****ght, I'm new to this blog thing, but I'm going to give it a try and see how I like it. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be writing this for an audience or not, but right now I'm just using it as a sounding board for my own thoughts.

Ok, where to begin? I'm a 37 yr old male. I consider myself underweight (more on that later) and I believe I am weaker now than I have been in my entire life. I hate my job, I'm depressed because it's winter, and I lack motivation.... until recently.

For the past 10 years I have joined and left 3 gyms, 4 times. I guess you could say I'm a habitual gym joiner. I join for the right reasons, but then either something happens in my life that makes me step away from the gym for a time and I get too lazy to go back, or after 3-4 months I get bored and wonder to myself "why am I really doing this?" and end up leaving.

I believe this time is different for a couple of reasons. First, my wife joined her gym a little over a year ago, and has been very determined in her goal to get fit, and lose weight. She's been making great progress and her mood and energy levels have both increased exponentially, not to mention her body getting tighter with the addition of muscle and loss of weight. I was starting to get jealous of this "better me" she was becoming, and wanted the energy she had, not to mention the self confidence.

The second reason is more recent... This past January I caught the flu. No I don't get a flu shot, and please don't start with me on the benefits of it. Anyways, I lost 20 pounds. Most people would not think this was a bad thing (my wife called me a jerk), but I'm 6'4" and weighed 199 before I got sick, so dropping to 179 was NOT healthy! Not only that but I got weak. Going to work (I work in a frozen food warehouse, with heavy lifting) became difficult, walking my dogs turned into my dogs walking me, the stairs in my own house seemed to have doubled in number as I would be winded by the time I got to the top to go to bed.

So... after two months of talking about going back to the gym, I finally did it. It took a little financial sacrifice, and my wife encouraging me to do it, but I walked in, signed the papers and became a member of the same gym I had been a member of twice before. That was 3 weeks ago.

At first I thought I would do the beginner program I had picked up from Muscle and Fitness four years ago. I know it worked then because I can still remember my wife's "wow" when I asked her to do a three month measurement update on me. Problem was, I couldn't find the program. We moved since the last time I had used it, and it was probably still in a box somewhere. So, I picked up a copy of Muscle and Fitness for the first time in over four years and started leafing through it. Inside my issue was the M&F Rock Hard Challenge. It was a contest of sorts for getting oneself motivated, and the winner would win cash and supplements etc etc etc. Without actually looking at the workout program in the following pages, I thought 'hey, this could be MY new program', and I decided to start the following week. I logged on to the M&F website to see if I could enter, but alas it is only open to residents of the USA, so my being in Canada immediately ruled me out. However, I still stuck to my original resolution of doing the program anyways.

My M&F RHC story follows.... next blog entry