Chuck’s Home World

Diet and Pains

Finally made it back to see Dr. Dua regarding my weight management. I had another body scan and it did show I’ve gained a bit of muscle mass, however not very much and that I’ve gained some fat too. Most of it is in my “trunk” and that’s where I need to start focusing. We’ve switched up the diet and exercise routines a bit to hopefully start dropping more of the fat.  I’ll be doing a full body workout once per week and at least 45 minutes of cardio 4 times per week. I see him in about 6 weeks to see how we’re doing.  I’m going to be heading to Seattle in a few weeks and I want to try and drop as much weight as I can before then.

My right shoulder has been bothering me for a few weeks (about 3 months now) and so I finally worked with Dr. Dua to have that checked out. He prescribed an anti-inflammatory and muscle relaxer. I’m taking the “Aleve” twice a day and the muscle relaxer only at night. I need my head clear for working during the day.  You’re not suppose to take aspirin when you take the anti-inflammatory so I’ve halted my daily 81mg of aspirin.

I’ve been working on a Summary report for my health status – mostly to make it easier for me and the doctor to review my nutrition and exercising routines. I’m pretty happy with it for now, but I’m sure I can make some improvements. I need to see if I can disconnect the “live” connection to my home server and just publish static pages. That will allow the pages to load much faster than having to read in from several servers. I’ll work on it a bit at a time until I’m finished.

New HDMI Switch

I’ve picked up a new HDMI switch to take over the role of a component cable switch for my living room.  I’m thinking of installing it today, but I’ve had it for a couple of weeks. It will take some time because I need to pull everything apart and hook it all up, and then reprogram the remote control. I need to make sure I have enough HDMI cables too. Before I pull everything apart, I’ll make a plan so can order the cables if I need any.

Earthquake in Maryland

There was a 3.6 earthquake with an epicenter not too far away. My area didn’t really feel anything, but many people at work did feel it. I may have, but I was sleeping at the time it happened and it wasn’t enough to even wake me up. Many people don’t realize that we’re in an area that has many quakes, it’s just that most of them are so small that we don’t feel them.

Getting into a WT Routine is tough. The more I do it, the easier it is, but for now its tough getting back into that every other day routine. Today, my muscles are sore from yesterday’s workout.

I’ve been back to the gym for three visits as of this entry. The first visit was not the best, but I was sore for a few days after. This past Saturday, I started my new “plan” and will be going three times per week as instructed by the doctor. I went yesterday and I’ll go again tomorrow. I like going in on Saturday’s but I guess it really doesn’t matter which days I go in – as long as I get there before many other people do.

I picked up a new software package called “Private Coach 2″ and am slowly getting to know it. It’s not the best interface, but there are a lot of features.  Support has been great with Martin Menzel, but I have a feeling it’s another small company like Radium Technologies (who develop Diet Pro 2005).  As with Diet Pro there is a lack of updates (due to a single developer who is working on many projects) and so its going to be a while (2011) by the time a new version comes out. Private Coach 2′s is built using Java and there are some missing “Windows” features and feelings. I really hope that evolves overtime and gets better.

On the work front, I’m still keeping very busy with more and more work coming my way. Overall it’s still enjoyable, but there are times where I just can’t seem to focus on any one thing. I need to watch out for that and make sure I’m not starting to burn out.  Yesterday I seemed to make several mistakes – the first one was when I fixed something and applied other changes before I meant to – and then had to scramble to run utilities to insert missing data for the new structures. It would have been better had I taken some precautionary steps to prevent it, but it is what it is.

Today was another early morning; Lacie decided that around 1:30 AM was the time to start bothering me. I was able to put her off until about 2:30 AM and then finally gave up. I went to bed too early last night and today I’m going to pay for it. I guess I’ll have to keep the caffeine levels high to make it through the day.

I need to drop my cardio to only 2 times per week and start weight training again. My body fat is 32% and even though I’ve lost a good bit of weight (down to 216 from 280), the amount of muscle has been dropping steady. I lost about 30 pounds of muscle since September (with some amount of error in figuring). But even at 10% error rate that is too much. I need to have at least 150 lbs of muscle/bone instead of the 132 lbs muscle/bone I have as of last week. Gonna start hitting the gym and focusing on muscle mass increases – starting tonight!

Instructions from Dr. Dua are:

• Weight training 3 times per week
• Cardio 2 times per week
  • 1800 calories per day:
  • 200 grams of carbs
  • 150 grams of protein
  • 45 – 50 grams of good fat (omega 3′s)

All the blood work looks good. The cholesterol numbers were up a little, but still only 159 (up from 140 last time). My vitamin D levels are now 40 compared to 22 last time. I want to raise it a bit more (to around 50) but I’m above the 32 minimum that it should be. All the other stuff looks really good too.

Body scan shows that my legs are the leanest of my body with my left leg not quite as lean as my right. That makes a bit of sense because of my back issues affecting my left leg. My left arm is too more fatty than my right, but I am right handed. Of course my trunk is the worse part with the most percentage of fat, but that is expected.  And we didn’t even bother looking at the bone density, which was perfectly fine. I have good strong dense bones!

My head weighs over 12 pounds, based on the body scan.

Today I was expecting the normal body composition test where they hook up an electrode on my foot and one on my wrist then they run electricity through it and check the impedance. Today, I got onto a scanner that was used only for bone density, but has been upgraded to do a detailed body composition too. I can’t wait to see the results next week. The test can actually tell me how much I way without my head! And I was pretty happy with the scales too.

On Saturday, I spent time in PA visiting my friends Jean and Kenny. I helped Jean out with some technical stuff (resetting wireless router, transferring files from one system to another). After having a bit of cheese and crackers (OK a lot of cheese and crackers) we headed out to have a wonderful meal at La Cucina’s (including a very confusing chocolate dessert). Afterwards, we spent a little more time doing some tech stuff, before I headed out around 7PM. It was a very nice day. I’m looking forward to the next time that we get together. Overall I didn’t screw up the diet that badly. In fact I couldn’t finish my meal nor my dessert. It was awesome to be able to stop when I was stuffed, instead of stuffing it down in order to clear my plate.

Yesterday, I got up around 5:30 AM, but around 1:30 PM I decided to take a nap. I slept for a few hours in the afternoon and that made me stay up later than usual. I think that help me shift my sleeping time.  I’m tired of getting up at 2:30 – 3:30 AM everyday when I don’t need to. I’ve been getting pretty good sleep, just starting too early in the evening and getting up too early for the day. Hopefully with the time change, the extra sleep over the weekend and some more effort on my part, I can get my nightly sleep and still get up early enough to workout before work.

This week at work is going to be another busy one. That’s OK. I can handle it. I may have to take a mental break now and then, but otherwise it’s challenging and fun. I just wish some people would get back to me with their testing results and suggestions.

Overall the diet is still going pretty good. I’m still dropping the weight but doing so very slowly. I think it’s best to drop it pretty slowly because its more likely to stay off that way. In a couple of more weeks I’ll be going in for another body composition to see how much muscle mass I’ve lost. I’m sure its a bit because I’ve not been doing any muscle building at all. I really need to get back into the gym!