Days 22-25 & more self harming

Post covering the days 22-25 (Monday 1st October – Thursday 4th October) where I have reverted to self-fucking-flagellation again.

More Self-Harming 

I swear to god I am 33 years old!

This is like a game of fucking Cluedo, with first guess being - weapon of choice a chicken sandwich, murder victim being my skin. I was convinced the conundrum over my skin was almost solved; chicken and possibly wheat were the suspected culprits. Well they are not off the hook yet but if they are guilty then they definitely have at least one more accomplice. In the past 4 days my skin has started to flare again. The one difference this time is that it’s almost completely isolated to my face (double edged sword), skin around my eyes tender as fuck. Each day it has got progressively worse so Cluedo continues after already heading down a couple of one-way streets.

Back to the elimination diet it is and a good analysis of what the fuck is causing this latest one. So no caffeine, chicken, wheat, alchohol etc. I mentioned in my previous post that I had probably reintroduced wheat a little early last Saturday. I also realised that like a dozy dickhead I had eaten a little chicken on Sunday. I thought that was to blame at first but now I know it can’t have been as I have not touched either of them in 4 days. So an analysis of the last 4 days is necessary…………….

Day 22
Went to the gym in the morning for one of the usual Tabata workouts. Took supps which made me a little itchy (but they do a little even when 100% with no lasting effects, think it is the caffeine). I wanted to fast for as long as possible (aids the healing process) but only made it till around 15:30 when I had some of my homemade chocolates and some nutella (homemade) that I had just made. I was travelling to Jakarta that night so I fried myself some pork loin in coconut oil and coconut flour. Added a slice of my cheesecake to it and I had myself a little packed dinner. Ate this at the airport and had ordered a low-carb meal for on the flight (nice one Singapore Airlines!). Believed I had steered clear of the usual suspects today apart from the caffeine in my supps and the chocolate. Night in the airport transit hotel it was, early flight to Jakarta in the morning

Day 23
Woke up 5:15am in hotel, checked out and caught flight to smog-city. My skin felt itchy but I needed an espresso to function. I had planned to fast as long as possible and managed to make it till around 18:30, then broke it with some salmon sashimi. Later I made a batch of chocolate and had some of that too. My skin felt itchy and by the time I was going to bed my eyes were getting tender and looking inflamed, which was a twat. NO chance of me getting the gym like this.

Day 24
Completely stumped over my skin but made sure I logged everything I was eating. Had a salad and sashimi for lunch then a salad and some salmon fillet in the evening. Trying to get plenty of fish oil in me as I know it does my skin good (still taking around 20g of capsules a day also), other than that had some more chocolate and some low fat cheese. Still not managing to make the gym, no-can-do until it calms down

Day 25
Well acting like a facially disfigured version of Columbo I have myself a theory of who the culprit is. Before you say ‘here we go again’ or ‘well we have seen how your last theory went’, I will hold my hands up and say without a shadow of a doubt I now do not believe chicken to be the evil murdering bastard that I had thought it was just a week ago. 

Me and Chicken, having a straightener.
Before I apologised for thinking so bad of him.

I haven’t eaten chicken in over a week (apart from a minor misdemeanour on Sunday) and here I am with a face that looks like I’ve been chasing parked cars. I’m not saying it is completely off the hook, just not the prime suspect, not the ringleader but merely an accomplice, sort of like Rose West or Myra Hindley. So the big question is who the fucking hell is the Fred West or Ian Brady?? My latest theory is SOY. I pointed the finger firmly at chicken after reading the section for blood type Bs from The Blood Type Diet (which you can now stick up your arse). I looked back at my food diary and there is was in plain black and white, an abundance of chicken. It seemed logical and although I’ve always eaten chicken, I’ve always had eczema flares on and off but never known why. 

SOY

What I hadn’t considered was that all I was including in my food diary was things that had calories and macros associated with them. I had not included things like spices, herbs, vinegars and in particular………soy sauce. Well every time I ate chicken I cooked it with soy sauce and almost every day on the last trip to Jakarta I was eating sashimi dipped in that evil bastard black sauce. The past few days I’ve had sashimi twice and salmon fried with some soy sauce. I’ve been low carbing it for almost 4 weeks now and soy sauce is a typical low-carb condiment that I’ve been using all the time. It makes sense to me so it’s what I am clinging to now. Soy has been added to the banned list, leaving almost fuck-all left to eat!

Oh, just one more thing.....

Oh, just one more thing………..I’m going to lay off the homemade chocolate as well for a few days. It has a really high cocoa content and possibly the caffeine in that will exacerbate things. Due to the flare it seems that my body is massively oversensitive to anything it doesn’t like and paying me back by making me look like an old man………with ‘orrible eyes. I do however know the chocolate isn’t to blame though as I was eating it in abundance last week while healing nicely. I also know that it is good stuff with nothing added seeing as I am making it myself. A few days off it won’t kill me. 

Anyway, fasting today until evening meal which will probably be salmon and a salad with nothing but vinegar on it! No gym again, fingers crossed I can go tomorrow as I must be losing some strength by now with a restricted low calorie diet and no weightlifting. 

Days 15 - 21 & self-harming

Another catch up post today, covering days 15-21 (24th – 30th September). Warning -  goes completely off topic but for good reason, the program has been temporarily shelved………….

Self-Harming 
I had come back from Jakarta in a terrible state. What I hadn’t mentioned before now was that I have allergies and Eczema that at times, would bring Chuck Norris to tears. I also didn’t mention that throughout last week, my eczema had begun to flare. Throughout the years I have been to numerous doctors and to put it bluntly every single one of them has been as much use as a chocolate fucking teapot. The immediate answer is either oral steroids or steroid creams. Both of these can fuck you up if overused and neither of them truly deal with the problem. I don’t profess to have the answers that the doctors cannot give but I know one thing, eczema is not simply a condition of the skin, it is an autoimmune condition whose origins lie within. I am 100% convinced that the main cause of my eczema flares is something in my diet.

Well from here on, I’ve decided to add another ‘goal’ to my journey, to find out what the fuck it is that is making my body fucking attack itself, more or less cure myself of my eczema. I am keeping a food diary so here is my chance……………..

Even worse than Winehouse.

After messing my skin up so bad and completely fucking my program up Saturday night / Sunday, I decided the best way to get things back to normal would be to do an extended fast. By doing this it means I don’t run the risk of eating the suspect food again and fasting also can promote/accelerate various healing processes. So from around 19:15 Sunday night (14th day) I fasted. As far as the blog is concerned, we may as well fast forward a few days as there is not much to tell. Adding to the fact that I wasn’t eating anything, there was also no possibility of me going the gym. Anybody that has suffered with eczema will know that sweating is a big no-no. The plan for the week was to fast, and then eat well restricting it to non-suspect foods. I figured I’d give the ‘Power Chowder’ (from the 'Ripped to Shreds' program) a whirl as it would give me plenty of clean nutrient laden food. I had trouble getting some of the ingredients so I had to improvise with some typical Vietnamese greens. Other than that, the gym was out of the question so early nights were the order of the day (week).

No Avocado and too much beetroot meant my chowder looked absolutely shite-all like this.

But like this!

Day 16
So the fast lasted till around 18:15 Tuesday evening (16th day). It wasn’t too bad to be honest as I felt pretty sick so was off food anyway. Any of the benefits of fasting hadn’t begun to show as I still felt like absolute shit. I had patches of eczema all over and the skin on my face was really inflamed. My hands were painfully dry and had cuts all over them. The state of the skin under my eyes made me look like I was a fucking 82 year old lizard. Only food consumed was the power chowder in soup form with plenty of cooked chicken followed by some home made chocolate truffles (I’ll post the recipe, but coconut oil and cocoa both have healing antioxidant properties). Early night, roll-on day 17………….

Day 17 
Didn’t ‘roll-on’ it fucking rolled over me! Skin was worse again even after a 2 day fast and eating so cleanly. Completely stumped I went to the hospital just so they could do the usual bullshit and prescribe me some steroids to fuck my adrenal glands up further. It was really pissing me off so I spent half of the afternoon on the internet looking for possible causes. I’d had no dairy, wheat, nuts, eggs, seafood, tomatoes, caffeine, alcohol………………..All I’d had was some vegetables (mainly green plus beetroot) plus a load of coconut oil and cocoa sweetened with only xylitol and stevia plus chicken. Racking my brains and trawling the net and then I stumbled upon something I had read before but years earlier that I completely dismissed. If you follow the principles of the Blood Type Diet then it provides each blood type with a list of foods that they must avoid. My blood type is B and top of the ‘avoid’ list is chicken believe it or fucking not! If you look back at my posts from days 8-14 you will see that I was eating plenty of chicken plus my skin is even worse today and I had a load of chicken yesterday, could this be the answer? I’ll be honest it seems like a long shot but worth a try, I’m a little sceptical over the blood type diet, find it hard to believe that a person’s blood type can make them sensitive or intolerant to specific foods but I don’t have another answer at the moment so this is what I’m clinging to. So from day 17, chicken was added to the suspect list, prime fucking suspect.  

Day 18 
Was a big improvement. I mean by most people’s standards my skin was in a shit state, red, itchy, inflamed and drier than a nun’s chuff but to me it felt so much better. The dryness is a good sign and is easily dealt with by moisturising over and over. All suspects completely off the menu.

Day 19 
Better again, skin definitely on the mend and no longer look like a hungover lizard with a skin condition.

Day 20 
Well on the mend, decided to get back to the gym and also to reintroduce a couple of the suspects, wheat and caffeine. Ate plenty of bread and had my supplements pre-workout.

TORTURE TIME
AM
Squats 
122kg x 5 (not perfect or full depth)
102kg x 6 (full, 6 definitely enough)
Deads
132kg x 3
152kg x 5
132kg x 8
Shrugs (w/straps, forgot chalk)
120kg x 7
100kg x 9

This workout was a bit of an experiment to be honest. One of the benefits of eating a diet high in coconut oil (the truffles the last few days) is that it encourages the body to start burning fat for energy and increasing ketosis. After 2 days of fasting followed by 3 days low carb I was definitely in a ketogenic state (and scales were showing it). So I wanted to see what this would do to my heavy workout. Well as you can see by the numbers above, it did nothing positive. I was weaker across the board and ended up cutting my volume right down.

On the feasting side, today was a refeed day and I wanted to check out my theory that chicken was to blame. I wasn’t brave enough to add the chicken back in yet but I wanted to reintroduce the other suspects in order to rule them out. So as I mentioned before, I added wheat and caffeine back in. I never do things by halves and was pretty confident that wheat was not the cause (I had eaten no wheat for the whole week in Jakarta) so I had plenty of wheat just to be sure.  

Day 21
Family day today, no gym and out for lunch, just attempted to keep the cals down. Back to the program tomorrow. Was a bit pissed off as my skin had started to get a bit angry again. It’s nothing like it was but patches are appearing again. I am still holding onto the chicken theory but have come to the conclusion that there are a few things and wheat is probably one of the others. Will cut the wheat out for the foreseeable future, shouldn’t be too hard if low-carbing anyways. In reality I probably got a bit impatient and experimented with the wheat a little earlier than I should have (impatient tit). I was on the mend but not 100%. So the plan for now is to be low-carb, wheat & chicken free, see how I get on……

Days 11-14

Catch up post today, covering days 11-14 (20th – 23rd September).  

SUPPS (all days provided working out)
Pre-workout 
Amino drink (containing BCAAs, caffeine, Taurine and a bunch of useless shit)
Glutamine ± 5g
Creatine ± 5g
BCAA ± 5g
HMB (new one for me as just got from the UK) ± 2g
Arginine EE ± 2g
Post workout
Muscle-Pharm Combat Powder Scoop

Throughout day
Fish Oil x 20g (±1g for every % bodyfat)
Multivit
Antioxidants
± 5g vitamin C

Day 11
TORTURE TIME  
AM

The effect of running in Jakarta
for 10 mins a day

Early morning interval sprints have been canned for a few days, state of my eyes has put me off running outside and I hate running on the treadmill (especially intervals). Shit excuses I know but they’re all I’ve got. 

PM
Tabata workout – Same protocol just different moves, went well.

This is where my morning runs would take place in Vung Tau, Vietnam.
Place was boring as shit but at least the air was clean!

FEASTING (WITHOUT THE ‘E’)
Lunch - Japanese resto I go to was closed (election day in Jakarta) so I had to go the Chinese restaurant instead. Wasn’t as clean and harder to estimate but I had a go. If I’d have known in advance I’d have just got espresso’d up to the eyeballs and fasted till the evening.
Dinner – Chicken salad and seared salmon NYOM.
Snacks – some ham and some crispy salmon skin (like a bag of crisps but zilch carbos booyakasha!)

Day 12
TORTURE TIME  
Rest day

FEASTING (WITHOUT THE ‘E’)
Lunch – Back to the Japanese, banging.
Dinner – Indian takeaway, protein only.
Snacks – The salmon skin & some cheeeeeeze

Day 13 (Disasters Eve) 
TORTURE TIME  
Wasn’t sure how this morning’s gym session would pan out. Today is a refeed day so I’m doing a heavy workout, the kind I love. But I’ve been low carb for 5 days prior to the workout so definitely carb depleted and in a ketogenic state. I had a choice of just going the gym early, fasted or trying to get a few carbs in my system beforehand. I chose the latter, getting some fruit and a protein shake inside me about 90 mins before working out. The workout went like this:
Squats 
130kg x 6 (not perfect or full depth)
110kg x 6 (full, 6 definitely enough)
Deads
140kg x 7
120kg x 10
80kg x 13
Shrugs (w/straps, forgot chalk)  
120kg x 6
100kg x 9
Seated Calf Raise (on plate loaded hammer strength leg press)  
Warm-up 
200kg x 12
300kg x 6
Drop-sets
400kg x 6
350kg x 5
300kg x 6
250kg x 6
150kg x 11
100kg x 16
50kg x 22

As you can see, was weaker in this workout than the few previous. I put it down to the low-carb this week. Not bothered by it as these workouts are just to ‘keep my hand-in’. My hope is to get one of these heavy workouts in around once a week.  

FEASTING (WITHOUT THE ‘E’)
Lunch, postworkout - Chicken fried rice, home cooked
After that I stopped counting, it was my Dad’s birthday plus it was a refeed day. We went out for a meal, couple of beers, nothing too drastic. The problem is it didn’t stop there. My team were playing and my Dad fancied going out to watch it. So we went to the local boozer and I proceeded to do around 2/3 of a bottle of vodka in. Had a great time doing it but my word did it fuck me up, in more ways than one.

Day 14 (Disaster Day)  
Today was mainly spent travelling back from Jakarta to Saigon. Had planned  to fast as long as possible, not easy when hungover. Anyways, was on the 1st flight, went the toilet and when I came back they had served breakfast. The dutiful Wife decided she didn’t want anything but was undecided as to what to choose for me (I had planned nothing) so she got one of each. The ‘hangover from hell’ told me to eat both of them and he would fuck off, so I did but he didn't. When we got to KL airport I had a bowl of noodles and then had a big meal delivered when we got back home. We still had some birthday cake left from the Wife’s birthday and I had a big slice of that too. I made the fucking thing and I know the macros were not pretty. Estimated cals for the day ~5,000!  

Needless to say I didn’t do my weigh-in, what a silly fat bastard who has gone and fucked things up. 

Days 9 & 10

Days 9 & 10, not too much to tell, back on the program…………..

SUPPS
Pre-workout
Amino drink (containing BCAAs, caffeine, Taurine and a bunch of useless shit)
Glutamine ± 5g
Creatine ± 5g
BCAA ± 5g
HMB (new one for me as just got from the UK) ± 2g
Arginine EE ± 2g
Post workout
Muscle-Pharm Combat Powder Scoop

Throughout day
Fish Oil x 20g (±1g for every % bodyfat)
Multivit
Antioxidants
± 5/10g vitamin C

TORTURE TIME
AM
Early morning interval sprints. Office hours are 7am-4pm in Jakarta (to try and beat the main rush) so have to get up at 6am if want to run. Decided to take the opportunity to run outside while here. It’s not possible in Saigon as they all get up before 6am, I live nowhere near a park and the roads are death traps to sprinting chubby white people. In Jakarta the apartment is in an area that is a little secluded from the traffic so running outside works well. The only downside is that the area isn’t secluded from the fucking pollution. After two days sprinting outside (just 10 mins at a time) I’ve got eyes like the late George Best on a Sunday morning……...in the 1970s, nice.

PM
Tabata workout – Same protocol just different moves due to it being a different gym (with a barbell)

Day 9
Barbell Upright Row
Barbell Back Squat
Deadlift
Lat. Pulldown (Cable Machine)
Bent Over Row
Barbell Bicep Curls
Reverse Barbell Curls (as an additional finisher)

Day 10
Dumbbell Bench Press
Dumbbell Pullover
Dumbbell Chest Fly
Tricep Extension
Crunches (decline bench)
Leg Extension (Machine)

Workouts felt pretty decent tbh, admittedly the choice of moves has been a bit haphazard and random. Need to improve this to make sure I’m not overtraining anything on consecutive days. Will be easier when back in Nam and I can perfect the workouts to improve the split.

Update (realised on Day 11): I was taking another look at the Ripped to Shreds book and realise that I have fucked up a bit. The Evening Tabata workouts are meant to be performed for 8 sets per move when I have been performing only 6. What a dickhead, 8 sets of each move tonight it is.

FEASTING (WITHOUT THE ‘E’)
Day's food pretty similar on both days, salmon salad and sashimi in the Japanese restaurant near the office both days for lunch. Evening meal was baby spinach salad, day 9 was with the leftover Indian meat (Tandoori), day 10 was some Salmon Fillet. Lovely, both days. Had overdone it on the fat on day 10 and was still well below my protein so I had to have a shake later to bump it up. This bumped my cals up also but 3,685 cals with decent macros from good sources over 2 days is fine by me. Did a test to see whether I was in ketosis or not the evening of Day 10, trace amounts of Ketones present, again Happy Days!

Weigh-in update
My thoughts regarding the dodgy weigh-in on Sunday were well founded. Been weighed a few times since getting to Jakarta and seem to be hovering above the 92kg mark. I’ll take a +2kg loss while seeming to gain strength as well.

Day 8

Today had disaster written all over it. We (me, Wife & Duck) were on an 8:35am flight to Jakarta for a business trip. Journey was two flights in all, arriving around 3:40pm. Plan was to get settled and perform the Tabata workout in the Evening. On the food side, plan was to fast until around 12-1pm and then break it with what I had prepared, some low fat sausages and some cooked meats, all well and good so far. Well as the age-old saying goes “the best laid plans of mice and men inevitably end up getting fucked up”. The first flight was cancelled due to a technical fault. Thankfully as we had Duck with us we were given priority for getting on the next flight which was at 1:25pm. Anyway we obviously missed our connection, rebooked on another flight and instead of landing at 3:40pm (pre-rush hour) we landed at 8:00pm. FYI rush hour in Jakarta can last till 10pm. Whoever designed the road system and were responsible for the infrastructure needs hanging up by their fucking ears and their pubes set alight, worst traffic in the world. Anyway by the time we got to the apartment it was gone 9pm. 

Needless to say, after a monster journey and having to unpack and get the baby to bed, the Tabata workout was swerved. On the food side, the packed lunch was demolished around 1pm and I spent half of the remainder of the day looking for low-carb/hig protein foods from in and around the airport. A bag of sunflower seeds and a bag of soy nuts was all I could muster. As hard as I tried there was no way I was staying as low-carb as I’d have liked. 

The day finished off on a high, ordered an abundance of tandoor items from a local Indian restaurant. This bumped the protein up without doing too much damage to the carbs for the day.  Under the circumstances, I’m pretty pleased with how my stats looked.

Anyway, water on the bridge, tomorrow I carry on with the program

Mission for this week – to find a decent source of testosterone boosting Tongkat Ali while I’m here. This here country is where the stuff is made , known as Pasak Bumi, watch this space........

Day 7

Oh the stress of it!

Bit of a dilemma today as had organised (months ago) to go to some weird-ass theme park with my old driver and his family. I know it seems a bit early in the program to be making excuses but this wasn’t your run of the mill outing with friends, Vietnam is different. Through a mixture of respect and being polite, there was no possibility of me preparing something ahead of time for myself. It was going to be a bit of improvisation, hope for the best, try not to go overboard but make sure I don’t offend anybody. One thing was for sure; the low-carb program was out of the question. This wasn’t ideal on the 1st week of the program but it couldn’t be helped, it was a promise we made a few months back when we relocated back to Saigon and with the language barrier (his English isn’t great but it’s miles better than my Vietnamese) and the difference in culture there was no explaining my ‘program’ to him. Anyways, it didn’t go too bad; they had prepared a load of lovely fresh fruit for us to eat in the park, then we had a bit of ice cream and then they took us to a roasted meat & rice restaurant before dropping us back. Nice day and damage wasn’t too bad.

They ended up dropping us back home earlier than planned so I had a think about the week ahead. Decided to take advantage of the extra calories and the refilled glycogen stores and do a heavy workout tonight (25 minute Tabata wasn’t going to cut the mustard). Then the plan was to go back on the R2S (Ripped to Shreds) low carb program plus intermittent fasting. On the exercise side, back to the early morning interval sprints and evening Tabata workouts, back to the fat burning.

Get tae' fuck belly

SUPPS
Pre-workout 
Amino drink (containing BCAAs, caffeine, Taurine and a bunch of useless shit)
MusclePharm Assault (had a scoop left so thought I’d swallee it)
Glutamine ± 5g
Creatine ± 5g
BCAA ± 5g
HMB (new one for me as just got from the UK) ± 2g
Arginine EE ± 2g
Post workout
MusclePharm Combat Powder - Scoop
Glutamine ± 5g
Creatine ± 5g

Fish Oil x 20g (±1g for every % bodyfat)
Multivit
Antioxidants
± 5/10g vitamin C

TORTURE TIME
Back Squat
132kg x 5 – Personal Best
112kg x 7 – Nice and low
92kg x 9 –  Ass to grass

Barbell Deadlift
130kg x 4 – warm-up
162kg x 5 – Another PB WTF??
140kg x 7 – Nice finisher

Barbell Shrugs 
102kg x 6 - no straps, grip failed
72kg x 12

Seated Calf Raise (plate loaded)
90kg x 8 – warm up followed by semi-dropsets (rest between sets = the time it took to drop a plate off)
90kg x 12
75kg x 14
60kg x 16
45kg x 18
30kg x 50

Well what a fucking surprise this workout was. Felt strong as an ox. I put it down to the refeed day on Friday after a heavy workout, followed by a day of clean nutritious food and then plenty of calories today.

Nailed it!

FEASTING (without the E)
Mentioned my food earlier up until the workout. Planned to just get plenty of carbs and keep my calories sub 3000. Main event was chicken fried rice (my own) details below:

TALE OF THE TAPE
As flying early tomorrow, decided to have the weigh in today, which ended up being a bit of a bad move in some respects:

Weight – 95.1kg (up 0.1kg)
Waist – 102.0cm (down 2.5cm)

I haven’t got disheartened over the weight tbh as it was one weigh in and the results were definitely skewed. You see I weigh myself most days, whenever the opportunity presents itself under the right conditions (preferably fasted, well hydrated with little water retention). I had been hovering between 92-93kg since around Thursday. Since then I’d done two things, replenished my glycogen stores and more significantly, ate a shitload of salt yesterday (cooked meats and roasted veg in particular). So in hindsight, the conditions were poor and I’m confident that in a day or so I’ll be back around the 92-92.5kg range.

Day 6

Rest day today so nothing much to tell!

SUPPS

Fish Oil x 20g (±1g for every % bodyfat)

Multivit

Antioxidants

± 5/10g vitamin C

NO TORTURE TIME

FEASTING (without the E)

Strategy today relatively relaxed but with a few rules, firstly to get a decent amount of protein (say 1g for every lb bw). Secondly, keep the cals sub 2000. Thirdly get as much good clean veg into my body (sort of like a ‘nutrient’ refeed). Was working in the morning then out around Saigon with the Wife and Duck. Stopped at a deli that have a quality salad bar so tried to put them out of business, failed but still piled the plate high twice. This was my breaking the fast meal around 2:30pm. Evening meal was some LF sausages and a load of roasted veg with some ciabatta. Snack was some dried beef. Eating window was about 6 hours, happy days.