AndyJ's Body Enhancement Thread

date: 09/01/2022 - monthly progress report
PE day: 771
keto day: cycle 2/day 82

weight: 11/2021 347# — today 270# (-77#)
waist: 11/2021 63” — today 50.5” (-12.5”)
thighs: 11/2021 32” - today 28” (-4”)
upper arms: 11/2021 17.5” — today 14.75” (-3”)

BP: 11/2021 140-175 — today 100-115
glucose: 11/2021 95-105 — today (same)
BMI: 11/2021 50 — today 39.6 (-10.4)
lung volume: 11/2021 2000 — today 2800 ml
pulse pressure (systolic-diastolic): 11/2021 58.2 — today 50.6 (-7.6)
SpO2: 11/2021 97.5 — today 95.9 (-1.6)
- (odd, but the cardiac guy didn’t see anything wrong with it)

NBPFSL: 07/2020 5-1/2” — 07/2022 7-3/8” (+1.875”)
still can’t get repeatable BPEL measurements

prescription drugs:

Lisinopril (blood pressure)
testosterone cypionate (TRT)

dietary supplements:

[general health]
D3 (low D3 on blood labs)
zinc gluconate or zinc picolinate (beef tolerance)
copper (helps with zinc uptake)
calcium (preventive measure for osteoporosis w-aging)
iron (supposed to be helpful for low blood oxygen levels, fatigue)

[EQ]
L-Arginine
boron (occasionally)
celery seed extract

[nootropic]
magnesium sulfate
B12
gingko biloba
lecithin (sunflower)
L-Carnitine

unresolved medical issues:
left knee replacement (waiting for magic BMI number)
hernia repair (waiting for magic BMI number)

My homemade ADS/ANS rig.

The strap is the “neck strap” part of a cheap eBay vacuum ADS I bought some time ago. It’s elastic. I need to change it out for some plain flat nylon strap soon. The elastic doesn’t last when you sweat on it.

The ring is 2-1-/2” stainless steel. A 2” ring fits my shaft nicely, but you have to put it on before putting the sleeve and bell on, and it’s a hassle doing it that way. The 2-1/2” ring lets me put the sleeve and bell on normally, then slide the ring over. It’s actually something metric - 60 or 65mm - by 8mm thick. I may try a slightly smaller ID ring, 10mm thick later.

The matchbox thing is a “Gear Keeper.” It’s a constant-tension reel that is intended to clip to a belt or vest, so you can hang a microphone, flashlight, etc., pull it out to use it, and then it retracts like a tape measure. This one has a 3/4 pound pull. They make them up to 3 pounds pull, but I haven’t bought one yet. So it’s never going to be a high-tension device. I guess you could add another Gear Keeper in parallel, though.

I added the split ring and snap hook. The Gear Keepers come with a variety of attachment methods; I have a 1/2 pound keeper with entirely different arrangements.

So; put the vacuum bell on, slide the ring over and down, loop the strap around my butt, and pull the snap hook out and attach it to the loop on the bell. The Gear Keeper and cable ride in the crease where my thigh meets my abdomen, as does the bell and my shaft. There’s no discomfort, though the blocky shape of the Gear Keeper is noticeable sometimes. My wife says nothing prints even when I’m going commando.

The previous arrangement didn’t include the Gear Keeper. I kept getting blisters on my glans. You can’t really judge the tension from the elastic, and if I arranged it for a reasonable tug while standing, it would tug a *lot* harder when I sat down. With the Gear Keeper, tension is always 3/4 pound, no matter what position I’m in.

With the Gear Keeper, as long as there’s some cable unreeled to start with, tension remains at the Gear Keeper’s

I think that’s the 33mm Total Man bell. I could measure it, but it would require actually getting up and walking into the next room, and my action-fu is weak today.

The sleeve started out as 23mm, but it has stretched in diameter. So far it has lasted a lot longer than the two 25mm sleeves I used up. I don’t think the issue is girth as much as it being stretched to be folded over the bell for entry and exit. I try not to stretch it any more than necessary, but it adds up over time.

I never could get one of the standard 20mm sleeves to work; they weren’t stretchy enough to fold over the bell, at least without more strength than I have. But sleeves vary a lot in stretchiness. So far I haven’t torn a sleeve, unless you count the blue 20mm one that came with the first vacuum bell. It split where it was pulled over the bell, and when I cut pieces off to make stayer rings, those tore too. I think it was just a bad sleeve; it never lasted long enough to use.

Now that the scar is mostly gone I’ve put the 2-1/8” tube aside and gone back to the Froehle “anatomical” tube. It’s about 1-7/8” inside. It doesn’t have a graduated scale, but it has a glans shape molded in. Over the last few weeks I’ve watched my in-tube length slowly grow from almost there, right there, and now slowly past there. Apparently the model or patternmaker had an extremely long glans, because I still have maybe 1-1/2” to go before I run out of tube.

The ball pocket has managed to tease my testicles down out of my abdomen again. The “whole package” opening shape promotes that somehow. I had pretty much given up on ball pumping when I was mostly using the 2-1/8” tube; now that the Froele is pulling them down, I’ve been pumping them. For some reason the 2-1/8” isn’t comfortable at all, even with the wide rolled edge; the 2-1/4” tube’s simple not-sharp opening is much more comfortable. It’s definitely counterintuitive. At one to two hours the edge starts to sting a bit, though. I need to start searching for a soft opening gasket again. LA Pump makes a nice gasket, but it only fits their tubes, which have a wide, flat flange. [pauses at keyboard] There’s no reason I can’t make a flange on the lathe and glue it on. I think I’ll order one of the LA Pump gaskets.

This morning I had to replace my vacuum extender sleeve again. It had stretched until it wouldn’t reliably hold vacuum any more.

The first two sleeves were 25mm inside diameter. The one I just replaced, and its replacement, were 23mm. The 23mm didn’t last noticeably longer than the 25s; about 10 weeks. I have the hours I wore the sleeves logged, but I didn’t note when I changed them until today. I’ll go through the thread and see if I bitched about it last time.

I was showing my wife how it had stretched; I dropped the fresh 23mm sleeve through the hole of the stretched one. She said not to worry about it, she’d pay for the replacements when I needed them.

Well, then.

These have all been eBay China imports. I might have to try some of the more-expensive sleeves from Autoextender, Total Man, or LG.

It’s not so much their short lifetime, it’s that when they start to occasionally pass air up into the bell, it sometimes causes a blister. I hate blisters on my glans. And a couple of times they’ve simply pulled right off when I was moving about, and that hurts.

I’ve been using the exercise machine lately, after figuring out different ways to do stuff. It would have helped if the manufacturer’s instructions weren’t generic across a whole range of machines. Plus some stuff wasn’t mentioned; I guess they figured the customers would know what to do.

The abdominal hernia makes it hard to lay down on the weight bench, so I’ve mostly been using it in the sitting position; overhead presses with the barbell and concentration curls with a dumbbell. I also lean on it for dumbbell rows.

I don’t know why, but for some reason Zottman curls are fun.

The leg strap for hip adduction and abduction didn’t work out. The lightest pull on the exercise machine’s lower pulley is 40 pounds, and that’s more than my knees can handle, apparently. I had doubts, but I tried anyway. Took a couple of days before I could walk without depending heavily on the cane, but you never know if you don’t try. I’ll be able to use it after I get new knees.

Adapting the machine for paddling may not be practical; I think it would be a great back exercise, but the way the weights and pulleys work, it would be a Rube Goldberg nightmare that would have to be attached to use, and then all the bits would have to be stored when not in use. That’s a good start toward “use it a couple of times, and then it stays in the box forever.”

The freaking speed bag drum and frame still aren’t finished, more a lack of time than anything else. My “uptime” - the time I can be up on my feet - is still only a few hours, but it’s improving as I continue to lose weight.

Great job Andy.

Thanks, Andy! I didn’t reply because it was nice seeing someone else’s name alongside the thread title for a while.

I’ve been stuck on 270# for weeks now. But though I haven’t lost any weight, my body shape has been changing noticeably. My waist is still going down, but my biceps are getting larger, and there’s hard muscle here and there under the layer of fat. I can see veins and tendons in my hands and the lower half of my firearms. My face is narrower and it looks like I’ve aged ten years. I expected that, but I didn’t forsee that it would cause problems with the fit of my CPAP mask.

I got out to the exercise equipment before daylight today and put almost two hours in. Today was ‘shoulder day’ again. Just a few weeks ago I would have been completely wrecked; today I didn’t even work up a sweat. I expect the loss of fat is being balanced by some muscle gain; just recovering and toning up what I used to have, not anything new yet. I’m still well below the strength I had a few years ago, but progress has been gratifyingly rapid.

Before; I had the usual big belly. That’s now 13” smaller. I recently added chest and abdominal measurements as well as the weekly waist measurements. Technically, I’m slightly “wasp-waisted” now, since the abdominal roll is the largest dimension, then the chest, then across the belly button. We’re only talking an inch or two, though.

Change is gradual, and without the meticulous record-keeping I would probably have given up long ago.

Definitely going great here Andy. I think you are correct sounds like the muscle gain is balancing wlthe fat loss. Keep it up!

As I understand it, you don’t gain muscle that fast. I figure what’s happening is that toned muscle is heavier than flabby muscle. And a lot bulkier. I can make a bicep now, and feel separate muscles in my forearms; a few weeks ago, there was nothing to see and not much to feel.

I expect the “muscle gains” will slow or stop abruptly as I reach equilibrium with exercise. I’m okay with that. Also, keto isn’t the right diet for body building or strength training, and I don’t want to give the arthritis and allergy benefits from keto.

Just wanted to say “Great Job”! I like how you keep record of this. Helps to keep you on track I’m sure. Keep up the losses in one area and gains in the other. You got this!

Muscles retain water after the initial bulk from extra blood pumping in them wears off but yeah that would be a one off affect not continuous. The muscle would definitely be affecting the weight loss a bit. Maybe measure to see how the muscles are growing, knowing you you are probably measuring already?

Was reading an article the other day where they measured muscle growth, of people weight training, with ultrasound. They said it takes roughly 3 months before muscle mass is noticeable to the naked eye

You may not even need that CPAP when you get down to your target weight - who knows…

It’s possible… most people have “obstructive” sleep apnea, where weight loss can sometimes make a difference; I have “central” sleep apnea, where the part of my brain that’s supposed to make me breathe occasionally sits there eating nachos and watching TV instead of doing its damned job.

On the other hand, like so many other medical conditions, central sleep apnea crops up for no particular reason, and sometimes goes away the same way.

I use a Resmed 9 machine, which saves data on an SDcard, and a program called Oscar that reads it and makes nice graphs. I can see the number of apnea events has dropped off sharply in the last six months. The weight loss isn’t supposed to make any difference to central sleep apnea, but there you are. I added a few CPAP columns to my mega-spreadsheet a while back, and went back and filled them in back to the beginning of the year.

One unexpected thing the CPAP fixed: I used to have insomnia, even when I was a child. I’d lay there for hours sometimes, trying to sleep. With the CPAP, I pull the mask on and I’m asleep almost instantly.

I have the seamstress tape I use for measuring girth; I began using it for other measurements as I started to lose weight.

chest, waist, abdomen
biceps, thighs
neck (it’s the new BMI fad)

I group a bunch of ‘maintenance’ stuff together when I do my weekly testosterone injection. There’s some jitter in the measurements, but they trend generally down, except the biceps have started going back up. I expect that won’t last long; the muscles are firming up, but they’re probably not going to do get much bigger in the near term, so I expect the diameter will start going back down as I continue to lose fat. Unfortunately the saggy fat-old-man skin left behind isn’t going to shrink, but it’s not like I was handsome before, either.

That passes the ‘it sounds reasonable’ test, anyway.