My Little Family

 So my inspiration of this post comes from the fact that I like to look through the pictures on my phone pretty frequently. I just wanted to share with you some photos that no matter what brighten up my day. These two are my absolute best friends in the entire world. Obviously I have a little harder time having conversations with one opposed to the other but that doesn't stop me from trying. But to be honest I have no idea where my life would be if I didn't have my small little family. I cherish them more than anything in the entire world. I have been with Jayme for almost 6 years now. That is all of Jayme's adult life and almost all of mine. We have grown up together and I find that to be so cool. She has definitely shaped the person that I have become and I am so happy that I get to call her my wife. We have a pretty simple life together, some might call it boring, but I absolutely love the way my life is shaping out because I get to spend so much of my life with my two great loves.

My Year of Fitness

I want to start this off first by saying this is a post that documents what I did and my results. I am by no means an expert, in fact I will state many times how dumb some of the things I did were. This might end up being long but I will try to summarize it the best I can at the end. 

I started realizing that I needed to lose weight in December of 2011. It was this photo below that sparked my journey. This was the day that the most amazing women in the entire world told me that she would marry me. It was such an amazing moment in my life and I will forever cherish it but there was just one problem. When I looked at the the couple pictures of me I didn’t see someone that I was proud of. I had gotten big and pudgy over the last 5 years and knew my now-wife deserved better.

At this point I was at my heaviest weight, weighing in at around 235lbs. 

Even though I knew I needed to lose weight in December, I didn’t actually start trying until February 2012. If you know me very well, you know I go full out when I commit myself to something. Well this was no exception. I started out by waking up every morning at 4:30 and going to do a hour of cardio before work. I would then do 1.5 hours of strength training every evening. This strength training was usually just a single muscle group a day with heavy weights in the 8-12 rep range. As many people will tell you this is not the best routine for beginner, I would not advise people to do it but it’s what I knew so I went with it. On top of the exercise I was also on a diet of around 1800 calories. At this point I did not care about my macros, just total calorie count. Again not the greatest strategy for getting jacked, which was my goal. 

I continued this plan for exactly 63 days straight. I did not miss a single day or have a single rest day. As you can imagine this ran me down pretty good. At the end of the 63 days I was tired and ached all over but I was losing weight. About 4 weeks into this process I snapped the photo below. I was at about 225 lbs. At this point I thought I was looking good and I was proud of myself. I also started following SideSteel and listening to his nutrition advice. I began to adjust my macros so that I was getting enough protein and fat in my diet which lead to a general clean up in my diet overall. 

After the 63 days straight I started working rest days into my workout. I would do the same routine but every Thursday I would have an off day. I continued this process all the way till July 2012, about 22 weeks in. In that time I dropped all the way down to 175 lbs. This was my ultimate goal. I had a vacation in July at Lake Powell and I wanted to look good for it. Below is the picture of me and my now-wife, and me and my friend on that vacation. I felt great.

When we got back from our beer drinking, water skiing, jet skiing, burrito eating vacation I had gain about 8 lbs. I was fairly okay with that since I had such a good time and I thought I needed to start gaining muscle. I was absolutely sick of cardio at this time and I decided not to do it anymore and I haven’t since. From July till about November I ended up not tracking calories and trying to put on muscle. In November 2012 I had gotten all the way up to 195 lbs and decided I should get my diet on track a little more.

I started again trying to hit my macros at about a 500 calorie deficit without the use of cardio. Below is a picture of me and my wife at our wedding. I am so happy that I can look at these photos and be proud of myself because god knows I’m proud to call that woman my wife. 

I continued this cut up until now. Believe me I have my struggles with not going over with calories but I just keep at it, trying to do better each day. Below is a pictures of how I look now. After my recent dunk tank my bf measure was at 10.8% which is a little higher than I wanted but I’m still really happy about where I am. But I think I will always be improving.

Currently: I am doing lean gains style intermittent fasting. For those of you not familiar you can read up about it Here. This style of diet works great for me because I have a huge appetite and love large meals. If you love breakfast it might not be the best for you. My current macros are about 2000 Calories with 185 grams of protien, 65 grams of fat, and about 170 grams carbs. I will eat whatever I want as long as it fits those macros. I lift 6 days a week, one body part a day and still no cardio. My current 1 rep maxes are as follows:

Bench: 305lbs

Squat 365lbs

Dead Lift 455lbs

Over Head Press 175lbs

Summary: I lost a bunch of weight and became happy with my body. It’s not because I had the best workout plan, the best nutrition plan or because I worked out any harder than anyone else. I think my success is just do to the fact that I had a plan and stuck with it every day for over a year. Yes, my plan has changed and grown with new information but that is not a major contribution to anyone’s success. I know a sexy plan is what sells but the true reason to success is consistency.

If I would give anyone advice it would simply be start a strength training program, eat at a deficit hitting reasonable macros and do it for a long period of time. There is no way you won’t get results.

Thanks for reading about me and my results.