The Hard Slog, Week 2

The Hard Slog

Where we're at

In the beginning, healthy lifestyle changes
can be a real mental battle of willpower

I'm now on Week 2 Day 4 of my fitness challenge to see what advice in the health and fitness industry actually works and it isn't as easy as I hoped it might be. It's easy to understand how people fall off the fitness train even after only doing it for a little while. I think until the changes you have made become habitual and a standard part of everyday life then you will be engaged in a real mental battle.

Will Power

From the start of doing this until now every day has been a mental battle to make the healthy choices, to spurn what is the most convenient, to get home from work at 9pm and cook something nutritious rather than something quick. Everyday is a challenge it keeping that willpower in place and as the first week progressed I could feel those reserves of will power being used up.

I don't think that willpower is binary, I don't think you either 'have it' or 'don't have it', I think it's like a health bar in games, you can start off on full but every time you have to sacrifice some of it to make a tough decision you lose a chunk from that health bar.

Will Power is like a Health Bar, you can use it up!

I'm going to say this again because it's important; 

Willpower is NOT Binary, it's like a health bar!

My Health Bar

So as the days have rolled on and I have kept making healthy decisions over tasty and easy decisions that will power bar has fallen, until by the end of the first week there was none left and I was slipping into bad practices; it had been a bad day at work so I 'needed' and 'deserved' that caramel latte, I didn't get home from work until super late so rather than cook I grabbed a take away. 

The day after I felt like an idiot, all the work I had been doing in eating better and exercising more had been undone in a few stupid moments when willpower was low, and here I hit on something stupidly simply but mega useful;

If Willpower can be used up it can ALSO BE RESTORED

Every hard healthy decision was using that willpower health bar up, but just like in Mario where you can grab a heart to regain life, you can regain willpower!

My next post is going to be about my personal top ten ways to Willpower heal

But for now here is one of my biggest willpower heals, as promised, those day 1 pictures. I warn you they ain't pretty

The Story So Far

Day 4 - The Story So Far

In todays entry I want to let you all know how I have been finding the first few days of my new Super Hero lifestyle of clean eating and exercising.

The Catch Up

You shouldn't need to rob a bank to get fit.

Just to make sure everyone is up to speed; I am 26 years old and pretty out of shape (Day 1 pictures are on their way), I have always been a big guy which used to be great when it came to playing games like rugby where I could monster down the field but I have never been a big guy with a Super Hero physique. Recently my fiancee told me that she was worried about the stress my weight was having on my heart and this was the slap in the face i needed to make a complete lifestyle change! In typical fashion I nerded out and read everything I possibly could on eating well and exercising right and quickly became exasperated by all of the confusing 'advice' that is out there that all seems to disagree with each other.

So I have decided to road test some of these more popular fitness methods to see if they actually work for a normal guy who has to work normal hours and isn't going to rob a bank to buy every new fitness gadget and gizmo going. 

The Master Plan

So I have started off with the 'StrongLifts 5x5 Ultimate Strength and Muscled Building Programme', http://stronglifts.com/, which supposedly follows the training method that the Terminator used to do back in his Mr Olympia days, it focuses a doing a few heavy big all body moves, claiming that this will build your muscles the most and that by simply having muscle you will burn more calories even when sedentary.

StrongList 5x5 claims to follow
Arnies old workout plan

For the meal plan I have turned to the Paleo Lifestyle which demonizes grains as the source of all evil, as well as cutting out the usual crap like fizzy drinks, sweeties and booze. I picked this one because after failing with previous 'diets' I thought that this would be one that I could stick to because I am a massive Carnivore.

Onto the Progress Report!

To be a Superhero you gotta lift weights

So I'm now four days in and other than a few little wobbles I think it's all going ok. The workouts so far are going fine although I think that for some people who try the Stronglift 5x5 they might need to start out with a lower base line, I don't know if everybody could manage 20kg overhead military presses straight from sedentary, I only just managed it. The workouts aren't that long and are quite enjoyable because you're not caught doing one thing for too long like trudging on a treadmill for an hour, also there is some satisfaction from just doing weights and feeling that power in your muscles that suddenly becomes unlocked when you ask them to start doing something for you.

A little salad won't cut it for this plaeo

The food for the most part has gone great, although by 'going paleo' I have learnt just how much other stuff I was eating, I was honestly stumped the first few days when I was packing myself up a lunch to take to work because I couldn't pack sandwiches and there is virtually nothing in the work canteen I can eat, other than a bowl of lettuce and cucumber which just isn't going to fill that hunger hole in a big guy, especially after going to the gym in the morning. 

Getting up an early to make up some lunch to take
to work can be nigh on impossible.

Instead I've found you either have to a) get up early to make something you can reheat or b) make something up the night before. This is a much bigger time sink in your precious free time hours than just chucking together a couple of sandwiches and I know that finding the motivation to get out of bed an hour earlier to make yourself some lunch to take and do the pots is super tricky. 

So my master plan has been to just make double of whatever I cook myself for my evening meal and then take half of it the next day for lunch. This doesn't really take anymore time seeing as I have to cook my evening meal anyway, all it takes is a little bit of thought about what you are cooking, because some stuff just doesn't seem to reheat well - steak for example - where as other stuff is just as good the next day - like my super hero chilli con carne.

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog, for now I have to leave you because it's gym time, but don't worry another blog entry will be coming on Thursday with those infamous Day One photos! 

Be More Superhero

My Dream Physique

The quest is to go from an over weight, out of shape 26 year old guy to someone that I am happy to see when I look in the mirror.

This blog will detail my journey from day one and will hold all of the trials and tribulations that I will face on my fitness challenge.

I don't know whether anybody will read this blog or not, I am writing in the hope that someone will find it useful and to go back and read it myself as a motivational tool.

Many times in the past I have tried losing weight, my lowest weight in memory was just under 210lbs and that was back in college when I used to run for an hour every day without fail. Since then my weight has rocketed up in periods of intense weight gain, first off from 210lbs to 224lbs during my A Level exams, then from 224lbs to 252lbs during university and finally from 252lbs to 280lbs in the last couple of years. 

Too much BS has been written on fitness

There is no one reason why it has happened, no great tragedy, or any change in ethos that I have recognised. I don't know if it is metabolism slowing down or a more comfortable lift style now that I have my own things like job, car and house.

The biggest problem seems to be losing motivation, either I am unwittingly not applying myself enough, or expecting changes to quickly but at any rate my body doesn't seem to change when I have tried to get in shape, so I get demotivated and quit. 

This problem is confounded by the absolute mountain of health and fitness advice that can be found wherever you go, from youtube to forums to magazines everybody seems to be giving advice on health and fitness, yet they all seem to disagree with each other, there doesn't seem to be one plan that everyone can agree on.

Being a geeky guy, I read all I can on a subject

Being a geeky guy in general seems to lead to reading everything I possibly can on any subject that interests me so that I can know as much as possible about it, the same is true for health and fitness, I have read countless plans, huge swathes of advice and diet plans beyond counting.

So I am going to try something that I haven't been able to find elsewhere, I am going to try each of these different plans and see how it actually works on a normal person who can't go and buy weird food or have the luxury of time to eat 8 small meals a day, or workout 3 hours at a time. After two months if no changes have happened, or the changes are negligible then I can expose the plan as being baloney and move on to something new, someone, somewhere amidst all of the white noise must be telling people the right way to go about things.

So I am going to start off my fitness plan with a nice motivational anchor 'Why am I doing this?", "What's going to be different to the last times when I failed?". I am doing this because the other night my fiancee told me that she is worried about how healthy I will be in the future, and the amount of stress that my unhealthy living is putting on my heart. This was really hard to hear, my fiancee has never mentioned my weight before and is the most supportive person I could hope to have around me, it was a real slap round the face, but it has been the jolt that I needed to kick my ass in to gear and do this thing.

Next up is my goal. Now I know that weight can be a poor measure of healthiness, right now I weigh 280lbs of mostly fat, for arguments sake I could become a superhero and weight 280lbs of pure muscle, now if I just rely on scales then I would think that I had utterly failed. Instead am I going to measure myself on bodyshape, by taking photos of myself tomorrow (day 1) and then every 2 weeks, hopefully over time I will notice a change in my physique and know whether or not what I'm doing is working.

Time for a plan

So I have my motivation - having a healthy heart and being fit for my fiancee and wedding

I have my goal - to alter my physique (going full Thor would be my ideal dream)

Last up comes my health and fitness plan. So to begin with I am going to try the 5x5 regime for my workouts and the Paleo lifestyle for my diet. 

The 5x5 workout regime claims to be inspired by the way that the Governator used to train back in the day, and its focus on total body big lifts like squats and deadlifts does seem to make a lot of sense, many of the sources I have read agree that activating big muscle groups creates the most stress on the body forcing it to become stronger. The plan ignores isolation moves like curls and lat raises, arguing that those muscles will get worked out by contributing to the big lifts. The regime doesn't mention any cardio so to begin with at least I won't do any.

The Paleo diet claims that for most of the time there have been humans (in one form or another) we have been hunter gatherers and it has only been relatively recently that we settled down, planted crops and started eating grain, dairy, fruit pastels etc. It claims that our bodies have not yet a\adapted to eat these foods because evolution only happens very slowly, and bodies only really evolve when there is a pressing need, with their not being a pressing need to use grain foods better because by the time it ruins our health we are middle aged and have already reproduced. The idea seems sound and the people that live paleo are filled with zealous conviction.

So tomorrow is Day 1, photos and the next blog to follow . . .