1 Year on MFP, 1 [M]illion+ Pounds Lifted!

(tl;dr - scroll down for pictures, or http://imgur.com/a/uP7fq#0)

When I started on MFP, I found inspiration from the success stories forum. Many people have made incredible transformations! I was especially inspired by seeing what could be accomplished in a full year. I promised myself that when I reached the year mark I would post my background and progress for others to hopefully gain inspiration from. I just hit that mark so here goes!



When I was a teen I was fairly active and hovered around 175-180 lbs. Seven years of post-secondary basically ruined my fitness, and I ended up at 225 lbs. I yo-yo dieted a couple of times but never made it stick as exercise always took a backseat to school, friends, and gaming. Especially gaming. I got hooked on WoW and into some pretty hardcore raiding. (my main has an embarrassingly high /played).

When I finished school I immediately started working as a tech consultant... lots of free food, business lunches, traveling, eating at restaurants, etc. I enjoyed myself - work basically replaced school - and my life continued on as before, except I had more money and more free time. Which led to more junk food, and more video games (I still play a lot of video games).

In Spring 2012, I started noticing a few disturbing trends. Climbing the stairs from the basement to the second floor of my house was leaving me winded with knee pain. My feet were swollen all of the time and ached. I would wheeze and sweat with only the slightest provocation. I got a cold and it clung on forever. I had to run for the bus and it gave me chest pain (which I explained away as "from the cold air"). The final straw came in May. I stepped on a scale for the first time in quite a while, and was floored. I was 241 lbs... I couldn't believe it. It was an abrupt wake-up call.

It was like flipping a switch. Many search for motivation, but for me, it was time and it suddenly clicked. I wanted to become healthy more than I wanted to indulge. I've had to apply determination occasionally and will power at other times, but the overall drive to get in shape was just suddenly there and has been there ever since.

I started eating less crap and immediately started dropping weight. In June, I bought an elliptical because it was the only exercise my knees/feet could really handle and joined this "online tracking thing" called MFP to help me stay on track. After about 3 weeks, I started walking to/from work (~30 min walk). I began to read fitness blogs for information and knowledge. I browsed the forums, learned who knew what they were talking about and who spouted nonsense, and then started picking up more links from those who were in the know.

Over the course of the summer, I managed to lose roughly 30 lbs following the most simple of rules - eat less, move more.

As time went on and I gained more knowledge, I increased the protein in my diet, started making sure I got enough fat, and reduced my carbs to a moderate amount. I basically started following IIFYM, although I didn’t sweat the macros too much. I never cut sodium, I ate pizza at least once a week almost every single week since starting, chugged coffee all day, and drank alcohol on probably about 1 in 3 weekends. I still do these things to this day. I just make sure I remain accountable for it, or own it and realize that it’s delaying my progress towards my goal.

I ate at a 500 calorie deficit, which for a guy of my size meant I was eating 2400 calories when I started. I'm down to 1850 to maintain -500 now. I have always eaten back somewhere between half and all of my exercise calories. I first increased my cardio, tried steady state, then decreased it, tried HIIT, and decided I’m not a fan of most cardio, especially due to the impact on my feet.

As well as cardio, I started looking into strength training. In my research I had come across a very obvious message: While both cardio and strength training are tools to improve your fitness, strength training is by far superior to cardio while losing weight. Cardio lets you eat more and does improve your cardiovascular health (these are not bad things). Strength training aids in preserving lean body mass while you lose fat. This is what results in the look that most people are going for, whereas employing only cardio tends to leave the average person thinner but without much definition.

These are the results I got with diet and cardio. HW was 241 but I didn’t want to take progress pictures until week 3 when I thought I might stick to it. I’m about 232 on the left, and 212 on the right:




I began to strength train using the ****ty bench and standard weight set I had at home. I assembled a TERRIBLE beginner routine (I thought I knew what I was doing, but in retrospect.... lol). I made progress for a little bit but was limited by my lack of equipment, and my inexperience with weights. There were things I wanted to do that I couldn’t. The only positive outcome was that I learned that strength training by doing “circuits” definitely hits your cardio hard, and I didn’t hate doing it!

In August I decided to hire a personal trainer. After a couple of sessions we established that I wanted to focus on barbell training and increasing my strength while improving my body composition. We caliper tested my body fat and I clocked in at 212 lbs 26.5%. I learned how to squat, bench, and deadlift properly. I bought Starting Strength and began reading it religiously (I’ve read it 4 times since and learned more each time). We settled on a simple, high volume program called Sheiko Powerlifting, started tracking in a spreadsheet, and I went to work. One of the neat features is the fact that I've been able to track an aggregate amount of "weight lifted". I updated it just before this post, and realized I had passed the 1,000,000 lb mark a short while back.

I began to make some major progress. My strength started to improve in leaps and bounds. My body composition followed suit. My weight went down as low as 199.8 lbs in October, but I read about taking “diet breaks” and decided to do an 8 week bulk. I ended up at 213 again but looked just a bit different from before.

I started ENJOYING lifting. I’ve pushed myself hard in the gym since September, but it was around November that I started looking forward to going to the gym more than anything else, even my decades long video game habit (I have an Atari 2600 and have been gaming since then). Lifting heavy things became an end rather than just a means to an end. My lifts kept increasing. I tried different programs, always focusing on heavy compounds. I had my trainer teach me the basics of how to design my own programs so I could adapt other programs to fit my needs.

Here is what my lifting progress looks like:


and a few videos (remember that these are PRs so go easy on form criticism):

440 Deadlift https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH18NrLioTY
425 Squat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95zUItl7DXU
210 Power Clean https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87cqYOtEqj4

During this period I became more lax on my diet. I ate at maintenance frequently, and tracked less often. Partially because I was more focused on the gym, partially because after establishing 6 months of good habits, most of my old bad habits were gone. My weight stopped going down, but it never really went up much. I kept pushing my lifts and made sure I kept at or below 212 lbs.

Which leads me to my current state. I hit the year mark, and took some progress pictures last night.

This is my MFP weight chart for the past year. I stopped recording as frequently later in the year, and began using my lifts to measure progress. Nevertheless:


I’ve taken sporadic progress pictures but I won’t bore you with most of them. I am glad that I took some “flexed” shots just before I started strength training though.

These are the results I got with heavy strength training combined with some circuit work for cardio. I am 212 on the top, and 207 on the bottom:




Sometimes it’s not about the amount of weight you lose, as much as the type of weight you lose. I am just over 17% body fat now at 207, where I was 26.5 % at 212. Which means I went from 56 lbs of fat to 35 lbs of fat. That’s 21 lbs of fat lost! Although my weight only changed by 5 lbs. Which incidentally means I also gained 16 lbs of muscle. Hurray for beginner gains!

Here are some pictures of my overall progress. Note that I'm wearing 42s on the left, and 36s on the right:




And some gratuitous flexed pictures:


Getting Angry, hulking out:


I'm happy about increased leg definition too!




So basically, that's my story so far. I push myself in the gym, for progress, but mostly because I enjoy it now. My knees and feet no longer hurt and overall I'm in much better health. I plan to continue lifting and see how far I can push myself. I will continue to lose fat and push my lifts even higher. Thanks for reading, thanks for the support, and I hope that I can inspire some others in the same way you all have inspired me.