Todays Pump House motivation came in the form of Captain Chunky and Team Hackers
I'd like to share my story, and opinions, and that's just what they are
When I was a kid I was quite lean, played serious junior ice-hockey, and was a normal teen just running around. No real weight issues. In '97 I was diagnosed with Colitis Ulcerosa (inflammatory bowel disease) and started to pack up some serious medication. I gained and lost weight in absurd proportions, up to 30-40 pounds in a month, up & down. That was basically because of the medication, the cortisone amounts I had to take gathered fluids like hell. Well, I was operated in '99 and couldn't move around for a bit. That wasn't the problem, but I could several years easily blame my past condition for not taking care of my self. Several years passed by. I started studying in '04 which led to an in furious amount of partying and eating bad food. The one most important factor was also that I've always had problems getting sleep. I slept years only a 4-5 hours a night (on weekends more, you don't have to wake up). Slowly I gained weight and got phlegmatic. I tried diets (speedy one's), working out (usually lasted a week or so) and all sorts of stuff, but apparently always too big steps, and couldn't keep it up. Also I noticed that when you are out of shape and start to work out, your defense mechanisms and immunity system takes a slight dip, and I usually got a flu or something which stopped the training and healthy eating. Then it would take months to get yourself try it again. Doomed to fail.
Luckily, in the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008 I started to take small baby steps towards a healthier future. I don't know if it was my subconscious telling me that "dude, you are getting old, shape up a-hole", or was it just by chance that I managed to get a few months of straight forward healthy food, working out and sleep. I weighed about 236 lbs in december 2007. What got me sleep even better was a natural hormone called melatonin (human brain produces melatonin, and tells your body that you should sleep), in the EU you have to get a prescription, but in the US it's available in all drug stores.
Food wise, the only thing I did was to stop buying bred home, making sure I eat more protein than anything else, and rest will take care of itself. Of course I left out candy and snacks for a while, but after a while you don't crave them anymore. Alcohol intake was reduced later naturally because the need to work out got bigger than the need to have a couple of beers. You can't really work out hungover, right?
Working out then. I started to go to the gym and swimming, and even indoor cycling. I did it quite slowly, didn't try to kill my self in the beginning, three times a week was good. Then after several months, I noticed that I was exercising 4-6 times a week, hadn't eaten fast food more than once or twice in six months, and hadn't been drunk more than once during that time. Calculating calories is not for everyone, but everybody should do it for a while so that they get some idea how much is good for you. The best part is, the more you work out, the more you can eat! I got taking these small steps, until they were big, if you look back. I got from 236 to 176 lbs in a period of 20-24 months. That's a long time, but that's 60 lbs.
A lot of people (especially girls) say that they don't like to lift weights because they don't want to get too much muscles and get all bulky. Well, trust me, you don't. It takes a huge amount of work and work-out hours to get bulky. Normal people with normal habits don't get bulky. They might get muscles, and they get toned, but they don't get bulky. The fact the usually people forget, or don't know how it affects your body, is that the more muscles you have the more fat they burn. It takes an enormous amount of work out to first build muscle, then loose fat, and just build muscle. If you work out two, three, four times a week, you just loose the fat. Of course this isn't always the case, the point is that afraid of getting bulky is just ignorance and a lazy excuse not to workout. Just do it, it's easier to loose the unwanted muscles than to get rid of some extra fat. Also, you need to eat damn lot of energy to get big, and if you eat less than you use, you can't get bulky.
I've used several different work-out programs at the gym, and some of them work better than others. The easiest, and most effective, at least for most people, is the Golden Six by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's simple, effective, hard but at the same time easy. It's big muscle groups and most of the exercises puts several different muscle groups working. Here it is:
Three times a week. One rest in between. I usually keep only a minutes pause between sets, in the original program they vary a bit.
Squat 4x10
Bench Press 3x10
Chins/Pulldowns 3x10
Behind-Neck Press 4x10
Barbell Curl 3x10
Sit Ups 4x20
I still work out with this one. I didn't go to the gym during april - september because the GOLF, but now I got back, and this is with what I begin with.
Here's me in 2007
2010
2011
Keep on working, you'll swing better too.
