been slowly reducing calories the past week from a +500 surplus to a -500 deficit. weight started at 225, even bounced up to 227, but has come back down to 222. that quick loss should be glycogen and water. now i can see what damage the last month of bulking did. belly has thinned some but still looks bigger from the starting point. legs picked up some muscle and seem to be showing more definition. shoulders and traps definitely added some size too.

nutrition is going to change slightly from last time. the main change is to get more carbohydrates after a workout. i'm also going to bump up calories after the heaviest workout days. this weekly 'cheat' day will be similar to what i ate when bulking. finally, i'm going to severely limit, but not completely cut out fruit. this will mainly be to add some fruit juice to flavor water. cold brewed coffee is still on the menu, and i need to get back to drinking green tea.

supplements. a friend had good results with Forslean, so i'm giving it a shot now. when its empty, i'll switch to a more traditional thermogenic. also trying Waximaize. that's giving me 40 grams of carbs with a post workout drink. that bumps total carbs up to equal the amount of protein i'm getting, so i'll cut that out soon to get more of a deficit. might cycle back onto it if i feel energy levels dropping.

lifting. the change will be to start out at high reps and then lower the # of reps each month. starting at 10 to 12 now, 8 to 10 next month, and 5 to 8 if i go a 3rd month. i've been real happy with the current routine : chest/forearms, legs/calves, back, shoulder/tris, traps/bis ... but i have to change routines next month.

cardio. starting out with radical changes here. i'm not doing morning cardio at all. what i had been doing was really low intensity, so i'm cutting it out to give my legs more time to heal and have more productive lifting sessions. there is some logic to my afternoon cardio now too. mid intensity intervals at the start of a workout cycle, low intensity recovery the day after legs, and high intensity the final day. each cardio workout is slightly more intense than what i had been doing before. this plan coincides with what the O2 test recommended.

added thumbnails, synopsis, and the ability to drill further down into categories; so you can get to the 'Arrested Development' streams in TV now. its also up on xbmcScripts.com, so i think it can be added from within XBMC using their load script.

new firmware came out on Friday and i'm really happy with it. they sped up SMB decoding so now i can stream 1080p from Windows Home Server (which doesnt support NFS out of the box). it now supports Vorbis in MKV and audio codec support seems to have improved all around. basically, the PCH can now play all of my MKV files. it previously had problems with background noise on some MKV files with AAC, and it couldn't play Vorbis at all. also had some HD MKV files that would not play, but now they play fine with the updated Haali codec.

that'll keep me happy for a little while, but i'm still hoping they end up supporting OGM, FLV, and MMS (all of which are supported by XBMC). but their main priority should be to redo the UI and make it faster. the PCH seriously kicks ass for media playback, but browsing to find your media is painful. its much quicker/easier for me to browse/find media using XBMC.

i think this last PCH update fully retired the Xbox 360s media functionality. its now just a gaming machine. pitiful, i really wanted the 360 to be my entry point for running custom applications in the living room.

just want to start out by saying mice are lame, and used by luddite persons referred to as arm-movers. trackballs rule! hell, the ball itself can be used as a projectile weapon. plus nobody ever uses your computer because they dont know what to do without a mouse. you know the movie scene where they break in and immediately know how to hack into the computer and grab all the files. that problem is easily solved by using a trackball. the hero would reach for the mouse, be foiled by a trackball, would not be able to find out your evil master plan, and he's dead in the next scene. happy ending. for the real world just replace 'hero' with 'your sig. other' and 'find evil master plan' with 'find your porn stash'.

since the last time i bought a trackball, nothing seems to have changed. i'll end up getting another Logitech Cordless Optical TrackMan because i'm a finger-mover and not a thumb-mover. finger-movers are cooler than thumb-movers which are still cooler than arm-movers. i wish MS hardware would have a trackball revival because the Microsoft Trackball Explorer was the best pointing device ever. the 3rd party retailers on Amazon are selling it for $300 used and $450 new! was also really hoping i'd be able to get rid of a transceiver by now.

hit 225, so i added 5 lbs. bodyweight had been bouncing all around, but its been a constant climb this last week. i take that to mean that i'm back into an anabolic state (which was the goal). bodyfat has bumped back up to around 15%. that means i probably added a couple pounds of muscle and a couple pounds of fat. probably have some stored glycogen and water weight too. measurements seem to agree with this. thighs are up an inch and arms are up a 1/2 inch. on the other hand, waist is a 1/2 inch bigger and belly is an inch bigger. at least strength is up too, mainly in my legs. workouts have been great since i've had alot more carbs to power them. was able to handle 10 to 12 reps much easier with a caloric surplus.

now i've got a week at maintenance calories (3000). then the plan is to go back to a caloric reduction (2500) for 2 to 3 months. in that time the goal will be to get down to 10% bodyfat. estimating that my bodyweight will have to be 210 to meet that goal. supposedly, if i'm at 10% bodyfat, then it'll be easier to put on a higher percentage of lean muscle mass for the next bulking phase.

still feeding the machine (this is where you visualize me pumping my arm to make the Mack Truck horn honking signal). probably been over 3500 calories daily, but i've stopped counting calories because its too much effort now that my caloric intake has increased. the new rule is :

can i eat? ... if YES, then eat. if NO, continue digesting. wait 30 minutes, repeat.

if i ever feel hungry, then the battles already been lost. the goal is to preemptively strike before hunger pains fire. one change is to switch from protein supplements to MRP (meal replacement) which has more calories and a closer balance of carbs and protein. they taste better too! i dont seem to be doing very good at gaining weight this round, so i'll probably have to switch to full on weight gain 4000 next round (BEEFCAKE!). too early to tell, but it needs to start packing on for me to reach 225 this month. at least i think i'm mostly out of the catabolic state and my body should be re-learning how to be inefficient using calories. hoping that translates into better weight loss next month.

energy levels are picking up but still have not at full capacity. i want that feeling back when i walk into the gym chomping at the bit to move some iron. strength is up slightly but my left shoulder is gimped and holding back chest workouts. left shoulder has become a recurring problem. think its because i've got a bone fragment or cartilige build-up in my right elbow which wont allow it to fully straighten (from a football helmet). it used to be that the right elbow would injure first, then i would favor that elbow and the injury would transition to the left shoulder that was overcompensating. now the right elbow injury is skipped altogether and it goes straight to the left shoulder. if we ever get in a fight, you should use that to your advantage.

couple days ago at the gym : a guy doing clean and jerk. today at the gym : powerclean. # of times i've seen anybody perform these lifts at the gym within last 8 months ... 0. chances are i'll stop seeing these lifts as soon as the olympics end, then i won't see them again til the next olympics, because olympic lifts are killer. these are the least performed lifts at a typical gym (from most to least common) :

squat - relatively common, but its usually the same people each time. most people dont purposefully crush themselves with weight. out of the people performing squat, about half of them are only doing half-squats.
deadlift - mainly because its such a pain to load and unload the bar. plus the initial start of the movement is killer.
powerclean - most gyms dont have a good place to perform this lift. it also takes some balls to drop under the weight before you squat it up.
clean and jerk - starts as a powerclean and then you have to press that over your head. good luck with that.
snatch - the name is funny, but i can't remember ever seeing this lift performed at a public gym. you need some agility for this lift.

here's my first day with scripting / python / XBMC scripts : xMceItv. all it does is parse MCML and ASX files from the MCE Internet TV (beta) app and put it on XBMC. so you get : Top Picks, Movies, TV, Music, Viral, Lifestyles, Sports, Tech, News.

trying to bake up a quick little script for XBMC. for UI, i just need a list and the ability to play network streams. found an XBMC sample for a list, and it just looks like a single call to play the stream. but then i ignored XBMC for a bit and just wrote the networking and screen scraping part in python on my desktop. that wasn't too bad. screwing around with indentation is stupid, and i'm quite sure their concept of global is not intuitive. and finding an XML lib to use took some fumbling around. anyway, i got that working easily enough. but now i'm trying to put the networking piece back into XBMC ... PITA! for debugging on XBMC you just call the 'print' statement. then when you exit your app you can open a debug window to see what is going on. but when i interact with the list, i keep getting into a situation where i cant exit the app without resetting XBMC. and that wipes the debug log. so then i have no clue what the problem is that caused it to lock in the first place. painful. going to have to read their script forum to figure out what stupid mistakes i'm making.