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My name is Sam Black Crow, and I live in a prison, trapped in my archnemesis: The Asshole. My opponent is fat, lazy, and self-indulgent. She eats like crap, trapping us in layer upon layer of fat, letting things atrophy. She doesn't pursue what she wants, doesn't try to better herself. She is content to eat Twinkies and candies and shame. Every ounce of fat on our 247-lb frame is killing me, quickly or slowly. It kills my knees, kills my lungs, kills my back, makes me work harder to do things that should be effortless. The laziness and complacency that is the Asshole thinks that she has all the power. Well as of today I'm taking it back. My Main Quest: Drop the Weight So I Can Train (Lose 32# by 9/12 [90 days]) My quest for self-revelation is impossible under the burden of adiposity the Asshole carries. Before I can reveal my true nature, explore the wonderful self-confidence that is me, I must kill the fat. The battlefield is everywhere: every hour on the couch, every meal that goes in, every action I take or do not take. To become who I can be, I must kill the adipose. Thirty-two pounds is far from the end-game in this War on Fat, but it's a good first step: cull the weight from 247 lbs to 215. Get the taste of blood in your mouth before you attempt to eat a whole deer alone. Mini-Quest #1: Run Really Fast. The first weapon on my side is the sprint. Push hard, push fast, and be out before the cheesecake. The sprints WILL occur three days a week. They'll start “easy†– 30 seconds sprints with a 60 second recovery, no less than 5 times (7:30) in a session. From there, they'll get harder: 30:45, 45:90, 45:75, 45:60. I will get better: faster. Stronger. Daft Punk will make me laugh again as I crush another dash. I will need no less than 18 sprint sessions in to slay the adipose in the 6 weeks I have allotted. Ultimately I will need 25+ out of 12 weeks, but every other day is a place to start. Mini-Quest #2: Lift Heavy Things. The second weapon in my arsenal is going to be the lifting of weights. Specifically I'm going to train like a body-builder, even though that isn't my goal. Muscle regeneration will require calories. Through diet I will deny my body exogenous calories, forcing it to metabolize internally-stored calories. I will eat The Asshole from the inside out. I will get stronger. I will develop the muscles I want under the fat, so that when it's been pulverized into history I will be chiseling away to who I am underneath: strong, powerful, sexy. My early lifts—the “big four†I WILL master—are the Lateral Pull-Down (precursor to the pull-up), the Standing Press, the Bench Press, and the Leg Press. I will also master the Kettlebell Swing and use it to cut fat and bolster muscle. I will learn my starting weights with each lift... and bolster each by 50% or more in the next 6 weeks. Mini-Quest #3: Eat Better. You can't kill the fat without killing the things that make you fat in the first place. For too long the Asshole has gorged herself: chips, sodas, snack cakes, candies every single day. No more. No. More. A year or two ago I had a great success with Tim Ferris' Slow-Carb diet. It was only a little extreme, and it worked, and it only stopped working when The Asshole whispered in my ear that I had “done enoughâ€, that I could “relax, stop worrying about it so much, you're all better nowâ€, and I let her, and a few months later it was chips and gummies every night. Never. Again. I will eat slow-carb again. Lean meats. Healthy fats. Lots of vegetables. And I will shed weight like a squirrel in the winter. I am Miz Black Crow, and this is my quest: to slay The Asshole and emerge victorious from within my prison of fat and fear. It's gonna be a long war... but the battles have already begun.