Hello Fellow Rebels

[romeyb76]

Hello,

 

My name is Jerome, and I was born and raised in San Jose, CA but currently residing in Sacramento, CA.  I'm almost 37 years old and I'm a Telecom Analyst for the State of CA. 

 

Basically what brings me here is the fact that I have a goal that I've been trying to accomplish but couldn't find the drive, motivation, or the correct ways of going about it until now.  Basically, since I was a child, I was a little chunky then, and I've always had a huge gut. I was really skinny throughout high school and was at 160lbs at graduation at 6'0". Everything was small, with the exception of the gut. I joined the Navy in 1996 and in boot camp, I lost alot of weight and still had a little flab in the mid-section.  I've spent the next four years in the service hitting the weights, but still ate whatever I wanted. So basically, when I workout, my arms, back, shoulders and legs would be defined, but I couldn't shake off the belly fat. Even after I discharged in 2000, I continued working out but still no changes. 

 

Finally, I hit depression and gave up working out for a long time which is like 2002-2009.  I gained a huge amount of weight, and the majority of it went to, you've guessed it, my gut. So I was eating whatever, I used to smoke, and drink heavily. But then I eventually found the will power to stop all that stuff. In 2009 was when I became a born-again Christian and then I invested in some Bodylastics resistance bands since I couldn't afford a gym membership at the time, and tried to lose weight, but I was so focused on my goals of being in the technology field, that I got myself in the way many times. So I've been off and on ever since 2009. 

 

This year, I decided I am sick of procrastinating, making excuses, feeling lethargic after eating foods consisting of starches and grains mostly, and it's time for a change. I'm about to sign up for some martial arts classes, and I want to be in the best shape to be able to keep up with the courses. But the main reason why I'm ready to change my eating habits and actually follow a decent workout program is so I can become healthier and adopt it as a LIFESTYLE and not set temporary goals of losing weight. Plus, I had blood work done, and my doctor said my liver enzymes are a bit off which isn't serious. But she said the cure for this is to lose weight. Last time I weighed myself, I tip the scales at 265lbs, the heaviest I've been in my life. I finally drew the conclusion that I've been stubborn and uneducated for too long. So what I have to offer is to not only be a student of the game, but to help others who struggle like me. And if anybody lives in the Sacramento area, I would love to meetup and making go for a jog or even a workout session. So that's my story, thanks for reading, and a pleasure to meet you. 

 

 

[Laureleye]

I a "little" south of you, in Burbank, but welcome fellow Californian. My brother and father are both ex-Navy & my husband is a retired Marine, so a lot of sea-service in my family.

You've done the important thing, you've decided to change your lifestyle; you're absolutely right, this isn't a diet. I recommend that you visit the free resources ares (click on the NERD FITNESS tab). You'll find several workouts that do not require equipment. I can personnally recommend the beginner's body weight as a good starting point. You'll also find a beginners guide to healthy eating - a good starting point since about 80% of your fitness is what goes into your mouth.

My last bit of advice is not to worry if you have to start slow, or move to a slightly easier exercise to begin with. Sadly, neither of us is 25 anymore. But that doesn't have to stop us from being awesome. Welcome to the rebellion.

[Jakob Kopfeld]

Hello Jerome

 

Welcome to the Rebellion!  I hope you have a wonderful time here, everybode is really friendly and supportive. 

 

It's great that you decided to turn you life around and take steps toward a healthier way of living. It's not an easy journey, but just because you decided to take the first step your also closer to you gaol. As long as you keep taking those steps, you will get closer and closer and the only thing that is still needed is time. And time has the wonderful habit of passing by by itself.

I wish you the best of luck on your journey!

[romeyb76]

Thank you both for the warm welcome!  I'm going to post pics of myself soon. I'm no longer ashamed to take off my shirt as I understand and take full accountability to what I've done to myself. I'll be posting a pic for the main page and also to share with you where I'm at now. I think it will be good for me so I can remind myself of why I'm doing this. Thank you for the advice as I will take full advantage of it.

[romeyb76]

Started my Moo Duk Kwan Taekwondo class and loving it. I'm combining that with running and the Beginners Body Workout. And starting the conversion to Paleo! 

[romeyb76]

Pics of me now have been posted. And yes, I went shirtless. It'll be good for me to look at those and see how much I want to change. Completed my first week of the Beginners Body Workout last week and started again yesterday. I know that it's a must I get back in shape because I'm struggling through the exercises, but at least I'm doing them from start to finish. And I'm now logging what I eat on a daily basis.

[chris_de_maas]

Hi! Welcome!!

How did your first week of working out go? How do you feel? I really hope you're enjoying the beginning of your journey.

There is a 6 weeks challenge starting in a couple of weeks, it could be a nice way for you to keep yourself motivated and set a few goals and actually see them fulfilled

See you around and good luck!!

[romeyb76]

My first week went well! Thank you! I'm feeling good about this. When I was younger, I exercised for the wrong reasons and ended up getting depressed because I was trying to do it so fast, but wasn't willing to change other areas in my life. Now that I'm ready for the change, I'm going to take it slow and find out what works, and stick with that.

 

I'll be on the lookout for that challenge!

[chris_de_maas]

That's great! I'm really happy to hear it's going well

It's good that you've understood that you need to go slowly, if you go all-out when you're not used to it, you'll burn out sooner or later. So really, don't be afraid to take smaller steps so you don't get overwhelmed. Also set some achievable and very clear and precise goals, may they be diet or fitness related.

 

The challenge starts on the 25th I think, but I bet they'll be announcements posted around

[romeyb76]

Oh yeah, I do have precise goals relating to both:

 

Diet: I'm seeing a nutritionalist on V-Day to get on an eating program. I would like to try the Paleo plan, so if I get put on anything other than that, I want to do my best to leave out starchy carbs and sugar. Purpose is to burn fat so when I do exercise, I'm not gaining fat on top of muscle.

 

Exercise: I have two:

a) Running: For cardio, endurance, and to aid in the fat-burning process. But mainly because I love it.

 

Free weights: For strength, stamina and muscle building.

 

c) Moo Duk Kwan Taekwondo: Because I love it and my next goal in life is to obtain a black belt.

 

It's a start for now, I will be tweaking these plans as I go along.

 

Reason for all of this: to live a healthy and active lifestyle without feeling lethargic and depleted throughout my days. And to be able to not huff and puff through my TKD classes. LOL!

[chris_de_maas]

This is awesome but your goals aren't precise enough, you need to go even deeper than that. The more precise you are, the easier it is for you to quantify your progress and visualise what you need to achieve.

For example, how much do you want to run? Do you want to be able to run a mile without stopping? A 5K without stopping? A 10K in under an hour? What do you want to do with your free weights? What kind of exercises? How many reps do you want to achieve? How heavy do you want your free weights to be? Let's say you want to do pushups, if you know that you want to get to 15 pushups without stopping, knowing that 15 is your goal number and repeating it to yourself over and over again will make it more likely for you to get there rather than "I want to do pushups" which is just too vague and will have you quit when you're tired. But if you know you need to reach 15 and you're dead at 14, don't tell me you won't push to reach that golden number!!

You can apply that to everything and add to the difficulty as you achieve your goals; great, you can now run 5K without stopping, let's try 5K in 15mins or 5.1K without stopping. You get me?

 

Also, don't forget to keep track of everything, you need to be able to see what number you need to beat to be better than you were at your last workout and see just how much you've improved!

[romeyb76]

This is helpful thanks. Now that I know what you mean.

 

Running: Yes. Eventually, I do want to participate in a 5K. But for now, I just want to be able to run a mile without stopping. I've been doing 30 min walk/run exercises, 4 times a week. So the first step I'm taking is to be able to run the entire 30 mins w/o stopping.

 

Weights: I'm going to get a local gym membership this weekend and I'm going to start training free weights. I'm not trying to "bulk up", but I would like to be toned. But I know it starts with first building strength. Right now, I can huff and puff through push-ups and I can't do a pull-up or a chin-up to save my life, so my weight training goal is to be strong enough to do those types of exercises. I don't have a "structured" plan right now. However, I do know somebody that is a bodybuilder and I'm going to be calling him for help. So I'll get back to you on that.

 

The reason why my goals sound so basic is because now that I'm learning how to do these things "correctly", I still have yet to really figure out how I'm really going to go about achieving my goals. I know what I want, but I accept the reality of it at the same time if that makes sense. But the learning part is the reason why I'm here.

[chris_de_maas]

No worries

 

And your goals don't sound basic, these are the things you want to achieve right now. In 6 months' time, they will be different. They need to always change and evolve. You just need to remember to go step by step, don't go ballistic and stick to achievable goals or you'll get overwhelmed and give up.

 

Regarding pushups and pullups, you can work your way to get there, Steve has posted some articles about that, I think they are called "How to do a proper pushup" and same with pullups, you can look them up

 

Concerning the structured plan, I'd recommend you used the free workouts that are available on the site. The Beginner Body Weight workout is pretty great to start with. It will get you sweating and working on your strength without needing a gym or a dumbell! The Angry Birds workout too is pretty brilliant and you can tailor it to suit you/your needs/your level.

Also, make sure you keep a proper form throughout everything you do, better do 5 proper pushups than 10 all over the place ones. Take your time and make sure your form is spot on.

[romeyb76]

Great thanks! Yep, already on week 2 of the Beginner's Bodyweight Workout. And all I'm doing is working on my form. The rest will come.

[chris_de_maas]

Brilliant! Well done! Keep going strong and you'll get there

[a2wd]

 I did the Couch to 5k running plan (C25k) and it is awesome. I used the C25k Free app by ZenLabs on my phone and I cannot say enough good things about it. Highly recommend!

 

Running: Yes. Eventually, I do want to participate in a 5K. But for now, I just want to be able to run a mile without stopping. I've been doing 30 min walk/run exercises, 4 times a week. So the first step I'm taking is to be able to run the entire 30 mins w/o stopping.

[romeyb76]

I'm adding another goal. Since I'm passionate about studying the martial arts, I've been studying at Kang's United Arts College in Midtown Sacramento, CA. I'm learning the Moo Duk Kwan style of Tae Kwon Do. Since I've been doing this for three weeks, here are the things I'm noticing about myself:

 

- It's very cardio base and I can keep up, but I do huff and puff.

 

- I have to stop in between the routines just to straighten out the kinks.

 

- I kick too low because yes, I did let myself go and my beer gut gets in the way.

 

So now I have new goals to set

 

- To become more coordinated when practicing the stances.

 

- To be able to get through a routine without stopping to stretch or breathe.

 

- To be able to kick higher.

 

- To look better in my taekwondo gi.

 

The steps I'm taking are to:

 

- Keep training myself to become a better runner.

 

- Strength training for endurance and to be strong enough to stand in one place for a long period of time without falling out of ranks.

 

- Finally get the hang of the Paleo Diet program and stick to it.

 

- When I'm not in the dojo: PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE.

[romeyb76]

***NEW GOAL***  

 

CORRECT MY POSTURE! Reason: I met with a personal trainer last night. I utilized the free training session I get for joining Crunch Fitness gym in Sacramento. He took a good look at my posture and basically told me I need lots of work. And he told me if I'm able to continue to work with him (meaning if I can pay for the sessions), then he can help me out with that by teaching me good form and technique when working out which is exactly what I need. And the biggest thing for me is accountability. I need somebody to keep me in check. Until I can find a workout partner who's more experienced, I'll be saving up for these training sessions. Thought I'd share and ask you guys to keep me in prayer please. 

[romeyb76]

Wow! Looking back, I was all over the place. But now I see that I set long-term goals for myself. So now, I realize in order to accomplish the long-term goals, I need to set short-term goals. So now I feel that I have a clear understanding of what I need to do. So here goes:

 

Stength Training, I'm doing 5 workouts because I found a program that's great for beginners. Hit me on my personal e-mail if you want to know what that is. But basically it's this:

 

Bench press

 

Overhead Press

 

Squats

 

Barbell Row

 

Deadlifts

 

I do 3 at a time every other day. I do 5 sets of 5 reps. And I started the squat, bench press and barbell row in that order with no weights, except I had two 10lbs weights on the barbell row. The next day I go, I'll add 5lbs to the weight and my next goal is to complete 5 sets of 5 reps with the heavier weight. And I increase each day. If I can't complete all my sets or my reps, then I try it again the next time until I get it, then advance. I hope that makes sense.

 

Taekwando: My next goal is to get my orange belt which I test for next month, so I'm practicing all the moves that's going to be on the test whenever I have free time.

 

Running: I do my running on my off days, or sometimes as a warm up before my strength training. So my goal with that is to get a little faster each day.

 

I realized that having a good physique, defending myself, becoming stronger and become a faster runner are all LONG-TERM GOALS. And by breaking it down to SHORT-TERM goals and leveling up each workout is the key to achieving the long-term goals. So shout out to Steve for that article on RELAXING!

 

Oh yeah, and the diet, I read the article about slowly cutting out foods that aren't good for me. So that's where I'm at. I'm at 262lbs so 3lbs lighter! Hope this helps and feel free to chime in on this.