Route 2 ripped..........chubby 2 chiselled?: The Story

Apologies in advance for the stupidly lengthy post.

I’m a Husband, a Dad, a worker, a studier, a traveller, a football lover and more recently, a health enthusiast & a gym lover. ‘Nothing wrong there’ I hear you say but the problem is I have long been a food lover too. I like good food, don’t get me wrong I now like good clean stuff that even the biggest health-tard in the world knows is good for him but I like some unhealthy shit as well and I have been known to eat to excess, regularly. It was this eating unhealthy shit, to excess..........all the time that got me to where I was around 10 years ago in 2002, 137kg (301lb or 21st 8lb) at just 179cm (5’ 10”ish).

I had grown up in a family where big portions were the norm, exercise was rare and food choices not always sound (as if that wasn’t 100% obvious!). I had just returned from a family holiday on which I had vowed would be my final blowout. On the ‘blowout’ theme I did myself proud and probably put on around 8-10kg on that holiday alone (it was 6 weeks long and in Houston, Texas which at the time was known as the ‘Fat Bastard’ capital of USA – biggest culprit, stuffed jalapenos!). I came back from Houston and embarked on a diet (if I remember right it was The Atkins Diet). I can’t even remember if I supplemented it with any exercise but if I did I mustn’t have tried very hard as I have no recollection (I think junk food messes your memory up tbh). I probably spent the next 3 years or so tossing it off aimlessly in the gym and eating an abundance of saturated fat because Dr Atkins told me to do so. I didn’t keep any records but I probably got down to around 110kg before going on a bit of a crash diet before my wedding in 2005 and dropping around another 3kg (Epic fail at a crash-diet I know). I swear to God this is one of my biggest regrets as I look like such a fat fucker on my wedding day and have an abundance of photos to prove it, in my living room, staring at me, all the time, looking like a fair-haired Peter Kay after he’s just had a 6 week blowout in Texas, my Wife on the other hand looking gorgeous in her size 6 (UK) wedding dress. People must have been looking at the two of us thinking my God he must either be rich or the ‘other thing’, wink wink (believe me it was neither). Anyway, I digress (I think junk food prevents you from maintaining focus tbh).

The following year we moved away to Vietnam for my job and for the first couple of years there was little change to my weight at around 107kg. I was going out (I forgot to say that I like to drink as well) and socialising much more but on the flipside I was living in an Apartment block that had a gym so was exercising and doing plenty of walking around Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) due to taxis being a right royal pain in the arse. I guess those things just cancelled each other out. In late 2007 we then moved to Singapore and I started to diet a little more and go the gym a little more also. It was in Singapore that I started to finally educate myself on what I should be doing, albeit a shitty education largely driven by things I was reading in the Male Health sorts of magazines (you know what I mean). The major catalyst for me in losing weight was actually a fun-run sort of thing that some friends had organised. It involved a run around one of the suspended parks in Singapore and the fun came at the end when we all got right royally pissed! This was a catalyst as even though I had never been a runner (I hated running, I was one of the kids who would hide in a bush during school cross-country runs and wait till they came back around and surreptitiously slither out and join the pack bereft of sweat but riddled with nettle stings) I had ended up running faster than anybody that day, I came first. Alright, it wasn’t exactly a race but that wasn’t the point, the ‘fat dude’ who can’t run just did and he did it better than all the rest (ner ner).

So I became a bit of a runner, I would go out about 2-3 mornings a week and run around 5-8km. Fasted cardio as they call it, a decent fat burner. I managed to drop to around 90kg in a pretty short space of time. People noticed big time & going back home to the UK felt the business. I had made good progress but when I look back, I had very little muscle apart from in my calves which in reality was down to carrying a massive fucking body round for a large portion of my life, well done me for training my calves consistently for the best part of 30 years, now that’s commitment. Adding to this, my bodyfat definitely still exceeded 30%.

So I started to educate myself further and by 2010 had become more or less self sufficient. I was reading tons of strength training books and had settled (at that time) on an Arthur Jones (best known for being the eccentric creator of Nautilus, MedRX) training style. Jones’ style was based around minimalist training, high intensity, always to failure. It was a most convenient coincidence that his style of training was performed best on his Nautilus brand of equipment with him clearly stating that ANYTHING else was inferior. Don’t get me wrong, the man was a genius (albeit an arrogant, socially inept genius who liked the odd dabble in much younger women) but I soon learnt that his methods of training were designed based on principals that made people like Casey Viator and Mike Mentzer huge. I now realise that this was largely due to genetic potential and later on, massive amounts of roids up the main line. Anyways I made some strength gains albeit slowly. I now know that I must have been putting on some muscle but in reality it was unnoticeable as I still had a good solid layer of lard covering the whole of my body. The strength training probably just made me look fatter. A trainer I knew in Singapore would call this look the ‘Fuscley Look’. I am definitely embarrassed to say that even at this more educated stage, I was basing my workouts around machines in the gym, partly because Arthur Jones & Mike Mentzer told me to and partly because I was a fucking idiot.

In 2011 I met a trainer called Dean Connor in Liverpool who my Wife had been using for a while whenever she went home. It was around this time that I finally levered my head out of my arse and learned how to lift weights, properly. It was at this time that I realised how much I enjoy PICKING HEAVY SHIT UP AND PUTTING IT DOWN. I switched to a Leangains type regime which involved the big moves, all variations of: Squat, Deadlift (my favourite), Press, Bench, Bent-over row, dips & chins. I have watched my strength consistently go up and still now, base my workouts around these moves.

The other major change initiated by going on a Leangains type regime as recommended by Dean was the nutrition side of it. Leangains is based around the principals of intermittent fasting. I sat with Dean one day and he told me I would need to fast for around 16 hours a day and would be left with an 8 hour eating window to consume my allotted calories and macros. I hadn’t heard of it, thought he was full of shit and that the shitty little muscles that I had been working hard to create, would evaporate if I didn’t ingest protein every 2 hours………….but still agreed to give it a go. As is the norm with me, I then spent plenty of time reading up and realised he wasn’t full of shit, what he had told me was pretty new, cutting edge and would inevitably spread across the world with more zeal than Adolf Hitler.

As far as the running, it’s taken a backseat. If I couldn’t go the gym and train then I would run but it definitely comes a distant second. I have also ensured I never ran the day after a weights session in case it affects my gains but I’m starting to realise that that is bullshit as well unless you are sprinting full-out and that a steady, not ‘all-out’ run can actually help with recovery.

So everything sounds tickety-boo, it seems like I have my eating DOWN, I have my training DOWN and I know what you are thinking, “this dude must look pretty good” but in reality I’m still of a somewhat porky disposition with a bodyfat around 20%. The problem is one of over-simplification (calories in vs calories out) and a prior misunderstanding of the importance of hormones in both fat loss and muscle gain. It’s these little bastards that decide what is going to happen but luckily for us, although insanely powerful, they are thick as fuck and can be manipulated easier than Jeremy Kyle can manipulate chavs.

From my research I know that above about 12% bodyfat, the body is less inclined to build muscle than below this value. The only sensible thing to do to be where you want to be (in my case big but chiselled) is to concentrate on cutting the fat then work on the bulk*. The problem for me has long been a psychological one. The two things I love (obviously beside my Family and Everton FC) are FOOD and LIFTING BIG. When you love anything it is always hard to let it go. So I’m telling my two lovers that we are to take a little break (12 weeks to be exact), not a full-on break but I just won’t be spending as much time with them as I would like. It’s time to stop fucking about and to concentrate on getting as lean as possible in 12 weeks with the ultimate aim to be able to return to my two lovers and do both of them to excess which incidentally is a wonderfully complimentary, symbiotic state of affairs. Just like the name of one of my favourite blogs/sites, LIFT BIG EAT BIG.

My source of inspiration during this time will be a book co-authored by Dean Connor and a guy called Shaun Petafi. The book is called Ripped to Shreds and has only recently been published. They actually don’t refer to it as a book, but as a ‘Power Report’ in all honesty this is apt as it is only around 40 pages long. I read the whole thing on a flight I was taking one. It’s a perfect length for people who can’t be arsed reading a big massive book and just want something to get them going, now! Anyway the book has a number of methodologies of which I will be using a few, possibly all within the 12 weeks. I start on Monday 10^th September and my initial plan is to us a combination of low carb while intermittent fasting (or anabolic fasting as their particular methodology calls it) and using a combination of fasted AM intervals with a short PM Tabata workout in the gym. The beauty of their low carb recommendations is that the low carb is only done for 3 days then the 4^th day is a refeed in order to reset waning leptin levels (something I know plenty about during my years of plateauing). I’m going to max it up for now by placing one of my beloved heavy workouts on the refeed day. I’m doing it this way for two reasons, firstly to take advantage of the refeed to maximize muscle growth after I’ve just tortured the bejesus out of my body and secondly because I am a firm believe that if a man does not squat and deadlift once a week, his willy will turn inside out. My plan for the typical week (for now) looks something like this:

Monday (low-carb)