Aside from a short period in high school I have always been a chubby kid. When I still lived at home my mom used to make sure I didn’t go overboard with food. She stopped me here and there when needed and always made sure we had delicious and healthy food on the table.
After high school I started living on my own and became a lot more active as a musician. I got used to a very burgundian lifestyle and started eating all kinds of junk. The free drinks for musicians also didn’t help.
I have always been interested in muscles and posture but never had the discipline to change myself into something I liked. I quickly turned into a lazy musician. Free drinks and fast food, either before or after a gig, were the norm. I didn’t know any better and ate highly refined foods with a shitload of ingredients with long and incomprehensible names. It was easy and fast.
Being fat was always in the back of my mind and it nagged at me. When I reached 115kg I felt horrible and knew change was needed. Always sweating, tired and out of breath. I had high blood pressure and was often feeling ill.
Even after this turning point I was still completely inadequate at sports and I didn’t have any discipline. I didn’t even know how to properly contract my muscles to lift something. I had no body sense at all.
I asked my mate Chris to help me out. He was (is) a complete legend and instantly jumped at the chance to help a friend. We started doing his “half hour of power”, lifted weights and ran as often as possible.
Well, I tried.
I often had excuses. “But I had a gig last night” or ”I’m still too sore from last week”. I was such a pussy and it must have frustrated Chris. But he was strong and pulled me through.
As I finally saw some results I overcame my disciplinary problems step by step. I changed my diet and the fat started coming of quickly. I even gained some muscle.
I started researching and a whole world of broscience opened up to me. I did programs like P90X, 5x5, and 4-hour body.
The thing that helped me most was my Facebook activity. I posted my weight daily. People would respond if it went up or down and it kept me motivated. This was the first time in my life peer pressure actually had a positive influence on my state of mind.
I experimented with different diets and hacked my body just to see how it would respond. My current weight (November 2012) is 89kg at 14% fat. I intent to bring these numbers down to 85kg at ~10% fat in the coming year.
I also want to run a half marathon in 2013. I’ve been running for more than a year and progress is slow. It feels like my body is to heavy for the sport. But I will persist and hopefully run the 21km in under two hours.
Some progress pictures
