Haitus Recap: Health

My health has always been a problem for me, whether it's been my lungs or my poor sleeping habits, I've never been the pinnacle of well-being. And I guess you could consider my bodytype to be unhealthy too.

I mean, when you're used to surviving off 1 meal every 24 hours, how can you expect to look?

Like so.

But things have been getting better and I'd like to attribute it to heading to the gym. For example, I've started eating breakfast again! Yes, after over half a decade of skipping this meal I've been trying to add it back to my routine.

Because is it ever hard to get enough calories in a day with just 2 meals.

Why do I skip breakfast? Easy. Because I'd rather sleep in for another half an hour than get up to eat a bowl of cereal. Though, I guess I could just grab a banana on the go and eat that but again, the laziness of older me was too much to even do that.

Vector cereal is really good though, also lots of protein.

I've also been taking this new mass gainer. For a while I was barely able to breach 160 pounds but after a few weeks on it, I easily pushed myself to 165. The biggest problem? Despite being the best tasting mass gainer I've ever been on, it still tastes kind of gross.

I mean, how can you manage to make "chocolate" taste eggy and sour? How do you manage to turn "cookies and cream" into... Well, there are cookie bits that taste like chocolate but the cream... I don't like whatever "cream" flavour this is.

Who knows what the vanilla is like. I am so sick of vanilla, never again.

My stomach cringes at the thought.

The added benefit of this mass gainer though is that when I miss one or miss a meal is that I get hungry. I haven't felt "hungry" in ages so maybe this is my body finally adapting to wanting to eat more? That's a good thing right?

My sleep schedule hasn't really improved though. I'm still tired most of the time though whether it's from poor sleep during the night or the workouts is hard to say. Fortunately I have an appointment in July where I'm going to begin the process of booking another sleep study.

Except this time I'm going to be sleeping in a lab with a ton of things hooked up to me while getting monitored.

Yay for people watching me sleep.

My lungs haven't been bothering me too much despite the increased loads I've been lifting at the gym. In fact, the only times my lung ever seem to bother me is excessive cardio. I had one temporary trainer who pushed me and I was just winded, light-headed, and actually nauseous.

No more cardio. Cardio isn't going to get me big, lifting heavy weights will.

Haitus Recap: Project Jason

Project Jason is my attempt at getting more muscle. Too long have I been a sack of organs barely held in by a thin membrane of skin. I've slowly noticed changes like my arms getting slightly bigger, clothes not fitting properly, and I say to myself, yeah, I think it's working.

And then I take a look at myself from a picture from before I started working out and THEN the differences become truly noticeable.

Those gains...

I guess it's because I see myself everyday so the changes aren't all that apparent. Hence the importance of progress pictures. I know I didn't take a picture back in August when I first started because of how embarrassed I was. But the closest thing I have is a picture from November and that was when I gained about 20 pounds.

And since November I've gained about another 15 pounds. It scares me to think of how thin I used to be. In fact, browsing various online fitness boards has lead to a startling realization. After all my hard work, I am only now considered "skinny".

Let that sink in for a moment. Almost 10 months of going to the gym has finally allowed me to be promoted to skinny.

So what was I considered before? Well, they have a lovely term for men who have noodle limbs and visible ribs: "Auschwitz mode".

Other acceptable terms include "hungry skeleton".

No matter, I'm still going to keep pushing to reach what they call "Ottermode" or the body type most associated with swimmers. For the first time ever, I'm at a healthy BMI at 165 pounds. My goal is to be around 200 pounds of muscle.

But this goal also puts me in an awkward position. Ideally, you want to be able to bench/overhead press your own body weight and squat/deadlift DOUBLE your bodyweight. Over the last few weeks I've finally been able to squat/deadlift 1 plate (45 pounds each side) and I can bench/overhead press maybe half of that.

I'm proud of myself, but I have a long way to go.

What's also funny is that I've developed somewhat noticeable pecs. And I can't stop touching them. Seriously, I'll be standing around and I'll poke them to make sure they're still there. What can I say? They're nice.

I imagine that it's similar for women when they first start developing breasts.

Ok, they're not that impressive yet, but maybe one day.

I'm still with my original trainer Eli, and things are going well. My other trainer (simply named Trainer D) finally had me lifting weight and not nitpicking over form before he disappeared. Yep. High turnover rate for trainers at that other gym.

So they slapped me with another trainer who we'll call Trainer E. He's nice, I like him but he doesn't have the technical knowledge or training that Eli or Trainer D had. I only have 2 dozen sessions left and after that, I'm just going to workout with Eli non-stop for the rest of the summer.

Haitus Recap: End of Term

Around when I disappeared back in March finals were around the corner. Normally this would be a time of stress, panic, and chaos as I scramble to deal with assignments and papers while I struggle to fit in time to study.

Not this time. I mean, firstly I only have 2 classes. Secondly, these classes don't count towards my GPA because I need to have a minimum of 3 classes a term to qualify for a full course load. So as long as I passed, that's all that mattered.

More time for League of Legends.

For those unaware, last term I was taking the last few prerequisites in an attempt to get into a Business after-degree in the following Fall semester. Economics 101 and 102 were generally dry but I was passing all my assignments and doing above class average on all the exams.

It didn't help that the assignment answers could often be found via a quick Google search, in the exact same question and answer format. I mean seriously, some of these searches yielded results as far back as 2008.

And guess what, they were almost always correct.

Finals comes along and I'm not worried at all. Well, as is my nature, I start cramming half a week in advance because I'm an idiot. You'd think with all the schooling I've had at this point I'd learn to start studying a bit earlier instead of procastinating so much.

You thought wrong.

Still, the exams went fairly well. I was particularly worried about the Econ 102 exam because I only had enough time to check over 1/3rd of my answers. Then as I was getting up I saw the girl behind me scrambling to bubble in her answers.

The student in front of me put down B for the last 30 answers.

Why.

A few weeks pass, and without a doubt I pass. Not a problem. But what's the current problem I'm having?

I won't know if I got accepted into the Business program until August.

Why?

Because the administration is lazy.

Seriously, all my friends who got in didn't get notified until August. And because they make us send in applications in March, you'd think that it wouldn't take half a year to determine if we could get in. In the administration's defense though they were getting so many applicants that they had to raise the minimum GPA from 2.1 to an astounding (wait for it)

2.3.

My GPA is above a 3.0. I think I'll be safe.

Coming out of Hiatus

After my last post about quitting Facebook I'm not sure what came over me. Maybe it wasn't just Facebook that I needed a break from, but all social media. For the first time since I started my blog, I couldn't find it in myself to keep typing. Little achievements and what not had occurred, "interesting" and "note-worthy" things came to my attention, but I stayed silent.

Or we can pretend I went temporarily blind and couldn't type.

But I'm back. Thank you to everyone who left comments wondering where I went to. It's nice to know that I was missed. It says something when more people via Blogger wonder where I went compared to Facebook. Seriously, only 2 people wondered what happened to my Facebook account.

Maybe I should have more of a presence.

Or do more horrible things.

But yes, stories. How the end of the term went, my non-stop workouts, my hunt for a job, plans for the future, and my cousin's upcoming wedding. All our family is coming to visit us and we haven't seen some of them in over a decade. This should be fun.

It's good to be back. Posting schedule is back to every third day. Can't wait to jump around and see what everyone else has been up to.