He didn't want that appendix anyways and Week 1 of Prep!

Hey friends! Sorry I went all MIA this week, it's been a doozy of a past couple of days. I'm scheduled to take my real estate licensing exam this weekend and when I have a deadline like that I tend to get useless for everything else! Dumb, I know. Also, I had a phone interview yesterday for a sales position that I think went very well, fingers are crossed, and then.....Vic got appendicitis. What a first week of prep, huh? He had been complaining about pain in his stomach all week, we just assumed that maybe it was indigestion or gas and so we tried to treat it that way. I had my appendix removed in college and by the time I knew something was wrong it was damn near bursting and I couldn't stand or move around at all. Vic's work has a clinic on site and the doctor told him "yeah, that is probably appendicitis, you need to get to the hospital" and the nerd went back up to work and finished out a meeting before driving himself to the hospital! He had surgery last night and was actually able to convince them to send him home instead of staying overnight, he's resting now and seems to be well on his way to feeling better!

The rest of the week has essentially just been entertaining the kids between rain storms (yay for the first day of summer rain, poop on that weather) and studying for this exam. I actually found an app that allows me to run through tests and study questions which is a much easier format to work on as opposed to just running through powerpoint slides. I haven't talked a whole lot about going back to work, but I've been looking at different options for the last few months, waiting to see if something particularly awesome grabbed at me. The awesome part is not having to return to work, but being able to be picky about it, but I'm used to having a job and contributing to the family and the kids actually want to be with other kids in daycare/preschool, so I'm on board with testing out the waters. I'm pretty excited about the interview I had yesterday, I'll let you know when I hear back!

But, on to prep. I started this out at 139 pounds, a lot of which was water weight from birth control snafu's and Disneyland trips, so while that number freaked me out, I knew that it would go down relatively quickly.

Last week ---> This week

I started with roughly 16 weeks to play with, so I'm excited to have a good amount of time to whittle down to stage ready. I was about 125 pounds at the Arnold, so I imagine we will have to get close to that again. My starting macros are much higher than they've ever been on prep before and that's exciting! In fact, my carb target for training days is the same as my carb target for my refeeds last prep. For those that don't understand those terms, my coach has me carb cycling. So, I have numbers to hit on training days (higher carb), numbers to hit on off days (lower carb) and refeed days which happen once a week right now and involve much higher carbs to up your glycogen stores and keep you from going totally bonkers, and lower fat to help level out calorie intake. If you are interested in learning more about carb cycling just comment below or send me an email at c.kassel@yahoo.com! I use carb cycling with my clients as well.

Last week ---> This week

I had mentioned previously that I wanted to coordinate these prep updates with some information about Parkinson's disease, considering that my prep is fueled by my Grandmother this time around. The frustrating thing about PD is that they don't know why it happens, and right now all you can really hope to do is use various methods to deal with symptoms. They do know that PD affects the neurons that produce dopamine, killing them and reducing the overall production of dopamine. Dopamine signals the brain on how to move and coordinate one's movements, so as these levels decrease so does your ability to control your movements and coordination. While everyone thinks about tremors when it comes to PD, balance is a huge factor in subsequent injuries and frustration because falling can happen quite often.

As I mentioned before, they don't really have a handle on any way to say "this causes PD", but they have found a number of genetic and environmental factors that they believe play a part. Let's chat real quick about what the Parkinson's Disease Foundation has identified as potentially protective environmental factors, some of which I find exciting. Again, they haven't been able to really nail down anything for sure because PD is such an obnoxious disease to study, but they have found a decrease in the development and prevalence of symptoms when patients are exposed Vitamin D, exercise and caffeine. What does this tell me? This reinforces that developing healthy habits of getting outside, getting exercise and my coffee addiction may be helpful in the long term, haha. The studies on caffeine were small, but showed that adding caffeine to the routine of patients didn't help with sleepiness, but their motor functions were improved. People that have higher Vitamin D levels are at a lower risk of ever developing PD, and the brain benefits of exercise help keep pathways and productions healthy, not to mention that reinforcing mind muscle connections and muscle memory can help with the balance and gait issues that come with PD.

Ok, this got long! It might seem like all of the above is just useless information because there isn't a lot to support anything, and that's what is so frustrating about when I hear about the trips to the numerous doctors that my Mom takes my Grandmother to. Everything is "well, let's try this for a while" and there isn't a whole lot to go on. Ugh. For now, I'm going to ensure that I take the best care of my body in the most basic ways possible, get outside, get moving, eat well, challenge my brain. It's all I can do at the moment to hopefully reduce the genetic likelihood of developing PD myself, since I have a pretty close relative with PD.

That's all for today, folks! Happy Thursday and we'll talk soon!