Body Project

Going to put a chest shot together from December 2008 and the one I just posted this week to compare difference.  The location is different and lighting is a little different, but it is close enough.  I see the difference, hope others will too!  Next is to do some back shots and legs.  Really would like to get big and ripped for next year and maybe become a sponsored competitor for Gaspari or ON, love those products.  But love bodybuilding.com more than anything.  This site made so much difference in my life!  Can’t put it into words.  Keep kickin ass and getting strong.

So my avi pic is from my only contest I ever did back in 1999 at the age of 30, The Tampa Bay Natural.  I did not know a ton about what I was doing back then and while getting ready for the show I got shipped to Aruba to run several jobs for the company I worked for at the time.  I agreed to go if they flew me back for the contest.  Well needless to say I got to Aruba, yeah tough gig huh, but it was hard work.  I had to be outside all day running guys on a jobsite, and was wiped by the end of the day.  I kept doing cardio, but my eating was not that good, and my w/o’s suffered a lot.  Wish I had a picture of the rat hole gym I went to on occasion, something like you can only imagine.  Either way, and long story short, I came back for the contest and carb depleted the hell out of myself and did not carb back up too good. 

I look back at the pics and the shape I was in and know that I am in better shape now carrying more muscle and more knowledge.  I intend on stepping on stage next year ripped up and big, hopefully in the 190# range and somewhere in the 4-6% bf range.  The rest of this year is about working on diet and what works to gain clean size.  No more bulking and cutting.  I am all about body partitioning the rest of the year, i.e. converting fat to muscle.  I think my diet for the next month or so will be a 7 am protein shake of ON Whey with milk, bcaa, and glutamine for breakfast and simple grains oatmeal.  Then 9:30 will be 6-8ozs skirt steak(I want the fat for testosterone production), brown rice, and ruby red grapefruit.  Lunch I will use cjicken instead of steak.  Then 3 pm will be a pre w/o shake, maybe BSN TRUE MASS.  Then w/o will be around 5, and I will probably hit the Gaspari Superpump 30 minutes prior when I get home at 4:30.  Then during w/o will be Gaspari Size On.  30 mintues post w/o will be Whey shake with bcaa, glutamine, multis and milk.  That should be around 6 - 6:30.  Then either a piece of chicken or another shake 1 hour before bed with whey, glutamine, arginine, and falx seed oil for the GH cocktail recipe I found in Muscle & Fitness.  W/o’s will be heavy and basic compound movements for a 3 day week, with abs and calves on off days.  Still going to do 3-4 days of cardio first thing in the am, some HIIT to get off more BF.  Hopefully by December I will be in the 190 range and around 7% BF.  That is where I want to stay year round from now on, if not less.

I will try to post updates and try to stay injury free.

My mom will not call until 6:33 tonight to make it official, cause that is my birth time.  My rebirth has been taking place over the past year and a half and will continue.  I have come a long way, with a long way to go to reach my fitness goals.  I feel great, knock on wood, and hope to get even better.  My motto:  "There is no try, there is only do or do not."  Celebrating today with a big dinner at the in-laws, then back on the wagon tomorrow.  Goal to be 7% BF by end of year and gain around 10 lbs of muscle.  Going to be working on body partitioning to accomplish this.  Supplements will be ON Whey, glutamine, bcaa’s, flax seed oil, Sizeon, Superpump 250, glycerol(trying out) and arginine.  Oh and my mutil vitamins.

So the big 40 is rolling up on me like the slow train Johnny Cash sang about coming round the bend, and I feel like a freakin locomotive, woot, woot!!  Man I feel great and it is getting better.  Helps that I just finished legs and 3 miles of cardio!  40 years old can kiss my lilly white a$$!  Time for 2 a day cardio to bring in the abs, and tighten the diet down even further.  Going to eat my b-day cake and enjoy it, cause I will freakin deserve it.  Putting heavier weights on the bar, and hittin’ it hard.  Like the song from one of my favorite movies, Stomp the Yard, "Go hard, or go home!"  Love the movie and the music!

So anyway, I am ready and can’t wait to see the change and what all my hard work has done since topping out at 264 lbs several years ago.  No more fat boy here.  He is gone, my goal is to be "dead sexy" baby!

Time for chicken and asparagus, second verse, same as the first, and so on.  Pics in a week to count down from 4 weeks out.  Keep kickin’ a$$ and getting strong! 

Drew

OK, i don’t diet, I tell people this and they say look at what you eat, that is a diet.  Nope.  I eat a certain way, and that includes for the most part, healthy foods that are nutrient dense, and good for me.  I like how i feel when I eat this way.  I personally do not eat many carbs.  i have found I don’t need a ton of carbs, and don’t really crave them.  If I get a craving, let’s say like i did this past week, I indulge it.  I had a french dip with double meat, and double cheese, large fries, 10 hot wings, and a large sweet tea.  It looked and smelled so good.  I made it half way and felt sick.  I stopped eating.  Why do this.  I indulge my cravings to remind myself why I eat boring ass cottage cheese, wheat germ, mueslix, oatmeal, chicken, spinach and foods like that.  I felt like junk after that lunch.  But when i eat my normal foods, i feel great all day.  So much of all of this is making a choice, a mental decision.  The body needs fuel.  The more i read about food timing and what the food does once in the body, the easier it mkaes these choices.

There are a ton of healthy foods that can be precooked and taken along to work, or school, or where ever you go.  Once you get use to having plenty of tupperware in the fridge with good foods, and learn how much is a portion without weighing, it is easy.  i still use a food scale and measuring cups all the time.  But for a lot of things, i can eyeball it now.  No reason to re invent the wheel, just make some choices, and start doing it.  Read my previous blog for somemore food ideas.  Also check out thenaturalone’s blog.  Good info there also. 

So I am starting this on January 12, 2009.  At present I am trying to be in ketosis to flatten out and loose some more BF by Jan 11.  I have already purchased MT Celltech hardcore, Nitrotech, NaNoVapor, and Anator P70 for my stack of MT products for my 12 weeks.  I already went thru a transformation from fat to fit since last December 2007, going from around 255 lbs down to where I am now, 198 at present.  Now it is time to see what kind of lean mass I can add, and how much more BF I can lose during my 12 weeks.  I will be measuring all bodyparts(keep it clean) LOL, and weighing in bone dry Jan 11, no pump.  My final pics I may get done by a professional, but I am undecided.  My stack will be  Celltech upon waking, followed by Nitrotech 30 minutes later.  This will be 5 am and 5:30 obviously.  7:30 Nitrotech shake, which will include oatmeal, flax seed oil, and BCAA powder.  Pre w/o will be the Vapor, then post w/o will be the Anator, followed 30 minutes later by more Nitrotech.  Food choices will be ground buffalo, elk, and hamburger.  It will also include chicken and ostrich.  Carbs will be oatmeal, brown rice, whole wheat pasta, and mueslix.  I will also be using non fat cottage cheese, Activia yogurt, and maybe wheat germ, and flax seed mill.  So I will have a journal and do updates in my blog.  I am reaching for a goal of 10-15 pounds total weight gain, and 80% being muscle, so 8-12 lbs lean gain.  I am hoping to do this in 8 weeks.  My dominant arm right now is 15 hanging and 16 flexed.  I am hoping to go to 16-17 hanging, and 17-18 flexed.  These are cold measurements.  Time will tell.  Updates to come.  Happy New year and thanks for reading!

OK.  I took the Sweet Potato Pie smoothie from BuckSpin, and gave it a twist.  The SPP smoothie from Buck is awesome and I have written about it.  Decided to try pumpkin as I saw an entire shelf at Publix while shopping.  The ingredients were as follows: Pumpkin.  That was it.  Here is the Nutritional Info:

http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/nutrition-calories/food/libbys/canned-pumpkin/

Combined this in a blender with 10 ozs skim milk, 1 cup of pumpkin, 10 G L-Glutamine, 10 G L-Arginine, 10 G BCAA powder, and 2 scoops BSN Syntha - 6 Vanilla Ice Cream.  Oh I almost forgot, a splash of vanilla extract and shake of cinnamon.  Blend on puree and drink.  Damn that is good.  This was a post w/o shake, with plenty of carbs, recovery agents, protein, and fiber.  10g of fiber just in the pumpkin.  Anyway, wanted to share it with everyone.  Now I have to compare the sweet potato nutrional profile to the pumpkin to see how they compare.  Keep kicking a$$ and getting strong!

January 13, 2009 will be 1 year from my first picture I took while I was still near the beginning of my fat loss/transformation.  I seems to have gone by so fast, but I am happy with the progress thus far.  I am going into December and first several weeks of January in cutting mode.  Spent the first part of 2008 losing the weight and trying to gain muscle.  I never really set my sites on cutting or bulking along the way, I was just happy with the changes.  About 4 weeks ago I decided to start cutting again and am down about 8 pounds now, to just a tad under 200, and I have not been that light since 1999.  Suffice to say I am happy and am working towards 190, no less than 185 as my target weight.  No matter the BF % at that time, which i guess should be under 10%, that is as far as I am going.  Then comes the CELLMASS, and VOLUMAIZE back into my supplement regimen.  I will add a few carbs back in, but not a ton, I want to gain lean muscle, even if slower than true bulking.  So that it is for now.  A plan of action to allow me  to roll into the big 40 next August looking stoked and buff. 

So i am trying to cut and get my abs to show themselves!  So I was looking thru my Eat Clean Diet book by Tosca Reno, thank you to KLTexas for the rec on this book, it is awesome.  I found a turkey meatball recipe, and decided to change it to fit my taste.  So I decided on a hamburger, a healthy one that is easy to carry in a ziploc bag and eat on the run for mid am and mid pm snack.  I bought 3 lbs of LEAN, like 97/3 lean ground beef.  This went in a big mixing bowl with 1/2 cup of A1 New Orleans Cajun marinade, and 2 cups of tri bellpepper mix, pre cut from Publix, and around 6-8 TBSP of roasted flax seeds.  Mixed it all up and made 6 oz patties.  I then put them in the freezer to firm up before grilling.  When I grilled them, they were so lean, that they fell apart a little, so maybe next time I will put in some egg white and wheat germ as binders.  Either way, they tasted great.  The A1, the flax seeds, and the bell peppers give it a unique flavor.  Had a huge spinach salad to go with and yum.  Going to try another batch with the wheat germ and egg white to see if they hold better to the grill.  I don’t know the calorie count, but i know 6 ozs pre cooked is around 30+ grams protein, and there is fiber from the peppers and flax seeds, and some fat which i am not worried about as it was 97/3 lean beef, and i want my test levels to stay up while I am trying to cut.  Made around 12 burgers if i forgot to say.