Day 5 Rhodiola - slight chest discomfort

On the flight today I had some slight chest discomfort, similar to what happened the last time I started into rhodiola rosea. I don't know of anyone else who has had this problem but I am hoping it's temporary. Last time I felt this, I stopped immediately, but given all the research I've done into this herb so far, there are almost no side effects so I am going to keep pushing and see what happens after day 21.

On the plus side, I woke out of bed this morning like I was ready for battle. No grogginess, just good to go. There was nothing special about my sleep, just a normal healthy eight hours. We'll see if this trend continues tomorrow. Right now I have a terrible headache.

Oh, I'm setting my sights on <10% bodyfat. I figure once I can crack 10%, I can start putting on muscle. Tonight I measured in around 13% so I need to burn that off. To do this I am going to do the following:

• HIIT at least 6 days/week (this week is 4 intervals, next week is 5 intervals)
  
• Increased protein in diet; in particular through the use of hemp protein powder
• More green smoothies (2x/day now) including one after the HIIT
  

Let's see how this affects my trajectory.

Starting into the Rhodiola Rosea

So I started into the book on Rhodiola Rosea book last night and decided I would start taking it the next day. I can't resist, the health benefits are far too surreal to pass up on, plus the ramp-up time is about two weeks so I might as well get the ball rolling. However I decided if I'm going to have the Rhodiola, I'm going to trade out the NoDoze in my messenger bag. No matter how tired I feel, I will not have any NoDoze. I must get myself off that and I'm going cold turkey, come hell or high water.

I shall see how this works out!

Oh, also I bought a portable DVD player and radio headset yesterday so I can hook up my P90X videos to the gym TV and work out in there. Working out in the apartment made me feel nasty plus it would be disrespectful to my colleagues who are here as well.

Race to 6-7 BF%

I find that I'm pretty excited for maintaining the raw vegan with my weekly violation on Fri/Sat. Whenever I get a little extra sleep, I always wake up and hit the treadmill for some high-intensity interval training to help burn that extra weight, and I think the rhodiola rosea might help as well.

Basically if I can get my bodyfat % down to 6-7%, the game at that point is simply putting on muscle. No problem! Once you're at that level it's all additive and there's no more major fat levels to burn.

Giddy up.

Week 3 P90X

I'm into my third week of P90X and I'm loving it. It's tough, and I still can't make it all the way sometimes, but I do like having a regular workout. I'm still having my wheatgrass juice every day, although I am getting a little sick of it. Next on my list of super powerful herbs is rhodiola rosea. My "Arctic Root" (brand of the Swedish Herbal Institute) arrived today and my book on the root arrives tomorrow. Once I've completed that, I'll start into daily doses. The root should complement my diet and workout routine quite well and improve my performance and endurance even more.

Yes: I am morphing myself into a super human, but that's what it takes to push oneself harder, better, faster. We are warriors! Hoo-rah!

No prisoners. No mercy.

My Cough is Gone

For the last 7 years I've had a dry cough. Always. Every few minutes or hours I would have to cough just a little bit. Always dry. Always coughing. Back at Cornell some of my floormates would know I was around since they'd hear me coughing. No doctor could cure it. My family used to always joke about the "Cornell cough" and my dad would regularly say "I see you still have the cough."

I haven't noticed it in the last few days, and I only seem to cough when I think about the Cornell cough.

I'd call this a pretty big breakthrough on the raw vegan diet. What other cures lay in my future?

Onward.

Moving Forward

I'm happily chugging along at a 100% (or near 100%) raw vegan diet. I admit when I get a smell of something deliciously evil, I feel very tempted, but I have yet to cave this week. I passed by a Red, Hot, and Blue while heading back to Weathertop and I almost fell into a trance of BBQ spare ribs, refried beans, and fantastic bread. I kept walking. Earlier today someone on site brought in some Italian dish with loads of pasta and creamy sauce. I was pulled away from work to enjoy the smell... then I looked back at my screen and continued.

I guess the big advantage of having done the month-long juice feast is that I am detached from those foods. Oh, I still enjoy the smell and wouldn't mind having a bite, but the pull isn't as strong as it was when I had gone from 100% cooked to 100% raw solid food as I had in the past.

I got in 3 intervals of HIIT this morning. Yee-ha! Then in the evening I did the chest, arms, and back exercise today of P90X. It was intense, especially given how weak my upper body has historically been. (at least on a cooked diet) But I felt great afterward.

I'm already looking into more options down the road as I continue pushing the limits. I ordered a book on the Paleolithic diet to consider non-raw diets down the road (Paleo, while not vegan, does also seem very simple). I also had heard about Rhodiola Rosea in the past, and while my experience of ingesting the pills in the past had been less than optimal, I decided to study more into it and ordered a book on the subject as well. I figure by the time I get around to reading it (in week or two), I will be ready to start taking it again. Studies show increased cognitive capacity, higher endurance, and longer life. Why not!?

Core Synergistics (take 1)

I've been engaged into P90X for over a week now, although it's been 4 days since my last workout. Traveling back and forth to the Shire and Mordor usually completely drains my energy levels, so I'm really glad I am forward deployed for the next two weeks. Also, while I'm here, I can completely control my diet, so I can hold at 100% indefinitely.

I think I still have some ways to go before I start seeing results, but I do feel pretty good -- in fact I feel so good I want to engage in some HIIT tomorrow morning!

P90X/Raw update - day 6

I just finished the 6th video today: Kenpo X. It was awesome, and just like he said in the video, by the time it was done I'd be all sweaty and missing it. I'm on day 3 at 100% raw (I broke over the weekend as per planned) and feeling good. Tomorrow is also all raw and then I believe I'm going to sushi for a recruiting lunch on Friday. My goal is to not be too dogmatic about my raw levels, but rather shift to a high raw lifestyle where I am primarily eating raw foods all the time, and perhaps once per week I violate for something, maybe even a slice of pizza if I'm in NY.

I feel good. The weight isn't dropping off as fast as when I was just raw and dieting, but I have a feeling muscle mass is going in and excess toxins/fat are burning out. My weight yesterday was 192, so perhaps I'll be lighter tomorrow. We'll see.

Working out on the front is really hard, and making time for an extra hour per day of exercise is very difficult. However, I decided my health was more important than anything else, and when it started going downhill, I decided to put a stop to it to save my life.

I do seem to have more energy! But let's see how things go over the next few weeks. I'm only rocking probably 65% efficiency with P90X and I hope to be up to 90% by the end of June.

Kudos to Apple for Snow Leopard

While I am quite stoked about the iPhone 3G and will happily shell out $300 for my 16GB model in a month, I am also very pleased to read that Apple is pushing the pause button on new features for its OS X and instead concentrating on performance and quality. I think this is a great idea and, as Apple is known for, contrary to what other companies do, which seem to ever evolve products rather than perfect them.

Take Microsoft. I worked there for 2.5 long years in the Office group, and during that time the idea of locking down and working on performance was only a small section in the last few months of a development cycle. Here I am on my brand new laptop with 4GB of RAM and dual core Centrino CPU, and Outlook on first boot usually takes 60 seconds from click to usability. A minute for e-mail? I can still load pine in under 2 seconds on a heavy inbox. Sure, there's a lot more going on here, but I always secretly (and sometimes openly) wished Microsoft would stop everything for Outlook and Word and just concentrate on making them faster. Nope, they never listened.

It seems to have come back to haunt them with Vista, where they sacrificed performance and quality for the latest set of new features. What they ended up with was a much smaller number of features (WinFS anyone?), much poorer performance on good hardware, and a lot of people holding onto Windows XP closely.

So kudos to you, Apple, for focusing only on these critical things. Are there really that many new features people are dying for these days? All we want is faster, powerful, but easier to use machines, and you are leading the charge.

No more iTunes, let's go Amazon!

Today I realized how important it is to me to own my music without DRM, or at least to have them available in whatever format I want. I really wanted to buy the two Sahara soundtracks (one is songs, the other is the musical score). Neither of these were available on Amazon.com's MP3 Download service, but were on CD for a combined total of $32. iTunes had both, so I could have them instantly. I decided to order the CDs out to the Shire and import them into my MacBook.

That's pretty huge for me since I generally despise optical media, but what I despise more is not having my music available for me to use however I wish.

Also, I attended a college reunion last night. One of the girls commented I had changed the most of everyone else, so that means something to me. I was a different person back then...

Finally, on a sadder note, I violated my diet from Friday night until this morning. I don't feel too horrible about it as I'm going back to my raw vegan diet now, but I am upset that I've lost 36 hours of that amazing raw vegan power.

On the other hand, I was thinking about my diet on the drive back. My overall tendency is raw vegan with a few exceptions of cooked food. I think that's a pretty solid change of pace from my previous diets of all cooked food with the occasional fruit.

On that note, off to get some wheatgrass, some Kambucha, and some pineapple and watermelon! Mmmmmmm.

Computer Interfaces

I really only realized today how far we've come in the last decade. For the entire 20th century, humans were forced to conform to computers' and machines' interfaces. We had to use unnatural plastic pads to play games, wrap our hands around handlebars on bikes and adjust the seat for our legs, and spend oodles of time understanding QWERTY keyboards (or as I remember from typing class, A-S-D-F . . . . . . carriage return!). Look what we've seen since 2001:

• The Nintendo Wii introduced a form of gameplay requiring almost no ramp-up time. Take a Wii controller and wave it around, and you're in the game. The computer responds to your hand gestures. (and with the Wii Fit, your lower body as well!)
  
• The Segway HT, while not near a tipping point in popularity or cost, provides an alternative method for urban dwellers to get around town without even thinking about it. The computer responds to their body movements.
• The iPhone throws away the hard-coded interface of keypads and allows the application to have whatever interface it wants with the most intuitive input system ever seen (in my opinion).
  

What will the next generation hold? I'm hoping for a Nintendo similar to what was shown briefly in The Island (I have a big crush on Scarlett Johansson... and Jessica Biel while we're at it), where full body movements are tracked with laser-precision accuracy and amazing workouts and entertainment is achieved as a result. Segway, well, hopefully the price will drop and people will start using them -- I still think it's a great idea! And the iPhone -- hell, a few years from now most computer systems will probably have interfaces like those on Star Trek. Only programmers will need the ultra speed of a keyboard. I would imagine my car navigation system, my home security system, and any form of public terminal will have multi-touch as the norm.

It's going to be great! I love human-computer interfaces!

Crazy Sexy Cancer

I finally saw Crazy Sexy Cancer last night starring Kris Carr. I'll admit, the only reason I heard about it was because rumors from the raw food world suggested Kris had saved herself using raw foods. In the movie, it's pretty obvious that the combination of wheatgrass and raw food did in fact lead to a healthy life that she continues to live. (I'm sure the yoga helped too)

It also touched me on a deeper level, as my mother died from cancer over ten years ago now. Back then, we really didn't know any better and the idea of alternative methods of treating cancer was foreign to me. Furthermore, the internet back in 1996 and 1997 was still very much a wild-wild west. And besides, "raw food"? Who the hell would eat fruits and vegetables all day?

In the movie, Kris decides she will do whatever it takes to fight cancer, and she goes on a several-year quest to find alternative methods of treating herself. In the end, she survives up through this day, and, as she says, she "finds herself." I suppose when death is staring right at you, you can either get busy living or get busy dying. (credit: Shawshank Redemption) While my mother didn't have the luxury of quitting her job and heading out to San Diego or Florida (she had four kids to support with little help from her ex-husband), she did fight a good fight for almost ten full years. Now that's a Spartan!

Anyway, it was a good movie and I would recommend it to anyone who has cancer or knows of someone who has cancer. I know if I ever had cancer I would drop everything, move to a warm place in Spain or Texas or Florida, and eat raw foods and meditate/do yoga all day. Fortunately, in theory, with all the wheatgrass I am consuming now, this shouldn't be a problem.

The Raw P90X Experiment

Allow me to detail the status of my experiment. Early May, I set out on the goal of drinking only liquids for 30 days. I made it 28 days before deciding to stop, not because I broke under pressure, but I felt I was no longer gaining anything from the experiment. I learned a lot: I love Kombucha as a soft drink, and I also really enjoy having fresh organic wheatgrass in the morning with a shot of fresh orange juice. I still think wheatgrass is the key.

For a week after this phase ended, I was to eat whatever I wanted, but preferably in moderation. I sometimes binged, but overall I was good. And during the last week I definitely put on a lot of weight (apparently, at least -- I never had a chance to weigh myself). Now it's time to enter phase II, which involves a raw or high raw vegan diet (Paleolithic will be my backup) combined with the P90X workout routine.

I'm on day 2 and I feel great! The plyometrics workout routine was very rough on me, but I feel super light and stretchy now, and I look forward to the next go. My hypothesis is that after 30 days of raw vegan + P90X I will have lost a lot of weight, gained muscle, and cut my bodyfat percentage significantly. This last bit is important: each time I "went raw," I would lose a lot of weight and bottom out around 185 lbs, but my bodyfat percentage never dropped below 13-15% no matter how much or little raw food I ate. My theory is:

• Eventually, of course, bodyfat percentage would continue to drop, but I can expedite this process by engaging in a super high intensity workout.
  
• A raw vegan diet can put on muscle just as well as a diet high in animal products (faster, in fact).
• A high-intensity workout (not necessarily high impact) can significantly speed up the process of detoxification and lead to that "raw glow" so many people talk about.

But why all this intense workout? Why not just a little cardio and some weights like everyone else? Well, a more subtle reason is the intensity it provides is reflective of the culture I am trying to nurture. There are over a dozen folks on my team, and I personally believe them to be a warrior elite within the company given the sheer amount of time they work, how much they travel, how little they sleep, and, despite all that, how productive they are. (I still believe we have developed some form of telepathy within the team) If our company were ancient Greece, my team would be the Spartans. (not to say the engineers aren't amazing, they are, and we wouldn't have a product to sell without them, but everyone knows we are always working 8 AM to 1 AM every day while they roll in at 10 and leave at 8 and actually have weekends!) I figure the only way I can nurture this elite class is to lead by example, and that means putting in the time and energy to show something for it.

Thus, P90X and raw vegan, easily the most difficult workout/diet most people could ever imagine. And I will be here to document the results. Bring it!

Life is so friggin' good

I'm just so happy with life right now. The decisions I've made in the last year have rocked my world, and I am so much better for them all. Before I left Seattle, I told my elite inner circle that I would return victorious, or not at all. It hasn't been a year since I left and already I'm almost to that goal.

Also, a few months ago I was driving along the roads of Mordor and realized my life plan for the next ten years. It just occurred to me. I know exactly what I need to do now and how I'm going to get there. Ever since then, I've just been so happy with everything! There is no more doubt in my mind about what I'm going to be doing in the future, and it's all been materializing over the last year until that one burp of discovery.

I suppose the greater part of that discovery was learning to love myself more as a result. For many years I thought I needed someone else--a family member, a lover, a best friend--to be happy. But being on the road so much and working non-stop has forced me to get to know myself better and learn how I can live with myself and only myself.

Don't get me wrong, I still love the company of others, but I'm no longer uncomfortable not being around others. And it's only going to get better.

Finally, high gas prices! Bring the ELECTRIC MINI Cooper!

I saw a lot of message traffic on the interwebs today about how pickup trucks are no longer outselling cars for the first time in their history, and how Ford is closing three of its plants to focus on its smaller cars. I for one and happier than a pig in shit for the rising gas prices, as they are finally forcing Americans to look away from gas guzzling SUVs and focus on economical, efficient cars as well as alternative fuels. I used to be a huge fan of getting BMW to release the Diesel powered MINI in the US (I even started a petition that has almost 1,400 signatures!), but that was back in the days when diesel was cheaper than gas (you know, 6 months ago).

Now, I say to hell with diesel -- let's focus on electricity! Yes, I'm a big fan of the Tesla Roadster, although I could not afford it until approximately 2011 (when I will be able to afford anything). But why would I want the Tesla? Not for the sports car part, just for having a pure electricity vehicle! Nowadays, my ideal car is a purple haze-colored MINI Cooper with a pure electric motor and 200 miles to a charge.

Can you imagine a pure electric MINI Cooper? In my dreams.

How much would I pay for this car? If it were available today, and I were actually driving a lot (right now I travel so much that I'm trying to get rid of my Jetta TDI), I would pay probably $40,000 for it. But the more gas prices go up, the quicker BMW and other big companies will start to realize the need for electric cars isn't a decade away -- it's on our doorstep.

So I say raise gas prices! Make them $6/gallon. $7! $10 like those poor European bastards (although exchanging the dollar they start to win!). In fact, I'm so motivated to get the electric MINI Cooper that I've started a SECOND petition to implore BMW to build this model before 2010. Will BMW listen to us?

Phase 2 starts soon

While it does feel great to be saving the world each day, I embarked upon this little quest of juice feasting to improve the physical component of my life (and also to allow myself to push for longer stretches of work on lesser calories -- yes, most of us at my company will do almost anything for it). The 30 days of juicing has completed (well, 28, but who's counting?) and now it's time to shift into Phase 2:

• P90X workout routine
• Primarily raw vegan diet (in some cases, paleolithic diet will be acceptable as an alternative)

I'll be only a mile from the nearest Whole Foods, I've got a juicer and a blender, and I'm going to learn how to grow wheatgrass. :-) After a month or so, I intend to start listening to my Holosync CDs again. (I had interesting reactions from using them, but I was unable to stay consistent with them given my schedule)

I never would have thought one could a job so much. An old friend of mine used to say if you love what you do, then you'll never work a day in your life. I know what she meant now: I don't feel like I'm working, I feel like I'm doing something for the greater good of all mankind. My only challenge is to integrate a physical health plan (the MS Health plan, as I call it) into the mix. I know I can do it because I have deemed it necessary for success.

I'm down in Houston right now hanging out with my cousin; he just had his 45th birthday party extravaganza with something like 100 people in the house. It was crazy. Now we're watching Sahara (badass film!) and I'm remembering what I can't wait to do in a few years. Study history, travel, hunt treasure. At this rate it's a mathematical certainty, unless I get hit by a bus (and let's hope not).