AndyJ's Body Enhancement Thread

Now that the “penis repair/rehab” phase is done (quite satisfactorily, thanks in large part to Thunder’s) I’m moving on to enhancement/enlargement, which I will report on periodically.

The rest of my body can use some help, so I’m starting a diet and exercise plan, which may be of less interest to most forum members.

I have an abdominal hernia that needs to be fixed, I need a knee replacement, and I need surgery on a disc in my back. These are all long-term problems, but they’ve been getting worse. No local hospital will touch me, even though I’m in reasonably good health otherwise. They’re all part of the BMI cult.

Beginning stats 07/14/2021:

age: 63
weight: 347#
waist: 63”
thighs: 32”
upper arms: 17.5”
BMI: 50
BP: 140-175
glucose: 95-105

Despite being a fat dude I was active and fairly strong, at least for upper-body strength. After almost two years of being ill just shy of bedridden, I have no strength or stamina at all. Everything that used to be muscle is fat. I’m the same weight I was three years ago, but much larger.

I have some curvature of the spine from poor posture. I’m allegic to… almost everything. And I have arthritis, which is linked to the allergy thing. It shows up on X-rays of my back, shoulders, and neck. I have central sleep apnea, adequately treated with a CPAP machine, which I use 100%.

On the plus side, I’m not diabetic, which has upset and confused various doctors. The arthritis isn’t the kind that fossilizes your joints. And while fat and decrepit, I’m in reasonably good general health - no heart, kidney, or liver problems. White blood cell count has been high for several years, but the lab and the doc say it’s not leukemia.

I am not currently taking any prescription medications. I have been taking some supplements - Vitamin D, zinc, L-Arginine, and L-Triptophan, mostly - for about a year.

So what is your plan?

Though I’d like to give the Netflix-and-Doritos Diet a fair try, it looks like I’ll try the usual exercise-and-keto thing.

Hi Andy,

I turn 58 this week. I’m 6” tall and weigh ~218 lbs. I’m down 20 lbs from my max of 235-240 and have another ~20 more to go to get around 190 lbs.
My BMI of 29 is just barely under the obese range. I agree that BMI is more accurate on at the population level, but non of us here are unicorns. Even my goal weight is still classified as slightly over weight by BMI. Making slow progress on my part.

Diets, all the different ones, will drive you nuts. Since you’re an old guy like me how many diets have we heard over the course of our lives? There was,Scarsdale diet, pineapple diet, Atkins diet, the South Beach diet, and on an on. Now we have keto and heaven knows what else. Do you want to know what works? Eat a little less, and I mean a little less and increase your exercise,a bit more weekly and you’ll lose 1/2 to 3/4 of a pound per week which is the healthy way to do it and still let you live.

That’s a calorie is a calorie nonsense. If you understand that the body needs a certain amount of nutrients and you eat the nutrient dense foods and eschew nutrient poor foods (and that includes half the fats keto suggests) you reach a point of being satiated and you don’t want to eat any more food and you’ll be taking in less calories.

Andy,

Do you eat liver? (preferably not cooked much)

What about steak or lamb? (and when you eat them do you eat all the fat and gristle).

These are nutrient rich foods in a bioavailable form. If you concentrate on them and don’t eat processed foods or seed oils, the weight will fall off.

You can lose weight either going high fat low sugar (carbs) or very low fat high sugar (carbs). Try one way and if your gut rebels try the other way. What most processed foods are is high (trans)fat high sugar.

Also taking vitamin D is OK but being in the sun is better (if possible). When you take zinc (which is necessary for the body) it can be out of whack with all the other things your body needs to use that zinc (for example copper). If you get these things in foods (like liver) they tend to have the complementary parts as well (even the complementary parts that science hasn’t named yet). Strange what happens when you eat closer to what we evolved eating before agriculture came along 14k years ago.

Carnivore.Diet | Real People Real Results

From the name of that diet, it doesn’t sound like there is anything nutritious about it. Will you also take a vitamin pill or something? Are you only allowed to drink water?

I don’t want to give you a hard time, just keep your nutrition up.

Just a little add on but if you lose 100 lbs which should take you about a year and a half if done right you can kiss your CPAC machine goodbye,

gprent,

Keto was developed by the Mayo Clinic to combat epileptic seizures. It mimics certain parts of the fasting state. It’s great for epilepsy and found a wider audience for weight loss. But you can also gain weight on keto because there are lots of recipes to tweak sweet tooths and though they might use things like stevia to provide the sweetness, they still taste like processed foods and are easy to over consume in the same way. So when you are making keto cheesecake daily and putting on the weight. it’s time to reconsider.

I like your full stat listing it’s a pretty cool idea.

I have a cousin who has done keto for past 3 years or so. It’s really done a lot for her. She sticks to it pretty rigidly and then has her cheat day for Sunday or whatever.
I don’t usually buy into the whole cult diet stuff and I’m not really disciplined enough to try it myself I like cookies too much. But it really did seem to do a lot for her. I think the main premise is tossing all the excess sugars and grains.

If you are able to directly control what you eat as in the person that buys the food for your house I’d really be interested in your feedback on it as time goes by.

I tried pitching it to my wife who is the person that buys the food for the house but she’s Hispanic and very attached to rice and tortillas.

First - congratulations for deciding to take this on - all my support is with you.

Agree with everything Memento said.

My humble opinion for what it’s worth is seeing a registered dietitian to get on a realistic and healthy plan - that focuses on nutrient dense Whole Foods.

If you can walk for some distance every morning then that would be a great start. Call it the newbie routine (even if you were an pro athlete earlier in life)

Do keto and low carb and carb cycling later - like with PE there’s no quick fix. You need to focus on changing lifestyle first.

I was put on my first medically-supervised diet at age 13, when I hit 200 pounds. It didn’t work. Neither did any of the other diet plans I tried. My weight went up to 350-ish and has been stable there for the last 25 years.

A few months ago I came across an article denouncing a guy named Gary Taubes and his crackbrained idea that all calories aren’t the same. The more I read, the more I was interested; what Taubes was saying dovetailed nicely into things I know from personal experience. I ordered one of his books, (Good Calories, Bad Calories), and was persuaded he might be on to something. So I’m going to give it a try.

Lamb is not a thing where I live. I would eat dog food before I would eat liver. I consider beef to be a basic food group, but my slight beef allergy has gotten much worse, and now I can only handle small amounts a few times a week. Fat and gristle are technically edible, but they taste bad and why bother?

Pity: liver, kidneys, brains have important nutrients in them that aren’t represented much in muscle meat. So your body will ask for more food when all you need is food with better nutrients.

Why bother, I guess because animals are the closest things to our bodies and so eating skin and cartilage provides the things our skin and cartilage needs (it’s made of the same stuff). Drinking bone broth helps too.

Good calories, bad calories is a good book but Taubes gets some things wrong (as we all do).

How does a beef allergy work? I mean have you had tested what exactly it is that causes a problem and what is the problem that it causes? If you have loads of detail, I’m really interested - it’s so rare. How are you intending to get the protein element of keto?

Beef: mostly rash, sometimes shortness of breath. Which is very annoying. I’m having a fresh allergy workup done next week; I’ll try to remember to ask if there’s anything special about a beef allergy.

Protein: chicken, pork, and turkey, primarily. Fish would be okay, but in the local market, any kind of fish that’s not breaded and frozen is expensive, and there would be preparation problems. Same for shellfish.

> Taubes gets some things wrong (as we all do).

No doubt. And his detractors are downright lyrical. On the other claw, what he says tracks almost exactly with my personal experience, so I’m willing to give his ideas a try.