# Travis' First Journal: Goal of 6% BF by January



## tdockweiler (Sep 27, 2004)

I've decided to write this journal to keep me motivated and on the right track. I've found that within the past 4 months it has not been that difficult to get in all my workouts. I'll get them in unless i'm half dead. 

I've had great results so far. Back in 2000 or so I was sitting all day in a chair behind a desk. At the time I was 19 and 287lbs at 6'4". I was always in bad shape and felt terrible about myself and the last time I got any exercise was back in high school. If I ate better it wouldn't be so bad. I was the stupid one who went to mcdonalds or other fast food places not knowing how bad a super sized meal was. Then after work i'd quite often eat pizza for dinner. I clearly remember days probably going through whole boxes of oatmeal cream pies and a liter of mountain dew. I never ate regularly and often i'd go into work without eating breakfast.

I didn't always feel fat, it's as if I felt normal but didn't really know how bad off I was. I always remember hating my picture taken. When I saw them I would get horribly depressed and just feel so bad about myself. I remember a couple of times trying to lose weight. I'd eat healthy for a few weeks and then when I didn't see any major results I gave up. I had no clue how to really lose weight and actually thought I could lose weight without exercise. Sure it's possible, maybe.

My vacation was due and I decided to fly to Hong Kong by myself. This was the first time out of michigan by myself and i'm going all the way to hong kong! I'm a big fan of foreign films and especially ones made in Hong Kong (drama's, not kung fu movies!) so that's what made me want to visit the place!

When getting there and walking around all day I realized how fat and out of shape I was. I was working up a sweat just walking around all day. It's as if i'd get tired so quickly. This certainly wasn't normal. While up there on Victoria Peak I decided to come home and change my life and I wouldn't quit until I reached my goal. I was tired of being fat. I had no future plans for my life and I was not going anywhere in life. I needed to quit taking the easy way through everything and work harder to change things. 

When I got back I moved out of my mother's house and got my 1st apartment. That was the first big step. Of course 2 months after doing so I had lost my good paying job and was stuck with a $300/month car payment, $550 rent and $1190 insurance. Of course it just so happens that a month before I lost the job I had purchased a blowflex (I use freeweights now, it's a long story). 

With all the free time and no job I worked out as hard as I could an hour every other day. I clearly remember the first time I worked out. My muscles would shake so badly. I also remember when I changed my routine to something so much harder I thought that'd I'd almost never get used to it..but I did and quite quickly. The first day of working out I got rid of all my junk food and spent money on groceries. I went on a 1500 calorie diet. Crazy, I know and now I almost regret it. I lost 8lbs in the first week. That's what the scale said. It's probably wrong and maybe it's water, fat and muscle. 

I'd track my results with a measuring tape and scale every single week. Some weeks I'd lose no weight on the scale but I got results on the tape. The nicest thing is having to go out and buy new belts and pants every month! I once got so sick of buying new belts that I started poking holes in mine! I also got so sick of buying my usual Levi's that cost $40 or so that I just bought some $12 jeans from wally-world to wear around the house. And, no they are really not even worth $12! 

I was unemployed for nearly a year due to lack of demand in my state for people in the computer field. Things got so terrible that they cut off my electricity, phone and everything else. While trying to find jobs I started a small website selling things. Most of the time that paid the rent, barely. 

I had to move in with my mother when things got even worse. When you're sitting in a house at night with no power and just a lantern, things seems pretty awful. It's hard not to get things get to you. I've found that no matter how hard things get, you just can't let them bother you. You have to try and avoid any negative things, but of course not ignore the problems. The worst thing was having to sell my bowflex to pay for my rent.

While at my mother's and searching for a job I started running instead of weight training. Her apartment was so small there was no way a weight bench could fit in it, or even ANY bench. I often used regular free weights, but it got pretty difficult. I got down to 196lbs, but I was "skinny-fat". 

Winter is when it got to be the worst for my health. I got back into eating junk food. I always had this stupid idea in my head that i'd burn it off. What a lie. I got back up to 226. Most all I had gained was fat. Over the entire winter I did not do any exercising.

Things got so much better when spring came. I took part time low-paying jobs to focus on my internet sites. I was making so much money with them that I could now work at home and get my own apartment. I went from making a few hundred off the site to making 5 times as much in a month than my last job!

You can be sure the first thing I did was get back to work ASAP. I did the biggest mistake EVER and got a....weider crossbar. Waste of $1000 to me. I regret it so much..a few months after getting it I "upgraded" to a weight bench and love it. I'm now gaining lots of muscle that I can actually notice. I have serious doubts that you can gain any sort of noticeable muscle with the crossbar. Certainly not like those marines in the commercials.

So I was starting over from 226lbs and felt terrible. I was 23%BF and couldn't believe how much fatter I got. I was wearing size 36 pants and got up to size 38 again!

When using the crossbar I was trying to prove to myself that I could use it to gain muscle. I ate 6 meals a day and tried very hard. I might have gained a little. More than anything I felt like I was wasting my time with the thing. I remember experiementing with dumbbells back when I had my bowflex and saw much better results with those than my bowflex. 

So i've been using free weights for a few weeks now. It's definitely the way to go. I was doing sets of 12,10,8,6 for each exercise and just increasing the weight but i've found that's not the way to go for me. I do 75% of my 1 rep max and try going to failure on EACH SET. It's so nice being in pain the next day. I've tried arnold's beginner workout in  his encyclopedia but i'm too much of a wimp right now. I'm also too lazy to workout every single day at this point. The first suggest workout left me totally drained, but it was the best workout I ever had. Quite rought to say the least, but I liked it. I'll try a tougher workout in the future. I need a few more weeks of basic stuff for now.

Anyway, I was at 226lbs and 22.6 or so BF%. Now i'm at about 14.9%. The strangest thing is that maybe I did it all wrong. I still have a little bit of fat around my midsection. Everything else appears fine. Could have be normal?! I've gained some good muscle using the free weights and it IS noticeable. I look in the mirror now and like what I see. It's as if now my fat around my midsection will be gone soon. It'll be so nice.

I was trying to gain muscle before with no real worries about how much I was eating as long as it was 6 meals a day of healthy food. I seemed to be losing bodyfat with the calipers but certainly not on the scale. Every week it would go down.

Now i'm eating 6 smaller meals. About 2000 calories a day. I'm now losing the last of my bodyfat. I was 226lbs and am now at about 14.9BF% at 215. I've got further to go. 

My goal of 6% is crazy. 10% will be "good enough". Heck, i'll be happy if all my noticeable body fat is gone. I told myself I won't go back to hong kong for a 2nd visit unless I have reached my goal. I want to be back there and full of energy instead of week and out of energy. 

Once I get down to 12% I think i'll start running again. I can't run miles but i'll probably work up to it. I think before my legs were weaker, so now I can probably run further without my legs getting tired. Of course, there is more to it than that. If I just keep at it i'll be get better. Hopefully I can do all this running before winter comes.

You know what the nice thing is about losing all this fat? I was at a funeral today and relatives come up to me and say "have you been working out?". Some didn't even recognize me. I get so many comments from people about how different I look. I have old friends amazed at how different I look. When people tell me I look good it makes me want to keep at it. It's nice to actually be able to look in the mirror and not be disappointed with what you see.


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## gwcaton (Sep 28, 2004)

great story, Good luck


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## Jenny (Sep 28, 2004)

Good luck Travis


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## klmclean (Sep 28, 2004)

Good luck!


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## M.J.H. (Sep 28, 2004)

Great story bro, I wish you the best of luck.


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## milliman (Sep 29, 2004)

Congrads dude.

You should enter the EAS constest and maybe you can make some money at the same time you reach your goal.  

Keep it up.


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## tdockweiler (Sep 29, 2004)

*Not a good day for eating*

Monday was one of the worst "free" days i've ever had. I almost NEVER EVER use them. I hate them and don't want to go back to my old ways. If I go out to eat at a restaurant and eating something that's just a LITTLE worse than normal i'll just call it my free day. If I eat just a small cookie i'll say that's my free day and I can't eat anything else. It's extremely rare that i'll eat junk food. 

Monday was a funeral for my uncle. The entire family was invited over to a  city hall for lunch. I guess it wasn't that bad. They had sandwiches (on white bread, oh well), potatoe/salad/fruit salad and even the kind with lettuce. Potatoe Chips and even cake. Nothing really so bad i'll be regretting it for a week. Since I was starving I ate like any normal person would there and even had desert. There went my free day, but then it gets worse. 

My mother called me up and she invited me to an italian restaurant that night. I wanted to decline would didn't want to do that to her, so I decided to go. This place had practically nothing healthy to eat at all. Mostly all pasta and stuff with lots of cheese. I had pizza, but not too much. I kept telling myself that when I get home i'm going to work my ass off as hard as I could.

Went home later on and had the best workout I had in weeks probably. I lifted more than I had ever lifted before and when I was done my muscles were aching so badly. I had gotten up hours earlier that day than I had ever done before but now I felt like I had just gotten up and had so much energy and it was soon time to go to sleep. Instead I worked for about 5 hours or so that night and got lots done (I work at home). I usually work after 6pm until early AM. 

Here's the strange thing. Do you know that feeling where when you get hungry your stomache growls? It did that just after my workout. How could that be? Obviously, it can't be my body used all all that energy already?!

I ate some low fat cottage cheese and went to bed. Skipped the carbs for obvious reasons. 

Today I just felt like going easy on the food. What's now strange is that normally when I wake up I feel like I haven't eaten in weeks. So bad my stomache hurts. It wasn't like that today but I was extremely sore, which is a good thing to me. 

The past few weeks i've been getting so sick of all the same basic foods. I always eat "clean" or whatever you want to call it. Everything is plain and boring with practically no seasonings or anything fancy. I don't use recipes or anything. Decided to pick up a book called EATING-FOR-LIFE and it has some good stuff in it. I planned to try out 4 recipes I found in it. Found this healthy pancake in it. The texture was strange and hard to get used to. It tastes like a mix between plain egg whites, french toast and a regular pancake. It wasn't to bad, but I really made a huge mistake of eating 2 portions all at once. I figured..1c of oats, 1c cottage cheese and 6 egg whites? that's nothing. Wrong! It's rare that when I eat in the morning my stomache is actually full. I don't really want that. 6-8 egg whites and oat bran almost never fills me up.

I had so much energy that I skipped my next meal since I wasn't the least bit hungry. Not good, but oh well. Since I work inside my home all day it gets boring and I just have to get out for awhile. Stopped at subway for a meal before going out grocery shopping (always a good idea, then you don't buy junk food, not that I would!)

I've eaten at subway for a long time and it's hard to give up on that place. I never had a clue how many carbs are in one 6" sub. It was a shock when I heard it. Some people only eat foot long subs as well! The past few weeks i've been trying their wraps but an hour later i'm hungry again. I know for a fact that a subway sandwich on bread and with a bag of chips is a BAD combination. The last time I did that I felt all "weirded-out". Carb overdose I guess. Probably also had to do to the fact that their wheat bread isn't 100% whole grain. I always wondered why people said if you're trying to lose body fat to not go to subway much. Now I know. I only go to Subway about once or twice a week, but avoid the bad stuff.

Strangely I had high energy all day today except that an hour after my last meal my stomache was again and I was getting hungry so I drank a meal replacement shake. And yes, I try to eat before I get hungry and not just when I FEEL hungry. 

I can see 101 problems with my meal list today. It's horrible. Not many healthy fats to be found anywhere and not enough protein. The protein source I ate didn't have enough calories in them it seems. Any other day i'd probably be so weak and out of energy on this little of food, but not today for some reason. Don't know why!

If I want to reach my goal I have to try much harder. I can do better than this. I didn't even get 6 meals in. No healthy fats and too many carbs at subway (I think). I didn't plan out todays meal plan and that was a mistake. 

I'll do better tomorrow. I'm still trying to figure out why I had so much more energy today than ever before. I guess some days are like that. 

	Healthy Pancake (2 portions)

	1c Oats (non-instant)
	1c fat free cottage cheese
	6 egg whites
	cinnamon/splenda

Meal 1:	Pancakes (almost like 2 small meals in 1, whoops)

Meal 2:	6" Subway Turkey Sandwich on wheat
	no cheese or oil, lite mayo
	double meat
	32oz diet pepsi

Meal 3:	6oz Albacore Tuna
	Huge salad (tablespoon or two of fat free dressing)
	portion of whole wheat spaghetti

Meal 4:	Myoplex MRP



Here I am trying so hard and I screwed up. Oh well, nothings perfect. Tomorrow will be better. Need to plan/schedule and write everything out.


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## ncgirl21 (Sep 29, 2004)

Good Luck Travis!!


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## Mindless (Oct 4, 2004)

Sounds good, keep at it!


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