You kill me! 
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Thanks that did confirm what I was suspecting (NGL didn’t stop me using the chatgpt info as permission to eat the tortilla wraps).
Yup my gut instinct is vegetable>grain>refined and processed grains. I’ll definitely rub the CBGM experiment and post back here though. I love playing scientist with my body.
It always makes me wonder why we get some many people on here who post questions asking whether they can “do” something. Like, yea of course you can, just do it and figure out if it works for you, why does everyone seem to need the permission of the hive mind?! (I realise I ran my info past you for a sense check, but I’ll run the experiment either way, just for the fun of it).
10/09/25 - 195 - those tortillas might have had an impact!
Keeping up with the morning routine with my son. I won’t post about this everyday, but I took the idea directly from the book and really like it, as part of the initiation in to what I’ll phrase the apprenticeship from childhood to manhood, gifts are given:
Shamelessly took the actual things from the book, a leather bound journal to help him chronicle the journey and reflect on our time together, and a high quality heavyweight pen, to demonstrate that his words carry weight ( caveat this was the most expensive pen I’ve ever bought, but was fairly reasonable overall, I’m not a pen snob/aficionado). I explicitly stated as much as well.
Ate breakfast read proverbs, chatted, prayed. He seems to be really enjoying these times, even if he’s quiet during it, I think just seeing that I’m taking the time and investing in him is having an impact.
I do an early morning prayer meeting every Thursday, gave him the choice tonight of coming with me or doing tomorrow’s session earlier in the morning or skipping it, he chose the prayer meeting, be interesting to see how he finds it (I did pre-warn him it’s literally an hour solid of praying, he was slightly taken back by the concept but still was positive he wanted to come).
I deliberately chose not to train Tuesday despite having diary space, I was really dragging physically, exhausted and stiff feeling the deadlifts, so I thought I’d be mindful of what I said here:
And you know what I won’t get to train until Friday now, but if I pushed through and injured myself, I wouldn’t be training proper for weeks, this way I’ll still make progress, even if it is marginally slower.
Walked everyday, so far, so that’s good for recovery and being an actual human being!
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I love the effort you’re putting into turning your son into a man.
This is a challenge I do not know how I would tackle, myself.
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It always makes me wonder why we get some many people on here who post questions asking whether they can “do” something. Like, yea of course you can, just do it and figure out if it works for you, why does everyone seem to need the permission of the hive mind?! (I realise I ran my info past you for a sense check, but I’ll run the experiment either way, just for the fun of it).
Because then, if things go wrong, they can blame all those people that told them it was going to work. It completely removes ownership of their outcomes from themselves and outsources it to the universe at large, which is a great security blanket for people with fragile egos. Failure is never their fault: the universe conspired against them and gave them bad advice.
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13/09/25
LP W1 W1 D3
GS1:
Jump squats: 10kg x 3, 5kg x 3 x 2 sets
SSB squat to box: 100, 110, 112.5kg x 8
Hanging knee raises: 8 x 3 sets
GS2:
SSB Front squat: 20, 40, 60kg
Sandbag squat: 50kg x 8 x 3 sets
HKR: 8 x 3 sets
GS3:
DB reverse lunges: 10kg x 8 e/s x 3 sets
Cossack squats: bw x 8 x 3 sets
RDL: 60kg x 8 x 3 sets
Absolutely shocked how quickly the fatigue in my legs hit, I almost called it at 110, decide to go for another set at 110, but added another 2.5kg last minute, but that was it, I probably shouldn’t be surprised - I haven’t squatted for 24 days according to the forum. Definitely re-acclimatsing.
I was going to call the whole session at 110kg, but decided to finish the full thing, just keep it really light, get used to the work volume for next week and build upon it.
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Thanks Andrew, it’s been really good so far, but like all things in life it will be consistency, discipline and effort that make the difference, got to keep it up for 5 years to really make the difference.
You’ve got a daughter from memory? They’re even harder!
Haha so true, it’s sad because the fun of this all is finding out what works, as cliché as it is, it really is the journey. If we were all able to have the perfect physique and performance on a once a day pill, it’d be meaningless, it’s the effort, the growth, the challenge that make this worthwhile, doesn’t feel like the people who ask those permission type questions get that.
As an aside reckon long term, sorry the hype died down, people wouldn’t even bother talking the pill.
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Talking of effort and consistency, I really, really didn’t want to do squats, I’ve been knackered all week, had evening meetings every day, alongside early mornings, babies and a few fire calls.
It took to Saturday to get them done and even then it wasn’t exactly my best work. I also switched from standard squats to SSB and will keep that for this program just to make sure my elbows get minimal irritation. I used the box to slow me down and ensure I stayed really tight form wise, still feeling gun shy with SSB squats.
DOMs is nasty this morning, really nasty.
I have caught myself engaging in some slight self sabotage, I’m fortunately only on my first week of this program so good to catch it early. I want to and need to gain weight for this program, yet because of trying to make sure I keep blood glucose low, I’ve been eating so close to my previous diet, that even when increasing food volume is isn’t really moving the needle. I need to balance gaining and keeping BG low, which I’m confident I’ll be able to do but not by just eating salad and fat free meat and yogurt.
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You taking any Berberine to help?
I did a few years back, but slacked off, easy win right there, thanks for the nudge.
Current strategy focuses on diet almost exclusively, using ACV and Ceylon liberally and keeping carbs lower overall and focused on legumes, fruit, veg and greek yoghurt.
Things to add: berberine, post meal walks whenever possible.
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Just took a heavy skim through your log to catch back up. I’m loving the fatherhood posts- my son is only 2 but in my mind the things you’re posting about are very relevant to what I am doing/will be needing to do in the future. I appreciate your insights.
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Have you ever read Victor Frankel’s " Man’s search for meaning"? If not, I highly recommend it. I get the feeling it’s a book you would enjoy. Perhaps enjoy is the wrong word. You might find it insightful. It speaks to meaning, purpose and suffering and how the 3 are intertwined.
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I have not, have thought about it but never made it as far as purchasing it (and leaving it on my ever growing stack of books on the bedside table). I guess I’ll have to now!
I’ll let you know how I get on (in like 1-2 years when I get to it 
).
15/09/25 - 197
Spent a couple of evenings over the weekend being lax with the food, family time and mental break, added bonus of moving the needle on the scales. Back to it now though.
Doing the intentional time with my son this morning - we do it during the week days and have a break over the weekend, he asked with a mischievous glint in his eyes last night, are we doing lessons again tomorrow morning - I’d told him these are conversations where we discuss and I try and impart wisdom, not lessons, so of course he now likes to refer to them as lessons!
Anyways side track, doing the intentional time this morning, I decided to talk briefly about Charlie Kirk, I wasn’t sure if he’d seen about him, or even heard of him, he wasn’t particularly well known around the UK. Didn’t go into major details (I still don’t know much about the guy), but covered some learning that a) don’t just believe what people tell you about someone, do your own research before forming an opinion, and b) doing what is right (or you believe what is right, no need for any political comments in here) can be very costly, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t do it anyway.
My son’s response was that we need to read Timothy this morning, his reasoning was to do with Saul becoming Paul and something that was logical and coherent and surprising at 0630 from a 13 year old…and I forgot what it was.
We read proverbs 5 first, lthen 1 Timothy 1&2.
I was really quite surprised we go through this passage:
Without any sense of immaturity (I mean even I have a little inward smirk at these verses), we just got the end of the chapter and my son went, “well those are verses you wouldn’t want to read to a child”.
Took my BP for the first time in ages:
Solid, despite some regression in certain areas of life.
DOMs is still nasty, quads and glutes aren’t loving stairs or the toilet.
LP W1 W1 D4
GS1:
1 arm DB row: 25, 30kg x 8 x 3 sets
Bench: 70, 80, 90, 100kg x 8
Lying leg raises: 8 x 4 sets
GS2:
Gorilla rows: 30kg x 8 x 4 sets
Swiss bench: 50, 60, 70, 80kg x 8
Reverse crunches*: 8 x 4 sets
GS3:
KB pullover: 24kg x 8 x 3 sets
KB press: 24kg x 8 x 3 sets
Cable ext: 3pkg x 12 x 3 sets
Pretty good, bench seems to be one of those things that holds well for me, even with layoffs and weight loss, time to make it move forward well instead of holding steady!
*This was supposed to be LLR but my abs were so smoked they were cramping, so regressed this.
I don’t love gorilla rows, agro on my shoulder weirdly enough, will look at something else that fits the bill.
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My husband purchased the physical book. I listened to it on audiobook. It’s 5 hours and 44 minutes long. Car rides to and from work and half a day of laundry got it done for me in about 2 days.
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Thank you, I don’t love audiobooks for the simple fact that I use them when driving, exclusively, and that means I don’t take it all in, but also I don’t have much spare time to read, so in order to not let perfect be the enemy of good I got the audiobook and started it last night (I’m also reading 1 digital and 1 physical book at present, putting this here for myself to remind me not to drop those books).
An hour in, and wow it’s harrowing, having briefly covered the atrocities of concentration camps, at school, feels like a significant injustice that we covered it so little, now having heard just a small amount of a survivors first hand experience.
Loved some of the learning from it already though and brought that into the morning routine with my son - specifically that when everything, everything that we use to define ourselves is stripped away, what we are left with is only the ability to choose how we respond, very powerful. Also a reminder of just how bloated we are as a society, life is so easy, so rich, so comfortable and it doesn’t really benefit us, we just become more spoilt.
Great recommendation, I know others have recommended it previously as well, so thank you Beth and others.
Morning weight - 194.
No change here - I’m not eating enough. Used chatgpt (imperfect but a useful sounding board) to look at things this morning.
I’m trying to lower hba1c whilst bulking, I’ve picked back up some negative habits, but diet wise it’s fairly clean and almost every intervention on lowering hba1c focuses on weight loss, and whilst my BMI puts me as overweight, I can still see all of my abs, so the goal remains gaining.
“Chatted” through diet, exercise, caffeine and nicotine (bad habits creeping back), the “duh” conclusion:
Changes to make, cutting back on the sleep disruptors (caffeine and nicotine, which in and of itself should help hba1c, slightly) and making a much more concerted effort to improve sleep, quality and quantity. In reality the poor sleep is as much my fault as it is babies or being on call, change the things within my span of control.
Still have legs DOMs, but now have lower back stiffness and ab DOMs. Whilst I have opportunity to lift today, I won’t, I will walk and hit up the rower instead. If my back is still tight tomorrow I’ll lift, but one more day of rest to ensure that I’m giving adequate recovery. It’s not injured, just grumpy, pretty sure I annoyed it with the pullovers, of all the things, so they’ll disappear.
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I’m so very glad that you are finding it to be useful. I’m excited for you to finish it. The second half moves away from his experiences in the concentration camp and into his use of what he learned there in therapy. My favorite part of the book is there. It is an interaction between himself and an older man who was a also a survivor and it speaks to purpose. I’m not sure why, out of everything in the book, it is the part that resonates the most with me. I’m sure you will know it when you hear it. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
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18/09/25 - 195
LP W1 W2 D5
GS 1:
Sandbag over shoulder: 50kg x 4 x 3* sets
Deadlift: 110, 120, 130, 140kg x 8
Long lever plank: some x 4 sets
GS 2:
Sandbag farmers: 50kg x 15 secs
Deficit deads: 100, 110, 120kg* x 8
LLP: 3 sets
GS 3:
Cheat rows: 60kg x 8 x 3 sets
Shrugs: 60kg x 8 x 3 sets
GHR: 30 secs x 3 sets
*Dropped this on the last one, they were bugging my lower back, whereas deads felt fine, kept the deads very deliberate, making sure to be lowering, not dropping, felt surprisingly good, slow, but that’s me just trying to keep tight and ensure good reps and form. The length of LLP by the end was laughable, still had DOMs in my abs.
Kept the farmers light in GS2, tried marching them whilst walking, back wasn’t pleased, deficits felt fine though.
Kept GS 3 light, because my lower back by this point was straight up angry.
So very little desire to get after this today and procrastinated as long as possible, honestly I’d love to walk away from this hobby, but I don’t, because I can’t stand my natural state, skinny and weak. I think it was Pwn that said (or he might have been quoting/paraphrasing) you get to chose your suffering. Today I chose discomfort and sweat, so that tomorrow I won’t have chosen smaller and weaker…doesn’t mean I have to like it though.
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Also, this was a lie, I ended up having an empty house, so took a really long nap instead.
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The book I keep on recommending to anyone who wants to hear it. One of the most impressive books I have read.
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Your life can be easy by making hard choices
Or hard by making easy choices
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You don’t happen to be in the London or Portsmouth area, are ya?