Hardgaining part 2

This the followup to something  I wrote about being a so-called hardgainer. These are the scrawny guys who can't seem to put on weight. 

I've found it's pretty simple.  But the simplicity is confusing.  See, all you have to do is eat more. 

But the average hardgainer generally knows about when to quit.  As a general rule, I used to average about 2,000 calories a day.  I never gained weight.  

See, gaining strength and weight is not really about lifting weights.  You can spend a considerably shorter amount of time lifting weights than you do eating. 

Eating is a 3-4 time a day action.  You have to do this every single day. 

In comparison,

Yeah, 3 exercises a day.  And only 7 times in a month. Lifting is a considerably smaller amount of time.  Yet there are still obvious gains. 

My average weight in the last month has gone from 135 to 140. 

Granted, that's not a colossal gain.  But it's considerably better than what it used to be.  5 pounds in a month, and it only took an extra 1,000 calories a day. 

Essentially, eating is the primary thing you need to work on in order to solve your problems with gaining weight.  You don't need to spend more time in the gym.  You need to spend more time in the kitchen.

It's going to be uncomfortable eating all that food.  Sucking down another protein shake sucks.  You end up feeling bloated.  It's not fun.  But it's what you're going to have to do. 

Remember: 3-4 meals a day, and add another 1,000 calories a day.  My average went from 2,000 to 3,000.  And that resulted in a one month gain of 5 pounds. 

100 things

So I'm reading a book by Tony Robbins.  It's Awaken the Giant Within.  The book by Bill Gates was temporarily kicked to the curb.  I'll pick it back up after this book. 

One of the things Tony Robbins says is that we spend our time chasing pleasure and avoiding pain.  The best way to solve a problem is to associate so much pain with the idea that you never perform that action again.  

Sounds kind of vague.

I merged that with something from John Maxwell.  He was talking about not liking yourself.  If you have a problem with liking yourself, write down 100 things that are good about you.  Don't stop until you get to 100.

So, I decided to combine that with Tony Robbins.

Take some problem you want to solve.

Write down 100 reasons or effects of not getting that thing.  Start building a giant catalogue of the pains you are going to feel if you don't accomplish your goal.

At the moment, I'm doing this on computer.  Paper would probably work to. 

But write at least 100 items.  And write them out in full sentences.  No vagueness. Be very specific.

I'm very hopeful for this idea.  Let's see how it works. 

Snowball

Finished reading The Snowball: Warren Buffet and the Business of Life. I think I'd give it a 6/10.

It wasn't a bad book, it was just way too in depth some times.  The book is a door stop, and the information flows liberally at times and with great intention.  So much so that certain sections seem to get bogged down in the finer details of everything that happened to be happening at the same time.  It's a strange bit of craziness. 

Anyways.

Warren Buffet was always a little strange.  He was the kid that had six jobs and was rich before everyone knew what rich was.  He really was. Which is possibly why he ended up becoming as rich as he did.  I guess his major obsession was simply making money.  And with a bit of the right knowledge and a lot of luck, he made a lot of it. 

My primary takeaway on this book is that you need to find an obsession and work towards the end of that obsession until it leads you down a path.  Could be a good path, and it could be a bad path.  It's simply a path.

Buffet worked essentially on concentration throughout this entire life.  Those parts that were important to him, he followed deeply.  Everything else he ignored. 

Things not follow from Warren Buffet: his personal life.  His personal life was flat out strange.  His obsession with various women that he wasn't married to caused all sorts of strangeness in his life.  His disregard for his kids during their formative years also seems to have been critical. 

It that category, he fit in with other visionaries I've read about.  John Boyd comes to mind.  Anyways, I'd say the book is worthy of reading.  Just be prepared to donate a lot of time to it.  I dropped the book half way in (shortly before the Furniture Mart section) just simply due to the large amount of detail.  Part of that detail simply took away from the flow of the book.  

Next up on the list...  Boone. 

Automation

I've been trying to automate more stuff.  Most recently, I used AutoIT to delete 4000 pages of fake assets.  So that was a great win.  I set the system to show 200 pages per item, and yet there were still 4000 pages.  When an import would fail, the system would create 65,536 new assets.  Do that 12 times and you end up with 800,000 assets.  That have to be deleted.  Manually.

Of course, if we were running the on-premise version of the software you could use a simple SQL command.  But we migrated off to the cloud.  So that was out of the question.

If you can't do it with SQL, then it's time to do it with some other method. 

Now, with 4,000 pages of stuff, at about 1.5 minutes per page deletion it would have taken me 12.5 work days to get rid of the fake assets.  Not happening. 

In the end, it took me about 4 hours.  30-45 minutes to write the original script.  Then another 3.5 hours dealing with crashes of the script to make tweaks.  Granted it was just a bunch of web page clicks, but sufficient time prevents those failures.  The main thing was adding time between the clicks. 

Click one button.
Wait 2 seconds.
Move to another location.
Click.
Wait 2 seconds.
Click. 
Wait 4 seconds.
Wait a minute.
Start script at line 1.

I wish I could have written a better script.  But I haven't become good enough at that.  So the scripts I end up writing are generally very specific to the computer being used.  Exact screen coordinates and what not. 

Anyways.  Enough of automation. 

Just realize: repetitive IT work can often be automated.  It just takes time and effort.  And documenting the large behaviors.   

Not for you

I've come to the realization that most of the things I see are not for me.  It's a sad situation where the advertisements just simply aren't what I need or want. 

See, I'm a scrawny white male.  I'm not trying to lose weight.  I'm in relatively decent shape.  I'm not really into the "lose 10 pounds quick" and go with the flavor of the month HIIT workout.  I've done enough of that.  Practical strength type stuff.  Except there's no comparison and no feeling of going anywhere.  No progress.  I can't look at a number and see any improvement. 

Is this thing going to improve me?  What are my starting metrics?  What about ending metrics?

See, being a hard gainer is something that alienates you from the rest of the world.  Take a look at the most recent information from MyFitnessPal.  Which is basically a site for fat people trying to get skinny.

Not for skinny people trying to gain weight.

"Healthy" always means lose weight.  "Unhealthy" always means gaining weight.  And that's wrong.

Why is it that every time I gain weight (which is my goal) the system tells me nothing?
Why does the system declare how great it is when I lose 2 pounds since my last weigh in?  When you are trying to gain weight, a movement in the scale downwards is a failure.

And the system asks "are you trying to lose or gain weight"?

Maybe the submit feedback thing will actually work and cause MyFitnessPal to fix their system.

I think I'll finish with something I heard from Jocko Willink.

Don't count on motivation.  Count on discipline.

more c-store stuff

Went back to looking at Hong Kong after reexamining a previous entry.  I picked an area in Kowloon and wandered around and found a gas station.

More Google Maps, by the way.  So, from a c-store point of view this is kind of interesting.  Also, the other thing that adds to my complexities... What we're looking at is a 5 dispenser station crammed into a small space. This location has several single grade dispensers which don't seem to exist in modern America. 

By comparison, in the central US you have 3+1 and 3 dispensers.  That would be..
3 grades of gas off of 1 hose
1 grade of gas off of 2nd hose

Or

3 grades of gas off of 1 hose.

In comparison, these look like

1 grade of gas off 1 hose
1 grade of gas off a 2nd hose
1 grade of gas off a 3rd hose

I'd guess Gilbarco, but I'm just guessing.  I can't see well enough, and the shape doesn't look modern/futuristic enough to be Wayne. 

Now, the secondary part of my observation. 

I'm used to wide open terrain and gas stations in the middle of open spaces.  Stations shoved into small spaces are different.  They strike me as a bit weird.  It's an open territory birth thing. 

Now... 

Moving to the inside is my thing.  I'm more of an interior control person than an exterior.  Pump technicians have a tendency to be farmed from plumbers (at least in the US).  Smart pump techs become point of sale techs.  Me?  I'm an IT guy that got into pump controllers.  The d-box is the end of my knowledge (most of the time).

Anyways.  

In the process of wandering around this location, I found a couple of 7-11s.  Both of those were non-fuel locations. 

Non-fuel c-store locations are minimal in my part of the US. 

The difference between a fuel and non-fuel location is very small.  A couple pieces of CAT5 and a distribution box.

Another random thing I noticed... (I think I started on Liberty Street).  The area seems to have a lot of animal doctors. 

Hardgaining... or when eating has to become a hobby.

I'm decided to gain weight this year.  I'd like to hit about 160.  I haven't broken 140ish in 5 years.  So it's going to be interesting.

I started working on gaining weight today.  And I realize it's going to be a pain. 

See, that's after dinner.  And that's just to break even.  I've got probably 3 hours before bed before bed and I have to eat another 1500 calories just to break even.  Eating has to become a hobby at this point.  From what I've heard and read, the real answer is eat like a cow. 

In general, I'm following the ideas presented by Starting Strength.  Mark Rippetoe is the only person I've heard that has produced a decent reasoning behind what they were doing.  He's also got an article about the novice effect.  One of his suggestions was to drink a gallon of whole milk a day.  The reasoning makes sense.  You need to increase your caloric intake a lot.  You need to eat about 6,000 calories a day and lift heavy weights three times per week.

That sounds great...  but eating 6,000 calories is a lot.  It took a lot for me to get to 3,000 calories.  Making it to more than that is going to be interesting. 

But then I've always followed complex programs that promised maximum gains without fat.   But then came the answer from Mark Rippetoe.  Basic answer was you can't have it both ways.  If you want to get bigger and stronger, you've got to eat a lot and lift heavy weights.  Spend six months gaining weight and strength.  You can drop those extra few pounds later.  It's worth gaining the strength and muscle mass now. 

So it's now time to make eating a hobby.  Let's see if I can make it past 2 gallons a week this week.