Working Out

Much like the picture I have been using over the last year and a half; I’m trying to bust out of several things…

1. A pity party
2. Emotional Eating
3. Laziness
4. Anxiety
5. General Frustration

Taking some advice from fellow FatBlogger Charles, I’m posting my workout log. I’m still formulating what I want this transformation to look like… but first a little back-story.

I recall starting to get ‘fat’ in the 5th grade. I remember that because I was in a church kids group called AWANA’s; part of the shtick is a uniform similar to the Boy Scouts. The difference between the two; in Boy Scouts you learn useful stuff like tying knots and bird calls. In AWANA’s you memorize Bible verses. I have distinct memory of the search for a uniform shirt being a long and drawn out affair because they had to get me an adult sized shirt, but the adult shirts had special markings on them that had to be modified. My parents, always putting the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional, made sure I knew that if I weren’t such a ‘big boy’, getting the shirt wouldn’t be a problem. Surprisingly enough, junior high was when the emotional eating hit its stride. Take a social environment that would make the Marquis du Sade blush, add in a ‘fat boy’ who was lagging behind his peers’ in a certain area of development and mix in PE class that required ‘dressing down’ and ritual humiliation and you have that wonderful social experiment known as junior high. Oh, PE also included the annual fitness tests. Guess who couldn’t do nearly enough sit ups, push ups, run around the track four times in less than 15 minutes or good God… climb THE ROPE? The last part of this Week from Hell was a doctors’ office ‘balance scale’ that sat in the middle of the wrestling room. Guess who was the first boy to tip the scales over 200? 220 lbs in the 8th grade… yeah, I have issues.

The summer between my 8th & 9th grade years was the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. I love the Olympics! That summer I discovered that some of the guys in LA looked really good… I wanted to look really good. Since I wanted to look like Greg Louganis and Mitch Gaylord, I really threw myself into gym in the 9th grade, but the eating killed me. I would push myself at whatever activity was being offered, but then have a double helping of spaghetti with garlic bread at lunch.

Since that summer 24 years ago, I have held guys who worked their bodies into athletic perfection as the ideal. Not so much the bodybuilders, but the Olympians or the guys in the exercise equipment infomercials. (Please tell me I’m not alone in this guys) Much of the motivation for some of the crazy diet plans I’ve followed over the years have had that goal in mind. I want to look like an underwear model (LOL).

My point (I do have one), is that I want a ‘worked out body’. When I still weighed WAY over 300 lbs, the personal trainer at the gym asked me about my goals. I told her since I’d been fat for a LONG time, I had no idea what is realistic for a 40 year old me. I pointed to this friend of mine at the gym and said, “I want to look like him”. Wade is 6’5″, 215 lbs and has maybe 12% body-fat (on a bad day). After I worked at it for a while, I simplified it, I want people on the street to see me and say to themselves, “Damn! He spends some time in the gym”.

I haven’t been posting it in my weekly weigh-ins, but I have moved from a whopping 42% body fat when I started in December 2006 to 28% at my last check. I think that I can get down into the mid-teens realistically. The PT set me up on a full-body lifting routine. She made three different versions, so I never got bored or, more importantly, so my soft-n-gushy body never got used to what I was doing to it. One routine was all machines, another was body weight and the last was free weights. I searched through the workout files on bodybuilding.com (see my BodySpace) to find a 3-day a week lifting program that broke down into body parts. The goal here is to pack on some beef. Instead of doing one bicep exercise under the full-body programs, body part routines blast the gunz with 2-3 competing exercises.

I’ve been eating well this weekend, tracking everything and hitting the gym. I’m hoping for good things at weigh-in tomorrow night. With that, here is my workout log for today… *click links to see how the exercise is performed.

Monday, Sept. 1

• Leg Press: 10×260 lbs, 8×300 lbs, 6×340 lbs.
• Leg Extensions: 10×140 lbs, 8×160 lbs, 6×175 lbs
• Deadlift: 10×135 lbs, 8×185 lbs
• Calf Raises: 300 lbs – 20xboth legs, 20xleft, 20xright (they BURN!)
• Pullup: 10, 8, 6 BW(minus 200lbs) *I couldn’t find the exact one I did, but it was at a station on the universal machine that counterbalances your body weight to assist with pull-ups and dips.
• Seated Rows: 8×120 lbs, 6×130 lbs, 4×140 lbs.
• Dumbell Row: 10×25 lbs, 8×30 lbs.

BOO-YEAH!