The power of transformation is incredible; you can build the
life you want. No one is coming to save you, and they don’t have to: you can
save yourself. You’re the best person for the job! It isn’t easy; you must give
100% and do whatever it takes! You must destroy all your comfort zones
and do the things you fear, the things you never thought you would do, but
always secretly believed you could.
You must do whatever it takes regardless of what other people
think to meet your goals. You will meet resistance every step along the way but
you will persist and you will reap the rewards that follow. You will build
strength, character and glorious health.
My personal
transformation
Stage1 - Me at 16
At this stage there was no diet and no exercise! I hated PE
at school and my motto for health was “I’d rather rest in peace than live in
agony!” believing the short-term pleasures of food to be greater than any long
term benefits of being in shape. After all, if only the person on the inside
matters what is the point in worrying about it? I did not believe that the body
affected the mind, believing them to be independent and as all my pursuits were
largely academic rather than physical, such as video games, building websites,
etc. I saw no need to pay any attention to diet or exercise, considering them a
waste of time.
My exercise consisted of walking home from school and
compulsory school PE. My diet consisted of unlimited red Coca-Cola, chips,
ice-cream, chocolate, crisps, crackers with cheese and/or butter, biscuits,
more cheese, tea with 2sugars, lamb chops, burgers, battered chicken, Burger
King super-size XLBDC meals, etc.
At 17 I decided to pursue interests other outside video
games to broaden my horizons and decided to try something completely different.
I saw little point in fashion, so I thought this would be a good place to
start, especially considering how much everyone else seemed to be wrapped up in
it spending all their video game money on clothes! I considered this strange,
so I figured I must be missing something.
I started reading GQ and spent time clothes shopping trying
to acquire some of the ‘top’ designer clothes including Emporio Armani, Ralph
Lauren, D&G, Vivienne Westwood and Ted Baker. I very soon came to the
conclusion that designer clothes only work on thin people, so I would need to
become a thin person! I was unaware that this one decision would completely change
the rest of my life.
Stage2 – skinny Age 17-19
As you can see from some of the designer clothes worn in the
pictures I achieved my goal and amassed a wardrobe
of designer clothes in the process. My diet consisted of eating as little as
possible, with sufficient protein for its appetite suppressing properties. I
didn’t count calories and just went for the minimum food I felt I could get away
with. A random day would look something like:
Breakfast – cornflakes with skimmed milk
Lunch – chicken and brown bread with low fat spread
Dinner – chicken and roast potatoes
Snack – glass of skimmed milk
Rough estimate = 1700kcal, 150g protein
I ate as little as possible and as clean as possible. I was
not weight training or bodybuilding at this point, my exercise consisted of
walking around campus whilst at school/university and the gym once a week
(compulsory PE) whilst at school. I was not a bodybuilder, just a skinny guy
who liked his clothes and being skinny!
I was happy being skinny but I wanted more, I wanted to
better myself and I had always dreamed of being a bodybuilder, but just like
the fat BMW dreaming of skinny BMW, I saw it out of my reach. I knew I could
change this, my belief in my own ability to change was now concrete after my
first transformation and I knew I could build myself into whatever I wanted to
be, I just needed the impetus to go and do it.
After my second year at university I did not feel I was
growing any more, just surviving. I decided to change this and looked to
reinvent myself again. I decided to join a gym and try weight training. From
the minute I started pumping iron, I was hooked, I loved it. I knew I would
become a bodybuilder and I would do whatever it took, taking one step at a time,
building on small, consistent changes. This would ultimately provide the
mechanism to catapult my life to yet another stage in my personal development.
Stage 3 – Year one bodybuilding, laying the foundations
In addition to regular weight training I read as much about
bodybuilding as I could. I acquired a collection of bodybuilding books and
magazines and pestered everyone who knew anything about bodybuilding to teach
me everything! I enlisted the help of a personal trainer, asked everyone at the
gym who would talk to me questions and absorbed as much knowledge as I could. I
was hungry for success and it showed!
My cousin, a 280lb bodybuilder offered to take me to the gym
and show me how to train, I could not have been more grateful! If he had told
me you needed eat broken glass to build muscles I probably would have done it!
I followed him around the gym eagerly and listened to every word he said. His
form was perfect; he was incredibly strong and very impressive to watch
training. He benched pressed weights that I had trouble lifting off the rack! He
highlighted my glaring training mistakes. I had been training my chest
primarily with machines, managing to bench a reasonable weight yet I struggled
to lift anywhere near the same weight with dumbbells. I could leg press
comfortably yet I struggled with squats and lunges. I subsequently removed as
many machines from my workouts as I could and found free weight alternatives,
removing most of the exercises I had been doing and relying primarily on big
compound exercises. Squats, front squats, deadlifts, T-bar rows, bench press,
push-ups and pull-ups became staples in my workouts. The result was dramatic, I
performed less sets and less exercises spending less time in the gym yet I grew
much stronger much more quickly.
Initially I struggled to gain much weight despite getting
stronger (left picture) and after speaking to others at the gym and my cousin I
soon came to the conclusion that whilst my diet was high in protein and I was
training around four times per week, I simply did not eat nearly enough
calories to grow. I bumped up my calorie intake considerably and saw consistent
weight gain, leading me to eat more and more. I believed that as long as I was
training regularly the weight would be mostly muscle and not fat, and subsequently
my food consumption skyrocketed. If the scales did not go up, I simply ate
more. Initially this was mostly clean food but I found I could consume far more
calories per day by supplementing with junk food leading me to feast on Burger
King, chocolate bars and ice-cream! As you can see from the right picture above
I built a considerable amount of muscle in this first year of training but I
also gained a lot of fat.
Typical diet around this time =
Breakfast – porridge, cornflakes, protein shake
Snack 1 – protein bar, baked crisps
Lunch – two WHOLE roast chickens and a loaf of soda bread
with butter OR
Kebab shop Double cheeseburger and chips, sometimes with
extra fried chicken OR Burger King Super-Size XL triple whopper with bacon and
cheese meal
Snack2 – chocolate, crisps
Snack3 – protein shake, porridge
Pre-workout – porridge
Post-workout – protein shake
Dinner – two large chicken breasts, a lot of roast potatoes
Pre-bedtime – casein shake, full-fat cheese and lots of it
At the weekends I feasted, supplementing protein shakes and
chicken to ensure I was consuming sufficient protein with huge amounts of
pretzels, Doritos, chocolate, pizza, cheese, crackers and other junk food. When
I ate out and at this stage I ate out a lot, it was a sheer eating contest. If
I was out shopping for the day I would stop for food twice while everyone else
stopped once, and I would stop for meals not snacks!
My most impressive record was at Pizza Hut on a Friday night
after leg day. I ordered two (they were either medium or large) pepperoni pizzas
with a ton of parmesan and a whole pitcher of diet coke and my training partner
ordered a large pizza that was on special offer (no idea what it was). The
waiter thought I was sharing with my friend and she was surprised when all
three pizzas were for just for us, leading the chef to come out and make sure I
wanted two pizzas before confirming the order. He even put a 5minute delay
between my pizzas so both would be hot. The manager and some of the kitchen
staff even came out from the back to watch my friend and I eat all this pizza and
they all said goodbye to us when we left. Naturally we went home afterwards and
carried on eating!
After my first year of training I learnt a lot about
bodybuilding and made adjustments to my diet and training accordingly. In the
second year of training I decided to focus on removing the excess fat I gained
while bulking and to continue building properly without falling prey to the
dirty bulk. I loved my new muscle but did not like having a belly again and I
did not feel I looked like a bodybuilder as the fat covered most of my gains.
Stage4 – Year two bodybuilding, getting shredded
I started keeping a food diary, logging everything I ate (as
you can see from my last blog post) and setting calorie and protein targets
related to my goals. When cutting I ensured that I maintained a calorie deficit
and a calorie surplus when trying to gain weight. With the help of my training
partners, including a new training partner I started working with in year 2, I
have been able to isolate some of my weak points and have learnt even more
about bodybuilding. I widened my reading, learning more about muscle anatomy,
injury prevention and cure and the science behind muscular development,
particularly post-workout muscular insulin sensitivity.
I am currently in the second half of my second year of
bodybuilding. I have learnt a lot this year and have been able to lose fat and
build muscle by eating mostly clean, keeping a food diary monitoring my food
intake, training consistently and manipulating my calorie intake carefully. I
have maintained a calorie deficit for most of the year with the exception of a
short bulking period over the winter. My bodybuilding suffered at the end of my
second term of university due to sheer academic pressure but I have learnt from
my mistakes and am training regularly and eating properly even while preparing
for my final exams. I have lost all the fat I gained whilst bulking and more,
developing visible abs and I’ve never looked or felt better! I hope to continue
shredding until autumn 2013 and then I will undertake a bulk with clean eating
and a more sensible calorie surplus to focus on building as much muscle as
possible over the winter.
BMW
