1 Year, 69 to 63kgs, skinny fat to ripped

This is a long article. Read it or not, up to you. Ok. Here it goes.

Early in 2013 I was going through some minor depression (little episodes that lasted a few days). Being a man of science, I thought about exercise and getting my endorphins up to make me feel better. I decided that I wanted to get to a goal weight of 70kg. A weight that I always wanted to get to when I used to play restricted grade rugby. However, I knew the reasons why I stopped going to the gym. I really didn’t know what the fark I was doing. I read up a lot and decided that Rippletoe’s Starting Strength was what I needed/wanted as a lot of beginners found success with this program.

However, remember, I didn’t know what the fark I was doing. I knew that my friend and colleague Matt was going to the gym. So I asked him to teach me how to compound exercises properly. Squats, deadlifts and benchpress.

At this same time I was wondering why I always got hungry after eating breakfast. I stumbled (via google) on an article called “Why does breakfast make me hungry” on leangains.com.

This article was like a godsend to me. Long story short, I stopped eating breakfast and ate “breakfast” at 11.20am (morning tea time at school). I also lucked out as Leangains is actually an intermittent fasting program which help you to lean out and gain muscle at the same time!

What a win! I decided to try this on-the-surface-strange diet for one month (feeding window from 11.20am to 730pm) to see if there were any benefits/changes. As you can see from the pictures there was! The first 3 days were torture. It was a combination of “hungry as hell in the mornings” and “hungry in the evenings.” A week of hell basically.

However, after about 2 weeks, I got used to not eating until 1120am, and I worked out what to eat for dinner, so everything was good. A month went by and I just kept on going.

I clearly saw that my body definition was getting a lot better (compare June 2 to Feb 13, 2013). However, I was not gaining nor losing weight.

So on July 19, I talked to another friend,Ben Kong. Ben does Muay Thai/Boxing in Thailand (http://muaythaipros.com/), and has a solid strength building (read: lifting heavy weights to build strength) and also does Intermittent Fasting. He’s also ripped as hell.

I asked for advice and he gave me a strategy on how to lose the weight: rather then just bulk up, I should cut (lose fat) first before gaining any weight. On July 20th, on his advice, I went on a 1750 calorie a day diet – about 500 calories less than what my body needed to maintain weight.

You can see I was clearly making gains after this. My body definition really started to come out. My biggest scare was that I would lose strength, but this clearly was not the case (see above, what the fark do I know?). One of the purported benefits of leangains diet/intermitent fasting is that you can quickly cut fat while preserving muscle/strength. I didn’t only just lose fat but I continued to improve in strength while losing weight; as I found out, this is what happens when you are a beginner weightlifter and apparently there is more of a chance of this if you do IF style diet.

On Nov 28th I cut back on another 100 calories as I was moving very slowly (happens...the less you weigh the less calories you need to maintain your weight).

So we get to today, approximately 1 year since I started my year of growth and I look and feel (mentally) incredible. My goal now? And yes it may sound ridiculous, but I think I would like to lose 1 more kg of fat. After that I’m going to increase my calorie intake to about 1900. It will feel like heaven I am sure. Then after a month of so of that, maybe up to 2000 and the slow bulk will begin. I no longer have the ambition of getting to 70kgs. I will look too big and Angiwill laugh at me because I won’t be able to put my arms down at my sides. I think a goal weight of 65kgs will be reasonable but you never know, maybe I’ll be happy with a little less.

Thanks Matt and Ben for the advice and help.

Lastly, it is my belief to always give back. I’m helping one of my friends now and it is the utmost importance that I help them succeed. I'm happy to give advice here too.