Today I was with my dad at our property and our neighbor up there stopped by.  I hadn’t seen him since just before the accident nearly three years ago, so he just had to bring up the fact that I lost a bunch of weight.  He said, "What happened man?  You used to make your sleeves look like they were going to explode and your chest, back, and shoulders were hard to miss too!"

Of course, I am feeling very good and looking pretty good compared to what I looked like even around Christmas time, so I was a little taken back by the comments.  My dad said, "He’s still got the guns though, show him Ryan".  So I did and the neighbor guy said, "That you do, that you do."

About and hour later I started the 20 minute drive home and got to thinking about what had happened and realized that I have a long long ways to go to get back all that I lost from that accident.  I got to wondering how long it would take me to get back to that kind of size again.  Then I tried not to think about it because it will take some time to get there, especially at the rate I am going now.  My guess is a good two to three years of hard training and eating precisely timed meals and that sucks.   I am normally more positive about these sorts of things, but I  need more hours in the day to eat more quality food.
This is just me more or less thinking out loud and adding something that several of you have asked me to do more often.   I will probably share my thoughts on this subject a bit more as this week progresses.  I am taking this week off from work to eat and train, so I hope to gain at least a pound or two in the process.  Wish me luck!

Be smart people and don’t let anyone tell you what you can or can’t put into your body!

Life doesn’t always go the way we think it will so today I am celebrating the fact that I am now back up to 160 pounds and about 13% b/f after hitting a low of about 147-148 at 10.5% b/f after my accident (pre-accident I was about 185-190).   I am now on the mend and things are progressing pretty well all things considered.

My neck and back are still  limiting factors, but I am doing everything I can to get myself  back on track and healthy again.  Gaining muscle is now secondary, being healthy is priority number one.  I have never done drugs and never will even though it’s tempting considering I am 30 years old and 160 pounds! lol Regardless, I expect to continue to improve my health and continue to pack on quality muscle over the course of the next year.  Hopefully by March of 2008, I will be able to golf again and be able to do a lot of other fun things that I am not yet able to do.  I hope to also be a lean 170 then too, but like I said before, the muscle is secondary.

To those of you that think 160 is weak, pathetic, or skinny……don’t forget that everything you have going for yourself in the gym right now could be gone in a heartbeat!

Back to me, I am beginning to plump up like a lean "Ball Park Frank" and that is a very welcome thing.  For the past year or more, I really haven’t been able to try due to some very bad neck and back injuries I sustained in a car accident.  I watched my hard earned muscle evaporate slowly over about a year or so hitting a low of about 148 (maybe lower, but I did not want to weigh myself at all there for a while).  That sucked because I was about 185 before that happened.

Now, I am up to about 158 or so and it seems like it’s going to rally back to the 185 range over the next several months.  My goal is to walk into the company Christmas party in early December.  I have been embarrassed to attend the company events over the past year and a half or so after the accident because everyone would comment about how "skinny" I have become and I also heard "Ryan, what’s wrong with you?" several times.  I almost told one of them (a fat woman) the opposite, but she seemed genuinely concerned about me, so I was polite about it.  The good news is, that is the past and the future is what I am working on today.  The future makes me smile!

I will probably have new images up in the next week or two as well as updates on my body stats.

I was recently dumped by a girl I had dated for a while who was talking about marriage and stuff like that right up until the end.  Less than a week later she is dating someone else.  I think the end had to do with my highly disciplined lifestyle.  I have worked out and had a “bodybuilder” lifestyle since I was 15, but since I had know her (the past two years) I have been battling back from a severely sprained neck and blown-out back from a car accident.  I fought off having her as a g/f for the majority of that time because I did not think that I would be a good b/f because I was a “gimp” and we became “best friends” in the process.  I learned to trust her completely because she fought so hard to earn it.  I am not the most trusting guy in the world and once she got everything she wanted, she did not want it anymore.  I think it had a lot to do with my not living a “normal” lifestyle even though I told her that was how it was going to be long before we ever got to that stage of the game.  Not only that, I made a lot of compromises that were not in my best interest to help make it easier on her.

I guess before I turn this into a huge novel I will get right to the point, do you any of you think that having this type of lifestyle is keeping you from enjoying your life fully?  I have found that it is really difficult to find someone that has what it takes to understand that I need to eat clean all of the time (for my health to continue to recover from my accident, not just for my appearance) and that being disciplined is a very good quality to have….to go along with my amazing sense of humor (I always had her and everyone else rolling) that is not featured here on this post due to my state of mind.

Any feedback is appreciated if you can relate or have any insight!