btmillerbt’s BodyBlog

In October of last year I was in the worst shape of my life. After having an all-time bad year I had simply given up. I was 295 lbs. of nothing but rolly polly blubber. My belly stretched the tape to 49". I was to the point in life where I thought that my life insurance would be of more use to my family than my life would be. For reasons beyond just my health, I was tired of life and wanted it to end. I didn’t have some life altering paradigm shift that made me want to be a competitive body builder right away. I had no illusions of actually seeing my abs again. I just wanted to fit into my uniform.
It was October of 2006 that I pulled into the gun shop up the street from my house, with the intention of ordering a gun and ending it as soon as I can.  They were closed, and that may have saved my life.  Well that and a fortune cookie.  After crying for some time in the parking lot, I went instead to kill myself at the buffet line at the Chinese restaurant.  After about seven plates full, I cracked open my fortune cookie and it said “Nothing defeats misery like hard work.”  I didn’t need a gun.  I just needed to work hard.  I’d been in such a downward spiral I’d lost sight of the fact that it was up to me to get out of the funk. 
I started with little goals.  The biggest Army BDU at the time was still too small for me get into. The buttons were about three inches away from reaching the button holes. I hated myself. I took some extended leave and after thirty days of relatively dedicated training and following the ketogenic diet (not recommended) I was actually able to squeeze into the BDUs and go to work. But I was still a blob and I knew it. I didn’t respect myself and was lagging personally and professionally. But I had one resent success to build on.
I was on the Army weight control program and "flagged" which meant that I was prohibited from any favorable actions, including reenlistment. I made that my next short terms goal. Fortunately the Army fat standards are liberal enough to have made that a short term goal. I took and just barely passed a PT test (with weigh and tape) and was able to reenlist in February. For the next couple of months I didn’t have a specific goal and I let the old habits of inertia take over and I hovered around the high 260s to mid 270s. I had been putting off a military school that I had needed to go to for some time and knew that it was something that I had to do. They weren’t going to be as lenient with me on the tape as perhaps the folks at my home unit were and I knew this. So I really started delving into the bodybuilding and fitness magazines to get tips on burning fat. They all said to lift weights and lift heavy. So that’s what I did. By the time I arrived at the school in early July I was no Adonis but was down to 259 and a passing 41" waist.
Nearly every day that I was away at school in Texas I lied to my wonderful wife. Yep, I said it, I lied. I told her that I had fallen off of the wagon and was doing nothing but inhaling apple pies and Salisbury steak. Truth be told I did have cheat days. Four of them in two months and they were all scheduled. Other than that I ate clean. I used this tactic as motivation. I told her I was eating cookies on the phone when I was actually snacking on broccoli. In addition to clean eating I lifted weights consistently and heavy following a program (as opposed to just walking in to the gym willy nilly). I also incorporated High Intensity Interval Training Cardio sessions into my day. By my last day of school on Sept 9th 2007 I had actually reached my pie-in-the-sky waist goal for the school and taped out at 35". I set that goal higher than I I really thought possible but I did it. My goal for scale weight was 219 but I was actually 228 lbs. That was less important however than the waist goal. I was happy that despite losing 31 lbs of scale weight during my time away in TX my strength went through the roof. I’d mostly done dumbbell work for my compound chest exercises and by the end I was tossing around 120s like they 45s. I almost couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t done squats since 1993 but by late August was repping out 475 lbs for 10 w/o a belt or knee wraps.
Through this process I have learned a lot about myself. Above all else though I learned that I need a goal. I need something to reach for. I need a date and I need a picture of what I’m going to be at that date. So about a week before finishing school in Texas I realized that I didn’t have a next goal. I didn’t want to come back looking decent just to trip and fall and spend the next six months at the Chuck Wagon Buffet. I looked and felt better but I knew that I didn’t look or feel great. I needed a goal with a date attached to it. I felt that I have some body building potential at this point (granted I may be delusional)and wondered if there was a natural bodybuilding competition in the reasonable future.
I don’t want to look decent. I want to look AWSOME, I want to look AWSOME right now, and I want to look AWSOME for life. I googled "natural bodybuilding competition" and found the OCB website. As I searched through it I saw that the OCB Charm City Classic was coming up and that they have a Bodybuilding 101 division for first-timers. If anyone was a first-timer it was me. I enlisted the help of renowned natural bodybuilding and fitness coach Phil Valenti. He didn’t look at me like I was a total idiot when I said I wanted to do this so I took that as a good sign. I still had mad body fat that I have to burn if I wasn’t going to embarrass myself on stage. I also took two posing clinics by local bodybuilder John Puskarich who was also the promoter of the show I was going to do, again this was all to avoid embarrassment on stage. My new friend Angie, and fellow Valenti pupil as well Charm City Classic competitor, had informed me that these clinics were an imperative. And indeed they were.  My goal by the time I hit stage on 20 Oct 2007 was to be 195 lbs (exactly 100 lbs less than October 2006). I wanted slightly less than a 31" waist. They were dramatically high goals considering where I was.  And Indeed they proved to be a bit too high, but like Arnold said, “shoot for the moon, and even if you don’t get there, you will look back and see that you’re results were out of this world.” 
A waist that small was my goal because that way I’d know that at least an abdominal cube or two will actually be showing. I had no idea what competing in a 101 class had in store. I mostly just wanted a fantastic after-picture out of it. It was also be nice to get that first competition out of the way so that I can focus on winning next. Were they pie-in-the-sky goals? Hell yeah! That seems to work for me.
And so I did it.  I stepped on stage at 203lbs with a 31.75 waist.  My Abs were showing and I didn’t embarrass myself.  As a matter of fact I looked pretty good.  Still it was good enough to come in last place in my division.  But the after picture was great.  After my evening show performance, the promoters showed my before and after photos and had me tell my story a little bit.  It was wonderful to stand up there with a standing ovation knowing that one year before I’d wanted nothing more than to end my life.  It was an incredible feeling.