If it's Wednesday it must be Chest and Triceps day. My 20 minute run felt good; I'm still not doing a full 2 miles but I am getting better (1.86 miles today). As for the weight training, all of my exercises have been at 3 sets of 12 reps. Next week I'm going to up weight and do 3 sets of 10 reps.

I had started a periodization cycle earlier this year, but the move threw me off. I feel like I'm back in the groove and the diet thingy feels under control, so it's time to start aiming for a little progress in the strength corner.

And little progress it will be, because I'm trying to lose weight. I won't be able to gain muscle while I'm trying to lose fat. It doesn't mean I can't improve my strength, though. Just not that much.

And hey, stepped on the scale:129.8 pounds. Yay! I got past the arbitrarily annoying 130 mark! I'm aiming for the arbitrary 120 mark. 9.8 pounds to go, and 68 days to achieve it (that's my 40th birthday, and that will mark the beginning of my 2 weeks off the diet. AND on that day, I will eat nothing but chocolate cake and drink Irish red Ale! Home brewed, of course. Then I will throw up in front of my friends and embarrass myself. Man, I can't wait!!)

That reminds me...

I've been wanting to regurgitate some of what I have been reading about diets.

First off, all diets in the long run are bad for you. If you eat hypocalorically (in other words, if you eat less than you need to function), you will eventually use up all of your energy stores and you will die. Just ask Karen Carpenter.

All diets are also bad for you because you will not be getting all the nutrients you need. This problem can be side-stepped somewhat by taking a cheap multivitamin.

All diets are also bad for you because since your body thinks it's starving, it will start shutting things down, like your metabolism and your sex drive. 5% bodyfat looks cool, but your body hates it.

And to quote Lyle MacDonald, your body hates you.

Most of what I have learned about ketogenic diets I learned from his book on the subject. Much of what I'll write below came from his book.

Your body doesn't really hate you, it loves you and wants to keep you alive as long as possible. Our bodies have not adapted to the modern diet; indeed it responds to food much in the same way the bodies of our ancestors responded. Because of an uncertain supply of food, our ancestor's bodies stored energy efficiently.

Namely, it is a natural adaptation to put fat on easily (fat is a great storage unit for energy; one pound of fat is equal to 3500 calories, 1 - 2 days worth of energy) and to take it off grudgingly. The fitness models on TV might look hot, but take one of them and an overweight blob and lock both of them away, the fitness model will die of starvation MONTHS before the lardbutt does.

Our bodies are pretty easygoing about energy: it will burn the fuel it has greatest access to. The reason we are getting so bigassed is because we eat so much the body is shunting the fat we eat into fat stores while dumping insulin into our bloodstream to handle all the glucose from the carbohydrates we eat. More on insulin in a bit.

Low fat diets work (if they are hypocaloric) because your body isn't busy storing fat any more because you aren't really eating it. Matter of fact once the carbohydrates are out of your system (carbs are pure energy - one gram of carbohydrate will convert to one gram of glucose), your body will then reach in to its fat stores for food. Your tissues don't care; they will burn fat as easily as glucose.

The one exception is your brain and central nervous system. It needs glucose. It was once thought that that was all it burned, but (again, thought to be an adaptation), it can change over to burning about 75% ketones, which is an energy source derived from fatty acids. I forget how the body does this, but trust me. Ketones are produced from fatty acids and after a few weeks of little or no carbs your brain will reluctantly start using them for fuel.

So what does your brain do in the meantime? Your body will break down muscle tissue. When your body gets ahold of protein, 58 percent is turned into glucose. This is why you lose muscle when you diet and it is also why you should not shirk on protein when you diet!

Low carb diets work (if they are hypocaloric) for pretty much the same reason that low fat diets work. After burning the food you eat your body dips into its fat stores for the energy it needs.

So, if you want to lose weight, go hypocaloric. Low fat (Weight Watchers), Low Carb (Atkins), or balanced (the Zone), it doesn't really matter except to how you respond to the diet.

Here is my problem with low fat, which I have done: A certain level of protein is neccessary. I am happy with about .8-1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight, so I'm eating about 400 -600 calories in protein a day. (1 gram of protein = 4 calories). If I'm eating low fat (say about 10% -%20 of my diet, or about 100-200 calories: 1 gram of fat = 9 calories ) I'm only eating about 10 - 20 grams of fat. That's not much - less if you are accounting for the fat from the meat you are eating. So the rest, maybe about 500 -700 calories is coming from carbohydrates (1 gram = 4 calories, or about 120 grams of carbs a day).

Are you with me, or are your eyes crossing?

My problem is this: mood swings and cravings. I did not know I had these until I tried low carbohydrate dieting. When I tried low fat, I'd have a meal like a chicken breast and some plain white rice and maybe a salad with just vinegar for dressing. The rice would cause my low blood sugar to spike - instant mood swing. I would also crave more (happens after an insulin crash). A half a cup of rice just sucks, and that's about all I was allowed to have at one meal.

The theory about insulin spikes and crashes is this: Insulin regulates the level of blood sugar. More sugar (glucose) in your bloodstream will cause your body to dump insulin into your system. Overeating carbs will eventually cause you to become insulin resistant. In other words, your body will dump more and more insulin into your system in response to the same amount of carbs. That overexcess of insulin will lead to a crash, or your blood sugar will go too low. In some people this crash can cause sugar cravings.

So I tried Low Carb. Same protein levels - matter of fact I'm being more careful with them now that I have learned about how eating too little protein can cause you to lose muscle. Carbs are reduced to about 80-100 calories a day (20-30 carbs) except on workout days when I'll eat about 60 carbs all told. That ain't much but I can go to town on vegetables. Since veggies are so tough for your body to digest, I don't get the insulin spikes like I would with potatoes, bread, pasta, or rice. The rest of my diet is fat. 500-600 calories of delicious, yummy fat!

I eat fattier cuts of meat (sometimes), use butter in my cooking, and eat real salad dressings. It's not much, granted (about 60 grams of fat), but I feel full and no mood swings. And I get to eat cheese! Mmmmmmmmmmm, cheese!

Logic would tell you, "hey, why don't I combine the two? I will do lower fat, but ALL my carbs will be veggies!" That's the Zone diet (kinda); it felt to me like I was grazing. Hey, if it works for you, do it! I tried but got tired of all that food prepping. Screw it, gimme a stick of string cheese.

Any way, I don't get spikes or crashes because there's just not that much glucose to react to. No peaks and valleys, no cravings. I feel level-headed and more alert.

Some people feel stupid on a low carb diet. This is because their brains have not adapted. For maybe two or three weeks it might be a good idea to eat a little more carbohydrates. Some people never seem to adapt. And athletes and heavy exercisers suffer under a low carb plan because their muscles don't have access to glycogen (I talked about that yesterday).

So, instead of going from one diet fad to another, everyone should get more informed about basic nutrition then try things out to find the best thing suited for them. If one thing doesn't work, try another. I bitch about the hamster wheel - all in all it looks like my on again-off again dieting hasn't worked. I think it has, to a certain extent. I fall off the wagon and consume like crazy - this habit seems to be caused by stress. Moving didn't help, of course. Finally things get calmed down and I try again and have some success for a while.

I'm saying it was somewhat successfull because if during these past 3 years I ate like I normally did I would have levelled out weight-wise at about 145 (or maybe more. That was my high water mark when I was 31).

I'm thinking the trick is to make observations about my habits and cycles. If I can find the patterns maybe I can find a way to counteract the wagon-falling.

This time around, I think an occasional planned refeed followed by a planned break after 8-10 weeks might help me take control. Cravings are bizarre; sometimes I just want to eat!. So why not plan it? We'll see...