October 21st 2007 - Hello! This is my first post. I have been inspired by many of the journals and progress pics here, and have enjoyed reading a lot of the great info, so now I thought it was time to contribute and share my own progress. Comments and feedback are welcome. I'll be adding progress pics.

Start:
217lbs, bf=25-30%? (est)
Gut @ b-button = 42"

Goal, phase 1: 6-12 weeks
200 lbs, bf=15-20%
Gut = 38

Goal, phase 2: by February
185, bf=10-15%
Gut = 34

History:
I weighed around 170 lbs and could not gain weight to save my life until I was about 25 years old.

Then my life became suddenly much more sedintary and by age 28 I weighed 200lbs. I hovered there, trying to maintain, but by age 33 I was losing the battle and tipping the scales at 230 lbs.

When I was forced to buy my 1st pair of 40" waisted pants, I became motivated to change. I lurked on this forum and did some reading here that helped me lose 40 lbs over 6 months and keep it off for another 6 months. Unfortunately, not knowing very much about what I was doing, a lot of that 40lbs I lost was muscle.

So, with less lean mass (lower BMR), when new life upheaval, leading to major stress and depression from age 34-35 hit, it left me where I was this September - 217lbs - almost back where I started two years ago.

What is different is that during the last 9 months I have been exercising even MORE than I did during the period when I actually lost the 40 lbs. Clearly something is different about my body. Back then, I was only swimming 3 days a week (in retrospect, they were similar to HITT - style workouts).

So, I have been reading and have decided that what was missing now was muscle mass = RT. I have been reading (here) that more muscle mass means you burn more calories - have a higher BMR. So I have switched from 75% aerobic and 25% RT to 60% RT and 40% aerobic and have added LISS for fat burning. It seems to be working so far.

Actual start date 'this time*' - 9/17/2007

Height: 5'11"
Age: 35
Gender: Male

Start stats:.............Sept 17th.........Oct 17th
Weight: ..................217..................210........ .(-7)
Neck:.......................17".................15 3/4"....(-1 1/4)
Biceps:.....................14 1/8"............14 1/2"....(+3/8)
Chest:......................44"..................44 3/4"....(+3/4)
"Gut" (@ b-button):....42"..................41"..........(-1)
Waist (@ belt):.........40"..................38 3/4"......(-1 1/4)
Body Fat: (? est).......25-30%?...........22-26%?
Lean Muscle: (? est)..152-162 lbs.......155-165?

Month 1:
Diet:
I basically cut out all refined sugar and simple carbs, cut alcohol and coffee to a minimum, lots of meat, vegetables and greens. Plenty of 'good' fats like nuts, olive oil, flax oil. I also happen to be following a new, cutting edge diet called the GenoType Diet. It is not a weight loss diet, however. It is just a really healthy way of eating and it has some other benefits I won't get into, but that are not specifically about weight loss or muscle building. Part way into the month I started paying a little more attention to keeping each meal around 40-40-20 based on some reading I did on this forum. (Thanks!)

Exercise:
During Month 1 I was going to the gym 3-4 days a week in the morning. I was doing 20 minute HITT (running, elliptical, bike or swimming) followed by 25 minutes of RT and then some stretching. Towards the end I read about LISS (on these forums), which I had not known anything about and started to separate my workouts into either LISS, or HITT or RT and going to the gym 6 days a week. This allowed me to follow some other advice I read here about eating before and after - so that I could not eat before LISS, but eat before HITT or RT.

Supplements:
I work for a supplement company (not one with a muscle building focus, but one with a more holistic focus), so I take a wide variety of daily supplements not specifically related to cutting or bulking. However, I have started taking Ecdysterone and L-creatine, and I was already taking Glutamine and N-Acetyl Cystiene for other reasons.
I also take some traditional aryuvedic adaptogens to mitigate stress and balance out energy swings. Although I cut back on coffee, I still take 50-100mg of caffeine in the A.M.

Challenges:
- Upper body imbalance. I have strong pecs and biceps, but weak shoulders. I have added a shoulder routine and a rotator cuff set, but weak shoulders make it hard to work the rest of the upper body because the shoulders get tired before the arms or chest.

- Pain. I was just starting to enjoy running for the first time in my life when I started to feel the signs of shin splints. I moved to the elliptical, but that really aggravates my lower back pain. I have added a lot of core exercises for the back pain and stretches for the shin splints, but really they are caused by structural problems like flat feet, pronation and poor postural habits. I am thinking of getting orthotics for this. In the mean time, it makes aerobic workouts painful. Swimming helps.

Today, for the first time, I tracked everything that went into my mouth, and used fitday.com to track even the protein, fat, carbs and calories.

I used a calculator in one of the sticky threads to calculate that my BMR is around 3100 cal/day. So I am planning to eat from 2100 - 2600 per day.

I am going to try to track my food for at least a full week to see how far off what I am actually eating is from what I have been guess-timating in my head.

After one day, I am pretty close on # of calories, but I discovered that rather than the 40 40 20 I had in mind, I am closer to 30 20 50. We'll see how it evens out over the week.