I get to be “meal time confessional” at my work as well.
Ya’ll are demonstrating one of the major benefits I experienced when I quit eating lunch
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I can’t remember when I had to eat in front of more than one other person. Back when I was a police officer, I’d eat in the car between calls. I made it a point to pack foods I could eat with my hands while driving. I literally had to put down my homemade grilled chicken sandwich to go arrest a guy for murder. I went back and grabbed it before we drove him to to be interviewed by homicide detectives (rode with another officer to transport him).
As a to teacher, I’ve always eaten in my office which is shared by one other person at most. And now I work a duty at lunch so I don’t really eat when others do.
I didn’t realize the persecution you all face!
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Yes. I feel triggered. Lol. I know it’s a bit complainy pants, but it just gets annoying. My food choices are regularly critiqued and commented on. Then the same people who make the comments decide they want to lose weight and are asking me for meal advice. Then they don’t take the advice and we are back to snide comments about my lunch. If you like, we could also get into the conversations that are had when people ask me when I have time to lift. Lol. That’s usually a pretty good starting place for questions of my sanity. 
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Side note: I like the casual mention of murder and chicken sandwiches.
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Always love your blog and experiments… but did we miss a title opportunity not going with “The Black and Red Diet”? Trademark that and sell the PDF!
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@TrainForPain Hell yeah brother! Always love the feedback. “Black and Red Diet” may be a reference that escapes me, unless it’s a roulette reference, which I DID toy around with. But I DO feel like this one has some legs if I were to ever sell it. Definitely a “working man’s” diet. “Men, do you want to eat steaks, drink coffee and sleep through breakfast on occasion while losing fat and never getting hungry?”
AM WORKOUT (0900)
TACTICAL BARBELL OPERATOR Week 4, Workout 6
“Axle Grace”
Time: 3:54
Notes:
- This is a regression from last week, but an improvement on the previous 2 performances before that. I’m in a different state of fatigue due to my schedule, and it was painful cold in the garage, to the point that my lungs hurt from breathing in. I felt strong, but it was tough getting a grip with my hands going numb.
- Also got in my steps, and a 1:00 hold. Honestly hard to fight the urge to train MORE, but I gotta keep the eye on the prize, especially in a compromised state of recovery.
NUTRITION RECAP
Breakfast was 2 omelets with 3 whole eggs, some leftover piedmontese 93% lean ground beef, beef liver, grassfed wagyu tallow and Jarlsburg light swiss, alongside 3 strips of beef bacon and a piedmontese grassfed beef jr hot dog.
Dinner was a chuck steak, along with some filet mignon from the Valkyrie and the fat off my kid’s chuck steak, alongside 3 whole eggs and 5 whites. More playing around with the Sous Vide.
STORY IN PICTURES
I got to the used bookstore today. You can tell New Year’s has been abandoned already, but I found some gold. I also realize how much I enjoy my echo chamber.
Afterwards, took the family to Panda Express for lunch, and my fortune cookie aligned well with my own philosophy.
And my kiddo has expressed some interest in joining the Valkyrie with kettlebelling…so I made an impulse buy.
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It was, but clearly not that obvious. I had a “you can bet you’ll lose body fat” tag in my head”.
I agree on the appeal. I read the title and thought “I love steak and coffee!” My second thought was that’s the exact breakfast interventional cardiologists like to pick on, but oh well.
That’s great! No better news than continuing to find shared activity
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With the state of health in America, I’m not sure I trust the advice of medical professionals anyway. Lol
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I thought this is what @TrainForPain was going for. Heck, the “Wolfpack Diet” sounds pretty legit too.
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Fun fact: in the visual branding world, the combination of black and red is meant to represent the pursuit of something new. So we’re all correct!
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The food looks good, but do you ever eat vegetables?
@TrainForPain and @BrandonCrawford Our own T-Nation was fully onboard with Red and Black train. I won a free T-shirt from them back in the day with that awesome color scheme.
@BethB Right?! I think I’ll skip the “Heart healthy Cheerios” thanks.
@cantfitinjeans Vegetables, never. Plants, once a week at most.
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AM WORKOUT (0400 wake up via alarm)
TACTICAL BARBELL OPERATOR Week 5, Workout 1
MAIN WORK
SSB Front Squat
5x5x265
ALTERNATE w/
Axle strict press from rack
3x5x183
4x183
Chins between sets
CONDITIONING
3 rounds of 150lb sandbag medley (2 trips each round)
ASSISTANCE
GHR sit ups
3x10
Notes:
- My training motivation continues to decline. I observe this trend in my “non-building” blocks of training. Jamie Lewis discussed this as the advantage of bulking: you’re motivated to train because you want to put all that food to use. I had a pseudo version of that, since our family meal was last night and I had enough motivation to put all of that to some use. But the weekend wasn’t quite as restful as I anticipated, as the puppy was a bit of a handful.
- I was curious how this workout was going to go when I looked at the weights listed. I was honestly quite pleased with the press, despite not completing 5x5. 3x5 is still within specs. I misgrooved a few reps, which resulted in an energy leak. I cut out the push presses to allow for enough recovery between sets to perform. Ultimately, this is just a great showing for me as far as recent performances go, and I’m strict pressing the comp weight for sets of 5.
- Squats weren’t quite as smooth as last week, but still better than usual. Some reps were 2 parters and some were clean throughout.
- The front squats clearly had a fatigue impact on me when it came time for the medley, and rather than groove slow reps, I just cut the rounds short. Still tried to focus on a good strong pick.
- Weighed 85.3. I actually called that before I stepped on the scale, down to the decimal. I’m gaining some good body awareness. This is a slight uptick from last week, but the post carb weigh ins are a wildcard.
- Got in a 1:15 hold last night. Did a good job getting in steps for the weekend as well.
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Do it. Now.
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On that note…
For the nutrition recap, breakfast was 13oz of grassfed airfried lamb with some beef liver alongside 3 whole eggs and 5 whites. I’ve reduced the portion sizes from the previous 2 weeks by 1.5oz on the meat. Slow drip deception.
No photos of dinner, but had the Valkyrie make me 3 whole eggs and 5 whites scrambled to accompany some piedmontese 93% lean meatloaf.
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AM WORKOUT (0509 wake up via dog)
TACTICAL BARBELL OPERATOR Week 5, Workout 2
“MEAT EATER II”
10 rounds of 10 swings (24kg bell) and 10 burpees w/1min rest between rounds
Notes:
- Really just wasn’t in the mood for the rower this morning. I think the rower is a great conditioning tool, but I don’t like waking up and then going straight to sitting. Doesn’t feel great on my hips. Meanwhile, this actually felt very restorative.
- Swings always FEEL good and then I watch myself on video and I look like Frankenstein’s monster.
- Now that my knee pain has resolved, I observed that I am MUCH more explosive in the burpee. Specifically the transition from standing to the floor. Instead of setting my hands down and popping my legs into a push up position, I was effectively sprawling to the floor and catching myself. Was cool to be able to bring that intensity back.
- Weighed in at 84.5kg this morning, seeing a continued slight downward trend. Got in a 1:10 hold yesterday. Tang Soo Do on the schedule for tonight.
- Coffee fasting day, and it’s funny how I look forward to both mornings. When I lift, I’m excited about the breakfast that awaits me, whereas on these days I’m excited about how fast/easy of a morning I have where I just have to make a cup of coffee for myself and have much fewer dishes to take care of. “High speed/low drag”. Alternating between the two is good on my sanity, as I always have something to look forward to, vs getting stuck in a rut.
- My kiddo took wonderfully to the ABF yesterday. 10lb KBs were the right call. It’s amazing the things you take for granted physically: I had to teach them how to sit their hips back in a squat because they were just pure knees. It’s also funny how, as soon as you put a KB in their hands in the goblet position, a LOT of problems get solved. I remember working out with my dad when I was a fat little boy trying to lose enough weight to be able to play Pop Warner football (spoilers: it didn’t work), and those are still some cool imprinted memories. Hoping we’re laying down a good foundation.
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Bingo! Something about that weight helps them trust the balance part enough to finally sit back. I recently stumbled across some random social media noise where a coach doesn’t let any of his athletes back squat until they hit 1.5 or 2.0 bodyweight on front squat. I quickly dismissed it because I can’t do that…
But it is a good thought for training newbies.
Kids ask me when I started lifting and I tell them “When I was your age” meaning sophomore year of high school. Sometimes I’ll be honest and tell them it was about 4th grade with my dad. He’d get me up at 0600 to lift in our basement. He still has the total station machine we used. He put me on a 4x15 workout for everything. I’m not sure if the calf raises elementary and middle school helped, but I give them credit for helping me dunk at the start of 9th grade.
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Ya know, I can appreciate not letting athletes back squat until they can front squat X simply because, the more I do the back squat, the more I don’t think it’s all that great for building strength. And for athletes in particular, I feel like it takes away resources. Its taxing to the lower back compared to a front squat, which means accumulating fatigue in strength training that could be better invested in the field of play. Whenever I run Operator, I use front squats, because whenever I run Operator I’m doing a lot more strongman work, and I want my lower back fresh for that.
But the back squat SHINES as a mass builder for these same reasons. It loads the WHOLE body up so well and creates a significant amount of systemic stimulus/fatigue. Excellent for off season, when you’re trying to put some size on your linemen (and most likely why Dan John used it for “Mass Made Simple”).
And so I can see the method behind the madness of that coach. Not that front squatting X weight prepares you for the back squat, but more that it gets your priorities straight. If, after you front squat X you STILL want to do the back squat, well, ok then, fine: you’ve earned that. But kinda like the whole “you can eat all the dessert you want after you finish 2lbs of salmon and 4 baked potatoes” approach to nutrition, maybe when you arrive there you just don’t WANT that back squat any more…
That load in the front IS magical though. It’s amazing how the body will teach US, rather than the other way around. And that’s a cool story of training with your pops! Dads are “swiss army men”. We’re expected to know a little bit about everything.
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And that’s why I use it in my classes. I’m not training the athletes. I have a few football players, a couple wrestlers, one or two basketball players, and one cheerleader spread over four classes just under 100 kid this semester). I have a lot of untrained and inexperienced kids so the class gets the group training approach for beginners. And sadly, a lot of the football guys suck at hitting squat depth and they have a weak core. I don’t coach football, so I have no control over the bad culture they have. Here’s an example of what I deal with:
Defensive lineman is competing in powerlifting for the school and one of the meets was this past Saturday. The powerlifting coach tells him to figure out his openers on the Wednesday prior to the meet during my class. He maxes on bench, grinds 225, misses 235 and 230. He comes back Thursday and wants to do bench again. I’ve given up on talking sense into him and just let him. He misses 225. Friday rolls around and it’s bench day for the regular class. He starts to bench again! I told him to just do nothing for the day to let his body rest. The powerlifting coach sent him a mobility workout to do on the Thursday/Friday before a different meet and he refused to do it so I didn’t bother to tell him to do that.
Same kid comes in yesterday (Monday) and it’s the class’ squat day. He sets up pin squats to work on his “weak point”. He tried to convince me he fails his squat 2/3 of the way out of the hole. 
He’s one of the extreme examples, but the rest aren’t much better. They don’t want to get better, they just want to add weight to the bar or sit on their backside. I’m not the football coach, but if I was, I’d definitely change the culture first. Unfortunately no one cares and it poisons the rest of the school’s athletic programs.
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Oh man, did you ever read “Powerlifting Basics Texas Style” by Paul Kelso? I feel like you’d relate a LOT to Paul’s stories about trying to run a powerlifting club in a junior college in East Texas.
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