Last week, Tuesday to be precise, was the anniversary of the day I finally decided that I’d better start taking my health seriously before I hit three bills and had a heart attack climbing up to the third floor of my house, if only because that staircase is really narrow and I’d probably get stuck and they’d have to either cut away pieces of the house, or pieces of me, to get me out, and my corpse is worth less than the house, so we know what HW would be advising.

If you need help parsing that sentence, shoot me a comment and I’ll break it down for you.

Anyway, I know I’ve already done a post listing some of the things I’ve learned about diet and exercise, but I wanted to offer one more bit of handy advice, then talk a bit about my current workout routine(s), and then, the pièce de résistance, a few before-and-after shots of my husky torso.

Advice: if you are currently out of shape, do not listen much to advice from someone who has never been out of shape. The reason for this is that they simply do not understand how difficult it is to get from “fairly chubby” to “crazy ripped,” and they will say “It’s easy! Just make a few dietary changes, add some simple exercises, you’ll be there before you know it!”

Horsecrap. If it was easy, the average American BMI would be 20, not 30. Admittedly, it is easy to start the process. If your current diet consists primarily of Whopper Juniors, Mr. Pibb, and Devil Dogs, simply replacing one meal a day with a light salad is going to lose you some pounds. If you also start walking a mile a day, that’ll also lose you some pounds. But after you lose 10, maybe even 20 pounds, the weight will level off. 20 pounds is no mean accomplishment, but if you went from 280 to 260, and you’re 5’3″, you’re going to be irritated when you can’t get further without making bigger sacrifices.

Eating right to lose weight is really, really hard. I really only manage to do it about half the time; weekends are a REAL challenge. I’m trying to limit myself to about 2300 calories a day, while getting 250 grams of protein, which means I get to have 1300 calories of carbs and fat. That ain’t much. When I eat what I want to, I can reach 4000 calories a day without thinking (something that will come in handy later in the year when I switch to bulking). Taking myself from 265 to 245 was easy; going from 245 to 225 has been really hard, and I’ve barely gotten started (although the creatine I take throws off the weight measurements).

The problem is that guys who look like this:

have never been seriously overweight. They’ve been making good food choices and working out for so long it’s not really an effort anymore; the idea of having a large McDonald’s extra value meal revolts them. These are people who ENJOY eating salads. If they have spare time, they go running, instead of watching TV or surfing the internet.

Ideally, if you need some weight coaching, you need to find someone who can show you a picture like this one:

That young woman had an ass the size of a Renault and it is GONE. She knows what it takes to get this done, and won’t sugar coat her advice.

Here are the important facts: don’t expect to lose more than, say, 40 pounds of fat in a year. That’s basically the top, and accounts for holidays and other weeks where you just can’t meet your goals, along with other minor setbacks. If you’re six feet tall and weigh 260, you’re looking at a two-year process of remodelling yourself. If you’re a lazy turd like me, it’ll take even longer. I don’t say this to discourage you, but to make you aware of what you’re in for.

What’s my diet and exercise routine, you ask? Well, I eat a lot of chicken, and I go through a lot of protein powder because it’s super convenient. 4 scoops a day, usually, which is about 96 grams of protein. I was drinking it with milk, but the extra carbs in the morning meant I’d be hungry at night and couldn’t eat more without going over the calorie limit. Those big bags of frozen veggies are the bomb; usually about 4-5 cups of broccoli in each, totalling maybe 120 calories. I pretty much eat one of those at every meal, or a big ol’ mixed salad, but to be honest raw vegetables suck without ranch dressing. I was eating a lot of pretzels for a mid-day snack, but cut that out too. I still do usually have a banana and a granola bar in the late morning, particularly if I plan to do some cardio over lunch.

As far as workout, I do:

• Cardio: a couple times a week, I’ll go for a run, or do some “speedwork” (short sprints with walking in between). If my legs are sore I’ll stick with the exercise bike to limit impact on my knees and feet. If I have time, which is not frequent, I like to bring my road bike and do a short ride over lunch. To be honest, I don’t really like the cardio; I just do it so I can eat a little more. If I set a limit of 2300 calories, but I run 3 miles and burn 400-ish calories, guess who has two thumbs and can now eat 2700 calories that day? MATT HEARN.


• Weights: I do standard “Starting Strength,” which looks like this:

  
  Workout A: Back squat 3×5, bench press 3×5, deadlift 1×5.

  
  Workout B: Back squat 3×5, overhead press 3×5, powerclean 3×5.

  
  “3×5” means 3 sets, with 5 reps in each set. I also do warmups of each exercise, usually a set of 5, then a set of 3, then 2, then 1, with weights increasing up to the work weight. I increment the work weights every workout, unless I miss reps. My current maxes are:

  
  Back squat: 250×5
  
  Bench press: 175×5 (was up to 190, but my arms are really starting to suffer from the caloric deficit and I just couldn’t handle the weight anymore)
  
  Deadlift: 340×5
  
  Overhead press: 125×5 (Probably my max until I start eating more to gain mass)
  
  Powerclean: 115×5

  
  I workout three times a week, MWF, and the workouts simply alternate.



• Bodyweight: I’ve started adding a simple workout called “PLP,” which stands for Pullups, Lunges, Pushups (although technically I do chinups, not pullups; the former have the palms facing you, the latter, away). On the first day of the month, I do one of each (one lunge with each leg). Second day, I do 2. Et cetera. I find it’s a nice way to get a little pump in the arms and legs, even on days when I don’t lift weights, and also I just like that I can actually do chinups now. Obviously the reps get broken up into sets, I can’t do that many chins in a row.