look great naked

How I did it: On July 27, 2007, I weighed myself and saw 196 pounds on the scale, so starting out with my old Army PT routine and transitioning to CrossFit on September 18, 2007, was the answer to getting rid of a number of years of accumulated weight.

By New Year's Eve, I'd lost 46 pounds and stood on the scale to see 150 looking up at me.  Doing the CrossFit workout of the day with my own equipment, walking 1.5 miles each way to the train, and trimming my calories back to my BMR was exactly what I needed to do. 

Today, I weigh 149 and tend to waver between 147 and 151.  The weight is gone, I'm still doing the CrossFit workouts every day, and I'm stronger and more fit than I've been in years, even when I was riding 250 miles a week on my bicycle.

I'm also 14 points away from maxing the APFT for the first time since 1990.  All it takes is some discipline, a big bottle of water, and the belief that you're much younger than your actual chronological age.

It also helps if you keep track of your progress.

Lessons & tips:

1. Find your BMR, look up the Harris Benedict Equation and eat between your BMR and the sedentary multiplier (BMR * 1.2) per day.
2. Eat more protein.
3. Walk an hour a day at first.
4. Do the CrossFit workout of the day scaled back to where you can do it.  (I used the average of the three events scores in the APFT as a percentage, e.g.: 136 on the APFT = 45% of whatever the CF WOD calls for.)  If you can't figure out how to scale it, there are pre-scaled workouts at CrossFit BrandX.
5. Don't get discouraged if your weight inches up.  Be satisfied with a downward trend.
6. Don't go overboard and try to eat 1000 calories a day.  Your body will go into starvation mode and when you break, you'll break into Twinkies and cookie dough and ruin all your progress.
7. Set performance goals (ie: run 5 k faster than 30 minutes or do 10 pullups in a row).
8. Keep a strict food and exercise log with stopwatch data, weight data, caloric intake (with percentage breakdowns of carbs, fat, and protein, where you can find it).
9. Test yourself periodically against athletic benchmarks (i.e.: APFT, CrossFit Fran, 5k run) to check your progress.
10. There is no spoon.  It isn't the spoon that bends.  It's you.

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Jun 06, 04:25PM PDT | 0 comments