Ok, so what most of this has been so far is the past: what happened and what I did about it and the changes I made years ago or decades ago. What, you may be asking, am I doing these days?

I’ve stressed before that part of aiming toward being fit is adopting a lifestyle of fitness: of inhabiting that and embodying it and making it part of your everyday life. This, of course, includes always having new goals to strive for. There is no end to this process, guys. The process is an end in itself. You enjoy the fruits of your labor even while you continually struggle to the next highest height.

So what about your resident Former Fat Boy? For me, I want to accomplish something I never thought I could. I want to be Colossus.

Ok, so I don’t want to acquire mutant powers of super strength and steel skin (or rather, that isn’t my goal… I’d definitely take that if it’s on the table). But I would like to do the next best thing: a bodybuilding competition. Maybe not place or anything, but at least qualify if I can. Let’s work through what that will look like for me and for this project.

What I plan to do is run a weekly update of my progress with some highlights of where I think I improves and lowlights of where I didn’t, along with some discussion of what I did during the week that contributed to all of that. Overall the goal will be to get stronger in the next 8 months and to really lean out as much as possible. Decent goals? Well… if you’ve been reading along, you know those are actually lame goals and I need to be more specific! (Pay attention class: there’s a test on all of this later)

So, here’s what we need: 1) long term goal, 2) near term goal, and 3) starting point.

Long Term Goals:

• Increase the strength of my Squat, Bench, Deadlift, and Shoulder Press by 30%.
• Lean down to an athletic bodyfat % (probably the hardest part haha)
• Qualify for a show.

Near Term Goals (that support the long term ones):

• Increase my Squat, Bench, Deadlift and Shoulder Press each week.
• Clean up my diet and maintain a very clear, very clean carb cycling regimen (I’ll talk about that in more detail later).
• Increase my cardiovascular endurance each week.
• Find myself a coach! (Can’t do this alone haha)

Where I am now:

• 228.6 lbs and an “Average” bodyfat %
• My strength for Bench and Shoulder Press are intermediate, but my Squat and Deadlift are beginner (my injury paranoia will have to be addressed)
• My diet is a very rough (and not terribly strict) version of Paleo.
• My exercise routine is 4 days of High Intensity Interval Training a week and 4 days of weight lifting.

I’ll go into more detail about exactly what my diet and exercise routines look like in later posts, but for now that’s what I’m working with. I’m excited about this new goal! It’s concrete, it’s important to me, it’s achievable, and it’s time-bound. So wish me luck everyone! I’ll keep you posted.