The Cat’s Corner

Well for those keeping track, as of two weeks ago, I’m no longer a moderator for Bodybuilding.com. I suppose that was going to happen sooner or later, since my life got busier, having kids and all, i suppose I haven’t been all that useful to the site anymore, and to be truthful, I did this gig nearly full time from ‘98 through ‘06 and look at me now, I really don’t have anything to show for it. Don’t get me wrong, I loved what I did, suppose I still do, and got the chance to help a great many people. I met a lot of great people as well. But when you have a family and job that keeps you busy 14 hours a day, commute included, it stops being merely about what you love, and more about what you are able to do, and I can’t do this for free anymore.

The game has changed a lot as well. So has the board. it has become a much more commercial apparatus. Understandably so, BB.com is first and foremost a business, and Ryan has done a great job with it. And I’m very glad for him. He used to always say he would take us, who put in so much time to make this place what it is, with him on the ascend. But lets face it, you can’t get much higher than this, and I’m still where I started. No resentment there, just a conclusion I had to draw.

As I’m getting back into this with the same passion I got into it 10 years ago, both in terms of research and training, I suppose it can’t hurt to take a fresh start and redetermine where my allegiances lay. And suppose right now that is with me and my family. I’ve been told too many times in the past I’m too kind for my own good. I never charged anyone a dime these past 10 years for things personal trainers and dieticians often charge 20-50 bucks an hour, and this while unlike most of them, i do have the track record to prove my worth. But I just can’t bring myself to charge people for what I love. I never thought it was fair.

I’ve left a legacy, as the Big Cat. Now its time to carve myself a future, just being Peter. Somewhere in the next two weeks me and my fiancee get to welcome our second son. Apart from a little more money to live comfortable, I suppose I have everything I need. A fiancee who loves me, soon two beautiful children, a roof over my head (even if it isn’t one of my own yet), a job I don’t hate going to and a handful of friends who are there for me. Guess its time to set me some goals, and instead of always theorizing, show the world how the science of performance and physique enhancement is such a powerful tool by demonstrating it myself. I plan to fully change my body in the coming 18 months.

Now that i’m no longer a moderator, perhaps the threshold to come here will be a little lower. So stay tuned. There is more of me to come.

I won’t even say I’m back this time, as I didn’t even come close to keeping my promise last time. And a month away from seeing my first son born, I doubt my schedule will clear up enough to do things differently at this point in time. But I did want to keep you all updated on what’s going on.

I moved into a new appartment, halfway september, together with the girlfriend. First time for me, living together, but strangely enough for someone who needs a lot of alone time, I’m coping fairly well with it. I guess that just means this girl is the right one for me. Just so none of you feel left out, I’ve been procrastinating on a lot of levels lately. With little over a month to go to the baby being born, I’ve yet to start on the baby’s room. Things have been so-so for me I suppose. Still no steady job, due to mobility problems, and still hoping that will get resolved soon. Its tough getting by right now. In fact, my internet connection is my only real luxury at this point.

 On a brighter note, everything else really couldn’t be better right now. I have a beautiful girlfriend, nice appartment, first baby on the way. I count myself a very lucky man despite having to make do with a little less right now.

 I’ve also started working out again in September, and since then I’ve managed to add all the weight back on that I lost the 6 months before that. I’m weighing in at a solid 222 lbs right now. I’m going to try and keep this weight for a while, then see where it goes. Whether I can keep pursuing a little more mass, or whether I prefer some abs for the summer.

 I doubt I’ll be back full force in the first two months. But I will try to start this bodyblog thing up one more time, hoping to provide you all with some interesting tidbits here and there when I can.

Well, I’m back from the beyond. First of all, I guess I owe an apology to everyone who tried to contact me the past few months. For those wondering what happened, read on, for the others, skip the next paragraph.

Since february I’ve been working on my thesis-project, which I finished mid-june and defended with success. It dealt with a proof-of-principle project involving the use of Invitrogen Gateway(TM) cloning technology and short hairpin RNA to regulate gene function in vitro and in vivo. And it resulted in the creation of a genetically altered mouse, with a knock-down gene of choice (in my case VEGF) in just over three months time. Using conventional knock-out technology, this would have taken 18 to 24 months. During this time I was working in Dr.Jody Haigh’s lab with Dr.Omar Nyabi at the Flemish Interuniversitary Institute of biotechnology, which involved getting up at 5.30 in the AM, and not getting home til 8 in the PM. As you can imagine this left little time for anything else, and with 4 and a half hours of sleep a night, I got ill 3 times (but didn’t miss a day of work, that’s how exciting this project was).

So what happened after that ? Well, just before my thesis defense, to add to the anxiety, my girlfriend told me she was pregnant. Forgot to take her pill and didn’t think that was important enough to tell me. Go figure. With her still in college and me on the verge of graduating it was quite a debacle on whether or not we wanted to keep it, but we finally decided we would. I’ve always wanted children, so it would be like looking a gift horse in the mouth to terminate this pregnancy because of ill timing. That left me working at a restaurant over the summer, because in a tourist town like this one, that’s the time and place to make some quick money, whilst searching for work and a place to live near here. That presented me with a major problem. Since I had to stay here for my girlfriend and the baby, but finding work here is hard. While if I had been able to move to Gent, Brussels, Leuven, or abroad, I’d have work in no time. So still no steady job, but we did find an appartment. I’m moving there halfway september. I’m keeping my hopes up, but I will really need to find some work in my field in september if I don’t want to jeopardize the financial future of my young family. The baby by the way is for February, we’ll know at the end of september whether its a baby boy or a baby girl, and it’ll be named either Kate for a girl or Brennan for a boy.

So that’s my reason for slacking as far as bodybuilding goes. Hopefully none of you have been slacking and find yourself in excellent physical condition, having met most of your goals you set out to attain. If not, well, I’m here to tell you I’m back and digging up all my old studies and copying new ones to best serve you I’m itching to get started again and hope to be cranking out articles by september and answering questions again like I used to.

I also hope you’ve all been nice to my fellow moderators, they’ve been very supportive of my situation and continue to do a better job here everyday. And since skippy instituted this fine little profile and bodyblog thing (and got it working like its supposed to ) I figured I’d try my best to incite people to use it a little more. I’ll try my hardest to post several times a week in this blog, either with news and updates, or with questions I receive from people.

As always, I can’t be expected to answer all the questions I receive, but will try my best to provide answers where I can. Where I can’t, I beg your forgiveness and don’t let it stop you from asking questions again in the future, I’m certainly not ignoring your questions, I just don’t have time for all of them, and since I do this entirely of my volition and will, as I have in the past, invest a great deal of time in this, I prefer to answer the most interesting questions first.

Oh, and I’m starting with a clean slate and an empty inbox, so you shouldn’t have any problems getting through.

I look forward to hearing from all of you.

Peter "Big Cat" Van Mol