Bodybuilding Dilemma

Have you ever gotten so tired of looking and feeling worse than you know you are capable of so you did something drastic? 

That’s what I did. 

Over the span of the last few years I got lazy. As my income increased, my desire to continue making all of my meals went down. After all, I now had money and could revert to my high school tendency of spending all of my discretionary income on food. 

This, paired with an inability to convince myself  to go to the gym resulted in an upward spiral. Within the span of two years, I went from 219 lbs to 273 lbs. 

I have always wanted to see what I looked like at 6’9” 300 lbs and I had never really gained fat before so initially, I was excited about this shift. 

My metabolism had finally slowed and I was able to gain weight but my dietary choices and decisions to not go to the gym were resulting in a startling increase in fat around my neck, midsection, and chest. 

I got tired of this so I stopped eating like I was in high school still and cut my caloric intake which quickly brought me down between 250 and 260 lbs on any given week. 

But we were still eating out a ton, not making smart decisions with the foods we ate (I absolutely love pizza, burritos, and Raising Cane’s) and I was still not getting into the gym. 

When I say we, I am referring to my wife and myself but one of my jobs around the house is keeping us fed so I was failing at one of my only jobs. Or at least, failing us. 

My lack of going to the gym meant that I could substitute that time with staying up late playing video games and watching shows. 

I don’t remember exactly when but there was a period where I felt like shit for too many days in a row for one last time. I was tired of feeling lethargic and needing a nap after eating and made the decision to get back into the gym. 

I was weak but getting back into the gym helped me feel less shitty - kind of. I still wasn’t being intentional about feeding us. 

Enough was enough. 

I hired a dietitian and with his coaching, weight started flying off. I did exactly what he told me to initially and then increased his prescription. Not of food, but of my exercise regime. 

This might be confusing but he body builds and that is the only way I want to see myself hit the 300 lb mark so he is coaching me not only on my diet but on my lifting too. 

Within 7 weeks I have gone from 253.1 lbs to 239.8. The weight is falling off with what feels like minimal but intentional effort and I feel so much better than I have for the last two years. 

But I still have one struggle. 

Our work provides snacks to us and I have coworkers that are kind enough to grab me some. Additionally, we have food on site with relative frequency and when I see my family, we usually grab a bite to eat. 

Because of my commitment to getting better, I am significantly more stringent with what I am willing to put into my body while I cut and my desire to eat something without knowing the caloric intake is low because I don’t want to delay my progress. 

This hasn’t stopped me from having a burger every now and then or eating food at restaurants with my family but the quantity of food I eat in those situations is notably less and cause for concern for people that have been around me my whole life. 

This usually prompts them to ask if I am going to order or eat more or why I’m not eating. While I have become significantly more confident in my answer, it is still hard for me to tell people that I have started bodybuilding. 

Most of the fear is the fear of being judged because I don’t look like a bodybuilder yet or for my willingness to not eat with people due to my stronger desires to hit my goals but it is hard for me to want to say this. 

Sometimes, I’ll even dance around it. 

I flat out refuse to say I’m dieting due to the negative connotations and frankly I don’t want to hear people making jokes about how skinny I am already when I don’t care about being skinny. Skinny is not and never has been desirable to me. 

I want to be jacked. 

Naturally, of course. 

But I’m not there yet and don’t want to go into a dialogue where I am forced to explain my thinking. 

While my confidence in my response has grown with my co-workers, I’m still not as confident in my answer as I would like to be. 

The funny thing is - I really don’t care if other people judge me. 

Woah. If you have seen Despicable Me, “Lighhhhttttbullllllbbbbbbbb!”

I absolutely HATE explaining myself. I have no desire to explain my decision making to anybody. I make decisions that are right for me at the moment in time that I make the decision. After I have seen the outcome of the decision, I reflect on the consequences and use them to guide my future decision making. 

Beyond that, people view what I am doing as extreme and I want to be extreme right now. It is 100% intentional. 

I didn’t just choose bodybuilding because I want to be jacked. I chose bodybuilding as it is a discipline. 

It is something that you have to be incredibly intentional with to achieve any degree of success. I have 0 desire to spray tan myself and cut to the point where I have to intentionally fight my body’s self-preservation to expend the energy to pick my feet up. 

I simply want to trim my body fat to the point where I can see what my six pack looks like, do a lean bulk over the next couple of years and prove to myself every single day that I can do hard things. 

I have other goals but with this, I can easily track my progress to make sure that I am progressing in the direction that I want and take corrective action if I am not. 

My ancillary and larger goals are much harder to measure as I build the fundamental skills required to achieve them so I am focused on inputs at this point in time before I obsess over measuring like I am with bodybuilding. 

But all of my goals require me to develop a level of discipline that I haven’t had before and sustain that for years and years and years. Bodybuilding just happens to be the perfect discipline for me to consciously practice the development of this skill for the requisite period of time. 

While I am focusing on bodybuilding - this doesn’t have to be your goal for you to encounter similar situations. 

You may want to write the next Harry Potter series. You may want to become the wealthiest person in the world. You may want to be the best philanthropist to ever exist. You may want to be the best parent ever. 

Whatever your goal, it is not your job to justify it to others. Set your sights on any goal that is going to motivate you - that is going to force you to take steps towards becoming the person that you want to be and go after it. 

If you want to explain your goals to others do it, but if their living small tries to impede your massive goal, kindly ignore what they have to say. It is irrelevant to what you are working towards.