Scott’s BodyBlog

Been quite some time since I last wrote a post here.  Last May was my "fall off" point.  I was making progress and working hard, until an old friend came to stay with me for a week in May.  I had an amazing time with him, but I made excuses to myself about why I wasn’t going to the gym during his visit.  All it took to completely break my momentum was a week.  Then life sped up: I got a new job and began in early July, started studying for licenses for my new job and college courses started back up, in September I married my fiance, got terribly sick for about 3 months, and this pace has continued and will continue until this May.  I was browsing this website and found the Muscletech $50,000 transformation contest and decided to learn from what happened a year ago, get disciplined, and compete in this competition. 

I figure what do I have to lose in competing?  I win no matter what happens!  I get into shape for summer time and I walk away with the momentum and discipline I need to continue a healthy lifestyle, and/or I get some money, product and fun trips for doing what is already good for me.  Very seldom in life do you find a Win-Win opportunity and get to make a decision where it is choosing the better of two blessings.  I’m in this competition to win… and no matter what happens by the end of it… I’ll win.

So, its definately been a hit and miss with regular trips to the gym.  I loaded most of my stats into the progress section last night and saw that I haven’t put a dent in my body yet.  I didn’t expect much, but I was surprised to find out that I’m worse off on a couple measurements than when I started… A little annoying.  I hit the gym hard yesterday and wrote up a diet for me to stick to until July to drop my weight and lean up.  Any advise on better variations on the diet would be extremely helpful.

8:00 am (post cardio, pre resistance)

1 cup oatmeal, 32 oz water, 10 cooked egg whites or 1/2 lb. grilled/boiled chicken, Lipo-6, multi-vit, no-xplode, glutamine (2 grams), 1000 mg calcium

11:00 am (post resistance)

3/4 cup brown rice, Whey protein shake (40 grams protein), 32 oz water

2:00 pm

3/4 cup brown rice, Whey Protein Shake, 32 oz water

5:00 pm

3/4 cup brown rice, 1/2 lb. grilled/boiled chicken or tuna, 32 oz water, lipo-6

8:00 pm 3/4 cup brown rice, whey protein shake, 32 oz water

11:00 pm 3/4 cup brown rice, 1/4 cup steamed veggie mix, 1/2 lb. chicken, tuna, or lean red meat.

This diet with a 4-5 days a week gym trip should put me where I want to be by July 21st.  What do you guys think?  

While I am noting my progress, it is slow going.  I’m convinced my diet is keeping my hard work from really paying off.  I wouldn’t have a problem keeping to a strict diet for cutting fat if I had the money to afford a cutting diet.  I support my fiance and myself through school and she is allergic to anything made from cow milk, meat preservatives like MSG, Sodium nitrite, sodium nitrate, etc. and we are on a strict budget for food.  She is a small girl who needs to almost increase her caloric intake from what it is to keep from being twig thin.  So, we can afford one type of meal plan and I would rather her be healthy than me be thin. 

So… to get the results in the next 100 days that I need to make good on my promise to her I have to rethink my training.  I’ve been looking at the workouts that the actors and stuntmen went through for the movie "300" to get them into the physical shape that they were in for the movie.  They all went from soft to hard in 8 weeks!  Two months to that kind of transformation.  So, I’m going to drop my carbohydrate calories a little and increase my protein calories and keep my healthy fat calories as they sit now, continue to cut out alcohol, pop, and junk food.  One more thing that I’m loving about the new workout is the relative strength that it creates.  Most of the actors and stuntmen saw an unprecidented gain in strength and power after the 2 months of training… now I understand that they trained 5 days a week for 8-12 hours a day with THE badass Mark Twight, but I have more than 2 months and have developed a personalized workout regime that I feel will put me in the shape I want… strength and looks!

It amazes me how our everyday lives seem to war with our goals for better health.  Working 40 hours a week as a Progressive insurance licensed rep taking calls and servicing policies, part time college trying to get my finance degree to enter the world of securities investments, a fiance who wants to spend as much free time with me as we get, and now devoting time to the gym…. my heads spinning already and it has only been a couple months.  I’m not wanting a crash diet to drop my weight down quickly and then gain it back quicker after I reach my goal.  No use in achieving a goal that will be undone in the next couple months due to the lack of longevity in the routine.  My progress is slow compared to high school wrestling season, but I’ll be the first to say that weight loss in most wrestling programs are the opposite of healthy.  My 12 year old chocolate lab is sick and needing to be taken to the bathroom about every hour.  Vet before work today, fiance’s cousins wedding tomorrow (Easter wedding??? I haven’t a clue why), bachelors party tonight, no sleep last night due to the poor dog, busy cleaning carpet all night and morning, as I said above vet appointment before work, 8 hour shift from 1:15 pm to 10:00 pm and party with the male side of my fiance’s family (this will not be the wild drinking, stripper, "what happens at this party stays at this party" type thing… probably beer, poker, cigars for the smokers, and drunken philosophy between several generations of men), head home and clean up after my sick dog again, and wake up to more sick dog, wedding, reception, housing 7 people in our little 2 bed 2 bath apartment… where did I mention the gym above??? No, I didn’t forget it because I have no time for it this weekend. 

Sail through the next few days and escape monday morning to the cold metal of weights, rock music and sweat… pushing and pulling all the stress, tension, awkwardness, and frustration of the weekend out of my body and mind.  Spend some time in my own world, where God and I can have a man-to-Supreme Being chat about everything going on.  Relaxation through flexion…. interesting concept and probably difficult for many sedentary people to understand, but anyone who has spent any REAL time in a gym understands exactly what I’m talking about.  God, weights, water, and me…. that’s my vacation!

The more I exercise, the more I remember why it was my main past time for almost a decade of my life.  It shows you that you have what it takes to change the things about yourself you don’t necessarily enjoy.  It reveals how tough you really are… down deep.  Restricting your diet, waking up mornings that you would normally sleep away, sacrificing other extra activities to push through sweat, pain, and fatigue.  You begin to see results and you realize that this wasn’t someone else, this wasn’t some miracle drug or popular diet… you changed yourself.  Your hard work achieved success, however little progress you may have made.  It fuels you… you crave more… you’re re-creating your reality, your life, and the lives of the people you meet.  Realize that the better you make yourself alters how people react and the characteristics they assume about you.  Hard worker… intelligent… dedicated… disciplined… and attractive as well. 

I have a long way to go before I’m at my goal, but each small step is showing me more and more about myself.  I grew up on an 80 acre ranch and was a very active kid.  When I started sports in school it wasn’t a huge fight to get to an athletic level.  I kept it up until my sophomore year of college.  I’ve bottomed out, pertaining to my health as a 23 year old man.  I’m fighting bad habits and justifications for why the gym isn’t where I want to be this morning.  I’m realizing that I’m tougher than I thought… more disciplined than I thought I could be without a coach screaming at me to push through the last quarter mile, the last quarter, or the last 2 minute period so that when I left the track/field/mat I would look back and be able to honestly say, "I gave my all.  I left it all out there." 

I’m not a morning person. Even though I might wake up at 8:00 am I don’t start functioning until around noon. I prefer to go to the gym and do my running after the sun sets. I work from 1:15 pm to 10:00 pm and my gym closes at 10:00 pm weeknights and 7:00 pm weekends and is a 20 minute drive from my work. So, my option is getting up early to go for a morning run with my chocolate lab and head to the gym before work. I’ve scheduled 5-6 days per week to be at the gym for around 2.5 hours to try and reach my goal by the July.

 So… how many times did I make it last week? I got up and jogged my 1 mile twice and didn’t step foot once in the gym. Looking back I’m disappointed and making sure that it doesn’t happen again this week. Anyone have suggestions about what helps them get to the gym when the going gets tough?

Imagine this… you decide to begin your journey back to fitness.  You’ve carefully weighed your goals and determined a workout schedule that is possible and won’t hurt anything that you need to get done on a regular basis i.e. work, school, etc.  Applied the finishing touches for the first two cycles of two week lifting schedules.  Finally, you’ve mustered the courage to setup an online site for whatever motivatation or criticism the members of a fitness community can provide.

One might think the climax would be the first day in the gym with the selected supplements and exercises… a flurry of pumping iron, stretching, and cardio that would have sent me home exhausted and praying God has mercy on my body and puts a limitation on the pain my sore muscles would inevitably put me through for the next couple days.

Seems like what someone would expect right?  So… The day I’m supposed to start my morning run and gym trip, I don’t feel so well.  I get out of the shower and feel like each limb is strapped with a 50 pound weight, my heart is racing and my chest hurts.  As a 23 year heart problems aren’t normally an issue, and while I’m not in shape, I’m not unhealthy to a point of heart issues.  My fiance is in nursing school so she is worried about me being one of those wierd cases where a young person dies of a heart attack.  So, ER here we come.  They run loads of tests and can’t figure out whats causing this pain.  So, here I am… recovering from something that has stumped a total of 4 doctors over the course of the last week.  I got put on medication that made me eat everything in site jumping me up to 255 pounds last weekend, once I stopped taking it because it wasn’t helping my appetite dropped to about nothing and I’m now 249 pounds… right back to where I was before this and still having issues with activities.   Got back to work today and I’m noticing that I’m still not fully healed from whatever knocked me down.  So, instead of starting my training with a good shock to my system to get my muscles and cardiovascular system jump started, I’m now (slowly) walking a mile a day and resting as much as possible to get myself healthy again so that I can enjoy the feeling I’ll get after I put myself through the day I described above.  Thanks for reading!

So, to anyone who is taking the time to read this, thanks for visiting.  This is my first blog anywhere, ever, so please hold tight and hopefully I won’t have scared you off completely.  I guess I would like to point out that posting my current pics on here is terrifying for me.  My current physical condition is at such a poor state that I’m mortified to be subjecting myself to millions of viewers online who can all comment on how unhealthy and unattractive I am.  I used to have a lot of pride in my appearance and physical condition.  My freshman year of college I was around 5% BF, 32 inch waist, and 190 lbs of damn near solid muscle.  A mile worth of running was a warm-up for me, a max bench of 350 lbs, leg press of 820 lbs, squat at 600 lbs, and curl of 230 lbs.  Not the most powerful young man out there by far, but still stats in which I held a great deal of pride.  After my freshman year of college I experienced a death of a person close to me almost every 6 months for the next 3 years.  I was working full time and trying to finish my college studies.  I stopped exercising and began eating poorly.

Now here I am… 23 years old, unhealthy and unattractive.  I feel 20 years older than I am for the weakness in my muscles and how easily I lose my breath when just walking long distances.  Aches and pains from weak muscles, tendons, and joints bother me almost daily.  Long story short I’m finding myself relating with the pains my father complains of as a 44 year old man… double my age and I can relate to his back pain.  I’m tired of all my friends commenting on how I’m always sick.  I have to change this now.

I have recently been blessed with the love of my life.  A little gorgeous woman named Meghan whom I will marry someday.  She is an exciting woman who loves the outdoors and to get her adrenaline pumping with skiing, kayaking, rock climbing, and any other thing that involves extreme fitness and danger.  She has helped me to regain a passion for life and I can’t thank her enough.  She loves photography, but with my current physical condition I refuse to let her take photos of me.  Its bad enough to see myself in the mirror, let alone framed pictures of me around the house and sent in emails.  She just turned 23 this past February 12th and being we are both poor college students I told her I had a present for her that couldn’t be purchased for money alone.  I am giving her the gift of being able to take pictures of me by my 24th birthday this coming July.  I am busting my ass and changing my life so that by this summer I’m comfortable with posing for her camera.  This is not just for that though… this is my opportunity to regain my life and who I really am.  This is my chance to be the best man I can be… for God, me and Meghan.

So… I will be posting updates and replying to comments.  I am subjecting myself to this community with the hope that I may get encouragement and advise as to how to transform my body back into what it once was.  I am open to all comments and advise from people who wish to help me in some way along this journey to regain my life.  Thanks for reading and feel free to bookmark me or something and keep track of my progress!

Scott