There and back again… A fat kids tale…

[3phil4]

Please excuse the length of this first post, I guess lurking for so long I thought of a lot of stuff I wanted to say…

Hey everyone, My name is Phill. I'm 28, and I live in Atlanta. I currently work as a Systems Engineer and enjoy doing nerdy stuff with my free time.

A quick run down of my stats:

I'm 6 feet and some change, weight 263 as of this morning, and have a body fat percentage of around 40% (assuming the body fat reader on my scale is correct) (33% based on the Us Navy Calculator).

My over all goal is to get down to 10% body fat by my birthday in June of 2013.

Additionally I would like to be able to hit the following strength/fitness goals:

Bench 315

Squat 315

Run a 5K

20 Pulls up

A little bit about my workout habits/lifestyle.

I am actually a fairly active person, Im in the gym about 3-4 times a week. I mostly do weight lifting and have recently started to add running and other cardio to my routine. Over the last 2 years my weight has gone everywhere from a life time high of 298 to 230 last summer.

About my background.

I've pretty much always been a bigger person, and played sports and stuff in high school and college (club). After college when I got a real job I got a lot more sedatery and didn't change my eating habits. My weight shot up to 298 in the spring of 2010. It was at that time I decide I need to make a change and went on a mission to loss weight.

Truth be told 2010 was the first time I came across this site. I was at the time willing to try anything and was researching a lot of different diets. I found the Beginner’s Guide to the Paleo Diet, and even tried it for a week or two. However back then Paleo just seemed too hard, and instead I started a caloric restriction diet. Dropping down to 1500 calories or less a day. I would also fast intermittently.

For 6 months fasting and CR worked great and the weight came off until I hit about 230. CR I thought was wonderful as it allowed me to lose weight without having to go to the gym or really change my new found sedatery lifestyle any. However at 230 I wasn't able to drop another pound. No mater how much I dropped my daily calories I wasn't losing any more weight. And to make thing worse I still pretty much looked the same (flabby). I wasn't too pleased. So I decided to start working out again.

Getting back in the gym was the biggest shocker. Come to find out along with the fat I had also lost almost all of my muscle mass and strength. I went from benching 225lbs to barely being able to bench 135. At the time I felt like all of that effort and nothing to really show for it was for the birds and I then kind of lost all/a lot of motivation. Around this same time I took a promotion at work and things got really busy and I used that as an excuse not to continue working out.

Fast Forward to June of this year and I decided it was time to make a change. I joined the gym again and started working out and trying to eat better. As of today I am benching 245lbs, squatting 205lbs and I can deadlift around 275-315lbs.

I am happy with my progress and I definitely want to continue progressing, but I more than anything want to look how I feel.

Right now I think what I most need help on is scheduling (gym/travel and /work/life balance) and eating/diet.

I look forward to being a part of the community!

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Welcome aboard! You have very good, specific goals and it sounds like you have pretty good plans to get there. This is the right place for dead-lifters looking to eat healthy! Steve says (and most of us repeat him) that diet is 80% of fitness. So if you're already working out like you describe, getting your diet in order ought to be one of the last changes you need to make. Welcome aboard!

[Nuala]

1500 calories or less oO', no wonder you plateaued and lose your strength. That's way too few. Hell, that would be barely enough calories for me and I'm a not-tall-at-all girl that don't even lift.

Happy to see that you're on the eating better road instead of the starvation one, you'll find many helpful people here that will be able to answer all your questions. Welcome!

[Avalonna]

Paleo FTW! Paleo is not hard at all - if i were you I'd give it another look. To lose more fat, go lower-carb paleo. But be sure to eat plenty - don't combine it with calorie restriction if you want to see strength gains. Have you found Mark's Daily Apple?

[Laureleye]

It wasn't too long of an intro at all; its always great to see where someone is coming from. The way you're lifting, I suspect you'd get great results from Paleo, but you can ease in if you like. You can just start by limiting your diet to "real" food; cutting out the junk/processed food. Be sure to join one of the guilds so you'll be ready for the next challenge when it starts up.