Who doesn't love pros and cons?

 Hey gang.

Alrighty, so yesterday's jiu jitsu was a mix of pros and cons, but overall I'm proud of my progress. We did open-guard/X-guard stuff, which I am notoriously terrible at.

Overall...

Pros:

- I rolled! 
- I didn't get tapped!
- I wore a mouthguard for the first time in years and it wasn't totally terrible. I've been lucky in the past, but I feel I'm way overdue for a punch in the face/knee to chin mishap. Do not want a terrible teeth accident.
- Managed an ankle lock on a much bigger dude

Cons:

- Said ankle lock on bigger dude was purely opportunistic...he was 5 seconds away from gi choking me and I probably wasn't supposed to do that to a white belt (well...blue with white in the middle? I don't understand the new belt system)
- I wussed out before the time was really up
- Rolled with smaller white belt dude and spent the entire time in turtle and/or with him having my back. 

More pros: Put on a shirt today that I haven't worn in a while (because last time I tried it was too small :( ) and it fits me now. So maybe something is happening there. Although the number on the scale says otherwise...

More Cons: I have mixed feelings about using scale numbers to monitor progress. Obviously it tells you nothing about body composition, but it would be nice to have some easy way to track progress. I have one of those body-fat-percentage measuring scales but I find that feature to be pretty much useless. Back in the day when I lost a bunch of weight, it had the nerve to tell me I had a higher body fat percentage than before I started training. Wrong! I can see the muscles!! I think it just spits out random numbers.

I'm not totally married to the idea of an "ideal number" for my weight, but it would be nice to be able to track meaningful changes on a regular basis so I can see what's going on.

Even more f'n pros: The no-dairy experiment seems to be working. For those that don't know, I stopped eating dairy of all kinds (milk, cheese, etc.) November 1st. I've had psoriasis for years and it seems to get much worse as winter comes. It gets dry, itchy, and quite painful. On a whim, I decided to try some diet experiments. The two biggest culprits (so I've heard) are diary and grain. Since I don't eat much grain to begin with, I thought I'd give no dairy in my diet a whirl. And guess what! It's been a few weeks and my psoriasis seems to be disappearing. It's practically gone from my arms. My shins are a lot less red. I don't need to bathe myself in moisturizer every morning. I slipped up last weekend and had cream in my coffee, and that night my legs were itchy and a little sore. Would it happen that quickly? I don't know. Is it in my head? It's possible. But I don't think so. I ran my hand over my forearm yesterday and shocked myself at how it felt.

In other news (a definite con), I ripped my red leather jacket this morning :( Maybe now I will attract fewer weirdos, but I love that thing. (recent selections include "Um... I need to tell you that your jacket is OBSCENELY red" and  "Is that your lucky red jacket? It looks like your lucky red jacket. P.S. I'm a writer/fortune teller/creepy people-watcher/pick-up-artist can I see your hand and tell you your fortune? I think we have a special connection.")


So yea. Pros and Cons. Love them. Tonight is weight training with N (and her friend who I have yet to meet) then the inevitable (a little dreaded) undergrad roomie reunion....ugh. As my current roomie A advised me this morning, "poop jokes will help break the ice". Maybe I'll give normal conversation a try, and leave that as option #2.... (see what I did there?)

Ciao

- G