Last Saturday (not yesterday), Chris competed in his powerlifting meet.  His goal weight was 205 lbs.  He weighed in Saturday at 199 lbs.  The secret diet that morphed into a “waffles and cheesecake are okay” diet worked.  I am positive that this diet would work for no one else and that Chris has conscious control of his metabolism.  Were neurologists to study him, they would discover, for the first time ever, the unique CF tract of the spinal cord running between the cerebral cortex and all adipocytes; only Chris possesses this tract.

Chris was happy with the results of the meet as well as with meeting his desired body weight.  His total weight lifted divided by body weight was the best he’d ever done.  I was happy with the meet as the organizers brilliantly decided the women would lift in the morning and the men would lift in the afternoon so Chris’s part of the meet only took about four hours (as opposed to the all day affair meets usually are).

Now that meet training is over, Chris has found a new focus in life:  he bought an accelerometer to clip to his arm when he lifts.  (In my initial writing of this post, I wrote:  “to clip to the bar when he lifts.”  This error so bothered Chris that, without speaking, he ran into the other room, strapped on his accelerometer –called a PushBand– and demanded we photograph his forearm.)

This PushBand is going to revolutionize his training I am told.  It does sound interesting; he’ll base his training around bar speed rather than rating of perceived exertion or weight lifted.  He ordered the accelerometer the day after the meet but it just arrived  yesterday so I can’t report on how it’s working yet.  His other post-meet purchase was some blood flow restriction cuffs. He’s hoping to use these to rehab various upper body parts that were stressed during this past training cycle.  These haven’t arrived yet so I wasn’t forced to photograph them.

And that’s the update.

Chris, waiting to lift. November 7th, 2015.

The accelerometer that is on his ARM, not the bar.

I post when something weird happens and I’m inspired to write.  Recently, there hasn’t been much weirdness.  This is good for life, bad for blog writing.

Chris is still dieting for his powerlifting meet in November.  He’s perfectly on track to be 205 lb the day of the meet.

His diet approach has been fascinating in a way:  he basically decided he wants to lose about 0.5 to 1 lb per week and that is exactly how much he is losing.  He IS NOT TRACKING MACROS. The phone app he was using, the one that revealed to me that he was on a secret diet, is no longer being used.  He isn’t even spreadsheeting it.  (By “it” of course I refer only to his macros. His weight and a complex workout plan are spreadsheeted; one cannot survive as Chris without complex spreadsheets.)  So his current diet, as I observe it, is simply to will himself to lose weight.

When I pressed Chris for the details of the mind-control diet, he explained that he is doing “high carb” days on weekends and less carbs during the week but, as a regularly observer of his eating habits over the past several years, I cannot discern how what he is doing now is much different from how he eats when he is not losing weight.  He did have the weird non-cake birthday cake back in August, but since then, he’s eating pizza and cheesecake (among other foods).  He is also 100% energized, sleeping like a normal human, and generally well.  I bring this up only because during bodybuilding diets he is maybe 20% energized, barely sleeps, and is generally strange.  He is not misreading the scale as he does truly look like he’s lost weight.  Thus, willing the fat to go away appears to be an effective approach for him for this relatively minor weight loss.  In our published case study of him, we neglected to look for this neural-metabolic connection.  I will have to let Chris know that we must soon dissect him to search for this pathway.

And that’s it for the update.  Sorry for the lack of photos.  You can’t photograph mind-control.

In my last post, I wrote about how we no longer have cable and thus this fall will be gloriously football free.  To kick off this football-free fall, Chris and I drove this past weekend to Norman, Oklahoma to watch football.

That’s us in Gaylord Memorial Stadium in Norman, Oklahoma watching football.  Yes, that really is me there, not a superimposed Lindy image.

Ok, so the trip (for me) was really to visit friends and hang out where we went to grad school.  We saw our old department:

I forget that I’m short until I see pictures like this one.

We went to Braum’s –an amazing, magical place with the most perfect ice cream sundaes ever created:

Carolyn, Robert, Chris, Jeremy

Let’s carefully count the people to ice cream ratio in that photo:  in front of Carolyn = 1 milkshake, in front of Robert = 1 milkshake, in front of Jeremy = 1 sundae, near the photographer (me) = 1 sundae, in front of Chris = a coffee.  We drove for EIGHT HOURS to magical ice cream with sentimental value and he got coffee.

You may at this point be thinking, “Oh right, Chris is supposed to be on a no-longer-secret diet to get ready for this powerlifting meet in November!  How’s that going by the way?”  To answer your thought, Chris has lost approximately seven pounds and is doing well.  I will expound upon his current methods in a future post.

Back to our Oklahoma trip.

We stopped TWICE at the newly remodeled Will Rogers rest stop.  Yes, they do sell t-shirts saying “Will Rogers Rest Stop” there!  Will Rogers is a big deal in Oklahoma.  Once, in grad school, I convinced Chris to go to a show featuring a Will Rogers impersonator.  For two hours, the impersonator lassoed things and answered questions in a drawl as if he was really Will Rogers.  It was exactly as exciting as it sounds.  It was so exciting, in fact, that “The Will Rogers impersonator experience” has become our benchmark for bad entertainment decisions. As in, “Wow, that movie wasn’t too good, but at least it wasn’t a Will Rogers impersonator!”  Thus, the fact that there is now a Will Rogers rest stop is pretty tremendous.  (It may have been named this before but all I remembered it as was the big McDonald’s over highway 44 outside of Tulsa; there was definitely no giant Will Rogers statue when we were in grad school).

Look out Chris! Will Rogers is going to lasso you for not liking his impersonator’s show!

On Sunday, Chris once again blamed his high body density on his inability to excel in water sports and got beaten up from a kneeboard:

Chris promises that this injury looks much worse than it actually is.  He is not concerned about it affecting his lifting.  On Sunday I also sustained a mild water-sports injury when I fell feet-first while water-skiing; I was moving rapidly in one direction and the water was resisting my movement in that direction forcefully and well, I basically experienced a high-intensity lake-water enema.  I don’t think I’ll post a photo of my affected region.

And those were the highlights of our Oklahoma weekend.

Jeremy and Chris watching their beloved Sooners.  Awwww.

We cancelled our cable a month ago.  The company was raising our rate and we were already paying a ridiculous amount so we cancelled it.  Chris set up an antenna and with Netflix and occasional Amazon shows, I was perfectly content.  Actually, I was more than perfectly content, because no cable means no football.

I get that people like football.  I’m not opposed to it as a sport.  I enjoy watching games occasionally and appreciate the awesome feats of athleticism.  Super high jumps over someone’s head while holding onto a ball is neat.  I agree.  What I despise are the jibber-jabbering sports-channel analysts with their shiny purple ties and know-it-all attitudes, the obsessive importance attached to games, and the way games dominate all fall weekends.

In recent years, through some tough negotiations, I’d bargained Chris down to “only Oklahoma games on Saturday and only Eagles games from the NFL.”  He sort of, kind of followed this deal.  He only planned on these games, which is something, but if he heard about another game that will be the big match-up that the shiny purple ties tell us we cannot miss well, we were going to obsessively check that channel and maybe leave the TV on mute all day just to check the score.  He tells me “checking the score” is not “watching the game.”  Right.  Can you think of other ways to “check the score” other than turning the TV to the channel?  Yeah, me neither.  Too bad no one invented the internet.

But back to us cancelling our cable.  When we made the decision to cancel the cable, it was with full knowledge that many live sports were now gone from our lives.  Chris agreed that the price of the cable was not worth it just for his contractually negotiated Oklahoma and Eagles games and his contractually illegal, non-negotiated, just-checking-the-score-oh-just-watching-this-play-oh-man-look-I-just-accidentally-watched-another-whole-game games.  This was going to be a great fall!

And then, last Tuesday, the cable guy called:  if we sign up again, they’ll significantly lower the price.  Ugh.

Chris set an appointment with the cable guy.  They could re-install the cable next week.  “What did I think?,” Chris asked.  I thought, “Great cable guy, thanks for taking away the fabulous football-free fall of 2015, you jerk,” but I told Chris if he wanted it, we could do it.  At least it was now cheaper to watch the shiny purple tie guys blather all weekend.

Remember how I posted last week that part of Chris’s post-workout routine is to obsess over videos of his squats?  He does this because he has had some minor injuries and workout challenges that have really been frustrating him.  They aren’t huge problems; he’s still in the gym regularly lifting heavy, but he isn’t progressing as he’d like in both strength and minor-injury rehab.  Thus, when he told me he was thinking about working with a lifting coach, I thought it was a great idea.  He needs someone with expertise who is not Chris himself to help him through these issues.  (Yes, I do know about lifting and I am not Chris, but I’m not the right person to help him with this).  So this morning, I’d just gotten back from a humid run and busily dripping sweat in the kitchen, when he ambushed me with the serious, “this is something important” voice that makes me nervous:  “Can we talk?  I’ve been thinking,” Chris said.

“Oh no,” I thought, “where’s this going?  Not a bodybuilding show please, please, don’t say you want to do a bodybuilding show.”

Chris:  “I found a coach who will work with me and I think I want to do it.  It’s kind of expensive though.  What do you think?”

Of course I thought it was a good idea if it helps him with the one activity around which his life is structured (that would be lifting).

And Chris continued:  “And since it’s kind of expensive, I think it makes sense to not re-subscribe to cable.  We’ll put the money to this instead.”

Thank you Chris’ lifting issues!  Football-free fall 2015 is back!

I’ll leave you with a scene from our apartment at 7 a.m. today:

He’s made his point.

Chris made the stinkin’ waffles.  It became an “I’ll prove Lindy wrong Ha!” crusade.  On Wednesday morning, I woke up before him and found this waiting in the kitchen.

He had also, maturely, written me a large note that said, “WAFFLES!”  I neglected to photograph this.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday passed with no waffles made.  Several times during this period Chris said things like, “I can’t wait to make those pancakes!” and it became clear that Chris did not know the difference between waffles and pancakes.  When I called him out on this language garbling, he said, “eh, it’s like a dress and a skirt, basically the same thing.”  A dress and a skirt are NOT the same thing (you may know this already) but Chris decided long ago to reject this knowledge.

Back to waffles.

Saturday night, Chris carefully read the instruction manual for the Griddler.

Then he carefully read it again.

He carefully poured the mix.

(That’s the being-phased-out Rocket Grill in the background. Was that cruel to make it watch its replacement in action?)

And waffles.

So Chris wins.  He made waffles.  And yes, he did eat them.  I was impressed that he did not weigh them (although I’m sure he knew an estimate of the macros).  So that he could still feel at least a little bit of self-deprivation induced joy, he did use disgusting sugar-free syrup.  Why actually enjoy the waffles with real syrup when you can add bloat-inducing yucky sludge to them?

I had to buy my own syrup after I saw what Chris had bought. (In full disclosure, I used to like sugar-free syrup, but my stomach rejects it these days).

Now, will he ever make them again?  I want to say, “No, never,” but if I do that, he’ll just take it as a challenge and cook them every day to spite me.  And actually, now that I think about it…that could be interesting.  How far will he take it?  He’s a man of routines and “making waffles to spite Lindy” could be a new thing to add in there:  workout, eat, stretch, roll on foam roller and softball, hang upside down, watch videos of squats, obsess over abnormalities in videos of squats, look up exercises to correct abnormalities in videos of squats, try exercises, make spite waffles, shower.  I think I like it.  So, here goes:  Chris will never make waffles again.  I challenge him to prove me wrong.

I gave Chris a Griddler for his birthday (it’s on Monday).  The Griddler (horizontal grill plates that squeeze together) will replace Chris’s beloved Rocket Grill (vertical grill plates that squeeze together) as his primary method of cooking.  The Rocket Grill had a good life but, after years of near-daily use, it’s sort of decaying.

As Chris opened his new Griddler, he excitedly noticed it contained plates that can be added to the grill to make big waffles.  These were unexpected.  “We can make Belgium waffles!” he exclaimed exuberantly.  I’ve never in my life seen Chris eat a waffle.  NEVER.  We’ve stayed at many a hotel with waffle makers and he has expressed no interest in these waffles.  Even when he’s not dieting, he is fairly predictable, and when we go to breakfast places, he orders an omelet or some other heavy-on-the-eggs meal. Always. NOT waffles.

Chris, washing the Belgium waffle making plates for the Griddler. Yes, the over-the-shoulder dish towel is weird.

I bet him a thousand dollars that he never makes waffles with the waffle plates.  (He will not make them, but even if he does, this is a safe bet as we share a bank account).  He is completely convinced that he will one day make them.  I’m not sure he even knows what ingredients go into waffles.  (And please don’t tell him so I can win my bet).  Is this diet-hunger induced food-related hallucination already?!

Today he also spent an uncomfortably long time cutting up a watermelon.  He even cut off all the rinds.  He may have removed all the seeds too but I’m scared to look.  He finished the ordeal by weighing out a proper little portion for himself.

Again, are the food obsessions starting?

We celebrated Chris’s birthday last night at my parent’s house. Per Chris’s request, there was no cake.

Alas, the dieter who was formerly secretly dieting, did not want cake.  He got some low calorie stuff with candles. (It’s actually a ricotta cheese, cherry, and almond thing my mom makes that’s delicious but still, had he not been dieting, there would have been cake).  To his credit, he did not bring the food scale to my parents’ house and he handled eating completely unknown quantities of the non-cake.

To sum up, The Behaviors of the Dieter are surfacing, but are nowhere yet near the levels of The Great Diet of 2013.

Epilogue:  You may have noticed that Chris is wearing a Cardinals shirt and that we went to my parents’ house for dinner.  So here’s the brief life update for those who don’t know:  Chris and I left Massachusetts in summer 2014 and moved to the St. Louis area (where I’m originally from). In our current job, we are both assistant professors (Chris is no longer an adjunct professor), and we still get to work at the same university with offices near each other.  Moving back across the country last summer when Chris was no longer dieting was not nearly as entertaining as the move from Oklahoma to Massachusetts when Chris regularly ate Greek yogurt in the front seat of the UHaul.  We are so, so happy to not be moving again this August.

After an almost 2 year hiatus, I had to post.  Something happened.

On Sunday, I returned home from an 18 day trip.  Chris had not come on this trip as he was presenting at a “bodybuilding camp” in Tampa during some of that time.  No, I don’t want to talk about what a “bodybuilding camp” is.  If it bothers you, you can pretend he was at the beach.

Anyway, upon my trip-return, I noticed Chris’s abs were leaner than when I left.  I said, “Chris, wow, your abs are leaner!” He said something like, “Huh, so they are.  Interesting.” I assumed maybe he’d just lost a bit of weight while pining for me, similar to how a kenneled dog refuses kibble until the owners return.

Later that afternoon, I looked in the fridge and saw cartons of egg whites.  I asked him, “Chris, why the egg whites?” and he nonchalantly muttered, “Um, I decided to increase my protein intake a bit.”  I bought this.  Why not?  Chris likes protein.

That evening, we were in our kitchen preparing independent dinners simultaneously, as we often do, when I noticed him spending just a bit too much time weighing his egg whites.  Weighing instead of measuring food is something he does so his having the food scale out didn’t initially strike me as odd but why did he care about the precision so much?  In retrospect, there was entirely too much weighing and re-weighing going on.  Still, I didn’t suspect.

Until it happened.  While the eggs cooked, Chris squished himself into the kitchen corner, apparently texting intensely.  Chris doesn’t text a lot.  “Are you texting?” I innocently asked.  Chris immediately pulled the phone closer to his body so I couldn’t see! Why wasn’t I allowed to see the phone?!  What was on that phone?!  A message from a secret lover?!  Dirty photographs?!  Nope.  It was a macros app.

The jig was up.  Chris put down his sinister macros app (italics indicate a tone of loathing) and confessed (and this was his exact phrase) that he was “secretly dieting.”  Read that again:  “Secretly Dieting.”  The lean abs, the egg white cartons, the obsessive egg white weighing – all part of a new diet.  He hadn’t wanted to tell me for fear it would upset me.  Why would I be upset by a totally unplanned and unexpected transformation of the person I spend >90% of my time with into a non-communicative, constantly exhausted, food-obsessed, infant-like robot?!  (If you believe I am overstating what happens during a bodybuilding diet, you have forgotten the posts of 2013; please re-read them).

In honesty, my real reaction was to laugh out loud.  My husband secretly diets!  Could this be any more hilarious!?  And then I thought about the blog and realized that I had better write this post.

That’s the sneaky face of a man “secretly dieting.”

Epilogue:  Chris eventually clarified that he is not dieting for a bodybuilding show.  He wants to lift in the 205 class at a November powerlifting meet.  When I left on my trip, he weighed around 218.  He’s now at 212.  Seven more pounds over 9 or 10 weeks is much less intense than 30+ pounds over 6 months.  Although I’m on alert, I do not believe the hungry robot will rear it’s head.  We will see…