Blood analysis says...

Alrighty, it’s that time again! Enough updates have piled up that it’s time to throw ‘em all in a new blog post.

First of all, Happy Birthday to my wife, Sam 🥰 (I already woke her up on accident so I’m not off to a great start today 😬 ). My birthday’s tomorrow, but for hers, we’re going to a local Swedish restaurant that’s famous for having goats on the roof during tourist season 🐐 And other stuff, too, but that’s our breakfast plan.

Now, we’ll start with the item I’m most excited about because…

YMCA Parkour Classes

…there’s no update on it yet and I just wanted to get that out of the way 😂 😭 

Yeppp…the only update I got since my last blog post was a “non-update” on March 17th that the HR rep was OOO til Wednesday (not almost 2 weeks ago), and that this HR rep is the person who would have the information about the insurance situation.

On the plus side, from a big-picture view, this entire dilemma is about classes that wouldn’t start til the fall, so there’s a whole 6 months to figure this out. I’m also not going to be done with the Level 2 course until late June, so…no rush, I suppose.

What can I say? I’m excited, and that makes me impatient 😁 

First Aid/CPR Certification

I finished the course! 🎉 

I’m booked for the Skills Training this weekend — April 5th in Green Bay — which is the in-person component that’ll cap off the certification.

I’ll enter next week officially First Aid/CPR Certified 😎 According to Perplexity, I’ll get a digital copy available in my American Red Cross account shortly after finishing the class on Saturday, but we’ll see how it all plays out 🤷‍♂️ 

ADAPT Level 2 Course Prep

Outside of the First Aid/CPR certification, I’ve been meaning to get my hands on a copy of the ADAPT Level 1 Learning Pack. The one I got signed during my Level 1 course back in 2014 went missing recently, despite me managing to hold onto it for over 10 years.

If I hadn’t lost it, though, I wouldn’t have this!

I asked the ADAPT Qualifications team back in February if I could have a copy of this to help me refresh my knowledge for the Level 2 course and they let me pay ~$50 for it (shipping was included). I had to figure out how to use Western Union to send money to the UK, but it was worth it!

I plan to start reading it soon, just been busy with work — 9-5 work and client work — and my own bullshit, of course 🤣 

Weight Loss

The bad news is I haven’t seen a number lower than 220 lbs. since my last post.

The good news is I seem to be doing some recomposition in the right direction:

My fat is down and my muscle is up. This is how the weight chart looks, on the other hand:

Hoping for some even better news next time I post.

Training

I’ve been increasing my training frequency since my last blog post.

Almost every day, I’m doing some kind of exercise, even if it’s just a 30-minute walk. But I’m going to the gym more than 3 times a week now, sometimes even 2 times a day.

I found my favorite morning workout is the “cranking motion” that drives a muscle-up.

Yesterday I managed 2 sets of 10 of 100 lbs, with the 3rd set being 10 reps of 90 lbs. I’m going to keep increasing it until I can do a real muscle-up with bodyweight. It’s going to be a while, but it’s cool knowing there’s a way to train this with weights.

I just attach a small bar to the tricep pulldown cable and move into a half squat — like I’m cat-hanging on a wall — and then perform the “climb-up” motion by pulling the bar down to my chest and continuing to push it down to my waist as a stand up.

It feels pretty darn close to a real climb-up on a wall, so I’m excited to see how that strength transfers to a real wall.

In other news, I stopped tracking my workouts the other day for a couple of reasons:

• I didn’t want another reason to be on my phone (I have plenty, it’s a problem lol)

• I felt it had become more of a distraction than a useful tool

• My training volume is already in a great place, so tracking the exact volume numbers is more of a vanity metric than a helpful guide right now

It’s too soon to know if this was a good idea, but less time on my phone should help reduce my stress levels and distractibility, and that could have a nice ripple effect on my workout frequency.

Nutrition

This deserves its own category because I scheduled my first nutritionist appointment for April 7th! 🎉 

But first, I obviously had to get my blood drawn so we could know if I need to focus on anything in particular. And nothing makes me feel better about almost passing out than a good meme:

Everything went fine, but I did almost pass out, though 😅 That said, my results didn’t surprise me too much. There was a lot of data, and I didn’t get an immediate summary from the doctor, so I just fed the numbers to ChatGPT and these were the takeaways:

1. Protein Levels (Globulin & Total Protein)

   • Your globulin (3.3 g/dL) and total protein (8.1 g/dL) are within typical ranges, suggesting adequate protein intake.

   • Good protein levels are essential for muscle maintenance and immune function.

2. Cholesterol & Lipids

   • HDL ("good" cholesterol) at 57 mg/dL is great! Higher HDL is protective for heart health.

   • LDL ("bad" cholesterol) at 111 mg/dL is within normal limits but on the higher side. Keeping an eye on saturated fat intake could help.

   • Triglycerides at 183 mg/dL are slightly high (above 150 mg/dL is considered elevated). This could suggest excess calorie intake, particularly from refined carbs or unhealthy fats.

3. Blood Sugar (Glucose Level)

   • Glucose at 96 mg/dL is within the normal fasting range (70–99 mg/dL), suggesting good carbohydrate metabolism.

4. Hydration & Electrolytes

   • Sodium at 140 mEq/L is perfect, indicating good hydration and electrolyte balance.

5. Iron & Blood Health

   • Hemoglobin (17.5 g/dL) and Hematocrit (48.8%) are high-normal, which may suggest good oxygen-carrying capacity but could also indicate dehydration or higher red blood cell production.

   • Red Blood Count (5.9 million/uL) is on the upper end but still normal, suggesting solid iron levels.

   • If you're taking iron supplements or eating a lot of red meat, you might want to monitor levels over time.

6. Thyroid Function

   • TSH at 1.560 uIU/mL is within the healthy range, suggesting no signs of thyroid dysfunction (which can impact metabolism and energy levels).

Possible Areas for Improvement:

• Triglycerides: Reducing refined carbs, sugars, and unhealthy fats while increasing fiber and healthy fats (like omega-3s) may help lower this.

• Cholesterol Balance: While your LDL isn't high, keeping it lower through lean proteins, fiber, and healthy fats is a good long-term strategy.

• Hydration: If your hematocrit is on the higher side, ensuring good hydration can help maintain blood viscosity.

Overall Assessment:

The main areas to watch are triglycerides and LDL cholesterol, which may improve with more fiber, omega-3s, and reduced processed foods.

So basically, I need to eat less fast food and candy and stay in a caloric deficit for a while and my blood markers should improve. Trading butter for olive oil and otherwise keeping my saturated fat intake down should help too.

So far, I’m making some changes like adding fruit to my day — limes, kiwis, green apples — and having high-fiber low-calories cereal in the morning with a RTD protein shake. I’ve also started using popcorn and rice cakes to manage cravings, and it seems to be working.

I stopped tracking my calories recently for a few reasons:

• I don’t want another reason to be on my phone during the day

• I’m aware at this point which foods are high-calorie or high-protein

• I know which eating patterns to shoot for and which to avoid. For example, if I eat lighter during the day and save most of my calories for dinner, I usually remain in a deficit

At first when I stopped counting, I started to go back to old eating habits and gained a few pounds, but when I started sticking to foods and patterns I knew were helpful, my weight self-corrected. Haven’t had a problem since then, so I guess I’m successfully doing the “intuitive eating” thing now 🤷‍♂️ 

Mental Health

I started meditating! A friend of mine — the same guy who coached me through the sales page I wrote for Social QA Bootcamp — told me about an app called Happier.

It’s been years since I tried meditating, and I have never successfully made it a habit. I’ve also never had more work stress than I do now, so I figured it’d be a good thing to try.

And by “work stress”, I mean that I’ve become highly aware that I’m at a historic peak in my career: my job is amazing in every way, and my biggest worry is losing the job due to a lack of focus impacting my performance. So far, I’ve done great, but I have a lot of ideas for how to do even better, and my biggest obstacle to “leveling up” is my ADHD pulling me off task from time to time.

Meditation is helping me relax, which I’m finding is helping me focus and do better work. Anxiety and looping on harmful thought patterns is often why I stay paralyzed and get less done.

While meditation is helpful, I would also like to add medication into the mix (see what I did there? 😏 ). I may need to reach out to my doctor this week to get the ball rolling on that, since he’s got my lab results now, and that was his only concern prior to prescribing me anything.

PK Coach Buddy App

I accepted temporary defeat after the demo and the feedback, because I was having so much trouble implementing auth properly.

I was able to log in an existing user and sign up a new user, but I wasn’t able to do any of the email flows successfully — magic link login, password reset, signup confirmation, and username update emails all had links that did not successfully deep-link into the app the way they’re supposed to. The best result I was able to achieve with pure “vibe-coding” was landing the user on the login page.

So….the other day, I tore out all of the auth logic and started over. I tried to start with just magic link auth for now, but even that’s not working yet. In fact, my latest build crashes when I try to open it 😂 It’s tempting to make this a web app but I’m resisting that temptation — I may just need to code the auth the “old-fashioned way” without relying 100% on AI.

So the TLDR; is it’s on pause at the moment. I don’t want too many distractions from work right now and nobody seems super eager to see this app become a real thing. It’s there if I get bored 🙄 

What’s Next?

How this next month goes will be a great predictor for how the rest of this “ADAPT Level 2 course prep season” will go. If I can’t get below 220 lbs or continue reducing my body fat %, I don’t have much faith that May will go any better than April.

My main focus will be continuing to increase training frequency and intensity while staying in a caloric deficit.

Of course, I’m still holding out hope that I’ll get some good news back from the YMCA soon, but I’m keeping myself busy in the meantime. I’ll wrap up that First Aid cert this weekend and start implementing whatever the nutritionist tells me to do next week. On top of that, hopefully I can start some ADHD medication in the next week or so after talking with my doctor.

The weather’s been shitty — lots of rain and cold winds and snow — but when it gets warmer and dryer, I’m going to shift more of my training outdoors, especially to the local skatepark.

When my “30 Days of Touching Grass” challenge is done, I’ll still do daily walks because they’ve been really helpful for my mental health and probably have helped me stay in a caloric deficit.

Finally, I’ll keep meditating until that’s as normal as my daily walks, and hopefully have some fun stuff to share from that Level 1 Learner Pack next time I post.

Til next time 👋