I know what that's like. But, feeling this freedom of movement with all sorts of endurance...well, it's kinda cool.

As I wrote on my New Year's Resolutions page, this sentiment applies beyond the scope of me: Restore, Retrofit and Retrowave: Outrun the Night. May it come to pass for you as well!

Yesterday was the hand wraps; today is the footgrips. OK, so I don't envision these playing too much of a role in my gym space, despite there was a time I trained barefoot, whether hammering on the heavy bag or atop the treadmill. But, who knows? Perhaps there remains a future function for floppy footwear, but for now, they're just delightful to wear around the house—makes me think I'm in a '70s kung fu film on a lazy, Saturday afternoon!

As you'll recall, after I tore down my deck by the strength of my crowbar and sledgehammer and debated on the merits of wood reclamation, I made a fire that any redneck would beam with proud in a storm shelter, a concrete bunker that is the former home to wasp and bird alike. You may also recall (if I remembered to write), that I made a fire so intense that concrete chunks were rocketing out the doorway!

Today had a bit of a finality to it as a couple fellas came out to the house with their equipment and smashed the reinforced concrete roof and filled the resulting hole. As someone who briefly considered shoveling up the dirt before employing my sledgehammer, I thought it was magnificent display of power. And yes, I only briefly considered using my strength of will to break it up because...well, again, my catalyst is not a telephone booth, but a cave.

Speaking of caves, I was interrupted from completing this post by a garage door repairman—oh the travails of a burnt motors!

That said, the stimulus check handed to me by the U.S. Congress is being put right back into my local economy. Among other locales, I used it to pay off the computer that I'm using to type this, for 6 classes on Udemy, Sanabul apparel for training and an assortment of after-Christmas deals on cologne sets as I continue with my 2021 experiment resolution of no deodorant...

...honestly, I'm getting the impression that with no sugars, a carnivore diet just doesn't smell much, and this in the context where when I don't have carbs, my ability to smell is an X-Men skill! I haven't read it anywhere, but I'm finding the lack of smell to be true in this week+ of disuse. I mean, what's the worst case scenario—I smell like bacon? Actually, that could get me more in trouble than that bottle of Eternity for Men coming in the mail! Mmmm...bacon.