My BodyBlog

I really started believing I could uncover my abs in November, 2007.  I started using this site and I saw the amazing transformations that other average people like me had made and I made up my mind that I would join their ranks.  A little over one year later I know there’s nothing ‘average’ about the knowledge, commitment and actions that it takes to achieve defined abs…I salute everyone who has made that journey.  My journey continues.

Building up the ab muscles has not been a problem for me…been working abs for 5 years, and in 2008 I got a lot better at it thanks to all the info on this site.  I know how to work them to failure so they are screaming at me to stop, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of time…it’s all about form and intensity.  I’ve been able to feel my abs under the body fat for several months now…helping to motivate me to keep going.

The hardest challenge for me has been losing the body fat.  I’ve been losing body fat all over for five years, slowly but surely.  The pace has quickened since I seriously cleaned up my diet in Nov/07.  As is true with most men, the fat around the waist is the last to go.  Thankfully I can see a great deal of difference in the mirror, and especially with my pants.  So I’m making progress…. but it’s still a work in progress and it is hard to stay patient when I want to reach a goal so badly.  Plus it’s been on my mind that maybe what I’m doing would take me only so far, and I would plateau at a certain body fat level and stay there.   So, at the end of 2008 I took a hard look at what I was doing at the gym and with my diet to see if I could make some changes that would give me a better chance at achieving defined abs and do it faster.

I love lifting heavy and work hard at improving my bench, squat and deadlift numbers.  Some say that strength training and getting lean don’t go well together, and I probably agree if you want fast results in either area.  But I’ve proven to myself that you can make progress on both if you eat the right things at the right time and workout smartly.  Muscle tissue takes a lot of energy to build and maintain, the more muscle you have the more calories you’ll burn.  It’s happening to me, I’ll keep going with it.

I know that the fastest way to burn body fat is to have a caloric deficit…burn more than you consume.  The fastest way to burn is cardio activity….the more intense the better.  I’ve never been an athlete and I work behind a desk so I have to make a real effort to have cardio activity in my life.  Thanks to my wife who loves to walk, a daily moderately paced walk at least half an hour but often much longer, has been a part of our daily routine whenever possible for many years.  I credit this walk with helping keep my weight from getting really out of control all those years before I started lifting when I was eating poorly…but this walk isn’t enough cardio to burn the fat I need to burn now.  So I’ve made an effort to do more cardio, and specifically more intense cardio but during 2008 I wasn’t consistent with it.  I might go a few weeks then stop for a few weeks.  A lot better than doing none I know, but it’s consistency and intensity I need to get defined abs.  So I vowed to do cardio after every workout starting in January, and so far I’ve kept up with that except for one workout where my legs were shot.  Could only ride the bike for a few minutes that day.  HIIT training on the treadmill really gets my heart rate up and I soak my shirt with sweat after 15 minutes, so my goal was to do this a lot, but I’m finding that doing so much heavy squatting and deadlifting takes a toll on my legs and I cramp up if I try to sprint within a couple of days after doing these lifts.  So I would use the bike or incline walk on the treadmill.  Not as good as the treadmill HIIT.  But I’ve been discoving another way to do cardio…jumping rope.  I started in December, just doing a few jumps between lifting sets, I could do 10-15 reps and thought that was great.  I’ve been working on it, and now I can do 60-70 reps no problem and sometimes hit 100.  I’ve started doing it every workout between sets and I do 500+ reps before I know it, keeping my heart rate high and turning a weight lifting workout into a cardio workout.  It’s a lot easier on the legs too, and I’ll still do the HIIT on the treadmill as often as I can.  I know doing cardio every day is a lot better than 3 or 4 times a week…so I’ve bought my own rope and cleared away a space in the house where I can jump rope to my heart’s content any time I want.  The bottom line is I’m dedicated now to consistency with intense cardio.

My diet was really holding me back until I cleaned it up in November, 2007.  Took a long time to be mentally ready to give up comfort and convenience foods….but my bodybuilding goals and achievements became more important to me.  I learned to look at food as only a tool….fuel for my body.  Still had to learn a lot about what I should be eating and when to eat…but I’ve come a long way.  I’m not perfect but compared to before it’s 99% better.  But one thing I had been reading about that I decided to try starting this year was to eliminate carbs in the evening.  People said it helps fat loss so starting this month, for 5 or 6 days of the week, I’ve not eaten any significant carbs after my dinner meal, usually 6pm.  I’ve been going for chicken breast, tuna and cottage cheese to fill me up before bed and get me through the night.  It’s only been 4 weeks so it’s probably too soon to evaluate what impact this is having on me…however I can see definite signs of progress, there is a little definition starting below the pecs to the navel.  Just enough to be a teaser, a hint of what might be possible if I keep working at it…enough to motivate me to keep working at it, keep striving to improve, keep believing in myself…

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 12:40 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.