227 lbs down to 197 lbs ? A sailor?s 8 month weight loss journey

[hookahjoe]

First off I have always been a big muscular guy with the genetic gift of broad shoulders and giant calves. I am also a ships officer, spending 4-5 months at sea followed by a 2-3 month on shore vacation rotation. I had just turned 30 last year and finally 8 years of bad motivation on the ship had taken its toll. The Captain was calling me fatty, and hate it as I did, I had to agree with him. My gut looked like hell and my ass was even worse. The food on the ship is too good, it?s easy to overeat and stuff down bad calories, not to even mention the ice cream bar and that one of our cooks was a pastry chef ashore. Consequently my energy was always down, I would drink 6 cups a coffee a day just to keep going and to survive the graveyard night shift on the bridge. At times I would try to make an effort to get out and hit the gym, but low energy, over eating the tasty but bad food, and the easy excuse of bad weather or rough seas always would lead me back to my laptop video games and an ice cream bar.

Turning 30 I decided this all had to change. Starting in Sept. 06 I teamed up with the ship?s muscle man and we decided what would be the best for both of us would be a high rep (24 X 3) minimum rest workout, with day one chest, day two biceps, day 3 abs and cardio, day 4 back and shoulders, day 5 triceps, and starting over. Over the next 4 months we would make small modifications but that work out was the general standard. My partner had broken a rib the year before so we were both starting out at an equal strength level. We also supplemented with 5 grams of creatine a day and I generally maintained what I would say was a healthy moderate diet but I was not too concerned about the science of nutrition, just common sense. For the first few months my cardio included brisk walking rounds of the outside deck of the ship for 30-40 min., stopping ever 10 min. to do a fast station of sit-ups, pull-ups, and pushups.

By Dec. we decided to do a max. bench press and I was astonished that I put up 305 lbs. That was 5 more then I had ever achieved when I was playing football in high school, or working out in military school. Also by this time I was feeling great, gone was the lazy old self and now I couldn?t wait to get to the gym for my work out. We didn?t have a scale on the ship but I was starting to notice my size 36 inch pants were starting to fall off me, and later that month during a New Zealand port stop I proudly went shopping for some new shorts and pants. We had another six weeks until vacation and again we continued to hit the gym hard. We sailed down to Antarctica (I work on an oceanographic vessel) so obviously walking the decks was out, so I started a nightly routine of 25 min. on the stair stepper. I continued to eat what I felt were moderate and healthy meals and we stayed on our gym routine and nearing the end of the trip even the new cloths I had bought a month earlier started to feel a little roomier. Our last max bench press contest had me put up 310 lbs and on arriving home and finally hopping on the scale I found I had lost 20lbs down to 207 lbs.

Well the story isn?t over yet, this is only my progress up through the first 5 months. I now had 3 months vacation and after 2 weeks visiting my family I was on to Colombia in South America to do a month of travel and another month of staying with friends in Bogot?. Generally I had always lost weight during my vacation time as I stay pretty active traveling and I get to break the cycle of the overeating on the ship, but in the last few years this was not really working like it had in my early 20?s. Anyway on this trip I spent my fist month doing hikes in the jungle and in the parks and visiting new parts of the county that I hadn?t been to on previous trips. When I met up with my friends in Bogota I told them I was going to join a local gym and a few of the guys decided to join me and I started acting as their personal trainer. We (or at least I ) hit the gym every day, no matter how hard I partied the night before, I continued to maintain a healthy diet and stayed on the same basic workout schedule I had been on the ship. I?m told that the altitude in Bogot? burns the calories and I was defiantly seeing it in the mirror. Again I had to by new cloths, now I just looked ridiculous in all my old stuff, and I even got a job as a model for a company exporting leather jackets to the States. By month 8 I was now down to 197 lbs.

So now I have been back on the ship for about 3 weeks. We have internet out here, it?s slow but it works, and I have recently discovered bodybuilding.com, this forum, and all the articles. I?m doing a lot of research on nutrition and unlike the last 8 months where I just treated eating with common sense I?m now thinking about my daily calories and how best to manage a food situation that I don?t really have much control over ? that its served to us cafeteria style, fruit goes bad after several weeks, certain types of food you relay on simply run out of stock. I?m down from 6 cups a coffee last year to just 2 a day now and instead I?m drinking lots of water and green tea. I?m eating two moderate and healthy meals a day, having a snack of a cup of dry grape nuts or raison bran cereal during my afternoon snack time, a tin of sardines in mustard for my early night snack, and a 16oz V8 juice to go on watch to drive the ship with at midnight. I have no idea what my calorie intake is a day on such a diet, but I feel great and I?m losing fat yet putting on some lean muscle so it must be in a healthy zone. We are a dry ship so at sea alcohol is not a factor. My main goal now is to continue to burn the fat, and develop my first ever 6 pack abs. I?m following the suggestions from the articles here to treat the abs just like any other muscle group using weights and sets of 12 reps to blast away at them, it?s been just one week doing this and I see the results already! I also want to get a bit more definition in my inner chest, which just this week I?m also starting to see. In the long term I?m not looking to put on muscle weight and I would like to be at a lean mean 190lbs.

Hope someone found all this interesting or motivational ? for myself I know I will never go back to the old lifestyle of lazy ship life. I don?t have any really good before pictures as I didn?t really keep a journal but I will post a few pictures of what I now look like showing the waistline of my shorts and pants that I used to wear 8 months ago, plus some pictures of our rusty old ships gym. Pictures

Myself today sporting a pair a shorts from last year

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...s/P8140011.jpg

Two pictures of our small rusty gym, it requires a lot of creativity for a good pump but we can still get the job done. The bench is outside with an open view of the sea

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...s/P8140016.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...s/P8140018.jpg

Our ship last January in Antarctica, picture taken from the workboat. With the bench outside this was often our view of chest day.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...odiac001-1.jpg

[phabphour20]

Awesome read.

A job well done man. I am impressed you could make such a transformation with such a mediocre gym and very little choice for food. It makes most of the people that complain on here sound like whiny little snots. It also makes me appreciate my gym, and maybe now I'll stop complaining that it is too crowded and I have to wait a few minutes for a bench. We have little flatscreen TVs on the cardio equipment for god sakes.

Great job. Keep up the good work!

-PP

[Snoopimp]

congrats and keep up the hard work...that gym looks hardcore as hell, definatley mad props to u and ur buddy for working out there everyday, I would definatley be the type to get seasick or something, I have mad respect for deep sea fishermen like the show "deadliest catch" if thats what u do and ur able to work out and do ur job thats amazing...

[hookahjoe]

Yeah, certainly a lot of my motivation problem had to do with having such a poor gym and also getting myself in the gym when it?s rough out. It took a lot of creativity to figure out ways to get the maximum out of the little we have, and really who wants to work out with home made gear and rusty weights. Rough seas are a pain in the ass, I don?t get sea sick but lifting when the ship is making big rolls takes a lot of care for your safety and a lot of good balance, but it can be done.

[shivsean]

Props to you and yours Joe for making due with what you had (as far as the gym and food go) and getting some kick ass results!!!

Motavation is the key - once you get it, it makes it that much easier to get into a exercise routine and stay with it.

[The Director]

thats awesome! Congratulations, sounds like hella fun though, wish I could travel the world on a ship, and lose weight at the same time, lol.

[phabphour20]

thats awesome! Congratulations, sounds like hella fun though, wish I could travel the world on a ship, and lose weight at the same time, lol.

I don't think he is sitting on the deck sunning himself and drinking frozen daiquiris though...

[The Director]

I don't think he is sitting on the deck sunning himself and drinking frozen daiquiris though...

lol..but he also isn't sitting at home weighing out his chicken on the scale.

[hookahjoe]

Weighing out chicken on the scale, certainly not, but just trying to guess what makes up a healthy balanced meal each meal at a time is how I approach the meals served in the messdeck. Please don?t think our food is bad, its actually excellent, just not so good for getting what you need consistently for cutting . And the daiquiris are for the port stop, actually this one will be Tiger beer in Singapore two weeks from now! Looking forward to shopping for supplements in Singapore, excited to buy whey protein as I have just started learning about it over the last few weeks at sea. Also going to look for NO Explode and get some good green teas in Chinatown.

Besides working out I stay pretty busy out here reading, checking out this forum and the articles when the internet works, and doing my overtime, I?m the ships Navigator and I stay busy plotting all the charts and routes and driving the ship for 2 four hour shifts a day. I work on a big research ship for the University of California in San Diego, we go all over the world and do interesting work. I confess it?s a good job, good money and if you?re not scared of being a little lonely at times, a great way to get around the world and see things that other people dream about.

[TheVector]

You have an awesome job. Great work with the transformation!

[Mutandis]

Nice story and pics. Do you have a higher resolution one of the iceberg?

[hookahjoe]

I do, but downloading them to the internet kills our available bandwidth to the satellite. If you are really interested, PM and I can try to send you some killer pics when I get to Singapore and have a high speed connection.

Till then I am adding some links to my blog where I have a bunch of iceberg pics, I don?t remember but maybe I didn?t downsize those so much.

http://hookahjoe.livejournal.com/164826.html

http://hookahjoe.livejournal.com/165812.html

http://hookahjoe.livejournal.com/164315.html

http://hookahjoe.livejournal.com/162903.html

http://hookahjoe.livejournal.com/163219.html

http://hookahjoe.livejournal.com/163947.html

[hookahjoe]

Just to add some recent stuff about life on my ship and to show that it?s not all about navigating and lifting out here, I?m adding a link to the Shellback Equator Crossing Ceremony we held today.

http://hookahjoe.livejournal.com/183062.html

But on a more frustrating note, this 46 day cruise is coming to an end in 2 days and to see the results from being an animal in the gym for this last month and a half, my buddy and I really wanted to do a max bench press. Unfortunately the weather has been uncooperative, with abeam seas and winds giving us 10 days strait of rolls up to 15 degrees. Not the best of conditions when trying to go for a 315lb bench, needless to say I didn?t make a new best, but only hit 300lbs, 10lbs less then my best. Yeah, I am going to blame this on the elements, my workout partner hit 20lbs less then his best. To look at it another way, getting on the scale out here in conditions like these gives a reading that swings between 20lbs. The navy base we are docking at in Singapore has a gym so I hope to get on the scale there.

[cawiau]

Jusgt passing by your thread.
Was a great read and am really impressed by your improvements...
That was awesome...the weight loss I mean
And really enjoyed your pictures

[Nomad]

excellent read and info,the iceberg pics were amazing...I've been looking into working "at sea"...have considered oil rig work but a ship would be awesome...i dont have any particular skills for it and havent seen the ocean in 10 years...any advice for a landlubber looking to go to sea at age 39?...reply or pm me if you have time..if not,have fun in singapore,but no chewing gum!

[hookahjoe]

Well we finally hit perfectly calm seas so I got on the scale and weighed out at 210lbs.

Its what I suspected but I dont really know what to think of it. I have been trying real hard to eat a cutting diet, enough so that I have been worried that I havent been getting enough calories (but I suppose I have) but yet looking at myself In the mirror I have been watching myself pack on the muscle. Im pretty sure my bodyfat has gone down a little as even all my shorts seem looser now then when I was at 197lb in June, yet from everything I have read here its said to be impossible to gain muscle when trying to cut. I have always easily put on muscle when I really hit the gym and in the last 6 weeks I have been an animal in there. Its not in my head because the guys tell me that Im looking much more lean and mean then ever. Im really confused, but happy I guess because I do look and feel better then I ever have and thats the point, even my abs are starting to show. I guess dropping 30lbs when you havent worked out for a long time is easy, but once you get to a healthy bodyfat % then thats when the cutting get hard? Im not going to worry about it, Im going to relax during my time off in Singapore, have a few beers, some good but healthy food off the ship, and shop for some supplements and get geared up for last two months on the ship.

For the last 6 weeks I have been hitting the stair stepper every night for 20min. Im going to change it up to HIIT every other days starting next trip.

My pic from last night at 210lbs