For the last three weeks I have been visiting friends in the western part of Germany while taking a short side trip to the Alsace region in eastern France. It’s been quite awhile since I last visited them (18 years) and this trip was a reward to myself after completing a long and emotionally difficult task caring for a passing loved one. In addition to reconnecting with old friends and enjoying their company, my goal was to think about defining new goals for myself and this project. I am immensely grateful to my friends that hosted me in Germany – Wolfsheim, Butzbach, and Wiesbaden – and to those that shared their time with me. They were all extremely generous and I look forward to returning the favor for each and every one of them. My guest bedroom is all yours.
In April of 2020 I tacitly put this project on hold. The aforementioned family matters required my full attention and researching, writing, and creating videos for BBC couldn’t be the priority. I consider myself very lucky that I had the ability and the support network of my friends and Lady Barbell so that I could take the time to serve a man that had so faithfully served me, for so many years. Now that he has passed, and I have my feet back under me, I am ready to start working on this passion project once again. So, what to do…?
Goals
The primary goal for BBC stays the same – To research and adapt the ancestral cuisines of the world into useful fitness meals that are enjoyable to eat – presenting this material in a dark, humorous, and sophisticated heavy metal style. I’ll post new content as I finish it, and only if I think you will find it useful. I don’t care about schedules, clicks, or monetization goals. I have always envisioned BBC as an education endeavor, not an influencer or content factory.
“Utility” is the watchword.
Lifting Goals
For many years I have been working a standard bodybuilding four-day split. It works in that I don’t have to put much thought into it, but lately I’ve been getting bored and I have been feeling the need to expand my lifting routine. What I want is to gain some more power, but I don’t want to give up chasing ‘gainz’ either. Enter Powerbuilding – attempting to thread the needle to have both strength and size gains. My initial hesitation is that a powerbuilding program won’t be particularly stellar at producing either quickly, but I must remember this is a marathon, not a sprint. If I get both but more slowly than focusing on either one, I can live with that.
So, over the next couple of weeks I will further educate myself and design a basic powerbuilding program to work over the summer.
Dietary Goals
I’m going Vegan.
Ha! No fucking way!
I think I do need to adjust a few things however. During my vacation some minor digestion issues I had subsided as I ate (and drank) like my German friends. This might be due to higher quality bread and alcohol. So, I plan on cutting my portion sizes a bit, and cutting the frequency of booze. The alcohol that I will consume will be of a higher quality. I’m thinking way less beer, and better wine and whiskey. That means more money. But less and better booze when I do have it? Sounds like a decent trade to me.
As for bread, I make my own anyway so I just need to give up any commercial breads I get while eating out.
Since it’s almost summer I am going to do a deep dive on great slaws and salads combined with high quality protein. Almost all of my meat comes from local ranchers so the protein category isn’t an issue.
Domestic Goals
A big challenge to producing new video content comes in the form of two young Maine Coon kittens we adopted a few months ago. If any of you have survived kittenhood before you will instantly understand my meaning. At eight months of age everything, damn near everything is a toy to be scratched, smacked around, rolled on, sat on, slept on, barfed on, and covered with cat hair. So I am having to develop some new habits to mitigate their willful destruction of humanity and civilization.
This involves a reorganization of my kitchen space and tools as well as finding other protective equipment and procedures for furniture, carpets, knick-knacks, and even my damn stereo!
I love them dearly tho.
It seems I have much work to do this summer.
The journey is awesome, I hope it is for you as well.
~will
