For the last week in a context of daily workouts, I ate 1,821 calories a day and...GAINED a pound!

Again, it really underscores how the energy-in / energy-out fails to provide weightloss.

No, there's gotta be something more fundamental about reaching my weight than some sort of silly, created paradigm. It is NOT about the calories a lab technician records from yesterday's furnace or today's calculator!

What is being overweight? It's having more energy stored for the winter than what is required. People ate with the availability of food, knowing the uncertainity of tomorrow. It's what people have always done when successful hunts became fewer.

Why was it that people were fit and didn't track while not having access to today's tools of micronutrient tracking?

A LOT is packed in that question, and you could have an entire library devoted to answering it. For a quick, 40,000 flyover, I'll say that foods weren't manufactured and people ate what they liked until they were done eating. I heard something off of the Joe Rogan podcast with Paul Saladino, about a meat-based diet. It was a simple logic: we can just about eat any animal we run across, but if we do the same with plants, we're gonna be in a world of hurt. In that context, our genes likely won't make it into the next generation.

I mean, it makes sense. Animals can fight and flee. Plants are kinda...well, STUCK. Yes, they want us to distribute their seeds, but do they seriously want us to eat their leaves, roots, or even their seeds?

Just maybe what everyone labels as nutritious just might not be...I think that's the biggest thing I've grown weary of is the groupthink that moves toward power like a moth to the flame. In today's image/brand obsessed culture, it's particularity egregious. Who are you when you are disconnected from tech?

All of that aside, for the next three weeks, I'm going to give a carnivore approach a fair shake. Until The 16th Expedition's weigh-in, I'm just going to eat meat; eggs; salt (and potassium chloride); butter and water. Weigh-in and evaluate on December 3.

Let's roll: no sweeteners, no coffee, no plant oils—let's just cover it all: NO PLANTS. I may even hug a tree!

I'll likely eat 1 or 2 times a day based on hunger. I'm benching my Cronometer use because I don't want to be governed by daily nutritional goals, feeling I have to eat something to hit a manufactured target.

And with that, I drink my last Bulletproof Coffee.

After spending the weekend at parks toward investing in cardio and skipping out on the scheduled rest day, I didn't enter Monday's morning workout with fervor. Indecisiveness was the order of the day: a quasi rest & train day. I didn't like it, but I'm in a transition as I'm trying to figure out how to be a runner...and if I'm honest myself, I recognize that I'm never all something, but always a hybrid. I didn't even wake up in the 3AM hour, but slept an hour further to heal the legs. I got up, warmed up things, and went to work on the bag.

Still, it wasn't a satisfying workout, though in comparison to going to a park, time in the gym isn't as motivating.

Honestly, I feel stagnant. I don't feel my body changing and days are coming off a bit like Groundhog Day. But, it's a matter of trusting the process, isn't it? I do whatever I can now to contribute to a better position to kickoff 2021.

With 2020's sunset, the long shadows give chase as I search the horizon.

Despite my time spent conditioning at the park yesterday and oddly enough, my foot muscles—downhill gravel trails are a curious thing—I am NOT limping into my (not-so-much) REST day. I hope to put in more time on my feet today, though outside the walls of my gym as I continue to explore settings for future training.

It's official: I have dumped my retro diet in lieu of a macro-%-focused Keto Diet, one avoids insulin surges more than past implementations; I don't trust "sweet." While a diet beverage can be the occasional treat, sugar-free starters have been benched. Sorry gelatin (not-so-much-of-a) dessert; it's more like a desert if you ask me! My diet is all about fat satisfaction, which sounds like it drives through the intersection of Queen and Sir Mix-A-Lot!

I'd like to dial down my weight as a primary metric for success. Sure, it still makes its impact, and 91 lbs ago, it was the reason I got started—but was it really? I had (and still do) the desire for something better. The thing about weight is, well, despite being on point with a diet...

...I gotta admit, I began to foolishly follow calories again, and despite putting in 2+ hours a day in the gym with cardio...

...that there are days when the scale remains the same. It's where it's one of those weird things when in the micro, there are no changes, but for the macro, there's a transformation to the person I visualize.

I think that's the key. Sure, scale weight is so easy to measure until our phones are upgraded to tricorders for fat analysis, cardiovascular efficiency and data archival. Weight is an easy metric to convey and compare.

But, the scale's accuracy is not particularly telling to our state. And let's face it, not something we can control, but something that our hormones and fat cells regulate.

I like performance-based metrics, things like a running pace, as that sort of thing is in our control and can establish future goals, even if at this time, I don't have enough data.

And while weight may not be a factor that I can directly control, weightloss is absolutely critical to greater success. Three minutes on my vertical climber drives that point cleanly home! Weight loss is just something that happens; it's something that eventually lines up with the reality within.

And through a diet that targets a 70%+ fat intake for energy while minimizing carbs to 5-10%, I'll close out 2020.