Three Years of Trying to Do More than 10 Push Ups (and the 60+lbs I Lost Along the Way)

Introduction

From "Day 1" in 2017 to Whatever-Day-It-Is-Today, I actually have only dropped from 301.1 lbs to 239.9 lbs. But, I didn't start at 301. I just happened to be at 301 when I started. This is a long-winded story I've been thinking about writing for a minute and finally have the time, the data, and some results and thoughts to share with others.

Here I am today: https://i.imgur.com/APotoNb.jpg and https://i.imgur.com/nBO6Ndj.jpg

Here I am at Day Zero: https://i.imgur.com/KGXuu3I.jpg

So, we'll start from the beginning:

I have always been "husky" or "big boned" or whatever other adjective that loving parents use to describe their morbidly obese children. I liked to EAT. Fundamentally, I lived to eat. And this was compounded by a number of factors:

1. My family is made up of overweight adults with a palate for fatty, carb-heavy food and, more importantly, seconds. It was weird for someone to fill a plate and then not go back and fill it again!
2. When I was younger, my mother was an important business-lady and my father was notoriously horrible at cooking. This lead to the common "It'll take too long to cook dinner, so we'll just go out." Next thing you know, you're at a steakhouse eating cheese fried smothered with ranch dressing and bacon two to three nights a week.
3. My mom tried a few of the crash diet fads in the early 2000's. I remember Atkins being her BIG one; I think she paid for the big box of recipes and all that nonsense (which, ironically, was made funnier by the fact that she didn't start really cooking dinner at home until I was graduating high school in 2008). I remember seeing her "try" and "fail" to lose weight and at a certain point, eh - why try?
4. My weight never stopped me from doing the lazy things I wanted to do. Not like I'm going to lose weight so I can play Diablo II (I did have the Lord of Destruction Expansion) all weekend. I had more than my fair share of "neck-beard" mentality and a whole LiveJournal of cringe-worthy bullshit that came out of my brain in the 2003-2008 era of High School.
5. I didn't have any health issues because of my weight, so my weight was obviously not a problem. Right?

Whatever the reason was, I very quickly got fat around age 10 and stayed that way (ask me today and I'll still say I'm fat, just less so).

At my biggest, I KNOW I was tipping the scales at 330-340 lbs (this would have been 2009, 2010). I don't have any proof because if you don't weigh yourself, you can't be as fat as you know you are. I'm taking credit for the undocumented weight loss. If you don't want to count it, eh - 60 lbs is still pretty cool, too.

Stats

Today (September 24, 2020)

• Age: 30
• Sex: Male (XY - I've seen my 23 & Me report)
• Height: 6 feet 2 inches
• Weight: 239.5 lbs
• Goal Weight: 240 lbs by Jan 01, 2021

Lifestyle

I am a bread baker/pastry cook at a restaurant in Missouri and live in a secluded little apartment with my Wife. She farms chickens is the Poultry Specialist for the local university and does science with them, so I get a pretty good deal on eggs. No kids, yet, and no pets, yet. This leaves me with a lot of free time.

Especially since I'm a baker - I wake up around 4am daily and leave work between 12pm and 2pm. The wife works 8am-5pm, so I have a good amount of spare time to myself. I also, because I know this matters, ALWAYS go to bed between 830pm and 9pm.

As far as general fitness, I have just finished running a 4-day/wk variant of 5/3/1 (SSL, 5's Pro) which I did for the last 12 weeks. I've been lifting for most of my journey. I also took up running (on and off) for the last 6 months and have pushed and pushed from a 50 minute 5k to about a 30-32 minute 5k which I tend to mostly maybe run every other day regardless of what else is going on (so, Mon-Wed-Fri-Sun-Tues-Thurs-Sat, repeat). I also tried to include some Strongman conditioning twice a week depending on time.

I also bought a bike in August and have generally enjoyed biking to-and-from work 3-4x/wk despite the ride being downhill in the morning and uphill in the afternoon.

To put it simply, I'm active and I love it.

Starting Stats

Day 1 (August 6, 2017)

• Age: 27
• Height: I think it was the same
• Sex: Male (probably - I didn't do the DNA test until 2019)
• Weight: 301.1 lbs
• Goals: Do 10 push-ups
• Relationship Status: I hate my girlfriend

Why did you Start?

So I've told you about me in High School. I've told you about me now. What is missing is everything in between.

I was working in a BBQ Restaurant in Kentucky (where I'm from and grew up) and would regularly gamble with my coworkers over little bullshit things. Some of them were knowledge based, others were feats of strength, others were...look - we got REALLY bored sometimes and we had to pass the time. On my Day Zero, I specifically remembered being called out and challenged to do 10 push-ups. In a row.

I could totally do that. Any person who couldn't do that was obviously a big dumb idiot or a Fatty McFatFat. Right? This was the mentality I went into this challenge with.

I hadn't done a single push up in...ever? Since I thought about losing weight one time in college? Who does push ups for fun?

Guys - I'm gonna level with you. I couldn't do 10 push-ups. I could do 5. I lost $50 that day. I was bet $30 that I couldn't do the push ups (I lost that one) and then immediately called out my similar-sized-Boss to do 10 push-ups for $20 (he did 15).

Fuck.

I was torn up. I went home that night and was like - yo, who can't do 10 push ups? That's like, basic shit. I've seen babies do push ups! Ugh.

So I joined a gym. I started a MyFitnessPal. First workout selfie!

Counting Calories - But Never Tracking Weight

For the first few months of my Journey, I tracked calories pretty okay, maybe. I guessed a lot at what I ate (didn't own a food scale) and assumed I was making progress in my weight-loss because my lifts were going up in the gym (I was so, so, so dumb about some of that shit). Oh! I didn't own a bathroom scale. I thought about buying one, but didn't because it was too expensive. HA! God I had excuses.

Based on the exactly 6 data points I collected, I managed to lose 10 lbs between August 6 and Jan 1.

Here I am in November 2017: https://i.imgur.com/fF60Kr8.jpg

Here I am in January 2018: https://i.imgur.com/5bgM5v0.jpg and https://i.imgur.com/HYneJXh.jpg

That's about 21 weeks and about 0.5 lbs/wk. Which is great, sustainable weight-loss.

While I think that MFP overestimates your needed calories, I did manage to lose a good amount of weight at an okay rate over a reasonable time. Here's a major consideration though: I never once tracked exercise via MFP and I set my activity level to Sedentary. If you want slow, consistent results - I think that not tracking weight daily can work. Not for me, but hey - everything works for everyone.

I also dropped 150 lbs of good-for-nothing girlfriend that I didn't much care for. That took WAY longer than it should have. It was a horribly toxic relationship and one that I was glad to be out of. Frankly, the more I focused on bettering myself, the less the relationship was "good" for me. She wanted to drink and drink and drink and I wanted to go to bed at a reasonable hour. My goals shifted and I realized that this particular girl was not The One. Mental health improved considerably.

First Setback

Due to circumstances fully beyond my control, I was rendered bed-ridden and calorie deprived for 165 days. I had no physical activity and I lost 40 lbs in 24 weeks. There were entire days where I didn't stand up. I lost a ton of weight but this came at a huge cost: I lost all the muscle I had worked to put on. Remember how I looked in January 2018? Here's what I looked like in July 2018: https://i.imgur.com/5x8ViQG.jpg

At this point, I was 245 lbs, fully clothed, Doctor Weight. And y'all know Doctor Weight is the realist weight. I was weak, fragile, and barely able to walk 50 feet without needing a break. When I finally did make it back to the gym, I was unable to squat the bar - seriously. I failed a squat with a 45 lb bar at 245 lbs BW.

So I did what any reasonable human being does: bulking season, bitches!

I bought a bathroom scale.

I brought my weight up to 260 lbs by September and held it there through Jan 2019.

This was important for me though - I went up and down a couple 5 lbs here and there but I really did try and keep my 7-day running average around 260 lbs. This took discipline that I was not used to - I realized that some of the cues I took to "eat" were just boredom. I stopped using food as a comfort, as a reward, or even as enjoyment. Food was fuel - and you don't top off the gas tank when the lever clicks.

Diet

This is what works for me, and I know this won't work for a lot of people, but I think it's an important note here, before I lose the weight again: I eat the same foods daily. I find that I cannot handle the mental stress of 1) losing weight 2) having to push hard in workouts despite being purposefully under-recovered and 3) counting calories.

So I don't.

I figure out what every day needs to look like and then I eat that diet every single day.

Currently, I just finished 12 weeks of weight loss. I wanted to shoot for about 2400-2500 calories consumed on any given day. Here's exactly what I've been eating:

Breakfast: Half a gallon of coffee, 6 eggs (ranging in size from peewee to jumbo, but all mixed), 1 tbsp butter, 40 grams of oatmeal, 1 tbsp brown sugar, 140 grams of frozen fruit (blueberries, strawberries, etc), 30 grams blanched slivered almonds.

Lunch: 450 calorie protein shake (50 grams of carbs, 50 grams of protein, give or take) (if I make it at work, add 2 shots of espresso)

Snack: two random yogurts ranging in caloric content from 90-190 calories.

Dinner: 1 chicken breast (8-12 oz) grilled, 160 gram serving of cooked mixed grains (quinoa, barley, farro, and white rice), 180 grams of steamed peas.

And I ate this every single day (with a few exceptions when my wife got bored) for 13 weeks.

To maintain weight, I'll probably just add 6 eggs or yogurt or peanut butter to my snacks and see where that puts me. I like to make easy swaps (like, 2 servings of PB2 is basically 1 yogurt's worth of calories and it solves my peanut butter craving). I don't like to track my calories. And this works for me. YMMV.

Oh! Also 5g of creatine. Every day.

Fitness - and Fittin'-This-Pizza

For the most part, I do resistance training. In Jan 2019, I had a few goals:

1. Join the 1/2/3/4 Plate Club (spoiler: I didn't)
2. Do 1 Pull-up (spoiler: I did)
3. Drop from 260 lbs to 245 lbs (spoiler: I did).

By and large, I was able to go to the gym and lift weights for almost all of 2019 and it's during this time that I really did start to notice "changes" in the mirror and in my body. In March of 2019, I was starting to see a few muscles, my belt fit a little better, and I think I even took up trying to maybe consider jogging with my then-girlfriend-now-wife. Turns out, life is WAY better when you a partner with similar goals. We both wanted to be stronger and so we had a lot of fun weight training together.

One particular instance stands out in 2019. The Lady and I were hungry and antsy on a rest-day from the gym. We wanted pizza but didn't really think we deserved it since we'd done literally nothing all day. Like, you know those days where you sit on the couch and do nothing while binge watching Game of Thrones? That kind of day.

So we decided we were going to walk 5 miles to get a pizza, eat the pizza, and then walk 5 miles back home. And we did. Was it a bad use of food-as-a-reward? Sure. But the journey was really the more fun part! We both play PoGo and had a blast chasing pokemon down the road on a mission to get food. It's a great memory for both of us.

Here I am in November 2019 (243 lbs) about 2 weeks before I proposed: https://i.imgur.com/WldpVU5.jpg And I know what you're thinking - that might be the outline of abs!

BTW - she said yes, we were married in December, and life is good.

2020 - And the 90 Day Challenge (That We Failed Miserably)

In December 2020, I proposed to my Lady (get the double entendre?) that she and I try and lose weight for the first 90 days of 2020. Here's how that went:

January 1: 255 lb weigh in after a night of horrific binge drinking https://i.imgur.com/xaM1E9a.jpg

Feb 23: 238 lb weigh in after my birthday weekend and the last time we tracked weight: https://i.imgur.com/IcMd32Q.jpg

In January, we found out that we would be leaving KY and moving to MO in March. Like, we needed to be packed up and living in Missouri in the first week of March. So we canceled the gym membership in Feb, rented an apartment sight unseen in Missouri, and moved 500 miles away. Life was too hectic to also worry about things like our weight or the fact that we tried to lose weight in a crazy crash-diet for funsies.

We moved to Missouri without issue and then - COVID-19. The gyms closed. I was unemployed. Deep depression set in as I unpacked our new home and did nothing all day. I must have spent a month in this horrific sneaky hate spiral.

March came and went. April came and went. I started to go to the park nearby for a walk and that eventually became a good routine for me. There weren't many Pokestops, so I started to want to get between them faster. Walking became slow jogging and jogging became dedicated running and Pokemon fell by the wayside in that endeavor. Hey - do what works for you, right?

My first attempt at a 5k (which happens to be exactly 5 laps at the local park) was 52:44 walking. I knew I could do better. (Spoiler: My best time to date is 30:30 with a 5-run average of 31:24).

July 20: https://i.imgur.com/KYEaXKA.jpg 252 lbs. I had regained 15 lbs during COVID-quarantine.

Losing the COVID-19

So I set about losing the COVID-19. How hard can it be? I figured I'd lose weight at about 2lbs/wk (which at 250 lbs, should be easy enough). I did the math, figured out my diet (see above) and set to work. For the next parts of the story to make sense, you'll need a graph: https://i.imgur.com/4uec8KV.png

I put my plan into place. A local powerlifting gym was open and I joined on their first day open. It's 24/7 and generally pretty empty when I want to be lifting, so it was going to be safe and had all the equipment and support that I would need to make serious lifting gains.

You'll see that I had Setback #3 around the first week of August: I had literally burnt myself out. I started pushing the 5k times for faster and faster. I bought my bicycle and rode it more and more often. I wanted more conditioning. More cardio. Faster lifts. Heavier lifts.

In short: I kicked my own ass.

I had to readjust. The calories I was eating previously (about 2000/day) were not enough to support my activity level. So I bumped the calories to 2500ish/day and finished my training block.

You'll also see big spikes in weigh-ins - yeah, those are days when the Wife was tired of chicken/rice/peas and demanded something more fun (pizza, chinese, spaghetti, nachos). And you'll see that even those occasional "oh my god why did I eat that?" days didn't really hinder progress. In fact, I will credit my wife with helping to fight the mental fatigue of losing so much weight so quickly.

Milestones:

• I have joined the 1/2/3/4 plate club as of this month after...let's call it 18 months of real training.
• I hit a 1000 lb PL total, too (265 Bench/325 Squat/420 DL).
• I can do 4 pull-ups in a row! I'm hoping to hit 10 by Jan 1.
• Ran a 30:30 5k. I need to shave 30 seconds, but I think I can do it.
• I am at my lowest adult weight.
• I don't get winded walking up the stairs.
• I don't get winded biking up the big stupid hill I have to bike up to get out of the driveway at 430am.
• I cleaned off that dresser from the Day Zero Pic.
• I got a chest tattoo.
• I got married to my best friend: https://imgur.com/Y8gDZI4

Conclusion and Takeaways

Guys, I see it all the time in r/Fitness. This is a fucking marathon. It's not a sprint. It is a lifetime of real, slow lifestyle changes that build and continue to snowball until you look back and cannot believe how far you've come. I could not do 10 push ups! Now I can do 20 in 30 seconds. If you told 27 year old me about what 30 year old me would be up to, I would not believe it.

I don't have much in the way of advice.

My lifts aren't stellar or even really impressive on the internet.

My progress is okay, but I've seen people really crush it and lose more. I'm gonna run the full 21 week program Average to Savage and that should end around my birthday. See where I am at 31.

But I do know that 1 day isn't enough to fuck up your progress. Hell, 1 week isn't even a big set back. 165 days bed ridden didn't hold me back. I have a completely rebuilt shoulder and that doesn't hold me back. Why would one day hold you back?

So, take it one day at a time. Today sucked? Tomorrow you'll do better. Gotta make a sacrifice today? Tomorrow you'll do better. Be better. Do better.

My wife jokes that I live by two rules: 1) Never lie to yourself and 2) There is nothing I can't do.

I'll leave you with that great advice and here's a video of me failing a 435 lb deadlift attempt for shits and giggles: https://youtu.be/LbWHDkCuqjM I have plenty of excuses, but tomorrow I'll do better.

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