Bit of background about me:
Until I was 10 years old I was a pretty normal looking kid. Inexplicably, at 10, I started putting on fat extremely rapidly. My parents and doctors were at a loss to explain my fat gain; my mom has always fed us extremely well and my blood tests didn't indicate any hormonal or thyroid problems. I was a normal, active, fat kid. By the time I was in sixth grade I was probably at least 160 pounds. By 9th grade, when I joined the high school wrestling team, I was 220 pounds (no idea as to my BF%). I managed to drop to 199 lbs in wrestling and gained quite a bit of strength and endurance. However, at the beginning of my sophomore year I partially tore my right ACL and was forced to have surgery. I wanted to get back into wrestling but after missing a whole season in recovery my dad got a new job and my family moved to Michigan, and that's when things really got bad for me. I got pretty depressed, went through the usual teenage relationship angst BS, and played a lot of EverQuest (which is basically the antithesis to a healthy lifestyle -- 6-8 cans of soda/day and zero physical activity). In late 2003 I hit my peak of 295 pounds. You'd think that something would click with me since I was on the verge of hitting the big 300.
Well, nothing clicked, but my lifestyle improved slightly when I got to college and made some new friends. I stopped using the computer so much and drinking ridiculous amounts of soda. I started going outside. By summer 2004 I was down to 265 pounds, probably at least 32% bodyfat. In September a friend of mine convinced me to go work out with him -- I was dreading it and actually considered ditching, but I gave it a shot. I hated it at first. I'm sure I don't have to tell a lot of ya that being a lardass around a bunch of hardbodies feels like having a third arm or something (without the obvious benfits of having a third arm). Somehow, some way I stuck with it. Miraculously, I got hooked. I bought a membership and started lifting 4x a week and doing cardio on off days.
For the first 5 months or so of lifting I didn't alter my diet at all. I was doing things right in the gym, but out of it my habits were, well, terrible. I drank -every- night. Heavily. Being as naive as I was, I thought that more calories would lead to more muscle. I got stronger, since it'd been years since I lifted, but I stayed the same weight and I didn't feel like I was losing any fat. I did cardio; it didn't help. Finally, I realized I must be doing something wrong out of the gym rather than in it and began to focus on my diet. I went on a 'cutting' diet of 2,200/day with roughly a 50p/30c/20f ratio. It was like night and day, once I got used to it. The fat melted off me at an astonishing rate. From Feb 20 to May 20, I dropped from 260lb. to 210lb, while continuing to (sloooowly) gain strength.
My routine now is a 4 day split, chest/bis/abs -- legs -- shoulders/abs -- back/triceps. Low intensity cardio (hiking, basically) 3 days a week, whenever I can fit it in, for at least 90 minutes at a time. My diet is still hovering around 2,200 although I've been less diligent about food logging lately since I got back from a 2 week trip to Europe. My last bodyfat test put me at 18% but I think most of you will agree from the pics that I'm probably more like 21 or 22 -- I carry my fat in a weird way.
So anyway, here are the pics. Next step for me is to ramp back up to 6day/week moderate intensity cardio and get back to diligence with watching my calories. I've been very very happy so far with my results (when I feel fat all I need to do is look at my older pics and I'm just, "wow") and I'm confident that by the end of summer I'll be looking the best I ever have. I've gotten a lot of information from this forum and a lot of inspiration from the people on it; every before and after picture I see just makes me want to stick to it more and I have enormous respect for those of you who have managed to stick to your guns through it all.
Oh, by the way -- I have clinically diagnosed gyno. So in case you were wondering what it looks like. Not sure at this point whether I'm gonna pursue surgery when my bf% gets low enough but right now I'm leaning toward no. The only people who have ever commented on it are guys anyway and I'm not trying to impress them.
Linear Mode
