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I started a fat burning diet two months ago which is much like the Atkins Diet except it has less variation and it has one day in a week that lets you eat a lot more than normal. This Bulk Day boosts your metabolism and increases your sports performance for a few days. This diet will get your body in a state of Ketosis.

Here’s a tool that lets you estimate how much kilocalories you can eat every day. Take that figure and deduct 500 kcal from it to get the figure that you’re going to use on this diet. Also increase it by 50% to get the Bulk Day figure.

No exercises are required when on this diet. If you do any kind of sports on a day, you should eat more that day.

In this diet you eat only 20 grams (0.044 pounds) of carbohydrates every day and 500 kilocalories of energy less than what your body uses daily. So you’ll be eating more than in the average fat burning diet. You’ll be avoiding eating anything that has carbohydrates and eating a lot of things like eggs, cheese, peanuts, bacon, cream, fish, butter, sausages, meat but none of things like rice, bread, spaghetti, pizza, hamburger, candy, chocolate etc except on Bulk Days.

Your daily energy intake should consist of about 35% or more of protein and 65% of fat minus 20 grams of carbohydrates. Do keep in mind that one gram of fat has as much energy as two grams of protein.

One day of every week after the first 2 weeks of being on this diet should be a Bulk Day. On the bulk day you should eat roughly 50% more of energy than you spend that day. In the Bulk Day you should restrict fat intake instead of carbohydrates. So you’ll be eating just protein and carbs with as little fat as possible. This will take you out of the ketosis state for a day or two but it will be something to look forward to and it will keep your metabolism high. I’ve read that weight loss results are about the same with or without the Bulk Day. During the Bulk Day you can eat candy, low fat chips, bread etc. but not pizza, chocolate or hamburgers for example.

This diet loses its effectiveness after about 6 months and I recommend you to be on this diet a maximum of five months.

This diet was supposed to be a good one for those who want to keep as much of their muscles as possible on a fat burning diet and while I might have kept my muscles, my strength in the gym decreased too much and it didn’t quickly get back to my before diet level after the diet. So I don’t recommend this to anyone who takes his gym training seriously but I do recommend this to everyone else who have a lot of self-discipline or like eating fatty foods and want to lose weight. Both women and men should find this diet to be effective.

If you’re going to start this diet, I suggest you to read more about it first elsewhere. You’ll be needing some dietary supplements like vitamins and I can’t instruct you in English about that properly.

The results

- 14.July.2007 I weighted 88.7 kilos in the morning. This was the day I started this diet.
- 23.July.2007 I weighted 86.6 kilos in the morning. This was the day I lowered my daily calorie intake to the proper amount. I first though that I should eat as much energy as I use on this diet, but no. Silly mistake.
- 25.July.2007 I weighted 86.2 kilos, right before my first Bulk Day, which was that day.
- 27.July.2007 I weighted 86.1 kilos, so the extra weight gained from Bulk Day disappears quickly.
- 29.July.2007 I weighted 85.5 kilos
- 30.July.2007 I weighted 85.1 kilos
- 3.August.2007 I weighted 85.7 kilos - I started using Creatine Pyruvate on 1st of August 2007. One guy reported that this dietary supplement meant for body builders and alike increased his weight by 2 kilos on this diet within 7 days after first use.
- 4.August.2007 I weighted 85.1 kg - Even though I took Creatine Pyruvate on 3rd of August.
- 8.August.2007 I weighted 84.4 kg aamulla - Some time after this I started eating over 30 grams of carbohydrates, which is too much as you can see in the results.
- 13.August.2007 I weighted 84.6 kg
- 14.August.2007 I weighted 84.3 kg
- 19.August.2007 I weighted 84.4 kg - After this I stopped eating over 30 grams of carbohydrates.
- 21.August.2007 I weighted 83.7 kg
- 22.August.2007 I weighted 83.1 kg
- 24.August.2007 I weighted 83.7 kg
- 27.August.2007 I weighted 83.3 kg
- 29.August.2007 I weighted 82.5 kg
- 2.September.2007 I weighted 83 kg
- 5.September.2007 I weighted 82.1 kg
- 8.September.2007 I weighted 82.7 kg
- 12.September.2007 I weighted 81.2 kg

Exactly one week after the diet, today, I weigh 82.4 kilos / 181.6 pounds, so the weight increase after diet because of an increase of fluids in the body was not huge and I expected it to be exactly what it is.

I’ve been going to the gym for about 2 and a half years now and didn’t really start taking it seriously until 7th of February 2007. Since then my motivation in everything I do has increased greatly. So have my happiness, health, strength and muscles. I feel like I’m constantly progressing in life. In reality I have no good reason to become strong and muscular but I do this mostly for my mind rather than for my body.

My overall strength has increased ~15% since that day (in 2 months) which is clearly the best progress I’ve had since being a total beginner. I’ve been able to increase weights every week while I’d normally be stuck for some weeks.

Now let me tell you what I define as hardcore training: To make the training your lifestyle. You’d go to the gym at least 3 times per week and eat bodybuilding style at least five times a day. It will basically be on your mind 24/7 and to me it feels like the most important thing to me while my logic clearly states that it isn’t but that’s ok. To my conscious mind work is much more important but now work feels less like work, while training and eating feels a bit like work. Currently I’m perhaps a bit too hardcore and I’m calculating my energy intake every meal and separating fat from carbohydrates because that makes fat cell generation harder.

I’ll talk more about bodybuilding food later but I’m sure you can find out more about it elsewhere for now.
Now I also need to tell you what little benefits loose gym training has over hardcore gym training: Gym training won’t stress you at all unless you’re really lazy and have to force yourself to go there just to maintain your body. Personally I didn’t have that problem even when I was training loose. Hardcore training will stress you usually, more or less. You’ll be able to eat more loosely; undefined amounts of food and better tasting foods.

I find that taking gym exercising seriously greatly improves my motivation in just about everything I do. It boosts my physical and mental health so it has became a big part of my life.

Have at least one rest day (without any muscle exercising) in between gym days.

I’m currently on a bulk(ish) diet and my gym training programme is a slightly modified version of a popular gym training 5×5 single factor program:
http://www.geocities.com/elitemadcow1/5×5_Program/Linear_5×5.htm (If that site is still down, try this link). I’ll write a post about my diet later. When I say 3×8 for example, it means 3 sets of 8 repeats.
This program is great for building muscle and strength. You should probably have been in the gym for at least a year before trying out this program. This programme is meant for intermediate trainees.
Take 1 - 5 minute breaks after every set. (5 mins only if your target muscles are very tired and 1 min only after the lightest sets).

The gym days’ moves are ordered in a way which I find optimal, but if some spot is taken in the gym, you may alter the order to avoid waiting.

Week’s first time in a gym

• Bench Press 5×5 ramp up weight after every set, until top set of 5. (Move Example)
• Barbell Squat 5×5 ramp up weight after every set, until top set of 5. (Move Example)
• Barbell Row 5×5 ramp up weight after every set, until top set of 5. (Move Example)
• 4 sets of weighted sit-ups.
• 2 sets of weighted hypers.
• Sitting Calf Raise 3×8 constant weight. (You may leave this one out if you don’t care about those muscles much).

Week’s second time in a gym

• Barbell Incline Bench Press 4×5 ramp up weight after every set, until top set of 5. (Move Example)
• Barbell Squat 4×5 ramp up weight after the first two sets, then repeat the third set. This is light because it is in the middle of the week and you’ll also be doing Deadlifts.
• Deadlift 4×5 ramp up weight after every set, until top set of 5. (Move Example)
• 3 sets of Chin-ups. (Optional, you can replace this with 3 sets of normal sit-ups too)

Week’s third time in a gym

This day takes me 90 - 130 minutes in the gym. Longer than the other days.

• Bench Press 4×5 same weights as in the first time of the week, but leave the last set out. 1×3x102.5% of your last top set of five, 1 x 8 x third set.
• Barbell Squat - The same set schedule as above.
• Barbell Row - The same set schedule as above.
• 3×8 Triceps Extensions
• 3×8 Barbell Curls or something else that targets Biceps.

You need to check out this page too after reading this post before you can start with this program. Then come back here to know better what I’m talking about.

If you’re having nightmares about some people you don’t like and you want to get rid of them, here’s what to do:

This is going to sound weird: Love them.

I had this problem with a-holes bullying me when I was a kid years ago and after that they were haunting me in my nightmares for years and someone at a personal development forum just mentioned that advice and it worked!

I consciously totally ignored the advice because it sounded so weird but my subconscious mind picked it up and made it so that one of them was becoming my friend in the very next dream and after that it took many days to have the next dream where another bully was my friend. Other than that I haven’t had any dreams involving them anymore but make sure to try to stop hating them consciously too.

That brain reboot I mentioned earlier needs a little more time for some enhancing tests to be posted.

Do note that game development, while I still enjoy it very much, is no longer my main interest. But because I’ve been and still am among other things a game developer until I have enough money for a bigger business, I thought to write about it for those who are interested.

Ever since I was like 6 - 8 I’ve been playing all kinds of games. Someday as a teen I decided to make a game design document just for fun. Then I got excited about it and went ahead and tried to contact via e-mail some big name game development companies if they’d like to have the design document which of course was responded to with “No”. That didn’t stop me as I just liked to design games whether they got implemented or not. Later on I started designing a simpler game than a MMORPG, yet it was very ambitious for someone who didn’t know how to program. That game was Battles of Norghan. I don’t remember if I had the intention to make it happen when I started designing it but at some point I started trying to get a team for it although I didn’t expect to find one and I thought I’d develop the game myself if I have to. Failing to find active programmers but succeeding to find a few volunteers (of which all but Scott Buckles became too inactive), I started self-educating myself programming and I chose C++ as my first programming language which I haven’t regretted. I made a few small games and other applications myself before I started programming Battles of Norghan. Soon it was confirmed that the game is going to be of commercial quality and so instead of using volunteers, I started hiring freelancers to do tasks which I’m not a master of, like art and sounds and I started focusing on the business side more. One of the mistakes I made early on the development is that I decided to roll my own game engine instead of using an existing, well tested and more robust one. While it didn’t take me way too long and turned out to be a good learning experience, the fact that it is a simple DirectX 9.0c wrapper one is now deeply rooted to Battles of Norghan and to change it to use a cross-platform and lower DirectX version game engine will require much work.

Later on with several years of extremely active programming experience, I became confident that I could greatly improve what is by many successful independent game developers considered to be the best publicly available 2D Windows game engine out there. The main problems of the original game engine are however that it isn’t cross-platform (for example Mac sales often amount to 50% of independent downloadable games’ direct sales) and it is much more difficult to use than SDL or almost pure DirectX wrappers which makes developing with it harder and take more time. The best side of it is that programs developed with it work in virtually every machine, even “ancient” ones. I was going to license it to other game developers so I could make it practically perfect instead of just doing whatever Mitorah Games will need in a timely manner. To read more about the greatly improved cross-platform version of that engine, the Mitorah Games Engine, go to http://www.mitorahgames.com/Mitorah-Games-Engine.html.

My purpose in life:

General purpose:

• Help to discover the meaning of life or become a smart enough being to define the meaning of life.
• After you’ve discovered it, live accordingly and let others know about it.

Current specific purpose:

• Help the best you can in the creation of smarter than human beings and making the lives of those beings as significant and great as possible.
• Make as much money as possible to help you in your journey and use it the best way you can.
• Become a smarter than human being.
• Live to best serve your purpose.
• If you fail, the least you can do is raise a son and pass this journey to him.

Your purpose in life:

Here’s a few of the other best things one could do with their lives for the universe (in my opinion):

• A significant politician who works for the best of the world as a whole. I am yet to see one.
• A donator who focuses in acquiring money and putting it to good use.
• Become someone like Steve Pavlina, a person who helps us grow mentally by writing, giving speaches etc. He’s the person who inspired me to create this blog, but I don’t and neither should you follow his every advice.
• Scientist who works either in the field of saving the world (from global warming etc.) or on a radical, world improving technology such as nanotechnology.

Also keep in mind that other occupations such as a policeman, fireman, farmer, factory worker etc. are much more important than being a typical office worker.
Finally, you may want to listen to Steve Pavlina’s podcast about defining your purpose.