My fitness kick - Why, When, and How - Part 3

I decided some time ago to delay this post until I hit my goal of a solid year of resistance training.
Well that goal is hit as well as the physical goals I was trying to achieve during that time frame. (more on that to come)

This past year has been an interesting one to say the least. I've really progressed as a person and made some of the biggest leaps in the development of my character that I ever have.
I've still got a ways to go before I truly end up where I'd like to be but lifes a journey not a destination right?

Anyway before I get to the physical goals I want to cover what was basically THE goal when I started this, my health. I started eating better and exercising because of my anemia. Now while I had definitely felt better I didn't have confirmation until earlier this year that I was actually fixing anything.

I won't get into specifics but all my numbers on my blood came back AWESOME. I had literally fixed everything all through self education and consistent hard work.
Now I can't really describe how awesome this personal victory felt. It was really a profound feeling being fully reinforced and somehow vindicated.
I mean I thought I knew what I was doing and doing what I should to fix my problems but theres always that sense of doubt there until you have a test proving what you think you know.
Hard, tangible, scientific evidence telling you that you aren't full of shit.
Like I said an awesome victory was had and I felt fucking great, this was early February.

Now at this point I was on top of the world and unstoppable in my health and fitness goals.
So I started my next task which was also a final push towards my one year goals.
I started Kris Gethin's 12 Week Trainer in late February.

Now I'll be honest this was one of the hardest things I've ever undertaken in my life. I faced many challenges but none so unrelenting.
The hardest part was definitely diet. I followed his plan pretty strictly with almost zero lapses.
The two worst parts of the diet was no alcohol and how there are almost no fats (only fat intake was from the meats I was eating).
Honestly it wasn't the alcohol or drinking itself I missed that much it was the social ostracization. Because I was no longer drinking many people simply stopped inviting me out or talking to me all together. I got a lot of crap from long time friends for my choice. This was really disheartening and frustrating. You find out who your friends really are in times like that. To those who supported me during this, thank you I'll never forget that. Enough of that though lets talk about how lack of fat sucks.

The part that makes the lack of fat hard is that your mind really relies on fat. I feel like the lack of fat really put me on my C game mentally. I also became quite irritable. I did my best to focus and not be short with people but often times my best wasn't good enough.

While the eating and liftstyle switch was the hardest the exercise was no walk in the park. Kris throws some seriously tough workouts at you. I came very near vomiting on more than one occasion. Add to that the 20-30 min of cardio TWICE every single day and you've got a tough program.
I knew it was tough going in but the reality of facing that toughness daily really showed me what I was made of, and to be honest I was proud of myself. I always managed to work my diet and routine around whatever life threw at me and persevere.

Well by the end of it I had triumphed, instead of talking about the results I'll just show you.
Before (Late February):

After (Early May):

The numbers tell no lies either. Started at 173 and 13.8% bodyfat and ended at 161 and 6.8% bodyfat.
During the first 10 weeks all my lifts went up too (they plateaued after that but never went down).

Since these photos I've progressed more and have set new goals but I'll have to save that for next time as its getting to be past my bed time (proper sleep is huge for health and proper recovery!).

My fitness kick - Why, When, and How - Part 2

I last left off in June of 2011 with my running and working out at home.
In July I went and got myself a membership to Xsport fitness.
In retrospect this is one of the best decisions I've ever made for myself EVER.
Now I should state now when I started I decided this was a lifestyle change. Not something I was gonna try and quit. I was going to change how I lived my life.
I promised myself 1 year straight of giving 110%.
This was simply to not make the task feel so daunting but also to make myself a promise I felt I could and had to keep.

I'll be honest doing this intimated the HELL out of me.
I was skinny nerd and had always been skinny nerd.
Never in my life did I expect to be the kind of guy who lifts weights yet here I was signing up for a gym and researching beginner routines.
My first visits were the scariest. Of course I had relatively little clue as to what I was doing despite my extensive research and reading
Like anyone who is doing something new where they don't feel they belonged I was very self conscious and assumed everyone was looking at me, judging.
I persisted regardless of these anxieties and eventually the gym became like a second home to me. . Slowly but steadily I figured everything out.
I developed tunnel vision that started as soon as I walked through that door.
Straight to the locker room to change. And as soon as I was changed my headphones were in, my gloves were on, and I entered the fucking zone.
Very clearly and exclusively focused on myself and my own goals. Everyone and everything around me was now nothing more than a backdrop.
This would last for awhile and is what really got me through this difficult period.
Being able to focus on my own thing and block out what I perceived to be judgements of others really helped me excel.
Over the first few months I really ironed out my form and got my base numbers going and quickly rising.
That was mostly the physical side of things though.

What I truly ultimately gained was something quite different and once again quite unexpected.
Lifting has become almost like a spiritual experience for me.
There is no simpler struggle to be had. Life's problems are complex and can be all different kinds of difficult.
Lifting is the most simple and basic form of problem or struggle. There is simply you, where the weight is, and where you need to make it go. You will be put in your place if you try to bite off more than you can chew. If working as hard as you should you will regularly be brought to your limits and fail. This is one place where failure is the GOAL. Going as hard as you can until you simply CAN'T anymore. Its helped me not only to find my personal limits but taught me how to push through and persevere once I actually get there.
What I also enjoy about it is it is a natural system.
You can't lie, you can't cheat, you can't bend the rules. If you slack or miss days it shows. If you stay disciplined and work hard you get rewarded.
Simple as that.

Throughout this time I tightened up my diet gradually but overall quite drastically.
The amount I drank was cut to the lowest it had been probably since I started drinking in high school. My diet slowly became more similar to that of a bodybuilder than your average person. Lots and lots of lean protein, complex carbs, and good fats. (I'll get into specifics on that in a later entry)
I also really started hitting the supplementation. Protein shakes, multivitamins, and fish oil are where I started.
This eventually progressed into more complex and additional supplementation to address specific individual needs.

All of these things progressed naturally as one would expect.
I learned from reading, through my own trial and error, and from the experiences of others.
One lesson I learned was that too much fruit can make you FAT.
Surprising isn't it?
I definitely didn't see that one coming but once I pinpointed the problem all I did was decrease my massive fruit intake and the fat faded away again.

After getting all these ducks in a row I started seeing great gains regularly.
As of this day 2/11/2012 I have gained 22.5 lbs of mostly all muscle from the time I started in July 2011. This is barely over 7 months of time and the difference I've seen is rather amazing.
Every single number has gone up on every lift. I'm talking about both reps and weight.
Some of my numbers have even doubled. For example when I first started I was doing 20 lb dumbbells for hammer curls, now I use 40s.
Some exercises I couldn't even do when starting I can now do in great number.
Dips and pull ups are great examples of this, when first starting I used the weight assist for these while today I just ordered a weight belt to ADD weight since my body weight has become too easy for these exercises.

But enough talk, here are a couple recent pics to see my progress.

My arms have gotten pretty damn large for my body size.




FINALLY starting developing a chest after months of work at it.


Thats it for now, I'll continue with part three very soon which will be a wrap up of my recent blood tests, the motivation I've gotten from those around me, and what the future holds.

My fitness kick - Why, When, and How - Part 1

This is something I've been meaning to address for a bit actually and had yet to tackle.

As with any tale its always best to start from the beginning right?
Well this one starts as many big changes for the better do, with an unexpected change for the worse.

It was January of 2011 and I had been feeling quite fatigued and almost constantly tired for a very long time.
A drastic change in my personal life gave me the kick I needed to go ahead and see a doctor finally.
A month or two of various tests and it turns out I have a rare type of anemia and also an iron deficiency caused by said anemia.

Now what does this mean in terms of symptoms?
Fatigue and weak immune system.

At first this news left me feeling a bit powerless and only worsened my state.
Its like having a doctor tell me what I felt was real made it excusable to me.
They like any good drug dealer of course wanted to put me on meds.
If you know me you know I don't really like to fuck with dumping drugs and chemicals into my body.
I passed on the meds and wallowed in self pity for a couple months.
Like I said during this time there were some drastic changes in my personal life and I was feeling overall quite depressed.

Now I'd like to say that what happened next was fast and an epiphany of some sort but in truth it wasn't.
One day I just decided I was sick of feeling the way I did and I figured I'd try to fix everything with a bit of exercise and a diet that would help promote better blood health.
I started running in April and added in some P90X stuff and basic exercises as well (push ups, sit ups, stuff like that).
Much to my surprise I started to feel GREAT.
What really made me hooked more than my body feeling physically better was the emotional and mental benefits.

Now I've heard many folks talk about exercise as a cure for depression but I was rather skeptical.
Well I was now most definitely a fucking believer. I couldn't believe the stress relief and the just general happiness this brought me. Its indescribable really.
I became hooked. It became such a release and so empowering in every way. Like I had broken self imposed chains of lethargy and self loathing.
Now I'd like to say it was easy to start but it wasn't. Habits are hard to form especially physically demanding ones.
Luckily I caught the addiction quickly and I simply HAD to run 5 days a week or more.
During this time I had many ups and downs. Periods where shin splints and brutal knee pain really threatened to slow down or halt my progress.
But I persisted through and used all the resources at my disposal to learn and prevent these problems.

Now after awhile of doing this some unplanned side effects did occur. My body really began to change.
My waist went down from 32-34" to 28-30".
My weight dropped from 168 lbs down to 150 lbs.
I began to look BETTER than I ever had physically.

Here is a pics from that time.

This was June of 2011.
Where I went from this point will be covered in Part 2.