It was inevitable that I’d do another one of these posts centered on healthy living. My journey began last year when I was nearly a 23-year-old diabetic after spending the first 20 years of my life in martial arts, bodybuilding, running and surfing alongside my father who is a personal trainer. It was embarrassing that I gained 80 pounds in 1 year and a chiropractor said I had the back of a 70 year old due to 12 hour days behind a desk followed by late nights of drinking with little sleep. Despite the start of this journey being centered around learning how to cook, beginning a small fitness regiment and reducing the amount of time at the office, I truly dove head first this July when I recommitted to a gym, dropped everything out of my diet that wasn’t a catalyst to muscle growth and fat reduction and stocked up on so many supplements that Olympians would say, “alright, I think you’re taking enough vitamins”.
There have been some very big changes. First of all, I don’t feel like I have less time. Maybe if children were in my life, the story would be different but I don’t miss any of my favorite TV shows or tech news. I can still read magazines and chat with friends. I owe that to the iPad, which is with me at the gym each day. The iPhone entertains me while moving weights around and the iPad I use to watch TV shows and read the web while running, on the elliptical and even in the sauna. It’s a wonderful device. If you plan on living at a gym, get an iPad and it will change your life. I store my vitamin and supplement routine in it as well as exercises and calorie counting. I can do it all with the iPad and it’s with me at all times and it helps that my gym as Wi-Fi but Verizon service works too if I need it.
It may also be a bit shocking that I’m authoring this piece at a KFC. See, their grilled chicken breasts are greats on nights that I forgot to defrost anything and are all out of veggies at the house. However, when I order 6 grilled chicken breasts, it takes about 30 minutes to cook them. It’s not fast food but the protein is superb and I just have to know that the sodium content of their grilled variety is quiet high but I’ve never had a problem with blood pressure or cholesterol in my day. The time spent at KFC waiting for nearly fresh grilled chicken has been a great time to grab the MacBook Air and get some writing done. Ya know, I saw some weird computer setups in cafes in San Francisco but never did I imagine seeing a guy “jacked in” with full DJ headphones and a MacBook Air at a KFC. There’s probably a photo of me on Fail Blog…or maybe I should just submit it myself.
Enough of the rambling, I’d like to share with you an evolution of the program. It was absolutely inevitable that I tone down the diet and regiment a bit. One can’t sustain this sort of regiment unless they have unlimited income for supplements, unlimited income for local and organic foods and a lot of time to hang out at the gym. I have friends now at the gym but I promised that gym buddies wouldn’t be my ONLY friends and that requires doing things outside of the gym, which means having a beer and cheesecake on the weekends. You alienate your friends if you’re the only guy not drinking or the only guy ordering salads for every meal. It annoys people and I won’t be that guy.
So, after 3 months I have changed nearly everything about my routine and I’m still losing weight and seeing results. Let’s talk about diet first. I’m allowing myself alcohol every night if I want. That can be a glass of wine or a beer. Usually, I have a drink every 3rd night because taking vitamins at night means alcohol will make me sick when it hits the garlic and cayenne pills. Vitamins come before alcohol. I can eat whatever I want as long as what I want comes in one meal meaning I can have a sausage sandwich at Dunkin Donuts but can’t have Taco Bell for dinner. Also, the splurge must contain a large amount of protein. Splurging on a donut is not in the rulebook but splurging on a chicken sandwich at Wendy’s is completely fine. I’m still taking protein bars, powder and high protein meals to build muscle but I’m less concerned about staying in the calorie deficiency level as I was before. I’ve changed up my vitamin routine where a multi-vitamin, B-Complex and Fish Oil is daily. The other 25 vitamins I take are every other day. I still take powdered creatine after a workout but I’m not taking garlic daily or green tea extract. This saves money ($300 a month for vitamins isn’t sustainable) and is easier on my digestive system. Trust me when I say 28 vitamins, high-protein intake and extreme physical activity will do some funny things. I don’t recommend it for a long period of time. I’ve stopped taking N.O.-Xplode and have switched to Jack3d and only take Jack3d before every OTHER workout, not every workout. There were some individuals who said they were showing high liver toxins after taking these pre-workout supplements for only a month and liver disease could occur during long term doses. I have an appointment scheduled for blood work but figured that I was fine without these pre-workout supplements so I’m going to take them only as a minimum and cycle off them once a month for a few weeks. It’s important to live a healthy life and not just get big and strong.
Since I was healthy my entire life but my entire life before really noticing that people noticed or cared that I was healthy, I didn’t realize how different people treat you or stare at you as you improve muscle tone and drop fat. A large percentage of America has extra fat and a large number of us are obese so, to have chest muscles and biceps bulging out makes you different from everyone else. People stare at my biceps in between making eye contact and it’s really freaking me out. They’re my arms so I don’t notice how big they’re getting but they’re growing very large and I see it now in photos taken of me. I still have stomach fat but that’ll be the last to go. My leg and arm fat is nearly gone and the definition in my muscles has improved but there’s this layer of fat over rock hard abdominals that is going to remain on me until the very end. When I started gaining weight, that’s the place it went first. Because my stomach hasn’t really decreased at all. I’m still wearing the same pants size so my waist is unchanged but there is more space in the legs of my jeans, which is nice. Things are more comfortable but I’ve remained at 250 pounds for the past 2 months. I feel that if I stayed on that insane diet of last month through the end of the year, I’d have no stomach fat and well no fat at all and be back to a size 34 jean but I’m not stressing about it. The important thing is, I feel fantastic and I’m gaining a lot of muscle so I am dropping fat even if the fat isn’t flying off the shelves. The fact that I’m getting bigger and staying at the same weight means fat is going away but slowly and that’s alright.
I was going to discuss my routine and its evolution but I’ll do it quickly because at 1350 words, I’m sure all of you want me to stop talking at this point. The physical routine is more grueling than before BUT I’m mostly taking weekends off. I stretch on the weekends but rarely go to the gym unless I really feel like it. Monday through Friday I work out once a day and two times if I get up early enough. I’m still doing the same physical workout before but I do 15 minutes of biking before working out and then 1 hour of running or elliptical after a work out followed by 30 minutes in the sauna or steam room where I stretch and practice breathing exercises. I have changed it up to where I’m doing different exercises but the schedule and what I work on which days is unchanged.
That’s the update. I’ll post again probably in 2 months with an update on how I’m doing and my current stats. For now, thanks for reading and I hope you’re getting inspired because I’m really excited with what I’m doing and how I feel lately. It’s just awesome.
