October 2023

The nutrition side of things is leveling off. The digital coach no longer thinks I burn over 4,000 calories a day.

I’m going to be dropping chicken thighs and eggs from my diet soon.

It’s starting to get cold where I live and it’s been difficult to convince myself to get out and walk.

Left toenail is still curled, but not as bad as it was. I’ve been prying it flat after each shower and making sure it’s not impacted. The manicurist I learned from talked about the toenail needing to reestablish a groove in the skin and how it would hurt. It is definitely hurting. But it looks better than it was.

You know what we haven’t talked about in a while (or possibly ever in this context)?

My toenails.

Back when my primary care physician thought I had gout (middle of 2022) I went to see a podiatrist. He also thought I had gout.

While I was there, he noticed I had an ingrown toenail on my right big toe, which was the problem toe. He removed it. I noticed my left big toe also had an impacted and ingrown toenail. He didn’t remove that one. I asked the podiatrist if the toenail would ever grow in flat again, and he said, “No.” He also said that if the toenails continue giving me trouble he could remove them and apply acid to make it so that part of the nail never grew again.

This prompted me to learn how to give myself a pedicure.

I’ve been doing it every few weeks for a few months. In the beginning it was every week. The things you can learn in the twenty-first century is pretty insane.

Apparently there’s a difference between an impacted toenail and ingrown toenail. An impacted toenail may look and feel like an ingrown toenail, but it’s caused by material (usually lint front socks) gets lodged under the toenail. An ingrown toenail on the other hand results from a sharp bit of nail digging into the skin.

In both cases inflammation may occurs, which deforms the nail and causes pain.

For an impacted toenail you want to remove the debris causing the inflammation. With an ingrown toenail, you want to remove the stabbing bit—not necessarily the curled bit of toenail down to the quick.

I bought all sorts of shit.

Cuticle pusher, files, buffer blocks, cuticle nippers, and things that look like dental instruments. Epsom salts, foot balm, and nail mycosis solution. A tool carrying case and one of those foot basins.

It’s a bit ridiculous, but I was tired of feeling like shit and it seemed as good a place as any to start.

To make a long story short (I might make a separate post describing the journey), the first time I gave myself a pedicure, my feet felt amazing. And recently, I think I finally have the left big toenail sorted. Above all else, the toenail appears to be flattening out and my feet appear less swollen; I can see the tendons and ligaments.

Progress.

As for the nutrition side of things, MacroFactor reduced my recommended caloric intake again, so I reduced the amount of bananas in the breakfast smoothie. This demonstrates a level of flexibility in the latest iteration there.

I’ve removed carrots, broccoli, and sourdough bread entirely, which reduces the volume of food. I’m thinking the chicken will be the next thing to go. That will reduce meals that require a pan and fire to only breakfast.

I mean I could eat raw eggs, but I’d rather not.

I’m going try start experimenting with peanuts and sunflower seeds as nutritional replacements for the chicken and eggs. Reduces volume again, cost overall, and should decrease cholesterol as well.

I removed the multivitamin from my supplementation. Now I’m meeting daily targets for all the things, but still going over on iron, magnesium, and manganese mainly due to pumpkin seeds and cashews. I’m hoping to reduce those and replace them with the peanuts and sunflower seeds.

This will tilt my diet toward fat over carbs.

I want to a full blood panel done with micronutrients to see where I end up. If I have deficiencies, I can change the targets in the MacroFactor app to be specific to my needs instead of a generic human.

Oh! I was also able to do get on the ground using a cross leg squat, without using my hands. This is a longevity test and marker. I still used my hand to stabilize getting up, but still good times.

I think I’m settling into a cadence for these posts. Mainly, I’m thinking once a week, probably on the weekend. With that said, if something interesting enough happens on a given day, and I remember to write it out, and I’m in a position to do so, I will. That’s a whole lotta conditions and caveats.

But I did set a reminder for myself to do so, similar to what I do with the building wealth paycheck-to-paycheck series.

I updated September with a few things and fixed a bug related to this content, so I won’t recap that here. Instead, I will talk about how much I’ve had to recalibrate heading into this week.

Becca and I went out of town the last week of September. Then, three days later, we went out of town again. To say I fell off the wagon a bit would be an understatement, but I did stick with the nutrition plan set by MacroFactor. With that said, I’m not sure how much I can say this was falling off the wagon as it was avoiding injury.

I’m going to say two things really messed me up:

1. butterfly pose and
2. walking backwards.

Let’s start with the butterfly pose. I added it to the morning system integrity check to help stretch the groin and that general area. If you don’t know butterfly pose in yoga, it’s where you sit on the ground, put the bottoms of your feet together, bring the feet toward you, and (at least for me) try to get the knees on the ground or roughly in line with the top of the hips. I get into position, stretch to a point of slight discomfort, and count for 30 seconds; actually, I do a 4-count inhale followed by an 8-count exhale and repeat that 3 times. Then I release sping myself around and “bang out the stretch” and do a bit of massage. I follow that with some breathwork before returning to the position a second time for another 30 seconds.

The first few days were amazing. Then, I started developing discomfort, sliding into pain in the groin area. So, I backed off for a bit.

When I initially started walking backward, I started with the prescribed 10 minutes to see how the body would respond. During the walk, it was awesome. It’s an interesting perspective shift. Then I started developing pain, not just discomfort that might become pain, but pain in the quadriceps and calves.

I gave myself a few days to recover fully from all that, only doing the active recovery provided by walking.

All right, so what do we change?

First things first, the next time I get an updated prescription, I’m going to just start slow instead of experimenting first and scaling back, if necessary.

I scaled back the walking backward to 2.5 minutes instead of 10 and kept the butterfly pose as is with the thought of going 3 times per week if things didn’t dramatically improve.

Things did improve, and I finally felt comfortable doing a full day’s worth of movements. The full, scaled-back physical therapy prescription and the modified MovNat Fundamentals Week 1, Day 1 routine.

Mistakes were made.

My entire body overall was in at least some form of discomfort. My upper legs and hips were in pain territory. I hit the brakes on everything—except the nutrition recommendations from MacroFactor, which we’ll get to in a moment.

So, what changes are we making (changes are in italics)?

1. 3 sets of 10 single-leg hip rotations 3 times a week; I’ll still do 1 set slowly in the shower as part of the system integrity check.
2. 3 sets of 5 split-leg calf raises daily. Walking backward hits the calves pretty hard, and I’d rather build into verifying I can still do 15 every day than try and start there only to regret it later.
3. 3 sets of 10 toe abductions daily.
4. 3 sets of 2 distal quad stretches daily. Walking backward also engages the quadriceps; I wasn’t doing 5 repetitions before. So, would like to build back up instead of trying to go all out.
5. 3 sets of 10 Powell raises twice a week.
6. 1 set of 5 reverse step-ups 4 times weekly (no more than every other day). These also hit the hamstring and quadricep, so scaling back will build into the 25-repetition goal.
7. During the walks
   • Walk backward for 2.5 minutes once per day. Again, this is quadricep- and calf-dominate, so scaling back. I’m planning on increasing this to 5 minutes once per day and seeing how that goes. If it goes well, I’ll increase the others before increasing the time walking backward again.
8. MovNat Fundamentals Week 1, Day 1
   • Replace the deep squat with the deep knee bend.
   • Replace foot-hand crawl with a bear crawl (shorter steps) and hold for 30 seconds (with a goal of holding for 60 seconds). This, I think, is what I think contributed the most to back, knee, hamstring, and glute discomfort. So, instead of pushing myself into movement, I will just hold and see what happens.
   • With that said, I’ll go back to just the warm-up 3 times a week and see how things go. Then, progress into the warm-up along with the emphasis. And, eventually, the full sequence.

Let’s get back to the MacroFactor recommendations.

I started using MacroFactor in late August of 2023. I’m curious if it can be a decent enough nutrition coach and resource to save me money in the long run compared to actually hiring a nutrition coach.

You set a goal. Create a plan. And, based on the goal, the plan will adjust using your food consumption and weight over time. For the last 2 months, the changes in the plan can be summarized as “Eat more food!” Unfortunately, since I stopped being as active when I received the new physical therapy prescription, it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.

My weight didn’t change in either direction and hasn’t for the week we’ve been back, but, holy shit, that’s a lot of food. We’re just talking volume here. Leading up to the end of this week, I started feeling bloated, gassy, and constipated despite still having regular bowel movements.

I also couldn’t weigh myself for over a week, which meant the app was basing everything on historical trends. Of course, the app didn’t know I basically went from doing cardio and lifting to nothing.

Again, mistakes were made.

This brings us to today and what I’ll change with the app.

Basically, if the trend of my activity changes or I cannot weigh in regularly, I’ll adjust the program.

Outside of the app, I’m planning on changing my nutrition. More nutritionally dense foods and less high volume foods.

For example, I’m pretty sure I can replace the eggs with sunflower seeds; 3 eggs are estimated at 150 grams compared to 100 grams of sunflower seeds. This will increase caloric and fat intake while maintaining and improving the micronutrient profile compared to eggs. This would reduce my need to cook with a pan and fire by one meal. Given the increase in calories, I should also be able to remove the carrots and broccoli from the breakfast meal entirely, further reducing the volume of food.

If I remove the chicken thigh from my dinner, which I’m not sure I can do without adding something else, then no more pan and fire is required.

I won’t need a microwave if I switch to green peas from a can instead of a microwavable bag. At that point, it’s just a freezer for smoothie-related things, a cupboard, and a blender. And van life is prepared.