[WillACarpenter]

Thank you everybody who's reading, especially those who are replying here, it's motivating for one, and two...I'm a talker, I've written several thousand words here and haven't even GOTTEN UP TO DATE yet. So if there's something you're wondering JUST ASK. I will *literally* answer any question honestly and to the best of my knowledge. This comes with a disclaimer: if you don't want to real answer..don't ask.

Phil Stevens said it best: "It takes a lot of work to get your body into shape. Any shape. I've been (low 200's) lean and mean, and it took a lot of work, I've also been (low 300's) really sloppy and that took a lot of work too. It's a lot of work to eat crap all of the time, it's a lot of work to do that much nothing."

I agree with that completely.

I have recently purchased several books on fitness, nutrition, exercise science, lifting, stretching etc (recently as in most are still in the mail recently) but before that I found that a lot of the "general knowledge" type books really helped me out.

Fight Fat is a Men's Health book from 1995 that really gave me the mindset to workout back in my 3-5 month workout binge. I'm not going to say anybody should follow anything the book says word for word...but it does drive home one GREAT point: All things in moderation.

Do you want to lose weight? Don't eat so much crap. Do you want to be able to walk up some stairs without losing your breath? Workout more. Do you want to do better at your job? Focus more.

It also does a good job of getting the simple points of: Eat when your body needs food not when your body needed food two hours ago. Plan snacks and small meals, and eat more times a day, and hey maybe you should hit the gym and maybe a workout doesn't always HAVE to be a 5x5 or 3x10 in the gym...maybe you're on a business trip and you jump rope for a while and run up and down some stairs then do some push-ups.

The #1 point most people get wrong is to think that diet and exercise is HARD. It's not, it's just not. Knowing the RIGHT information without knowing TOO MUCH is hard. But eating fruits, veggies, nuts, lean meats, wholesome carbs...that's not hard. Knowing that you should shut off the TV and go do some moving or lifting...that's not hard. It's only hard if you can't succeed after eating okay and working out a bit. If you're having problems...then do your homework.

Where were we in my episodic soap opera? Oh yes, starting this whole working out thing.

I joined my dad as he switched to a new routine, and he transitioned from a local commercial gym (all in all better than the others around here, but not super awesome, I liked the place for what is was though) to our home gym.

What you need to understand is that my dad *thinks* he is one of those guys who doesn't care about how much he can lift or how much weight he's using..and to some extent he is...but he DOES care at least a bit. My dad weight trains for 3 basic reasons:

1) it's been a hobby of his forever and he enjoys it
2) when you drop 130 lbs you have a lot of loose skin, what better way to solve that problem than to fill it up with nice hard muscle?
3) it's a hell of a lot better than running in circles for your health.

Those reasons mean that my dad is primarily a bodybuilding based weight lifter. A lot of fitness guys like to complain about body building, and I understand their arguments..but I'm not going to fight you on it. Yes body builders concentrate on a lot of smaller movements designed to make a person look like they're really strong when really they're not. I disagree however because my dad really is old school (he's 60 BTW) and his reply to "how do you train your legs" isn't "leg curls, leg extensions, calf raises" it's "squat. squat like you're life depends on it, then squat some more...and then maybe throw some of that other stuff in some other time, or for specialization"

Yes my workouts are (at least my big training days) primarily bodybuilding workouts, BUT I'm always doing a full body complex as our main lift of the day. Some days two (the next routine we're doing involves dead lifts and lat pull downs)

My motivations are simple: I want to make fitness a part of my life, and I want to reap the rewards associated with it. I am not, I repeat, AM NOT doing this to lose weight. Will I lose weight? Most assuredly. But I'm not checking the scale every day. In fact I'm not really measuring, and I haven't taken pictures yet. The time will come for all of those things.

I just want to break the cycle of doing crappy things I don't really care about, and start doing better things that I enjoy and do care about. I didn't get fat from eating junk food alone, I got fat from over indulging in some grade A quality chow as well. I could eat enough chicken breast and broccoli to get fat given a long enough time line.

So I'm working to change that. Workouts give me a time to hang out with my dad, a chance to talk, a chance to just SHUT UP and NOT have to talk for part of my day, some time to blow off some steam, some time to really prove something to myself, to fight the iron, to wrestle the weights....to set myself up for a small victory.

Often times I'll get done working out walk in the house and my mom will say to us "how was the workout guys?" and my response will be "I'm a F***ing BEAST" because I set myself up to succeed, to prove myself worthy.

I love that. EVERYBODY needs that. At work, at school, at home. You need a challenge, but one you can see results on NOW or SOON. 3 days a week I get to test myself, to take everything I have and just GO. I love that.

Plus hey, I'm looking better, feeling better, losing some weight, spending less money on food and my joints hurt less.

Where exactly is the down side? Oh yeah..work. It takes some ACTUAL effort to do these things, that's why we all (myself VERY included) have excuses for not doing this stuff..but if you plan better...it's less work, it's just your routine, just what happens naturally...then you've really improved your life.

To respond to Juleske: I set my goals in a lot of different ways, if you've talked to any personal trainers or really big people in the business they'll always talk about how people set the wrong type of goals, the kind they don't have enough control over, or they're too specific. I agree, but I think it's a good idea to have several types of goals, maybe one for next week, maybe ones for next year, maybe ones with no set date, so mine are all along the same lines, just different time lines or lengths in some sort.

Goal 1: I want to continue to workout without missing any days. My dad and I agree if we're going to miss 1 workout..it's going to be leg day. This is a bit less likely for me because I've fallen in love with squats (see my icon) but the hardest stuff you're the least likely to do. 3 months in, 3 workouts a week without fail. We rock.

Goal 2: My next weight goal is to have lost 10% of my starting body weight. The first time I weigh myself (a week or so into my training) I weigh 348.5 on my scale (a full 23.5 pounds heavier than I'd ever been) so 10% is 34.85 lbs to lost meaning my target weight is 313,65 It's good to keep in mind right now that I'm not really all that concerned with this goal or when it happens, just that it does. I know that professionals will tell you when a person is as obese as I am (BMI of roughly 42, considered extremely obese) you can lose up to 4-5 pounds a week and be okay health wise...but I don't care. I know that if I lose weight at whatever natural rate just happens while I'm eating better and working out better I am much more likely to keep it off, I am much more likely to see my strength and musculature go up and my fat go down.

So far I've lost like 22 pounds, in 3 months, without weight loss being my actual goal. In fact I didn't look at a scale for 6 weeks. I could see my chest and shoulder muscles filling out, and my gut drooping, and started to see some biceps and quads...who needs a scale!? Hell I've probably put on a MINIMUM of 15 pounds of muscle in the past 3 months. Add that to my 22 pounds lost and I'm down 37 pounds, go me!

Besides if I lose 1 pound a week for a year...I've lost 52 pounds, I am NOT going to complain about that!

Goal 3: Be able to complete movements in Bench Press, Dead Lift, Squat using my body weight on the bar. This goal is fun for me. Some people would say that's a bad goal because it's really far out of my reach right now...but think of it this way. Say I never ever squat more than 250 pounds...al I have to do is lose weight until I'm 250...then I completed my goal. I can work at it from both sides! (by the way I've already worked my way up to 210...so 250 seems pretty achievable over this next 6 months)

Goal 4: Master the Front Squat. Our next leg day...next Tuesday I believe, I will do Front Squats for the second time in my entire life. They're going to be the squat variation we do for the next several workouts, and I want to get good at them.

Other than that I just want to keep plugging away, and improving my diet and workouts as I go.

My diet plan: Eat several times a day, try to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, lean meats, skim milk, low fat cheeses, not so many carbs but I do love the carbs so I make sure that I used better versions. I use a multigrain plus flax wrap for some burritos or wraps. I eat whole grain lower carb breads, I love the taste of whole wheat pastas. I try to limit my portions, which several meals helps that out a lot.

I cut out soda. I kind of did this naturally anyway so I just made it part of the plan. I drink a LOT of water and a lot of tea, hot or cold, usually green. I have 1 liter Sigg bottle that my SO got me for graduating (that's not ALL she got me, mostly she got one and wanted me to look trendy too) that I carry everywhere and I drink probably...6 liters a day? I'm not trying to drink about 1.5 gallons of water a day..I just do. Mostly that's because when I get busy at work I just down some tea to hold me over until I get a minute to eat..that covers 2 liters right there. Also I am an active, fat, man. I sweat quite a bit, need to replace that stuff. And I drink a lot of fluids with my supplement pills...and throw in some protein shakes.

For supplements I take:

Vitamin C x1
Fish Oil X6
Greens+ (plus) X8
Fiber Greens+ (plus) x6
EGCG x2 (sometimes I drink a lot of green tea so I don't bother, sometimes I take a third if I haven't been drinking any)
And I take a multi vitamin occasionally. Why? Because I really do eat a lot of good for me food, and I take greens+ everyday, so I don't need all of those huge doses of multi vitamins all at once, especially when I use supplements like protein shakes to help with some of those.

I also should mention I take those 2-3 times a day. I take half of those in the morning, some midday, the rest a couple hours before bed.

I'll be adding some ZMA in before bed soon actually.

For what most people consider supplements...I like Metabol II protein powder even though it tastes a little bit like foot. Mostly because I used to use that years back when it didn't mix well and tasted worse..but it WORKED, and it still does, so I always have at least a little bit around. (I have the orange flavor right now...used to only be terrible chocolate or worse vanilla, I mix the orange with orange crystal light (the walmart brand is called orange early rise)

I use a caesin protein for my Tuesday and Thursday workouts because they're right before bed. That's a chocolate flavor so I mix in a serving of PB2 (best stuff EVER)

I make most of my shakes with skim milk, even if I use crystal light powder. Trying to get some shakes that I DON'T do that with so I can take the powder in a bottle with me on the road.

I just ordered some Cytofuse, which is a "recovery" drink. I did that because John Berardi (Dr. John Berardi) recommends having a 2:1 carbohydrate to protein ration during and after you workouts. I needed something a bit thinner than my shakes and more refreshing that had those balances. Raspberry Lemonade flavor is on it's way to my house right now.

We're in the midst of switching our routine up, but essentially we lift (and lift HEAVY) 3 days a week. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. We generally have 4 different workouts we do. That means that we just completed day 4 in our routine on Tuesday and won't hit day 4 again until the following Thursday.

The reason is that we DO lift heavy and to failure of power (when you can't get explosive movements anymore) and we go for the gold. Balls to the walls, no guts no glory, grunting and swearing...okay it's extreme at times but generally we just give it everything we *can* and we want to have those muscles DAMN WELL RESTED before we hit them again. Less is more.

On off days I have stared doing recovery workouts. I walk a lot anyway... I haven't mentioned this but I'm a server. I get an average of 8500 steps a night in...just at work.

Side bar - if you want to lose weight...got spend the $5 to get a freaking pedometer at walmart...you'll thank me later.

I WANT to do more stretching. This is the #1 thing I need to improve. Guess what I just ordered with the rest of the books and supplements I just mentioned? That's right, Juleske will be happy - A Foam Roller! I plan on doing a LOT of foam rolling.

I also made myself some light...lightish Bulgarian Training bags. I keep the really light one in my car, and the other in my gym. On off days I'll do some dynamic stuff with those for a quick workout. I've also been jumping rope. It's amazing how fast that can just destroy a fat guy like me. If you haven't done it since you were a kid... got spend the $7 to get one.

I look forward to keeping you all updated here, and I look forward to learning more from my books, podcasts and all of you guys. If there's anything you want to know, just ask, and please keep the feedback coming!

Also if anybody has any sort of photoshop skills and would be willing to put together a couple of simple things for me...please let me know!