So 20 days in and I've lost about 6 pounds. It's kinda sporadic though, the day-to-day weigh-ins have a lot of variance due to water weight. I have been taking pictures of myself every 10 days however, and in the first 20 days there are definitive changes. My upper body has actual tone developing, and there's a lot less roundness in my neck and stomach. I know that coming out of highschool I weighed around 145 and even though I felt normal everyone around me thought I was too skinny and never bothered to say anything... Seeing my old drivers license you could tell I was just rail thin. So While 170 is a much better weight than 180, I think ultimately something in the ballpark of 155 to 160 is going to be optimal, and hopefully I can accomplish that before the end of the year.

I'm realizing that nutrition is ultimately the deciding factor in how much bodyfat I shed. My best weeks have come when I've been stringent about my nutrition. Namely keeping my carbs low, eating enough veggies, and eating ~170g of protein daily (my current'ish bodyweight).

Once you do that for a week or so, I've noticed that the day-to-day appetite is less intense, or rather I feel less of a need to snack in between meals. I dunno if that's normal or not, what I do know is that there's definitely a calorie deficit which leads to weight loss but I don't know the appropriate pace right now. I would pay good money to have someone telling me exact portions to eat; as is I'm just eating when hungry and making sure I'm eating to my standards. There are reasons to worry with something like this, though, because I know this is the kinda attitude that can lead to people getting eating disorders. A kid losing weight sees the progress he makes after a few weeks of not eating enough and decides to eat even less, and it spirals downward.

I haven't had anything like this happen so far but there have been days where I've eaten breakfast and done my protein shake and find myself not eating anything until dinner. There's something fundamentally wrong with that, I just need to make sure I'm getting enough meals in my system so I can lose the weight in a better fashion. This is another reason I need to be waking up at 8am and not 2pm, because it's a lot easier to realize what times I need to be eating which meals, since my brain is better wired for that schedule. It's hard to remember what counts as dinnertime when you woke up in the early afternoon. Sometimes I like being a poker player because I can wake up whenever the f*ck I want fully rested, but it means I'm less productive day-to-day. C'est la vie I guess.

We have our personal chef for those 4 dinners a week, and for the remaining dinners and lunches I'm looking to use the leftover tupperware to store food in large quantities. Tomorrow's goal is to cook some turkey chili and store it in tupperware, and gauge how much I'd need for a week's worth of food. The nice thing about being a poker pro is that I'll have all the time in the world to do the cooking that needs to be done, so I'll look to add in some stuff as I go along but turkey chili is a decent enough start.

p90x has gotten progressively easier as far as the tough workouts go, but I'm about to hit week 4 which is the period where my body is given something of a rest, and all of the workouts are more geared towards stretching and rewiring. I'm gonna work especially hard to keep my diet in check during this week (may add some cardio to help produce a calorie deficit) because the p90x workouts probably won't be burning many calories. plyo has become my 2nd worst workout, and now yoga is king. it's just 90 minutes of feeling uncomfortable, and I loathe it. I will soon come to respect it, though. It's gonna take months however.

Poker continues to go well, I had a rather swingy week. I ran like electric jesus in the 25/50 7game, then I ran like AIDS in the same game while having a massive downswing in PLO. Fortunately I just stuck it out and replaced the mix games with RUSH plo (my basement as far as poker bankroll management goes) and ran better. the nutrition and the p90x have actually sorta screwed with my poker work-ethic (waking up in the early afternoon doesnt help either), and for september I'm gonna aim to wake up in the mornings, immediately do p90x, then do my pokering during daytime. then do a nap on the deck, then leave the rest of the day to myself. if I can do that every day in September, I'll consider it a successful month. I really ought to post a bounty on myself only playing PLO for September, but I enjoy mixed games too much but will look to keep it to $600 buyins and below... sometimes the 1k buyins are really juicy, but I haven't run amazing in them and when you dont have the right amount of confidence then you're better off grinding the smallstakes.

Overall August was a swingy month, both with the p90x and with the poker, but overall I profited very nicely and made modest gains with my health. I still need to work on my cooking abilities and I need to get a new wardrobe at some point, but since most of my life between now and when p90x is over is gonna be foul bachelor frog material, I'm not too concerned about not having some fresh threads, as they'd say on Jersey Shore.

Anyhow, it's off to bed, in the morning I will get some ingredients for that mean turkey Chili and I will be starting my new video series, Ninja Style. Hopefully look to get 4 videos out of it, I've mentioned it in prior blog entries but my day-to-day has kept me from doing the video how I want it. My computer is in a grindstation office with my 3 roomies, and I've deduced that the only way I can do this particular video is by waking up early in the morning. Future videos will have to be done on the laptop (and if I'm smart, future poker playing aswell. I'd have to be retarded playing poker on my desktop some days when it's perfectly nice to sit on my deck. lawl).

That's a lot of words without pictures, and me being a visual thinker I must include a youtube. Here you go...

note: it has "The Wire" spoilers, so dont click if u havent watched the series, DERP.