The months since camp ended have been interesting. I have taken up the new hobby of Acro Yoga, I started a new contract that I am having a lot of fun with, but unfortunately I have gotten a little soft around the midsection.

With the holiday season upon us I have had a couple too many cookies and I am starting to feel it. It's not like at camp where I am chucking and catching 100 pound athletes for hours each day and doing my own body weight training on top of that. During the summer I estimate I eat around 4000 calories a day and maintain a decent build.

Now I am sitting most of the day hacking away on my new contract. Though I am loving my current project it is not doing me any favors physically. So as the new year approaches it is time for me to start getting back in shape.

Why am I writing this?

You might wonder why I spent several days coming up with such an in depth plan and writing it up. There are two main reasons:

For my friends and readers:

I hear from my friends, not so much the friends in the fitness industry but definitely the ones in the startup industry toiling away their days staring at a screen, that they find my posts about my own fitness experiments helpful and motivating in their own journeys. This series of posts are for you my friends. Hopefully my writing will help you live a happier healthier lifestyle. Best of luck!

To Keep Myself Honest:

Additionally I find if I want to do something and I don't tell anyone then there is no external motivation to push me through those inevitable tough times. But if I tell everyone I am going to do something then I don't follow through I look like a fizzle
I did the same thing with my real estate posts and with many things over the years and it has made a big difference. Thank all of you for keeping me on track and moving forward!

How to use this series of posts:

Those of you that are already experienced athletes with your own systems. My cutting training regimen will probably not be that useful to you, but if you're new to training it might help you to know the difference between solid state cardio and HIIT that can be found in the Training section.

Those of you that have plateaued on a diet might find my Diet Section interesting while those of you that are pros might be interested in my experiments with intermittent fasting.

I also cover some controversial topics in my sections on Supplements and Stimulants and Alcohol. My main goal with those is to help young people not make the same mistakes a lot of us more experienced meat heads have made.

The big thing I think everyone will find useful is the Habit Hacking section.

The History:

I have bounced around a lot.

Junior year of high school after wrestling season I weight in about 168 Lbs.
From there I quickly ballooned up to an alarming 212 lbs during my Sophomore year of college.
After graduating college I got a little serious about getting in shape and I stopped drinking 24 beers a night and settled in the low 180s. My lowest was valentine's day 2009(I think) at a lean 179. The fact that is was valentine's day was just a coincidence. I remember coaching a gymnastics meet that weekend, no date/nothing romantic about that day.

From there I ended up doing a battery of tech startup companies that took their tool on me physically left me at a bloated 212 lbs in 2012. It was right around the time I left SnowShoe when I realized how bad it had gotten and decided it was time to stop letting startup life destroy my body.

In fall of 2013 a couple months after my first full summer(9 out of 12 weeks) I hit a low weight of 183 Pounds.

Since then I have started to trickle back up. As of now, Christmas day 2015, I currently rest at around 198 Pounds. I am not going to wait until I break 200 Pounds to get myself back on track. So let’s get started.

My Goal:

My goal weight is 179 pounds which historically has been my lowest adult weight. This means losing 17 pounds total.

Why so much weight? Most of you that know me know I love to train body weight stuff: Handstands, Pull Up Variations, Etc. One handed pull ups are soooooo much easier without an extra 17 Lbs around your waist.

The Math:

I like to keep it simple: Basically calories in versus calories out. It is a bit more complex than that unfortunately. I have to track how much protein I eat as well otherwise I see a significant decrease in muscle mass which obviously defeats the purpose of cutting weight to make bodyweight exercises easier.

A pound of fat is about 3,600 calories. Multiply this by 17 and all together I have to burn/cut a grand total of 61,200 calories over the upcoming months.

Without killing myself I can probably go 400 calories deficit in my diet but I really need to focus. Additionally I can probably increase my daily activity by 400 calories of cardio though I need to find a way that suits me. I am trying to avoid low intensity steady state cardio but I am struggling to find the high intensity interval cardio routine that suits me.

At a light level of activity I burn roughly 2000 calories a day. According to bodybuilding.com I can multiply that by '1.55 for moderate exercise 3-5 days per week '. With my body weight training I typically do heavier weights less times so I am going to go with a multiplier of 1.25 giving me a total of 2500 calories per day.

This basically creates a total deficit of 800 calories a day on average. At this rate it will take 76.5 days to lose the weight. I figure a couple of cheat days and lean bulking weeks to reset my metabolism will bring me to 90 days.

This means if I start on January 4th 2016, the first Monday of the new year, I can be at my goal weight in late March.

Pseudo/Junk Science:

You will hear me repeat from time to time that I am NOT a doctor. I will be honest a lot of materials I link to are not published by doctors, but some of it will be. Some of it very well could be "junk science". But a lot of it is time tested by people who have done what I am trying to do. They may not be doctors but they have walked the path less traveled; the path I am trying to walk.

So I do apologize if anything I write about or link to is not 100% accurate. This is all one big experiment, and I hope you can learn from my trials and errors.

Additionally if one of my techniques may not result in the physical effect I am looking for but creates a similar mental effect then it still has some value.

An example of this is in my Diet section I discuss cinnamon's potential ability to decrease one's appetite. I have never done a study on it and can not honestly claim 100% that it creates a physical effect on one's appetite. But I can say even if it doesn't have the physical effect but mentally you perceive it to creating a placebo effect that causes the results you desire then it still has some value to me, and can have value to you.

Basically understand I am not claiming all of this to be 'gospel'. I am a student of life sharing my learning journey with you. Here is what I am reading and the sources where I got it. Read, diet, lift, live, love, etc at your own risk.

Breaking Down the Details:

There are a lot of pieces to how I designed my training, my diet, and all of the habit loops and behavior queues that will help me stick with it. Because of that I have decided to break them out into separate posts.

Your role in all of this:

I am a student of life and still learning. All of this writing, this entire website, is part of my learning process. Your feedback is part of that process to. I am eager to hear your thoughts. If you find something useful let me know. If you have a suggestion or resource let me know. If you find spelling errors(which I know you will) let me know.

I hope you all have as much fun reading this as I did researching and writing it.
~Cheers!

Tags

Fitness , Life

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