I had nothing to lose. If it didn’t work, it didn’t matter anyway, because I knew in my heart I wouldn’t go to the beach house; if it did work, I had stumbled upon something incredible.
I felt like a joke, a total fraud. How could I, as a professional, let it get this far? The bodybuilding was nice excuse, but it was just that – an excuse.
I wanted the girls who I’d been too insecure to even make eye contact with in high school to look at me and be too nervous to approach me .
But whatever, this is my revenge fantasy…shut up and let me enjoy it. You see, I wanted to be at the party looking so good that when people looked at my body, they would either get turned on, or pissed off .
Over the course of the evening, I started to think about everything I knew about fat loss and training , and all the different programs I’d written and read over the years.
More importantly, and this is very personal…this was NOT the reunion I had always pictured. I never wanted to run into people and be the “big” guy. In my head, whenever I’d thought about running into those people who hadn’t seen me, I wanted it to be a big shock, wanted them to see the tremendous change.
I felt…I don’t know. I felt like there had to be some expectations, and the idea of not living up to them made me feel worse than I’d felt in high school.
This led to a great career as a trainer, and a small but growing number of jobs as a fitness model. By the time I was 23, things went a bit more fluidly. I felt I had things down to a pretty decent system. I had programs for when I wanted to gain muscle and others for when I wanted to lose fat. Sort of a “slow and steady wins the race” type of approach. Well, unfortunately, even the best of us can kind of fall off track. I was in a muscle gaining phase, and “slow and steady” sort of turned into “big and lazy.” Sure, I put on size, but because I wasn’t watching my diet carefully, I gained WAY more fat that I should have.
(I was, however, awesome at procrastinating.) I didn’t realize it at the time, but not returning that phone call was a decision that completely changed my life, the way I look at fitness and fat loss, and even my approach to training my clients.
Could I tell him the truth? That I was a trainer and strength coach who was too fat or too insecure to be shirtless at a beach? And a fitness model on top of it!? I’d never been so disgusted with myself .
Although I wanted to gain muscle, I realized at the moment I was being lazy. I’d taken the easy way out and eaten everything in sight, instead of having a structured, sane diet. And look where it got me: fat, frustrated, and freaking out. I could not bring myself to make the call. I was too embarrassed . (Truth be told, at the time I was not very good at confrontation.) So, I decided to put it off for a day.
Sound familiar? Okay, I probably spent a bit more time thinking about that moment than was absolutely necessary.
It’s like, your body is supposed to be the physical manifestation of you , right? Well, I was educated and knowledgeable about diet and training, as well an experienced fitness professional.
Just one small problem: I didn’t look like any of those things. Ever since I’d lost the weight and gotten fit, I hated anything that reminded me of my life before. And here I was, confronted with it at the worst possible time. I looked back in the mirror to assess the situation. I needed to lose at least 15 pounds of pure body fat, probably more. And worse, it was those last pounds that had always been the hardest for me and taken forever . I was used to taking my time and losing fat slowly . I knew I would never be ready in time—there was no way I could lose the fat. NOT with my traditional methods. I didn’t know what to do. Could I really skip the party? Was I really that vain? Maybe. (Okay, probably.) Was I really that insecure? Almost definitely. I thought about who would be there. Now, keep in mind I lost all my weight while I was in college. These were people from high school, who knew me back before “the big change.” And yet, despite the fact that I had not seen most of them in years, most of these people had heard I’d gotten fit, done some modeling, and was doing well as a fitness professional.
The following morning, with zero sleep and a frenzied desire, I hit the gym and tried the first workout.
I thought of many methods, and having tried them all, I knew they all worked. Some worked better than others, but none worked well enough, or fast enough. I knew from experience that all these training programs had downsides . One was only good if I was already pretty lean. One worked okay but caused a lot of muscle and strength loss, which I wasn’t ready to sacrifice. Another worked well but took longer than I had to see results. Then I had a crazy idea: That night, instead of sleeping, I dreamed up a program that incorporated the best aspects of all of these methods.