I reluctantly quit coffee and then caffeine entirely. Yup, chocolate, mate, tea all of it. Tomorrow I will be 8 weeks 100% caffeine free.  I have no doubts about the negative effects of caffeine and have been so happy to see the benefits to my health. My anxiety is largely gone, my sleep is deep, my energy is stable and I'm past the body aches and getting back into working out. The workouts are different as I'm not on stimulants I can have a much more controlled and stable experience. My body composition seems different in subtle ways. I feel like I am healing at a very deep level and it is hard to explain.
I have been 100% drug, alcohol ect free during this process and it has been a true test to my thinking not having a substance as earlier in life I was a heavy drinker and smoker as well as a fat over eater. This has been the first time in my life I have been completely free of any any addictions. No unnatural nootropics, no nicotine, nothing. In some ways it has been amazing and in other ways it has been really frustrating. It has been hard on my moods. I find myself longing for something to help get me through my long days. Wishing I had some distraction from my hard moments. At the same time I feel my nervous system repairing and that I am far less effected things in my environment. In some ways I feel like I can be more strong in myself. I think my nervous system can handle more as I am not spending several hours a day in a parasympathetic dominant state. I miss the ritual of it but how quickly I forget the shakes and racing thoughts. It has allowed me to see just how addicted people are to any number of substances. My strict intermittent fasting has helped me to see this even more clearly. So many health issues that people have make sense when viewed through the lense of addiction. how many people are worried about toxins in their food while drinking caffeine which the liver has to work so hard to process out.
When I quit drinking or did my weight loss I really believed that my success would be impressive to others. I wanted to be inspirational overcoming so many obstacles. This was my ego hoping for a reward for my effort. Last year I lost 45 pounds and got very light, I posted my before and after pics. I thought people would see how fat I was or how I grew up fat or learn about my alcoholism and I would end up on Oprah or something. I was wrong. I'm a grown man and I have done my changes for me. There is no prize waiting for you beyond your own self respect. Self respect comes from self discipline and my self respect is worth more to me than anything else I have.

I will admit I have had the hardest time with the chocolate. I miss it and that is definitely what seems to call me the most often. I tell myself I can have chocolate again, just not today. I have said it every day.
I still get a sensation in my head like the caffeine head ache about every other day. This doesn't hurt and I'm guessing that my brain is continuing to acclimate to the increased blood flow.

If you are trying to quit any substance stick with it. It is both important for your health but also for self mastery. No one not even me would have believed what I have over come. With all these physical addictions gone I hope to focus those resources on my inner addictions and weaknesses. Which seems like an even greater task. I see why most never get past the physical struggles as the inner work is like standing in front of a mountain that has to be moved one handful at a time. But I look back at who I was and am so proud of the things I have learned and who I have become. My progress keeps pushing me further and further toward my goal of self mastery and truly being aware. you8 don't know who you really are until you are standing with no crutches. 

As always my favorite quote (I don't know the source)
"You never know if the problem you face is fundamentally unsolvable or if you are one step away from solving it."
The quote haunts me as the failures and things I have given up on may have been so close to complete so keep going. How sad to quit right before you strike gold. ​
I'm going to keep going. 

212 down to 166
​To see all my before and after pics go to 

2018 has been an amazing year. This time last year I was in a rut. I knew too much information but had no idea how to convert it into practicality. I went back to Rochester NY were I grew up, in January to face my demons. I did and it took a lot out of me. It took about 2 months to recover from that trip. The emotional and physical are connected. but then as the spring came I decided that it was time to make a real change and figure out how to get actually healthy. I started by dumping everything I knew onto what be came
The Archive on this site. i then decided that I wanted to see how much progress I could make if I really tried for 6 months. So I took the above picture was taken at the beginning of May. I didn't take a before picture at first as I was so ashamed of how I looked but as soon as I did and saw my face I knew things had to change. 
​I started bu coming up with an equation for how much to eat that would allow me to loose fat but maintain strength by rotating days. Having a Day 1 High Carb low fat that I would lift on and a Day 2 that would be high fat for recovery. I thought to myself how frustrating it was to try and do the math to figure the numbers and how someone should make a calculator to do it. 
This became www.AlexanderCalculator.com
Which I am very proud to have available to everyone who wants to start a weight loss journey but doesn't know where. 
I then applied these numbers to a 24 hour clock and then plugged that into a week and then a month. This became wwwAlexanderProtocol.com
​A site ( that may some day be fully automated) but shows how 
Calories, Macros, Micro Nutrients, Exercise & Time all matter and how to fit them all together synergistic to accomplish goals. I've been working with other and helping them to see how all these things fit together too. 
This all took a lot of trial and error but the weight started coming off. I thought maybe I would get to 195 from 212 but the weight just kept coming off. this external change was simply an indicator of internal change as people, and things in my life seems ed to be falling off as well. When people see you get healthier and happier it shows you whether they are real friends or not. I amazed at how much I have heard your too smart or too skinny (normally from people that I think need to learn more or loose weight) 
I finished the 6 months on DEC 1 of 2018 and am now doing some new protocols that can be found Rob On The Protocol
I am so excited to see what 2019 brings. 
I plan on continuing to do this blog build the site and keep learning. 
Happy New Year - Do Something Different in 2019

I'm excited I didn't think I would get down to the 170's. The amount has slowed which I would expect now just chipping away at my belly. 

Started at 212 now 180.6 - 32 pounds, 1/6 of my body gone - strength maintained.
​
I'm happy with my progress. I'm supersized how much fat I have left at 180. I can't remember the last time I was in the 170's that will be exciting. 

I'm guessing I'll be done between 170-175 depending ion water ect. 

I'll keep you posted.

I didn't take my weight when I first started at 212 but am now 186.0 
Down 26 pounds while maintaining my strength. 
Note that I am not Keto and have not cut water this is true fat loss. 

I'm sure that I can get down to 180 with just fat loss. I should hit that mid November based on my current trends. 

If you have noticed I have been developing the protocol and updating this site. I am pretty excited about how my personal progress is going and the progress of the site. 
So much content here now. Keep checking and I'll keep adding to it. 

I weighed in this morning at 190.0 so close to breaking into the 180's but I have to keep in mind what I keep telling myself on this site. Weight isn't the goal, fat loss is. I'm trying to maintain strength and change my body composition. At some point my weight loss will stop and my body will continue to change. I don't think I've hit that yet but I can tell the lower my weight gets the slower the fat loss. 
The good news is that my belt is about to go down to the next spot and that is a better indicator of progress than the scale. 
It is amazing just how much fat we keep on our bodies I'm guessing I can loose another 5-10 pounds of fat. 
So far down about 22 pounds total in 3 and a half months so right on track 

The best part of this is that I feel really good. My workouts are getting really fun and I'm loving my routines. I've been going long enough to start to feel the benefits. I find myself thinking  how great my life is which is not a head space I have spent enough time in. Happy to be in it though. 

In todays My Thoughts Blog I wrote about big long term changes coming from small short term changes. This is a chart of my weight loss I weigh myself every day.

Disclaimer: As always I am interested in fat loss not weight loss and the scale isn't the best measurement as I could go keto and cut water, glycogen, muscle and waste causing weight loss and not have any of it be fat loss.

But I am interested in the trend of body fat loss and the scale is one way to see this. 
It is important to see how many times the chart goes up and to see the trend down. I weigh myself naked every morning at the same time fasted as a constant. I have been doing the same program this entire time. The graph shows about two months. In that time I have lost a good amount of weight. If I had weighed myself and not stuck to the plan the spikes up would have been discouraging and made me quit. I'm not done yet but it is good to see the trend. This is a visual for other goals I have in my life some tangible and others more conceptual. Learning looks like this, consistency is the key. In this process I have made very small adjustments to the existing program to see what would happen. Tracking helps me to run mini tests within the bigger test to optimize the process and it's all happening in real time. 

I hope that my wisdom and knowledge graph looks like this but trending up of coarse. That's the goal.

On this site I have tried to emphasize the importance of fat loss instead of weight loss. I do weigh myself daily to see trends and typically my weight fluctuates with a downward trend. I have actually charted this out. 

The bad news - On my Day 3 lifting (see My Routine) high rep workout I do several exercises that have been tracked to see see how my strength  trends as I loose weight.
For a very long time this has trended up yesterday I wasn't able to do near as many. I look at this in a few ways
​1. I did crossfit the day before - I had been taking a recovery day in between this but with my schedule this week I wanted to fit both workout in and I was sore 
2. I had my weekly 44 hour fast on Monday-Tuesday and went straight into my crossfit workout and intermittent fasting I just don't think I had the food/carbs in me to push it
3......which is also the good news is I weighed in this morning at 192.4 
This is a new low and it means I have lost 20 Pounds since I started  I think this recent weight loss push has caused my strength to decline some which is ok, it happens. keep in mind that I am eating carbs so this weight is not me cut down from keto shedding my water weight. 

I have not been doing a cheat day as my weight has continued to dip and I have been feeling light. My weight loss has been consistent over the past few months but recently I feel like I just plain can't eat as much in my window as my stomach seems to have shrunk. This fullness is new to me as I have always been able to just keep eating and not get full. 

I'm guessing my weight will go back up a little and then continue to trend down as it has as long as I've been tracking it. Looking at my current body I think getting down to 185 would be good. I can't imagine being 180 and not looking sick but we'll see how things continue to progress. 

In other interesting news I have been taking 3mg of Boron for the past few months and stumbled a across an interesting video showing studies that for testosterone enhancement 3mg showed no change but 6-12mg is a better amount. I am going to up my dose to 9mg today and 6 tomorrow rotating back and forth skipping my fasting day. We'll see what this does for me. I'll keep you posted.
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www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4712861/