Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To find our long-forgotten gold

Mark it down, by the end of 2023, I will be the fittest of my life—err, outside of that fall '95 (that'll have to be a 2024 thing). Hey, I'm good, but I've got a LOT of catchup to do to compete with that 17-year-old me who wrestled 3 hours a day. My mindset isn't to compete with my peers at this age, only against myself. And right now, I've got my target on 2021, 182 lb me running at Overton Park. I'm SO going to toast him 'cause he was SLOW.

I've got advantages. While I had superior resources available to me in 2020, I didn't have the year mapped out as I do now. And unlike past years, I've got the full year to work toward achieving what I've set out to do.

I feel powerful again. I know it's the carnivore diet. In that mid-August, September, October and most of November months, as I ate just the standard American fare, I just felt...that I got kicked off the Avengers.

But these days, I've hit 10,000 steps for 4 days straight and I'm developing my resistance workout. I still do the VR thing.

I don't believe in calories anymore. If it really was a calories in/calories out, then are people basically the same size every year? I don't think we're that in tune with our diet when just a can of Coke per day at 139 kcal would lead to a 15 lb gain at the end of the year. 100 lbs would be reached in less than 7 years—that doesn't take into account for the added musculature and skeletal structure that would be formed to support that weight. We're only talking about 139 extra calories! You gotta be REALLY on your game to be so exacting AND we're not even talking about BMR's and tracking expenditure! How can people stay the same?

All of that said, calories are what we understand and it's approved by our government as the chief metric. Fortunately, our government knows how to cut back on sprees and should be trusted with our health:

In Nashville, pregnant women were given radioactive mixtures. In Cincinnati, some 200 patients were irradiated over a period of 15 years. In Chicago, 102 people received injections of strontium and caesium solutions. In Massachusetts, 73 developmentally disabled children were fed oatmeal laced with radioactive tracers in an experiment sponsored by MIT and the Quaker Oats Company. In none of these cases were the subjects informed about the nature of the procedures, and thus could not have provided informed consent.

-Wikipedia, The Plutonium Files

And while my manner of eating seems succulent—bacon, butter, lamb, ground beef and if I can swing it, a ribeye, all under the delightful rain of Redmond's salt, my macros aren't that crazy. A 200 fat gram target with 75 grams of protein is 2100 kcal. I've actually undershot my protein minimum for several days because I'm just don't have any appetite. The energy comes from the fat—that's 1800 kcal. The steel girders are the protein, but not the main feature. That's how I've changed from the past. And why The 28th and now The 29th, are new Expeditions.