Month: January 2009

So it turns out that tiling a floor is a 3 or 4-day job. The work isn’t long during the “work” time, but you have to wait for stuff to dry before you do the next step, so at a minimum it’s 3 days, and 4 if you want to be careful.

The first step is the underlayment — called “backer board” — whatever sort you are using. You spread thin-set (another name for concrete) on the floor, then lay your underlayment, let it dry, then start laying tile on top of it.

I’m not entirely sure I should have taken on this project, but I’m doing it anyway.

Demolition begins. Yeah, that black stuff is the reason we’re doing this. It hadn’t destroyed the sub-floor, but had swelled it some.

Floor’s ripped out, thinset is mixed, making a mess, I’m cheerful.

That goop is the thin-set, with a 1/4×1/4 trowel atop it. I ended up wishing Home Despot hadn’t been sold out of margin trowels by the time I was done. And that orange stuff is a plastic type of backer-board that I’m trying out. It’s very light and convenient.

So today, I am about to embark on a grand adventure: attempting to tile a bathroom on my own. I’ll be documenting it in photos, and will post them here after I’m done!

–Matt

When I was a kid, my dad was talking about trying to lose weight. My flip response as a high-school student was “Dude, just eat less and exercise more”. While that’s true, I’ve learned there’s a “most effective” way to lose weight… and that most other ways are much less effective.

The more I eat right, the more I read, the more I listen, the more I exercise, the more I realize there are just a few basic rules to almost all diets. These nearly-universal principles form the backbone of the easiest way to lose weight for almost everybody, except perhaps people on dialysis. If you follow them, even without a strict plan, you’ll win.

1. Eat six to eight small meals a day.
2. Include a serving of protein in every meal. Eating plenty of protein is the only way to spare muscle while losing weight. Eat at least 60g/day for a woman* and 100g/day for a man.*
3. Closely monitor your serving sizes. Once doled out on your plate, a serving of vegetables is around the size of your open hand; a serving of carbohydrates is around the size of your fist; a serving of protein is around the size of your palm.
4. Cut out all foods from your diet which have sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, white flour, white (polished) rice,
5. Take baseline measurements and photos of yourself, and compare them every week or month so you can remind and motivate yourself with your progress.
6. Don’t eat carbohydrates near bedtime; they’ll just turn to fat.
7. The principal purpose of cardio is to accelerate your metabolism. The amount of calories burned during the exercise itself is only a fraction of the amount burned due to a faster metabolism. The timing of your cardio doesn’t matter much; just do it 3-5 times per week.
8. Dietary supplementation is important when you’re on a restricted diet of any sort. Figure out your nutritional deficiencies — if any — and come up with a supplementation plan to address them.
9. Don’t make your program too complicated.
10. Plan “time off” your program regularly. Maybe it’s one meal a week, or the weekend, or once a month. Whatever it is, plan for the time off so that you can re-start shortly thereafter if you fall off your program. Long dietary marathons are difficult, and not having a plan to get back on the horse if you fall off is discouraging.

I got one part of the formula back in high school wrong. I realize now it should be “Eat more often. Eat less food. Exercise more.” Sure, you can have just one meal a day and still lose weight, but it’s a lot harder than a lot of small meals.

* If you are extraordinarily short, tall, or muscular, this number will vary substantially. Also, this number can be adjusted downward once you have achieved your target weight.

In response to a recent forum post on a bodybuilding forum I frequent, I proposed the following response to the question "What’s the purpose of carbing up on the weekends on a low-carb bodybuilding diet? Also, how are proteins metabolized into glucose?"

For more details about how protein is metabolized into glucose, please Google "gluconeogenesis". It’s a well-documented process, and Wikipedia has a great article introducing the concept. For its application to low-carb eating, Google "gluconeogenesis low-carb". You’ll find a lot of useful links.

For a great article on what carb-loading does in a cyclical ketogenic diet (CKD) like MANS, check out this article: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/keto2.htm . CKDs been very popular with bodybuilders for many years because they give you results similar to old-school anabolic steroids without the steroids part: the ability to diet away body fat while maintaining or gaining skeletal muscle.

Basically, we have two biologically opposed processes that we’re trying to maximize with a CKD like MANS:

1. Lipolysis, or your body catabolizing (that is, reducing structure and stored energy from) fatty tissue.

2. Hypertrophy, or your body anabolizing (that is, adding structure and stored energy to) muscle tissue.

Your body is catabolizing or anabolizing on a sliding scale dictated by:

1. The amount of insulin secreted by your pancreas in response to blood glucose levels. Key to remember is that when insulin is high, it’s a purely anabolic process: all your tissues are storing raw materials from your bloodstream. Fat cells are storing glucose and glycerol as triglycerides, while muscles are storing the same stuff as glycogen, which we’ll get to in a minute.

2. The need of your tissues. If your muscles need protein, amino & fatty acids, they’ll grab it from your blood. Muscles can’t grab glucose in large quantity without the presence of insulin, though… and your fat cells are just as eager for the stuff.

OK, so 5.5 days out of seven, you’re low-carbing. Insulin is very low and only present in more than tiny quantities after a really big helping (around 40g+, varies by individual) of protein. The anabolic process is very slow for muscles and fat. Your metabolism, however, is running rock-steady, and your liver is converting lots of fat into ketones and lots of protein into glucose to power those tissues which require those food sources. Usually, your fat cells are giving up a substantial amount of triglycerides to the liver, which converts them into glucose and their fatty acid components. This is the heart of the low-carb fat-loss process, and we spend most of the week in this state because to spend too much of the week in an anabolic state results in gaining large amounts of fat more than large amounts of muscle.

1.5 days a week, you’re high-carbing, and on MANS you can really eat whatever you want. Seriously, just eat whatever you’ve felt deprived of for the week, and it will still work for you.

However, if you’re interested in maximizing fat loss, you want to keep the carb-ups "clean" by eating slow-digesting carbs. Keep away from white rice, white flour, refined sugars, high-fructose corn syrup, and soda pop. Get your carbs instead from fruits and starchy vegetables. Also, if you’re trying to maximize fat-loss while still carbing up, glycogen storage will account for roughly 2% of your lean body weight when you’re "full" of glycogen. My lean body weight is 171 pounds, so I’ll gain around 3-4 pounds on a carb-up. This is very typical, and is around 1/2 water, 1/2 sugar in the polysaccharide called "glycogen". This glycogen storage is the majority of the so-called "water weight" people refer to: an easy 3-5 pounds that is lost as easily as gained in any given week, and illusory weight loss.

Note that means you’re only eating around a pound to two pounds of carbohydrates while carbing up for the most efficient, non-fat-gaining carb-up. That’s around 800-1000g of carbs for an adult male of my size; your amount will vary based on your lean body weight.

The purpose of the carb-up is:

1. To provide glycogen for your real heavy lifting. You’ll notice your ability to push heavier weights for more sets goes up with glycogen storage. Glycogen is purely short-term muscular energy storage, and won’t help beyond the first mile or two of a marathon, for instance.

2. To provide an anabolic environment for muscles to grow with insulin as a transport for several essential nutrients.

3. To increase the glycogen capacity of muscles by depleting and refilling, which also equates to muscle growth.

Hope I’ve been helpful!

Regards,

Matt B.

I took some body measurements two days ago. My waist is forty inches. My neck is seventeen inches. Now, I knew about the neck, and I’ve worn a 17″ neck on my button-up shirts for years. Yet I wear a size 34 or perhaps 36 pair of jeans. What’s going on?

Once again, I turn to the resources of my fellow humans on the Internet to determine if this has already been researched, and once again I found that people have already done the leg-work!

From http://www.jeans-and-accessories.com/jeans-sizes.html :

…the fit guide of some makers is a little on the generous side, so that we can “fit” into a pair one size smaller than our actual size. The psychological effect is obvious. Who wouldn’t swear that these are the best fitting jeans they have ever owned for their size 10 body, even though they are really size 12!

Well, OK, that covers the women’s side of the sizing dilemma, but why on earth is a forty way too big for me, 38 is falling off my buttocks, and a 36 is about right with a 34 fairly snug when I have a straight-up forty-inch waist? I can confirm my butt is much larger than forty inches around.

As far as I can tell, jean sizes seem to vary a lot by manufacturer. eBay to the rescue! They have a handy sizing chart.

SIZE XS S M L XL XXL XXXL XXXXL WAIST 27-28 29-31 32-34 36-38 40-42 44-48 50-52 52-52

Well, OK, so that gives me an idea what “standard” size I should be: a Large. Yet I have a slightly-less-than 40″ waist, which would be XL, and the sole XL jeans I own fall off me unless I cinch up the belt. I just measured the waist of the size thirty-six jeans as thirty-eight inches.

Is there more to this mystery? Most of my jeans are from Wal-Mart or Costco… do they engage in jeans “branding” for men like for women, trying to make the perfect fit? Why on earth do they size jeans two to four inches larger than marked?

I dunno, but all I do know is that once I’ve lost all this body fat, every pair of jeans I own is going into the dumpster or goodwill. And I’m going to buy me some slim-fit Wranglers to go with a nice pair of boots.

You know, over the past few years I’ve very peripherally heard about some drug/supplement called “ephedrine”. I heard that it was banned from sale in the USA, and didn’t give it much thought. After all, I could still run down to the local pharmacy and pick up Sudafed, which was my one-stop-drug whenever I had a runny nose, and had been for years. It contained pseudophedrine — thus the name — and worked fine. If I were having trouble sleeping due to breathing congestion, I’d pick up NyQuil, which IMHO is the best night-time cold remedy on the planet and has been for decades. No biggie, right?

Then one day a few months ago, I tried to buy my tried-and-true remedy for nasty colds, and found that I couldn’t find one that worked. The old Sudafed formulation had been replaced with a new one that, well, was about as effective as not taking anything at all. Also, the same NyQuil I’d always taken had been removed from the shelf, renamed NyQuil-D if I wanted the same ingredients, and hidden behind the pharmacy counter.

There was a little card instead of a product, telling me to go to the pharmacy counter if I wanted to buy the product.

WTF?

I didn’t buy anything that day because the pharmacy was closed, and suffered through using some of the remedies in our cabinet, including the crippled Sudafed. Unfortunately, most of the medications in our cabinet stink at actually alleviating cold symptoms for me.

On the plus side, I cleared out several dozen expired medications from the cabinet in the search for something that would work well for my runny nose that day.

Ephedrine and pseudophedrine-based medications are where it’s at for alleviating cold symptoms. They simply do a better job quicker than anything else for me. The “secret sauce” has been removed — or renamed to indicate the old formulation is now a behind-the-counter-only remedy — and I wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery.

So, of course, I turned to the Internet for research (note I don’t use the phrase “the facts”). Let me tell you, if you google “ephedrine ban”, you’re going to come up with several thousand pages with various explanations of what happened. From ephedrine loyalists to Chinese Herb practitioners to the FDA defending its ruling to the court cases that eventually upheld the ban, there are a thousand stories.

Here are the basic facts, as far as I can glean them. Note that this story has two parts to explain why ephedrine is harder to come by today than it used to be. I’m not going to delve into the pharmaceutical-company conspiracy theories; you can read plenty of those yourself in the front-page links on a Google search for the topic.

Ephedra is an herb that contains very small amounts of ephedrine, a highly potent bronchial dilator with powerful metabolism-boosting side effects. Ephedrine can be refined from naturally-occurring sources or synthesized in the lab. It gained popularity in the nineties as a weight-loss supplement because, combined with caffeine and a calorie-restricted diet, it both boosted the basal metabolic rate of study subjects as well as dramatically diminished appetite. At one point, it was estimated that approximately 10% of the American adult population — some 20+ million people — were taking ephedra or ephedrine-based supplements, mostly to aid in weight loss.

The FDA began investigating ephedra (the un-refined version of ephedrine) almost immediately after the passage of the dietary supplement act in 1992. Ephedra’s effects were quite drug-like, and in fact refined and synthetic ephedrine had been an ingredient in cold remedies and asthma medications for decades. However, as a dietary supplement under the Act, the burden of proof was on the FDA to prove an ingredient was not safe.

Eventually, the FDA’s research concluded that ephedra is deadly in sufficient quantities, implicated in a higher incidence of brain hemorrhage (at 32 mg/day or more) in otherwise healthy people, and that no dose is safe for people on antideppresants, MAOI (antidepressant) drugs, or with a heart condition or diabetes.

Type 2 diabetics represented a large proportion of the people taking ephedra because type 2 diabetes is associated with obesity, and the obese have the greatest interest in weight-loss. Unfortunately, Type 2 diabetics and the obese also are the most likely to have heart disease, high blood pressure, thyroid disease, and be on antidepressants.

The FDA passed a rule intending to ban the substance in 1998, and in 2002 the rule took effect. By 2004, they issued a final ruling and were prosecuting companies that did not comply with the rule against putting ephedra/ephedrine in herbal supplements that did not require labeling like over-the-counter drugs did. The ruling was challenged and in 2006, and eventually the FDA’s decision was upheld. Ephedra is now regarded as a drug, and now the burden-of-proof is on manufacturers to demonstrate the safeness of their product before putting it on the shelf with the “drug facts” labels, active ingredients, and all the usual disclaimers.

There were some exceptions to the ruling: traditional Chinese herbal remedies and herbal teas which were both regulated as “foods” rather than “supplements”. So the Chinese herbalists can be assuaged — though I expect this loophole to be abused — and those who like teas with ephedrine in them are unaffected.

Now here comes punch #2 in the one-two punch: the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005. Really, the FDA ban on ephedrine in herbal supplements never affected me in the least. However, Congress’ act to try to reduce meth production really did. Basically, this act enforces the following provisions related to ephedrine:

1. Minors may not purchase.
2. You may purchase no more than 7.5g every 30 days via mail-order. Note that this is a bigger issue for pseudophedrine than ephedrine, because the dosage is typically 3-4 times higher for the same effect.
3. You may not purchase more than 9g per month total.
4. All purchases must be logged, and all products containing ephedrine or pseudophedrine must be kept in a locked or secure location to enforce logging of purchases.
5. All purchases must be logged, and you must provide a valid ID to purchase.
6. Products must be sold in individual-dose blister packs. I guess this makes it less convenient than just dumping a whole bottle in for the meth manufacturers.

So basically, it turns out ephedrine and pseudophedrine are both still perfectly legal for personal use, if a bit irritating, time-consuming, and risky to purchase if buying for an entire family. However, if you buy over-the-counter allergy, sinus, or asthma medications for your children, you might be charged with a misdemeanor for going over the magical 7.5/9g limits.

For perspective, 9g/month is around two to three times the dose any adult should be expected to reasonably take, even if that adult is taking the usual 60mg/day dosage that people recommend in the ECA (ephedrine/caffeine/aspirin) stack for weight loss. The only downside for those using ephedrine for weight-loss is that now you have to buy your ephedrine in the form of asthma, allergy, or cold medication. And I think it’s important to keep in mind that most of the clinical trials of ephedrine for weight loss used 25mg/day or less in the subjects, and that anything over 32mg/day has been implicated in strokes in otherwise healthy subjects.

I’m going to give a home-made ECA stack a try, since I’ve really nailed the diet and exercise program and am losing a reliable 1-2 pounds per week. I’ll provide a report as to the effectiveness at some point in the future.

But hey, at least I know how to get my “real” Sudafed and NyQuil now. And I’m no longer scared of taking that little placard up to the pharmacy counter. I’m not making methamphetamines, I’m not buying an herbal supplement, and I’m not buying enough to cover multiple children with asthma or colds. One signature and a very scary-sounding stern warning about not falsifying my identity later, and I walk out with an actual effective cold & allergy remedy instead of the ineffective almost-a-placebo crap that is now sitting on the store’s public shelves.

I listened to a podcast today from Skip La Cour talking about managing one’s minimum standards. The things he mentioned were, for instance, setting a certain time to be up every day, planning one’s meals the night before and following through at the times you planned rather than winging it, and other things that you must do every single day — or at least five days a week — to be successful at whatever it is you want to do.

I thought to myself: “What are my ten minimum standards?” I realized I currently don’t really have any. So I probably ought to set them. But unlike a traditional New Year’s resolution, these won’t be goals… these will just be things I expect myself to do every day. Or every day but the weekend, perhaps.

1. Wake up between 5:30 and 6:00 AM.
2. Eat breakfast at 6:00 AM
3. Plan six meals a day the night before.
4. Write up at least one blog entry.
5. Go to the gym, or if I don’t go to the gym due to inclement weather, perform body-weight exercises at home.
6. Get to work before 7:30 AM
7. Spend time talking individually with each child and my wife.
8. Straighten up the front room and kitchen before bed.
9. Review whether I met these minimum standards every night before bed.
10. Get to bed before 11:00 PM.

Yes, I do better on 6-7 hours of sleep per night than 8+. I have a lot more energy and don’t have trouble falling asleep if I limit my hours in the bed a bit.

What are your minimum standards?

So I’m doing laundry this weekend, and I’m washing to whites. I grab the Clorox bleach and put it in. While this may be the 100th or 1000th time I’ve done this, for some reason I notice the “kills 99.9% of known germs” on the label.

I’m hoping this is a legalese because they don’t want to claim 100% and then find something impervious to bleach and get sued. I mean, there isn’t anything that can withstand a nice dosing of Clorox, is there? Is there a tenth of a percent of germs, viruses, bacteria, fungii, whatever that can take a bleach bath and laugh it off? I’m the most anti-OCS person you can meet, I utilize the 5-second rule very liberally, but I admit I’m scared of a micro-organism that can shake off Clorox and still target my immune system. I can see Plankton from SpongeBob gargling some bleach, swallowing it, then going all Popeye on my intestines. “EUGENE!!!”

My $.02 Weed

Well, the last two weeks have been fairly slow as far as fat loss goes. I’m down to 222 lbs now. In some way, there’s a special zen-like quality in contemplating having a weight where all three digits are the same. If I have my way, I’ll never have this experience again. The next lowest number would be 111, and the next highest 333. Both are places I’ll never go.

But what’s been most interesting to me are the small things. My goal, as I’ve stated all along, is to get fit and put on as much muscle as I can while reducing as much fat as I can. In that vein, things are going well.

• The pants that used to fit me snugly and look pretty good when I was fatter are now getting very droopy in the butt, and I can slide them right off without unbuttoning them. Time to retire them… which is a sad thing because I think they are great pants.
• I had to spend a long time bent over at the waist doing some work on fixtures over the weekend, and I suddenly realized partway through that I could breathe. If you haven’t been obese, you have probably never had this experience before. Most of us Big People know this as the “tying your shoes” experience: when you bend over, you have to fully exhale and can get nothing but shallow breaths as you tie your shoes. I was able to breathe deeply the whole time. It was nice to recognize I wasn’t out of breath and light-headed while hunched over.
• I didn’t care about carrying in all the baggage on my family’s vacation. In fact, it was a pleasant workout, and the only part I didn’t like was the cold. I wasn’t breathing hard — despite the 1500 foot altitude difference — and lugging those heavy bags back and forth for a half-dozen trips didn’t leave me tired and worn out.
• One of the Christmas presents I received was one of those “Iron Gym” doohickies, as seen on TV. The thing where you hang it from your doorframe and do chin-ups. Well, I can do two full chin-ups now. Months ago, I couldn’t even do one.
• The Wii Fit says I’m only 9 pounds away from my goal today, as opposed to twenty-five pounds a few months ago.

Hey, in the pursuit of personal motivation, the small accomplishments matter. I haven’t lost thirty pounds… I’ve lost five pounds six times.

So I’m finally back from vacation. I have a HUGE backlog of email to catch up on, and a new challenge for myself: blog a day.

Sure, some of the entries will be short, but I want to keep my thoughts up-to-date and record my progress on various goals throughout the year. So here’s #1 for the year!