I've actually been a member of www.burnthefat.com for about 5 weeks now, but today is the day I chose to get started.

I have been in shape before - In 2000 I hired a personal trainer to help me figure out why I was 28% bodyfat even though I could run 6 miles without a problem. My first trainer, Carla, was a nutritionist who helped me understand how food worked and how to best use food to fuel fat loss. When Carla joined the sheriff's department, I was introduced to Rebecca whose surgically precise workout routines helped me grow my physique into something I could be proud of.

Starting in 2003, I left bachelorhood and married my fiance. A few months later, my wife was pregnant... a few months after that we bought our first home... a few months after that I started school in addition to my full time job... and a few months after that my son Colin was born.

All of these were positive changes, but they were stressful nonetheless. I started saying to myself, "I don't have time to keep up with the whole "diet and exercise" thing anymore." Eventually, I made sure that was true.

Looking back, I took away the one thing that might have helped me deal with the stress!

Fast forward to 2007. My 185 lbs of solid physique in 2003 has turned into 250 lbs of blob. I made a few half-hearted attempts to get back into the swing of things, but my mind wasn't in the right place. I kept saying things like "I have to start journaling my foods" and "I have to get to the gym". None of these attempts lasted more than a week or two at most.

I knew that the only way to get back into the swing of things was to emerse myself in fitness culture again.

There was a time when I was fascinated by diet and exercise. I used to love experimenting with different levels of calorie intake and weight training/cardio combinations to see how my body would react. Since I'm married with kids and a ridiculous house note, I couldn't afford a personal trainer to help me focus, so I went on the internet to look for an unbiased source for information.

Tom Venuto, a natural bodybuilder, came up frequently. I joined his "inner circle" for $99/year to gain access to his personal advice and an online community for support. He didn't offer any sort of automated assistance for diet/exercise tracking, so I also joined thedailyplate.com for about $35/year.

The dailyplate.com really disappointed me, so I searched for a more comprehensive tracking tool... and that is what brought me to calorieking. TheDailyPlate.com focused on "weight loss" as opposed to fat loss and many important features looked like afterthoughts. Calorie King isn't perfect, but the beta version that I see looks fantastic - so I ported my journals over (by hand) and signed up.

So far, the only disappointement here has been that the stand-alone software can't download information from the website. Pretty short sighted design, if you ask me... but the website is strong enough that it doesn't really matter.

Tom Venuto offers his book "Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle" online as a download (only) for about $45. As a bonus, you get all sorts of additional materials. Tom has the gift of gab in addition to the gift of objectivity. He does not accept paid endorsement deals from supplement manufacturers or magazines... a true diamond in the rough. Anyway - I used a text-to-speech reader to convert all of his PDFs into MP3s and started listening to them every night and on my way in to work in the morning.

After a few short weeks, I was hooked. I was all about diet and exercise again. On the 8th (today) I woke up thinking about the gym. Instead of thinking "I have to go to the gym", I thought - "It's time to go!"

That's all it took. I've only missed cardio 3 of the past 17 days - and I'm already down 6 lbs. This is really exciting. I'm back on track and ready to be better than I was before.

Time to go!

--B

PS - the picture attached show where I was in 2002... and how far I've fallen.