So I've been a JSF lurker for a while and made a couple of posts a while back, but it's been quite a while so I feel a bit of re-introduction is in order.

I'm Nate, a preacher's son and fledgling composer from northern VA, and just last week I graduated high school. As such I'm going to college in August (as a music composition/education major) and my project this summer is to finish the work I started back in December 2004.

Here's the deal: back in December of '04 I finally resolved that I was fed up with being fat; I had always been overweight and it peaked earlier that year at 260 pounds. Over the summer I lost about twenty pounds just from being more active (marching band will do that) but the improvements in my well-being didn't occur to me until later on. When I finally made the decision to give up my unhealthy ways it was really a spur-of-the-moment sort of thing, but nonetheless I got myself psyched up about it and I was able to lose another thirty pounds in a twelve-week period thanks to the Abs Diet.

The first fat loss effort was hugely successful; people noted my change and were exceedingly proud of my accomplishment. Much of it was due to the dietary standards I gleaned from the Abs Diet; the other part was giving up regular soda. Another huge factor was faith in God to empower me and pull me through grueling cardio sessions. This website and these forums were also a tremendous assistance, even though I was just a lurker and didn't have much to say.

The following spring I dropped another five pounds, bringing my all-time low to 215 (if my math is correct; this is why I'm a music major). I felt awesome and looked great with a shirt on, but I still wasn't as cut or defined as I wanted to be, and I needed to do a lot of musculature developing since I had nothing to work with to begin. I did bulk up a bit as far as lean mass goes during the initial fat loss phase but not nearly to the degree I wanted to be. Senior year happened, so I couldn't give fitness the importance it should have recieved in my life with all of the things going on in school and work. I gained some weight back, but luckily I was still eating properly and lifting so most of it came back as muscle in an inadvertent bulk. And then I graduated.

That brings me back to my original point. I want to finish losing the weight I set out to lose from the very beginning and build a little bit of muscle. When I am at school I will have "free" and quasi-unlimited access to a state of the art fitness center just a short jaunt away (small-town private college), so I will save all bulking for that period of time. However, until I am ready for a bulk, I've resolved myself to cut as much as possible and develop a refined physique. This isn't only for my own personal health, but for faith reasons and the ability to make great first impressions. So here we go:

Height: 6'3"
Weight: ~225 lbs.
BF%: 23%
Goal (by August 16th--the day I leave for school): 190 lbs, 18% BF
Goal by October 16th: 170 lbs, 14% BF
Goal by November 16th: 165 lbs, 10% BF

I think most of this is going to be from becoming viciously strict about what I allow myself to eat. I've noticed that I've done a good bit of unconscious snacking in the past, meaning that I know I'm eating something but I don't really care if I had planned to eat it or not. Achieving a new degree of discipline will be the hardest challenge, I think. Another part of my own personal (but not necessarily fat-loss) plans for the summer will be training, both on my musical instruments and with my bible.

As far as training goes:
Sunday: Rest and Worship
Monday: Chest and Triceps, brief HIIT following (10 minutes)
Tuesday: HIIT on Treadmill (20 minutes), Abs work
Wednesday: Upper Back and Biceps, brief HIIT following (10 minutes)
Thursday: HIIT on Treadmill (20 minutes)
Friday: Legs and Lower Back
Saturday: HIIT on Treadmill (20 minutes), Abs work

And I had a rigorous eating plan, but it's no longer applicable since it was for when I was eating school meals and therefore had a bell schedule to work around. I'll have to recalculate one, but I'm going to try and eat about 2200 kcal a day on a 40/40/20 p/c/f split.

Thanks for your support; I'll keep y'all posted. Progress pics every Saturday, plus I'll toss in a WAY BEFORE pic just for kicks.

Picture time, as promised. The first was sometime around September 2004, I think, which explains the hair and the raccoon tan. The second and third are from November 2005, I think. It took about four months to achieve that (from December '04) so most of my efforts over 2005 and the first half of 2006 were to maintain that. I was about 215 in those pics, 250-ish in the very first (some of that was probably the hair, hahah).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v63/golgicomplex/before.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v63/golgicomplex/frontcropped.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v63/golgicomplex/profilecropped.jpg

I should probably start putting date watermarks on these or something.

Since today is rest day, I haven't worked out, but I will tomorrow. After church I spent an exciting two hours of my life trying to find a job, because I'm still unemployed from when I left Panera in May (which is another story in its entirety). Six applications total at various restaurants and grocery stores, I think. At some point today I'll get together an eating plan, but I've got a lot of crap left to do--including thank you notes from Graduation and Father's Day festivities.

Y'all have a rockin' Sunday!

225lbs 23% is 173.25lbs of lean mass
190lbs 18% is 155.8lbs of lean mass
170lbs 14% is 146.2lbs of lean mass
165lbs 10% is 148.5lbs of lean mass

Unless your goal is to lose tons of lean mass I suggest you revise your goal.

Other then that.

:gl:

:)

Shahar.

Yeah, I was considering that before; now from another's perspective those goals do seem a little outlandish. I'll revise them.

OK, here's some goal revision. I originally thought that my goals were fine, but upon review and suggestion (not just from Black-Dawn but also from a bit of reading up on the subject), I've decided to change my goals to render them as such. The goal is to lose two pounds of fat every week, with net lean mass weight lost not exceeding 2.5 pounds per eight weeks:

Supposing that for every 10 pounds of fat, ~2 pounds of lean mass is lost ideally:
Current: 225 lbs, 23% BF (173.25 lbs of lean mass)
August 16th: 210 lbs (16 lbs of fat lost, 2 lbs per week), 17% BF, lean mass down 2.5 lbs to 170.75
October 16th: 194 lbs (continuing 16 lbs per eight weeks), 12% BF

Supposing that these actually work and that I do my best to not lose lean mass, that will put me in good shape for re-evaluation come October 16th.

Thanks to Black-Dawn for pointing that out; I suck at percentages to begin with and I doubt I would have even considered it.

I remembered how much HIIT sucks today. Since I actually did chest/tris last Friday I just did straight HIIT instead today. Part of the problem was that I haven't actually done HIIT in a while; I've been doing LISS just because I like it better, and I liked being able to say "I jogged two miles today and it was wonderful!" instead of "I staggered two miles while counting to 60 over and over again and it was wonderfully arduous!"

But whatever. Felt good just to be done with it and know that was a workout I'll never have to do again :)

Did you lift weights seriously in the past?

If you have not or have not for a while
you might actually have slight gains of lean mass
in the begining.

anyhow your new goals make more sense, of course
Its hard to say if you lost 1,2.5 or no lean mass cause those small changes easily fall into the error margine of the various caculation methods.

Just try to keep the lean mass loss to a minimum.

Good luck!

Shahar.

Yes, I lifted weights seriously and regularly for the first part of 2005 but once senior year started I fell away for a couple of months and then picked up where I left off in November, albeit a bit more sporadically. So essentially I'm slightly out of practice and I haven't been lifting regularly enough at all--this is an attempt to change that :)

Another HIIT day today = another morning I didn't want to get out of bed. I hate cardio. Any suggestions for improving the experience as a whole? Regardless, I tried switching it up today. I did the first half on a flat track alternating between jogging and sprinting, and for the second half I put the treadmill on max incline and alternated between walking and jogging uphill. That's a killer.

Maybe I just need to go outside for cardio instead of using my treadmill... that's a thought. I think I'm really just overly stressed and I'm unable to put in the enthusiasm for cardio that I really want to put in. I'm stuck between jobs right now and my last three interviews have proved fruitless, although I'm convinced I'm not doing anything wrong. People just don't want to hire me, it seems. Whatever--I can't let it bog me down... but August 16th isn't very far away.

Tomorrow will finally be the day when I get my eating plan together and post it. Along with that will be my supplement info.

Today is upper back/shoulders/biceps day--which means I didn't have to get up this morning and run! Sweet. I'll be doing weights this evening; I'm always more focused and ready to go in the evening anyway. I just don't do mornings well.

I'm off to go be successful at something, like getting a job. Have a kickin' Wednesday!

Last night was a great lifting session; got a real good pump from all my sets and staved off full fatigue until the last one for each exercise. Additionally, I had an awesome run this morning and didn't feel like complete crap right in the middle of it.

So you know how I said I was going to be successful at something? Yeah, I was. I got hired as a busser at Red Robin without even an interview. It's not the best job ever, but it's a job :)

Also, time decided to do that thing where it slips out of your grasp without you even paying attention--crap I just remembered I forgot to take my supps this morning, so I have to go do that when I post this--so I didn't do my supplement information and food plan sheets yesterday. I will have done them at some point, probably tonight (the operative word there being "probably").

In other news I'm feeling great; exponentially better than I felt this time last week after half a week of eating out on the town. It always feels great to be back in the swing of things after a hiatus, but this time since I'm going all-out it's "the swing of things" to the next level.

I'm meeting my dad for lunch at Panera today, so that's sort of a cheat meal but not really since all their food is organic (if you know what to get). Half of a cheat meal? I don't know. I realize it'd be better just to eat at home but my dad and I go out to lunch at least once a week for the sake of tradition. Regrettably the Frontega paninis are right out (as in they're ridiculously bad for you), but they've got plenty of other good, nutritious food.

Expletive! I got caught up doing stuff for church and college last evening and didn't get my food/supp info done, so once again that's something to do. Fff. Also, dad had to run off somewhere so Panera didn't happen. We rescheduled for today, and I just got back from that.

Uh. Legs and lower back day, right? Right. I'll report on how that turns out once it's done. Have a fantastic Friday!

As promised! Food and supplement information.

First, supplements. Daily, I take the following:
- 1 One Source Men's Multivitamin
- 50 mg Zinc
- 500 mg Vitamin C
- 2 Flaxseed Oil caps (1000 mg each)
I know someone's going to be all "Zinc? What?" but I took it all through the winter as an immune system booster and didn't get sick once. I also drank a glass of orange juice each day and kept taking vitamin C. Now that it's summer, it's a different story as far as supplementation needs go, but I'll still take all these.

Meals! Since my food supply is pretty variable during the summer, anything can happen, but I try to stick with this rule: one starchy carb and one lean protein at each meal. I have yet to actually sit down in my kitchen (or on Fitday.com) and actually formulate stuff but I will do something of the sort tonight or tomorrow before I leave for Los Angeles. One thing that doesn't change, however, is my breakfast, which is always four egg whites and two low-fat whole grain waffles (the Eggo blueberry Nutri-Grain waffles are pretty awesome). I also try to balance my calories around 2200 a day on a 40/40/20 split, and this will hold true all the way through the cut phase into college.

Dang, yesterday was friggin' carb day; the Panera bagel killed it. Whatever. I'm not reeling from it or anything, so I'll just call that my cheat meal and leave it as such. Didn't work out yesterday because, well, I don't have a valid excuse. That's fine; I'll run tonight and call off any "cheat meal" that would happen today--except that I'm going to Red Robin with church friends in thirty minutes to hang out, but that doesn't mean I have to buy anything to eat, does it? :)

Also! I "officially" weighed in today. I remember last Sunday I was around 229, but today I'm 225.8. Assuming that's actual fat lost (which it probably is), that's 3.2 pounds. Very good. I feel thinner, too. I know I'm not going to do a complete cut in a week but I do feel a little bit lighter and more confident that I'm making progress--at least moreso than I did last week at this time. I'll try and get some progress pictures up this evening but judging from the way things have been going I don't know that they'll happen as planned :|

Uhh... news items? Yes. Finally restocked on whey protein; I don't know why anyone would buy it from GNC when Wal-Mart has it for substantially less. Protein's protein, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe that paradigm will change when I decide to bulk but as it stands now it's all good.

Also, I'm on my way to Los Angeles at butt-thirty in the morning (flight leaves at 7:00). Don't know if I'll have the interweb, depends on whether Dad brings his laptop, so we'll see. Gotta go to Wal-Mart today and stock up on food to take so we're not stuck with fast food.

Wow, it's been a while. Don't have much time to toss up an update, but let me just say that Orange County was amazing and everyone should try and visit at least once.

Right now I'm stuck around 223-ish, which isn't too bad considering my goal of 210 for August 16th. In a worst case scenario I'll be around 215, but so far my loss has been slow but steady. I've been really bad about morning cardio this week due to having to wake up at an obscene hour to help out at church every morning, but things will change next week. I've been keeping my diet pretty steady as well. This past week has been a bit carb-heavy, though, just from this and that throughout the day and my sometimes weird work schedule at Kohl's. All that's just gravy; fact of the matter is I'm still making progress, which is awesome.

I'm also in the midst of a big musical project right now, and that's added some normalcy to my day-to-day life and it's keeping me sane.