I think I mostly just find this to be annoying about myself. Why can’t I be a normal human who eats a cookie every now and again. Lol. I really am getting better I think. I love the lifting and feeling strong. 100% my favorite part of all of this. It’s just that weird fear that slips in and tells me that it’s so easy to fall. BUT I have to remember that being healthy and being strong and aging well (as I am slowly inching towards a geriatric state) is what I’m after. Tomorrow starts cycle two. I don’t care if I have to go straight @T3hPwnisher style and eat an entire cow a day (total exaggeration, there is a 0.1% chance that I would do that) but I’m going to hit my effing bench goal if it kills me. (Also an exaggeration, but I’m willing to work hard and be sore)
Hell yeah! That’s the clarity! So we don’t need to worry about what normal people do, because we’ve got no use for it - you’re eating for a very specific performance.
I dig how this combine the Milo of Croton story with Hugh Cassidy’s “Eat through the sticking points” approach to powerlifting. And also appreciate all the love in the topic here.
Different talents. There are moderators, and there are abstainers. The former can do exactly as you said: have a cookie every now and again and live a normal life. The latter don’t know how to eat one cookie without eating the entire sleeve. It’s all or nothing. But that’s also a talent too, because the abstainer can say “I’m just not going to eat carbs ever again” and then just DO that and be at peace with it, while the moderator, upon saying that sentence, will now ONLY want to eat carbs and will find a way to sneak it into every meal before eventually hijacking a bakery truck and having a 7 day donut bender because the agony of restricting was too much for them.
Big thing is to just lean in to your strengths, rather than to try to be something you aren’t. All successful diets employ SOME manner of restriction: no one is succeeding in the nutritional sphere literally eating everything they want every time they want. Peter Attia narrows it down to 3 restrictions; energy (calorie), nutrient (restricting carbs, fats or protein) and time (some manner of fasting), with successful diets employing 1,2 or all 3 forms.
In my own case that was brought up, I use both nutrient (carbs, or, more specifically, plants) and time (I only eat 2 meals a day). This allows me to eat in a manner I really enjoy: I feast twice a day. When I tried small, frequent meals, I became food obsessive. Now, I have no food noise.
This works for me. For others, it would break them. It’s just about experimenting and find what works with you. You’ve got the right attitude to do exactly that.
11/16/25
5/3/1 The Triumvirate Circuit 2 Week 1
Training max 55 lb.
Warm up
Ball throws 10# 3 x 10
Fire hydrants 3 x 10
Military press
65% x 5
75% x 5
85% x 12 rep PR
Seated DB Press
10# 3 x 15
12# 2 x 15
Pull-up 3,1,1,1,1
Felt good today. The military press is pretty fun because basically everything is a PR because I’ve never done this lift prior to starting this program. 
I am struggling with my pull-ups. But I can do them, so I guess I should be proud of that. Not sure what caused the step back, but I will get it fixed.
Moving forward. Today is a new day.
congrats
I read through this and found it extremely helpful. Thank you.
Most Excellent! As Bill and/or Ted would say.
PR Party 
11/17/25
3.11 miles. Total time 30:24. Average pace 9:47. Best pace 7:47 (for about 50 yards, but it still counts). Average heart rate 138. Max heart rate 188.
I knocked a minute and 2 seconds off the same route from last Monday. I am very pleased with this. This was a very head (and lung) clearing run. It’s one thing that I really do love about a good run. It clears out all the cobwebs and makes my brain function just a little bit better. I’m going to spend the remainder of my day in the kitchen. I’ll be doing my food prep for the week and also making all the snacks that my boys like.
I was talking at work about how I make protein bars and granola and muffins for my boys and one of the women asked me how it didn’t bother me to spend so much time hanging out in the kitchen when there are other things I could be doing. I just told her that I couldn’t really think of something more important than making my kids healthy food. Based on the look on her face, I don’t think she had ever thought of it that way.
My youngest son told me the other day that he is going to start eating eggs everyday for breakfast. I asked him why (we have been trying and failing to get him to eat eggs for several years). He told me that he feels better at school and is more awake when he eats eggs than he is when he eats a bagel and he also ran a PR the week that he had been eating eggs and wasn’t able to beat that when he went back to bagels. He is making the connection between what he eats and how he feels as well as how he performs. I feel like this means that maybe his dad and I have done something right. Lol.
Tomorrow…deadlifts…
Today is a good day.
Winning!
My kids (the ones near enough) love coming over on Mondays for dinner, because it’s prep day. Here are two healthy, tasty entrees - help yourselves! And then what’s left are my work lunches. I agree, my kitchen is a terrific place to be, and if I have a visiting kid sitting on a stool talking to me, or a crowd of them milling around, bonus! Yesterday’s taco bar will be my lunches this week, sans the tortillas and the cheese.
I made taco bowls today for my lunches. Used ground pork instead of ground beef. We will see how it turns out. 
The turkey taco meat was not great.
11/18/25
5/3/1 The Triumvirate Circuit 2 Week 1
Training max 175 lb.
Warm up throws and fire hydrant kicks.
Trap bar Deadlift
115 lbs. 65% x 5
130 lbs. 75% x 5
150 lbs. 85% x 11
Good mornings
50 lb. 5 x 12
Sit-ups
5 lb. 4 x 15 8 lb. 1 x 15
Pretty good session. Feeling a tiny bit of tightness in my lower back. Twisting stretches seem to be helping it.
Today is a new day.
It made me very happy.
11/19/25
I slept poorly last night. I kept waking up with hip pain. Both hips but my left was worse than my right. I got out of bed like a 90 year old with severe arthritis. Everything feels very tight this morning. I think I’m going to use today as a day to do some yoga type stretching. I foam roll before each lifting session and I stretch after, but I don’t do either on my run days. I think using today strictly for mobility will be good. Plus I’m just kind of worn down from the shitty sleep. Tomorrow is bench. I look forward to making progress there.
Today is a good day.
11/20/25
5/3/1 The Triumvirate Circuit 2 Week 1
Training max 90
Ball throws and fire hydrant kicks
Warm up sets
Bench Press
60 lbs. 65% x 5
65 lbs. 75% x 5
75 lbs. 85% x 13
DB incline Bench Press
5 x 15 20#
DB Row
5 x 10 20#
This was a good session. I thought I was getting sick yesterday but I think I was just worn down from the horrible sleep the night before. I got home from work, ate a metric ton of carbs (a tendency I have when I’m very tired. I assume it is my body’s attempt to get some quick energy) and slept like a log. I feel much better today. I felt strong in my bench and enjoyed the accessory work. Whatever kink was in my back has worked itself out which makes me extremely happy. I’ve also noticed that my usual shoulder/elbow/wrist pain from work is minimal if not gone. All of these things have come together to give me a very good start to my morning.
Today is a good day.
IT band syndrome showed up for me as hip pain, and of course running exacerbated it. I thought it was bursitis, which I’d had in my 30’s, and tolerated it for a long time because I thought it was just a thing I had to live with. When it ultimately got worse I decided it was the hip itself -aging thing - and tolerated it some more because I didn’t want to deal with a hip replacement. I finally talked to my doctor about it last year and she completely rejected my hip theory (“I can promise you that if you needed a new hip you wouldn’t let me do this to you” [stretch my leg in all the directions]) and sent me to PT, which ended my several, maybe many, years of throbbing hip and sometimes knee. So: stretch your IT band post-run!