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| This is happening now! |
By the closing
days of The Long Road Back (Bajai Boot Camp 4) my weight was down 10
pounds from the beginning of the session. I was beside myself with the feeling
of accomplishment. Returning to the weight I’d been 30 years earlier had been a
fantasy of mine for twenty of those years. Not a goal, but a fantasy. It didn’t
become a goal until two years ago, when it looked like it was in sight. Even as
recently as March of this year I was making excuses for myself, hedging with
statements like, “Maybe 175 lbs. is too
light for me.” But in the back of my mind I kept thinking about it. I even
made small posters and drew the number 175 on them and posted them where I’d
see them every day.
While I haven’t
officially hit 175 as of this writing, I did hit 176.2, which strongly suggests
that if I keep doing as I’m doing; maintaining the activity and the desire to
keep my weight in this zone, there’s no reason not to believe I can maintain a
range of 173 – 178 throughout the summer and fall; maintaining the upper realms
through the winter/holiday season.
So let’s call
it; Mission Accomplished – with all
the cautious optimism necessary to maintain and improve.
The question is:
Where do I go from here? A reminder to myself and my loyal readers, weight
management is not the sole goal here. I want the actual strength and power that
is expected of a fit-looking physique. I have body weight (exercise) goals,
body fat goals, body composition goals, as well as weight lifting goals. There
are even (what I call) ‘tricks’ that
I want to be able to do, which I may be able to pull off with an extra ten
pounds off my hide.
I also hit my
fat-weight goal on The Long Road Back. I imagined that a 3:1 muscle mass
to body fat ratio would be attractive. I had no idea exactly what it would ‘look like’ so I calculated based on
where my current numbers were and came up with 82 lbs of muscle to 28 lbs of
fat (which is close enough). What reality showed me was as my overall weight
decreased, muscle weight decreased as well, albeit at a much slower rate than
the fat. I was able to reach a best of 2.75:1 ratio (28 lbs fat, just under 78 lbs muscle.)
Notoriously, I don’t
believe in maintenance. I hold that maintaining is losing and I use the analogy
of walking upwards against a downwards moving escalator. My (or our) goal is to
get to the top, the goal of the escalator
(which represent the forces in life that seem to work again us, including
unwanted weight) is to keep us down… the closer to the bottom the better. Most of
us manage to stay at the center point of that escalator and when we’re young,
conditioned and full of energy, it seems that all we need to get to the top is
a little bit more time.
But here’s the
twist. Every year that escalator moves a little bit faster. So even when we
think we’re maintaining, we’re actually moving slower… losing ground. (You
might have a similar experience with money.) That’s why year after year, week
after week, we have to up our game. Push a little harder and stronger… or we
find ourselves at the bottom of the steps, (sick, hurt, hopeless.)
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| Today's after picture is tomorrow's before picture. |
Therefore,
despite reaching my weight goal, there is still further to go, beginning with refining
my fat weight goal, and discovering just how I can start building more muscle
weight and develop greater strength and endurance. This is what Survival
Protocol is about. Whether I imagine it as surviving some sort of zombie
apocalypse, staying away from the bottom of the escalator or out distancing “Father Time” survival is the key, and
BBC5 will document how I do, whether I trip along the way of not.
Aside from my
own personal fitness induced fantasies, this series also provides resources,
ideas and discoveries about our goals, (weight loss, body transformation,
increasing energy, improved physique, health & longevity). Normally, I keep
it open to those who just want to peak in for a look, this year, I will be
encouraging you to subscribe and follow. There will be more charts, tables and
proof that this stuff (at least the way I
do it) works. I may need your feedback to keep me encouraged during those
unexpected events, so I encourage you to subscribe, follow or whatever is
customarily done to boost ratings.
We’ll be linking
up with Minimum Wage Fitness as well, so together we might draw a little more
attention than last year.
And that’s it.
Chapter I (Summer) starts today. The complete two weeks of Session I will be up
– in about two weeks. In the meantime I’ll be working on the data from last
year. I’ve been imagining how much I can crunch these numbers to figure out how
to most effectively attack my (and maybe your) goals.
KC Bajai CPT,
Human Guinea
Pig, Fitness Nerd
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