The cleanse, Day 5

Before the diet, I purchased my first real scale from Costco, some Weight Watchers digital scale, pretty sweet looking actually. I figured that while the weight loss was incidental to the diet, I was very interested to see how much weight I would lose. Well, I have lost 10 pounds so far as of this morning, or 4 days in. And the loss has been pretty steady, although I expect it to taper before the end.

I've been working at home all week, and haven't really left the house much except for a quick trip to the store and the library. So I have been wearing sweats and haven't tried on any of my regular pants to see how they fit. I started at 184 pounds, and am now down to 174 with 3 days left. Wednesday morning was the first time I felt a little sketchy when I woke up. Once I had gotten the kids to school I started to feel better, and 2 hours in I felt fine (or normal for the diet).

Possible justifications for that is that as the 'plaque' is sloughed off of your intestines, pockets of toxins can be released that flood you in the short term and can cause effects like that. Whether that was the real cause or something a little straightforward or physically nefarious, who can tell. But it makes for good press.

I've been doing a sauna every night to help with the toxin flushing (I have an infrared sauna in my basement) and that definitely helps eliminate the excess water that I have been drinking a lot of during the day. A nurse that I know expressed concern about my electrolyte level, but I figure with all of the pills and capsules I'm taking, I have that covered. Hopefully no hyperhydration here. Normally I'm not supposed to eat until Sunday morning, but with Goaltimate at 10AM that morning, I'm going to have to eat something Saturday night AND Sunday morning or else I will be a puddle of jelly on the field with zero energy reserves. So I'm starting to plan that dinner although I will have the kids so that will make anything in excess somewhat difficult. I'm thinking Pad Thai or something along those lines.

The stuff cost $78 including shipping (down from $121 MSRP love the internet) and I have probably saved food money this week, although it might be close. Yesterday night I felt a little weak also, although my barbells came in yesterday. I won't start any of that until after the diet, seeing that I have had zero protein this week. Doing my 'stuff' at the UCPC will be interesting. Look for the guy with the backpack carrying all the pill bottles, apple juice, etc...

I'm also going to be on a panel at the UCPC, talking about 'Professionalism in Ultimate' It should be interesting, although they moved us off of the 5-6PM slot where we had no competition to the slot before lunch. With all of the other presos going on, it will be interesting to see how many people we get to stop by.

Wouldn't that be cool if I actually dropped to 170 by the end? I bet if I didn't have dinner Saturday night, I would be 170 by the morning. Oh well.

The cleanse, Day 2

So, I started the fast Sunday morning. In true fashion, I did a little excess the previous night, going to a housewarming and not getting to sleep until around 3:15. So instead of starting at 7AM, I didn't roll out of bed until 8:30 feeling a little hungover.

I made the first shake and fortunately I had some apple juice in the fridge, otherwise it wouldn't have gone down too smoothly, although I barely put any juice in it. I did a quick assessment/count and I figure I will be getting at most 500 calories per day probably closer to 300 depending on how much apple juice I use in the shakes.

I had to run to Goaltimate at 10AM so had my pills right before leaving, and then brought stuff to make my next shake since I didn't know how long Goaltimate would go. We are running a 5 week league right now, so I have additional incentive to go. We ended up winning our game that day 3 games to 1 (it was REALLY frickin' cold, so we blew off best of 7). Then back to the house to clean up some more, more pills, more shakes as I tried to make up for the lost time. Watched the Pats game on the projector in the living room. While not stellar, it WAS an exciting game, considering only a 14-12 lead in the 4th quarter. Then watched some of the Packers loss. After TV was over, I sparked up the sauna in the basement and did 45 minutes there, sweating out all the water I had drunk during the day. Hey, in for a penny, in for a pound.

The toughest thing about it so far was watching football and seeing the fast food commercials. I rarely feel like I have to eat because I'm hungry, but I DO enjoy the taste of food, and that is definitely what I miss the most. Even today, I don't really feel especially hungry, except for a low-level emptiness which is pretty easy to ignore.

I weighed myself yesterday when I got out of bed, and weighed in at 184, with some excess fluid and food weight. This morning I was down to 181. It will be interesting to see what I weigh by the end of the week. I'm figuring somewhere around 175-77 but we'll see. Hell, more would be great, but I don't have my hopes up.

The cleanse

So starting Sunday morning (well, Saturday night), I will be beginning a 7-day fast. While the point of this fast is not to lose weight, but more of a systemic cleanse, that will be a necessary and welcome side benefit. I recently bought a scale, and am disappointed to see myself hovering around 181-4. I would definitely like to get back down to the mid 170s or even lower.

Details on what I'm about to do can be found here. This is the 'product' that I will be using. While I haven't done this particular 'diet', I have done similar ones over the years, but I haven't done one since my kids, so at least 2001, and as I check Quicken, I see nothing since Jan 2008, which is when I migrated to Quicken from MacMoney. So, it has been at least 10 years.

You might ask, why now? Well, I have undergone some recent life changes, topic for another post, and have also realized that I need to get in a little better shape, take better care of myself, and I figure this is a good springboard to do that. The fasting portion shouldn't be that difficult, because I have always been able to ignore food cravings. And with all of the shakes and supplements, there will be enough activity going on, and with the schedule of something every 1.5 hours, it will engage my attention enough that I don't dwell on it. About the only issue will be that I will be cooking for the kids at night, and will not be able to eat with them. I guess I'll just have to make them really crappy food that I won't miss... So no drinking for a week, I expect I won't really make it out of the house that much in general. The biggest issue will be the UCPC conference on Saturday, the last day of the cleanse. I will have to cart around all my pills and shakes in a backpack or something. And now that I'm actually 'presenting'. Oy! Maybe I'll talk about it re: Professionalism in ultimate.

As part of this personal renewal, I also purchased a set of barbells. Yes, funny I know. There have been too many situations recently where I have had to lift something, or do something upper body that has resulted in sore arms, general aches or even what would feel like bone-level soreness. I have never possessed any real upper-body strength (hucking is all technique...), but another facet of aging is bone loss, etc. And resistance training is the best thing to combat that. So I will be beginning a workout program to try and strengthen my upper body. There is no way I have the patience, wherewithal or money to join a gym, so I'm going to have to do it at the house. The barbells will go in the TV room so I can work while I catch up on my 'shows'. Unfortunately, the writers strike is a little annoying, but I guess it is giving me a chance to clean up the house also.

I also have a spinning bike that I purchased from Bryan Doo a few years ago. I have to admit, trying to do spinning alone is pretty lame. I haven't used it that much, and I'm not sure these workouts will extend to that, although I think I'm going to try and do the whole tabata thing on the bike that the Jims talk about (Paramello and Biancolo). That will be a lot easier mentally for me than sitting on the damn thing for 45 minutes and trying to vary a workout.

So, barbells (the Bowflex 5-50 pounder for space reasons) and a spinning bike. I guess I'll have to dig up a bench from somewhere so I have more variety in my upper body stuff, but we'll start with the little baby steps.

I will keep you posted next week in excruciating detail on the progress of the cleanse. Maybe I'll do a daily journal on how I feel, and whether the toxic cleansing is really having an impact on my physical and mental wellbeing. Stay tuned!

Nationals 2007 review

So now that I have a little distance from Nationals, woo-hoo! I'm going to Worlds baby! More relevant is that I have received my ultimate magazine AND my Ultivillage CD (great work as always Rob).

Since the magazine came out, the DoG masters list has been woofin' up the finals stats of course. We duplicated our 1995 success by having only 3 turnovers in the finals, again all by the offense. As I was just remarking earlier today, I was the one who opened the spigot with an inside out over Alec Ewalds head early on (they did NOT score on this turnover, which is the only personal stat that matters...). I mentioned that I provide a valuable service to the team by turning it over first so that others don't have to stress about being the first. And my ego is big enough to handle the damage. But maybe that's why I have shifted from trying to start games on O to starting on D. Maybe I want the D to screw up first. I'll have to think about that. I also broke the plexiglass shield and scored the second to last goal without cutting myself. I even scored the last offensive goal in the semis against Troubled Past. Maybe I should recast myself as a cutter. Nah!

It was sort of cool having all of the stats on the same page in the magazine. Now I know it wasn't quite as windy on Saturday afternoon as it was Sunday, but c'mon. In the masters final, there were 11 total turnovers, 3 by DoG and 8 by Surly. In the open final, 44 (23/21), in the mixed, 54 (30/24) and in the women's, 41 (24/17) go women. I attribute the fewer turnovers in the women's final to the mismatched nature of the teams, winning 15-6 yet still combining for 41 turnovers. As for the mixed stats, well, you probably suspect how I feel about that.

So, I had to take another look at the DVDs. It was much nicer watching the masters final on the big screen than squinting at the UVTv, although Jim and I remarked how easy it was to recognize people on the field by how they move, regardless of the fidelity of the video. The masters final's coverage began from the crows nest at Tourney Central because the main cameras were covering the men's semis. This was actually a cool vantage point because you could see the play developing on the field a little more. That is probably the main objection that I have to much of the Ultivillage footage in that it is often very hard to see what is happening away from the disc. It almost seems like they should have had a crows nest video also, and used the closeup stuff more for the replays on good plays. Although they did have the steel structures on the sideline, it still wasn't that 'widescreen'. Regardless, the masters final didn't look too dissimilar to the Open final. I would say that Surly played much more of the huck n hope than we did. We hucked it maybe 2 or 3 times, one of which resulted in a turnover to Eric Carr. Otherwise, we played pretty conservatively, at least compared to the current game trend.

The reason I wanted to watch the video was to see if I could see any big differences between the two games. One of the reasons there probably weren't more turnovers in our game is that we had only 1 MTP (multi-turnover point) and that was on my turnover when Alec got it back with a layout block. Otherwise, every (rare) turnover resulted in a goal for the other team. Watching the open game, it was embarrassing the number of MTPs. I saw the Open game live and the video was a great refresh. By half time, this was definitely Bravo's game to lose, and lose they did. They came out of half and scored to make it 9-6 and then proceeded to have the disc multiple times per point, whether on offense or defense, and couldn't put it in. Both Sockeye and Bravo had UGLY turnovers. Silly drops, silly hucks to nowhere that were thrown literally just as the guy was beginning his cut, so by the time he turned around to track the disc, the wind had taken it off the original line and he had no chance. It was also surprising the number of open people that were looked off on both teams. The teams did not appear to adjust their game plan to the conditions at all.

I'm not sure what, if anything, I'm trying to conclude (besides that DoG is dead, long live DoG masters, 1 of 3, etc.), I just wanted to point out the disparities between the two games and bemoan the ascendancy of the huck n hope, I guess. Yes, it makes for good viewing, but hell, I'd rather just win, ya know?