BAM! Idea time. It struck me. The one thing I enjoy almost as much as learning is teaching. And I have the most amazing idea ever. I'm going to go ahead and use myself as a test dummy again and teach myself and all of you at the same time. So strap in, follow along, and get ready to have all your excuses thrown out thewindow. Just be prepared because once your excuses are gone you'll have no choice but to get off your ass and become the athlete you want to be. Or you'll have to learn to be honest with yourself and just admit that you could. If you cared as much as you said you do.
I've always cared more about my performance than my appearance. The last five years of my Army career prior to acquiring Anderson Creek CrossFit I was, at best, just a little overweight. As more and more of our athletes began asking for help with their body composition goals it became necessary to learn more. Twenty years in the Army as a medic and all the CrossFit courses in the world didn't teach me enough to offer useful advice. The quest for knowledge lead to Teresa deciding it was time to begin working on her lifelong dream of being a physique competitor. I've never been one to accept the things I read without experimenting to ensure the accuracy of the information. When it comes to programming strength, speed, endurance, or general fitness plans I have ALWAYS insisted on testing. I put myself through everything before I decide on it's effectiveness. The same applied to nutrition. If athletes at ACCF want to lose weight and get "in shape" I needed to know everything I possibly could. And I needed to prove or disprove the effectiveness of whatever philosophy we decided on. That's where the Eat Like You Mean It program was born.
Starting last fall I managed to drop from 227 pounds down to 196. 100% of the weight I lost was fat. My lean mass was unchanged. During and after my experiment I heard every excuse in the world from "It must be nice to have great genetics" to "I don't have time" and "My body doesn't work that way". Sometimes I get a little tired of hearing the excuses. I wish people would just be more honest. Stop lying to me. While you're at it, stop lying to yourself. That's far more important. If people would just say "I won't" instead of "I can't" life would be better. Anybody CAN lose weight. It just depends on how badly you want it.
After dropping a bunch of weight, having the greatest CF Open performance of my life, and getting down to a single digit bodyfat percentage I threw it all away. I ate like a madman. I literally destroyed every ounce of junk I could get my skinny little hands on. A few weeks ago I spent nearly $50 at the local Chinese take out. There were no leftovers. Two days later I bought two large pizzas. One for me and one for the kiddos. When the kids failed to finish theirs I stepped in. No leftovers again. In the span of just about one month I went from 198 back up to 220 pounds. Why on Earth would anyone destroy all that hard work when it took 5 months to lose that fat. To prove a point. That's why. So here I sit. All swollen and bloated. Preparing for a CrossFit competition just a few months away. I won't just lose the weight again to be ready for competition day. I will take my fellow coaches on the journey with me. I intend to prove that genetics has nothing to do with it. It's all about proper nutrition planning and effort. Along the way I will teach anyone who cares to follow how education and effort team up to make anything possible.
Our challenge begins at a total combined weight of 639 pounds with over 115 pounds of that being fat. On July 22 the three of us will step onto the competition floor at the Independence Games in Florence, SC. During the challenge we will each lose enough weight to compete at less than 600 pounds between us. We will also drop the current average of over 18% body fat down to less than 15%. Over the next 10 weeks I will have frequent updates on our quest as well as informative posts so we as a community can learn how to develop a better lifestyle for our health. And how growing those abs you want to show off at the beach happens in the kitchen, not the gym.
Stay up to date here as Johnnie, Matt, and I all push toward our goal.