ozzyaaron’s BodyBlog

I was 92kg and low teen body fat. I had abs easily visible and was running the best I’ve ever run and lifting the best I’ve ever lifted. I was loving life, going out on the weekends alone if need be and just enjoying things.

Fast forward a little bit and I was finding I wasn’t so interested in my friends, things started to get less enjoyable and I’d skip workouts sometimes and skip BJJ. I loved these things especially my friends and now I wasn’t finding joy in anything really.

Fast forward to now and I’m sleeping 10-14 hours a day did weights this morning for the first time in a week, havent’ run this week, am eating like crap (bingeing at night and not eating during the day) and I’m 102kg and don’t want to think what BF I am. Those abs are gone.

Some people would just say I got lazy, but last week after a couple of tests I got put on SSRIs for depression and have an appointment to see a psychologist next week. Apparently I have severe depression and moderate anxiety. After talking to the doctor adn close friends I’ve come to realise I’ve just been fighting it for the last three years.

The hardest thing is that I almost have to give up. I have to say I’m not going to pressure myself to eat perfectly or exercise because that pressure causes me to not do it. I have to concentrate on getting over this hurdle and then applying myself to getting physically healthy after being mentally healthy. I’ve concentrated on my physical health for so long it’s really hard to change.

I used to be the guy that said I was going to do something and I bloody well did it, that’s what people thought of me, as that guy. Now I have a hard time getting out of bed. I got out of bed before 5am for working out or other exercise every weekday for three years and got up on most weekends to run 20km or ride 50km. Now I get up at 9am if I’m lucky and do weights a bit. My mind just isn’t in life at the moment.

Still waiting for the drugs to have an effect. Hopefull this comes soon.

I have another blog so I didn’t really want to write it all out again. It roughly covers the 12 months or so where I lost 100kg the next 18 months of gaining 10kg.

http://aaron.blogdns.org/?p=786

Then a milestone reached, fully noticeable top row of abs! When I flex I can sometimes see abductors (the fingers?) and the definition of the bottom of the second row!! Seriously for me this is massive, especially with the loose skin to contend with!

http://aaron.blogdns.org/?p=799

It’s been a big couple of weeks. I basically drew out two weeks on my food/diet whiteboard in the kitchen. The whiteboard lets me keep a shopping list and recipes I want to perfect as well as some inspirational photos and notes. I find the recipe thing is handy as I can change qty and add things very easily then when I’m happy write it down more permanently. The notes are stuff liek "DON’T EAT SHIT FOOD" in big writing and there is a pic of Arnie. It helps Anyway I’ve marked off every day I was happy with my eating, my weigh ins, my exercise and it’s really helped. I looked forward to tickign the day off.

Anyway … good times. This Saturday or Sunday is my release day. I have a big party on Friday night which won’t be food or booze bingeing (I don’t drink) but I have planned to eat a bit of bad food on Saturday.

What a crappy super power.

Last week I weighed in about half way through the week at 92kg and had my first row of abs quite well visible and things were going well.

I ate a bunch of junk food later in the week and the weekend and then got back on track eating and exercise wise this week. My last two days of eating and exercise were spot on.

This morning I weighed in at 97kg and body fat at about 14%. I was about 10% four weeks ago and would have been lower last week. So in about a half a week I was able to pack on over 5kg!

I’ll be interested to see how I am sitting by next week, hopefully this is mostly water weight and I’ll be back on track to further revealing my abs again.

What a crappy super power

I have been fighting bulimia on and off for two years now, which really surprised me. It’s amazing how for a bad thing you can seem to make it span a much shorter period in your head, but my friend reminded me it was about 18 months ago when I came out to my friends and said that I was fighting it but I was going to stop. Prior to that had been at least 6 months of the binge-purge cycle.

At the beginning of the year I was still in the throws of it, maybe 2-3 nights per week I would plan a binge and purge or I would have food stocked up that I could go to when I was feeling bad. The purging for me was about trying to get to a happy place even if it was just for that 20 minutes or so that food was going into my mouth and I could basically relinquish control to whatever part of my brain had taken over. The binging was about not taking steps backward as far as weight control.

I would tend to go into a cycle of it where I’d have been fine for a while maybe a month or two weeks or something of that nature, then something bad would happen with family, or feeling lonely or something and so I’d get some ice cream. It’s always been my weakness. Then I would eat it and think oh crap, that’s a day worth of calories, and throw it up. That would actually feel pretty good to be in control and so the next time it would be ice cream and chocolate, then ice cream and chocolate and biscuits, then ice cream and chocoalte and biscuits and a cake and so on.

At the beginning of the year though I went onto the Velocity Diet and the bulimia went away. After the diet it stayed away for about 3 months so for 4 months in total I was fine, I didn’t even think about bad foods or bulimia or anyway. Then I had a really crushing weekend with family and life and I ate a bunch of shit food, and got rid of it and so over the course of th enext three weeks I was doing it again by the end I was binging and purging sometimes twice a night and this was every night of the week as of two weeks ago.

I told my friends, and I went on the V-Diet. The deal was that I honestly believed this time I’d kick it, I had seen the triggers, seen what I could do to deal wiht the triggers, it’s almost like this was all a learning experience and now I have learned, however the deal was that if it came back that I would seek professional help.

I’ve read heaps of success stories and a lot of them have people that loved teh other person very much in the form of a partner, which I don’t have. My friends however are amazing and I have to learn to reach out more which is what they’re asking me to do and something I will work on. However in the end its going to be me that fixes this if it gets fixed.

I honestly believe I can fix the problem, it’s a symptom after all, it’s not the bulimia I am tryign to fix, it’s the issues that cause me to binge that I need to rectify and now I feel like I see them in full colour and what I need to do about them.

So anyway I know for me sometimes it helps me to see there are people out there just like me trying to overcome the same issues. Hopefully someone reads this and gets something out of it.

For me I feel like the more public I make it the more motivation I have to fix it. I’d also liek to hear from any self-recovered bulimics or peopel with other eating disorders.

Thanks guys

Is it cheating if you plan it though ?

Yesterday I met my goal for the local fun run by running 10km in 49:30. That’s about 5 minutes faster than last year when I actually trained for it! This year I lost about 15kg and the extent of my training was a couple of 5km runs a week and then doing a 10km run on Friday. Last year I was running 10-15km 3x a week… moral of the story losing weight is way better than more training

These days I don’t reward myself with food, or at least I try not to. That was how I was raised and I try not to let those old ways back into my life. My kids won’t be getting food for rewards, that’s for sure.

So the cheating wasn’t a reward for a good effort or anything it was simply to try and reset my body and get a solid high calorie day in. I’ve been eating in the 1600-2200 calorie range for three months now and my average daily calorie deficit has been around 1000 calories a day. I figured it was about time to give my body a bit of a shock.

Yesterday went something like this.

Wake up, eat a serve of rolled oats with 2 scoops of whey and some yoghurt.

Run 10km in 49 mins.

Get home and eat a wicked protein pancake of 4 egg whites and a scoop of protein.

Go to shops and buy any junk food I wanted. Literally, anything.

Eat junk food with lots of water.

Sleep for a few hours.

Wake up and have some dinner with lots more water and go back to bed.

Some people might be wondering how much junk food that actually was, so here it is.

Ice cream, choc chip biscuits, snack size snickers, snack size chocolate bars. All totalled about 6500 calories was eaten for the day!

The best thing was that I didn’t feel the least bit bad for doing this and my body thanked me for it, I could definitely feel the furnace going overboard. I was trying to sleep but all of those calories made me hotter than usual and I had to sleep with a sheet and the fan going! Usually it’s been a doona lately.

The next three weeks are going to be very strict and a slight change in diet with more nuts, cottage cheese and reduction in milk. I’m really dialling everything in. In three weeks I want to be at 10% or below. In two weeks I have my friends wedding so it’d be nice to get some ab action by then, but the real goal posts are my birthday on the 28th.

I still absolutely think this goal is reachable and while it may be easy to see yesterday as a hiccup I saw it and see it as a part of the solution.

On my birthday I’ll have some cake I’m sure. After that though it’s a clean bulk and I’d like to put on about 4-5kg of lean mass by the end of the year while maintaining below 12% BF.

I got injured again! I’ve gone through half a pack of Nurofen in the last three weeks, I haven’t been continuously taking them but it’s close to what I’d generally down in a year usually!

This time was a BJJ (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) injury. I was in an arm bar that got slapped on a bit too tightly and quickly and I finished with an arm that didn’t move too well. It was funny it was one of those injuries where the pain came about 10 seconds after it was all over.

After it was over though I couldn’t really move my arm too well (over extension of the elbow) and I had sprained my arm. Attachment points at the base of the bicep and upper forearm both were very swollen but with some ice and Nurofen things improved a fair bit.

I just kept stretching it and taking Nurofen every four hours for a couple of days and now it’s just sore when close to full extension.

I did my shoulders workout today without much issue, none of thos movements really require complete extension of the arm in that way. Chest tomorrow which again shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

The main problem will be back and arms next week but I hope by then things will have sorted themselves out.

So hopefully I’m getting my injuries for this year out of the way early

My two favourite exercises are the squat and the deadlift. I know you shouldn’t do them in the same session but I can’t help myself, I started doing deadlifts about a year ago with a crap setup and I still do them now and love it every time I increase the weight!

The squat is something that I’ve come to recently because I’ve now got a power cage to do them in. I would consider myself pretty poor at them but I’m learning as I go. I’ve been doing them fairly well now for about two weeks and I’ve been learning for about three months.

Back day is my favourite and I start with deadlifts and lat pull downs and I finish with a warmup set of squats, a 20 set that kills me, then I follow up with 20 half squats. I’m dead and I love it

However a week ago while doing deadlifts I hurt my lower back. I pushed through and completed the workout and when I cooled down I was in pain. I couldn’t ben laterally much out of straight up and down and I was bending at the knees to get down to anything approaching my knees. By the end of the week it was alright though so come Monday when it was back day I lowered the deadlift weight and proceeded to lift.

I got two sets out. Of the four I’d planned. I usually do 5×5 but I thought I’d do 10×4 instead.

Putting the bar down I got the bar to my knees then my lower back made a crack sound and gave way and the weights smashed to the ground. I stood hunched over for a while then slowly regained my composure. I was a bit scared as there was no real pain but I knew there should be.

The pain came a little but in reality it just made me weak and while it wasn’t super painful to do other exercises just picking up 20kg dumbells felt really difficult.

It’s now almost a week later and I think I’m about 70% recovered but this week I might skip the deadlifts and do something else this coming week.
It really was annoying though to have my favourite day ****ed up, but it’ll be back to awesome soon enough!

For the first time in my life I’m having to make myself eat more!

I always assumed that I was one of those people with a slow metabolism that just would always be overweight and easily put on fat but lately I’ve become a bit unsure about that diagnosis. When I add up what I eat, how much I exercise and how much weight I lose I tend to get an above average BMR. Not only that but I tend to put on muscle and maintain muscle pretty easily. I’m well co-ordinated and take well to sports and always did even when overweight. Maybe I’m not that endomorph I always thought I was?

Anyway I’ve been eating a solid 1600 - 2100 calories a day depending on whether it’s a workout day or not. I add an extra 500 calories to cover working out by adding mostly carbs around the workout and a bunch of healthy fat from fish, avocado, nuts and so on. On this plan last week I lost 2kg! I thought it’s time to up the calories because some of that was muscle according to the fat calipers.

So I’ve increased my eating by 250 calories mostly through carbohydrates and healthy fats and I’ll see what difference that makes. I think I’ll need to do another increase in a couple of weeks partly because my body will adapt and partly because to cover 1kg of fat is about 500 calories a day anyway.

I’m currently at 14% and 94kg on 5′11" frame and looking to get to 90kg and 10% long term and just 10% in the medium term. I’m thinking i’ll need to cut until about mid April then start my very clean bulk.

This is certainly the leanest I have been and it feels great. All physical activity is easier and can’t wait to get to 10%

I’d just like to say that I am over the moon with the results of this diet. Read on if you want more information

The obvious benefit to this diet is the weight loss, but the other benefits I’ve found are just as tangible and just as beneficial.

During the diet I had close to an hour or more of spare time on my hands to do reading or prepare my workouts or do whatever I liked. You can use it to sleep if you want, but I also found I slept a lot less, I think as I became healthier and required less sleep.

It’s given me a real appreciation for what I was putting in my mouth and how bad it was (even though I ate healthier than 90% of people). I look at what I used to eat and how much and though I will have a treat from tiem to time, rather than half a block of chocoalte or a bowl of ice cream, it’s two or three little cubes of chocolate… I haven’t touched ice cream in two months (this is masssive, read on to find out why).
It’s also given me an enjoyment of good foods, I disliked vegetables and hated green salads, now they’re my favourite foods. I love meat, but I want it sitting next to a big bowl of spinach, celery, tomato, cucumber and a little balsamic, or just some rock salt.

It’s changed my idea on portion sizes, I now eat 150g (5oz) of meat at a serving rather than 200g++ (8oz++) plus potato, plus veges, plus sauces etc. My portion is about 300g or steamed veges or salads and 150g of meat. I eat something like this 3-4x a day with some shakes etc.

It’s destroyed my bad habits! My weakness was ice cream, plain and simple. It’s left over from when I was 190kg (over actually) and used to sit at home each night and ‘make myself feel better’ by eating a tub of ice cream, some chocoalte, some potato chips etc… but the mainstay was ice cream. Even up until before teh V-Diet I could eat 1L of ice cream without much hassle. 3-4x a week!! I have looked at ice cream once in the last two months and even then it was for about a second before I said … if I mix some diet jelly and some protein powder I have a delicious pudding!! So I went home and ate that Really I can’t stress how much this has changed my habits.

It’s given me back the idea that I do control my body and if I put in work I’ll get some results! This is a big change in my head and its continued going since the diet to keep getting good results as I did this week.

On the diet itself I lost about 13kg, 14cm off my waist, 8.5cm off my chest and so on … that’s the full four weeks of shakes plus two weeks of tapering back onto solids. I didn’t put on any weight in the two week taper.

In this last week of eating normally after teh diet period I lost another 1.5kg and 1cm off my waist, hips and chest plus some off my thighs, arms and so on. I am still losing weight and most importantly I lost almost 1% body fat too!!

I think the main issue people bring up about this diet is that you are just losing water weight, or at such a low caloric intake you’ll eat muscle, but I’ve found neither of these to be true. I saw a gain of about 1kg of water weight back in the first week of taper because I didn’t lose any weight but I did continue to lose size. That’s a good indicator of a loss of fat but gain in water. I didn’t lose any muscle based on my bodyfat calculations at most I lost 1kg of muscle for 12kg of fat. I certainly didn’t lose any strength though and all my leg, back, shoulder, chest and arm weights either stayed the same or increased (back and legs showed very good gains). So for me at least, neither of these two points have been shown to be true.

So, if you have the will power to get through the first week or just shakes then I say you can’t go wrong. I’ve had great success with it so far and I am the *leanest* I’ve ever been and within the next month or so will probably be the lightest. I am starting to see that abs will start to come through soon! This has never happened for me.

That’s my experience with the V-Diet

I have a fairly varied exercise life. Currently I cycle (5/wk), run (3/wk),  grapple (4/wk), weights (3/wk) and it’s interesting to me to note how my body responds to each one differently.

I’ve found weights definitely keep my body the hottest for longest afterwards. Running is second. I wonder if it’s due to the increase in metabolism afterwards ?

For instance this morning I did 45mins of fairly intense weights on back, arms and legs. I showered, changed, and left to walk to the train station. I sweat the entire time I was on the train and until I got to work probably an hour after I finished my session. It’s kind of embarassing as people would just think you sweat a lot, oh well.
Sitting here, cooling down !