What started as a burn for a pile of leaves in the afternoon would transform into the welcoming guard against the night. It went from merely a chore to...well, more chores for fuel: using a handsaw to remove more trunk from the zombie tree in my yard, sawing parts of my backdoor deck off, and collecting all sorts of branches that have fallen so far this year...however...

...once the fire was set for the hours ahead, I pulled out the chairs and felt at peace as the long shadows danced with the night.
Underneath a cloudy shroud with darkness all around us, I was with my son as we heard the coyotes erupt into their nightly cascade of howls followed by an abrupt stop. I'd have to think it's a little unnerving for that crazy cat in the yard, as it sauntered by me, purring in its contempt while smirking at my recent failures to write it off.

Once the fire fell into embers, I thought I would just skip dinner entirely. In my last post, I mentioned my hunger signals practice, and I didn't feel anything despite my last meal at 9:30 AM. I thought I was good for the rest of the day. But, just under an hour after the fire and BOOM—I gotta eat some meat! After my typical 1 lb of ground beef and 3 eggs, I did not want to finish the morsels.

I put in around 90 minutes this morning as it was the first time I've trained since picking up the right lat injury. It's still there in the background, but I haven't made any outbursts of pain in days. I feel it most when I lift a weight over my ahead, or oddly enough, to my surprise this morning, I can produce a ripple of pain by throwing a LEFT uppercut from a southpaw stance.

Of course, I don't work out to lose weight. Come to think of it, I GAIN weight when I work out—we want that, right? I just see my workouts as a place to have fun as I develop my skillsets and improve my cardio.

A new day and we are marching toward Christmas and beyond! I expect these upcoming weeks to be transformative.

I'm practicing at reading my body this morning. Instead of immediately grabbing the beef from the freezer for defrosting, I asked the crucial question, "Am I hungry?"

Sure, OF COURSE, I can eat—I'm not asking if I have the capacity to eat. What I want to do is differentiate schedule from desire. I'm disinterested in following anything, whether an eating routine or amounts. As long as I'm eating beef and eggs sometime when that low fuel light pops on, I'm good. In a context of punting the intermittent fasting construct aside, I don't eat because I haven't been hungry; it's around 9 AM now and I haven't eaten since 1:30 PM yesterday. I can attribute it to my removing salts & seasonings from this carnivore diet. I agree with others that a blander approach doesn't stir up fanciful eating.

It's pretty simple: when I'm hungry, I eat. The only way a diet will work is if its sustainable. Being miserable is a dealbreaker. Eating as much as I want is critical. Understanding that feeling, both in target and time is key.

While I only hesitantly proclaim this, I have SMASHED the weightloss gridlock! OK, so we'll see tomorrow if this trend continues and then I'm DONE with weighing in until the end of The 16th Expedition—it's just under a week away! A 6-week weigh-in approach is the superior approach once a diet is established.

I'm less than a couple of pounds away from reaching the lowest weight for 2020. I don't know how valid it was: from March 7 to April 20, I went from 271 to 277 lbs, but along the way I hit 237. * shrug * The 11th Expedition is a lesson on how a low-calorie approach fails—you CANNOT out-calculate your body!

Of course, as the graph shows, my weight shot up to 292 until I went keto on June 18 until going full carnivore just days ago on November 23.

And true to form, (playlist removed) was all over the place, a buffet of exploration on everything from angst to The Office.

Thanksgiving

And while today is Thanksgiving, it doesn't feel like the day I once knew. I'm not surrounded by this weird obsession of gluttony. I mean, I'm not exactly sure how chomping and chortling carbs down the gullet en masse is a posture of being thankful. That said, the revolting overindulgence is congruent with the massive shopping spree followup.

I'm thankful for the little things, little things that are packed with content and context.

I'll share this picture I took this morning, a Jackson thrift store find mug that's advertising a Handy Map Street Atlas of Memphis. It is the crossroads I thrived to drive across in those early years of college around '96-'97 on a mug that is at LEAST that old.

...and I love candles and the fire within.

(image removed)