I’m not one for talking about myself but here it goes anyway.
After Christmas I decided I needed to drop some weight.
As far as training goes my goals and purpose for stepping into the gym up until then had been quite simple.
Lift the most weight I could physically lift by any means possible.
As long as I was able to lift more weight than I had previously I didn’t care about anything else my only goal was strength I didn’t care about aesthetics at all.
However coming out of Christmas I was weighing my all time heaviest at 250ish lbs or just a little under 18 stone and I had to be honest and admit I didn’t feel or look good for it.
Sure my strength was good but I decided I wanted more than to be able to waddle into a squat rack and lift big weights.
I’m still motivated by strength more than anything but I knew I had to take a step and play the long game.
This being, get rid or as much excess fat as I could whilst maintaining as much LBM as possible and try to prevent as much loss in strength as I could.
This would give me a better platform to build off in future.
I set my goal at getting down to 210lb at a reasonable BF% before I went on holiday on the 21st of May, 20 weeks away.
This worked out at roughly 2lb a week which I felt was a reasonable rate at which to lose the weight and still maintain my strength and LBM.
As of writing this I’m sitting around 216lb with 3.5 weeks until my holiday so exactly on target to where I wanted to be some 17 weeks ago.
My strength hasn’t actually dropped that much but more importantly I feel great for it which was the real goal all along. People reading this might think 20 weeks is a long time to diet and you’d be right but there in lies the secret to the success I’ve had.
Due to the long period of time I gave myself it allowed me a lot of freedom it didn’t matter if I had bad days or even bad weeks I had a long enough time frame to allow for that.
I can honestly say that despite being just under 3 stone down I haven’t had to miss out on anything, I haven’t cut anything in particular from my diet and if I’ve wanted it I’ve had it.
For the majority of this period I was eating around 3000 calories this has dropped in accordance with my weight but I can guarantee that if I’d done what most people do when they diet and cut out loads of different foods, massively restricted myself and dropped straight down to baby calories I wouldn’t be sat here in the position I am.
I would have fallen of the wagon a long time ago.
I’ve always been one for practicing what I preach and that is exactly what this blog is about.
There is no secret and when we tell people they don’t have to eat like a rabbit to lose weight we aren’t lying.
The goal is for people to be able to lose weight and look good after, whist still being able to enjoy their training and make good progress in the gym.
Starving yourself to failure never works. Being flexible and consistent is what works and that’s what we’re all about at RT Fitness.
Dan
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