BRIENMALONE's CalorieKing blog
Thursday, May 15 2008 - Turning Back Time: Feb 8, 2001...
View BRIENMALONE's food & exercise for this day
I love nostalgia. I had to review some really old emails for work today. In the process, I saw some personal conversations that really brought back memories. (Yes, I keep all of my email -- every piece.)
The memories were of my first experience with a personal trainer and they came in the form of an email to an old friend, Susan.
Susan and Synchronicity
Susan and I are no longer in touch (for better or worse). She was a sweet, yet horribly foul-mouthed, amazingly strong, fitness-minded woman who was married to a co-worker of mine at a dot-com. Susan and I became friends when we discovered that we actually went to the same university at the same time in Tennessee. We even had a friend in common, yet never met face to face until her husband and I joined a dot-com called PiNGPoNG.CoM in Fountain Valley, California.
Orientation
For a little background, I had just left PiNGPoNG.CoM a month earlier for the job I have now. (PiNGPoNG was going under and I needed stability.) In the months before I left, Susan and I were trying to encourage each other to get in shape.
She was a competitive swimmer in college, but had let herself go a bit. Swimming seemed like great exercise, so I took it up as my exercise of choice. There was a pool in the courtyard of our office building, and until I quit, I had been swimming there in the evenings after work. (Yep - swimming in a heated outdoor pool in January/February... gotta love Southern California!)
We traded gossip in an email thread for a bit before I turned the subject to fitness.
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Thursday, 2/8/2001 10:58 AM
...I'm afraid I haven't been swimming in ages! In fact, its been so cold at night I stopped running outside and started running at the gym on a treadmill. Early in January, I finally had it with my bodyfat level. I work my $@% off but can't ever seem to lose weight... SO I hired this [amazing] personal trainer. Her name is Carla and she's a competitive fitness model (WOOF!! LOL!) (Actually, she's probably in her late 40's - but she looks fantastic!) She has slowly steered my diet and exercise on track.
When I hired her I told her that my goals were 1) lose the bodyfat. I want to see my abs. 2) work on symmetry and 3) bulk up. I'd like to be in the 240-250 lb range eventually with 10-12% bodyfat. We've been working twice each week since Jan 11. Oh my GOD things are going well. When I was at PiNGPoNG I weighed 238 at my heaviest. After running and swimming, I dropped down to 230... then 220 or so... but got stuck! This was about the time that Carla came along.
She said she wanted me to put something healthy in my mouth every 3 hours. Eating every 3 hours keeps your metabolism up all day. It sounded reasonable, but I didn't think it would make that much of a difference... Since what I was doing currently wasn't working -- what the heck -- I'll give it a shot.
In 3 weeks I went from 220 to 210... losing 2% bodyfat. In the next 2 weeks I gained 3 lbs but continued to drop bodyfat. If I can keep this pace up, we're betting I'll be in happy 6-pack land in 4 weeks. WAHOOO!!! Bodybuilding [RULES]!!! I'm in the gym for an hour a day 5 days/wk and doing 20 min of hard cardio work 3 times/wk. Protein intake is around 200-250 grams per day... All I have to do is watch the fat in what I eat.
The clincher in all of this weight loss-muscle gain game is keeping a food diary. Its amazing how much it makes a difference.
------------------------------
This was my first step into a bigger world. It took more than 4 weeks to get my abs - to be sure, but I did eventually get there.
Some interesting things worth noting...
1) I currently weigh what I did in 2000. Appx 235.
2) The immediate loss of 10 lbs when I cleaned up my diet, followed by a slight weight gain is EXACTLY what happened when I started on this path back in December 2007.
3) I was almost 29 when I wrote that email in 2001 and had abs before I turned 30. I'm 36 now. I want to do it again - and do it better than I did before.
4) I miss having a personal trainer. If you can afford one, hire one (by referral only! There are 100 bad ones for every genius)
The memories were of my first experience with a personal trainer and they came in the form of an email to an old friend, Susan.
Susan and Synchronicity
Susan and I are no longer in touch (for better or worse). She was a sweet, yet horribly foul-mouthed, amazingly strong, fitness-minded woman who was married to a co-worker of mine at a dot-com. Susan and I became friends when we discovered that we actually went to the same university at the same time in Tennessee. We even had a friend in common, yet never met face to face until her husband and I joined a dot-com called PiNGPoNG.CoM in Fountain Valley, California.
Orientation
For a little background, I had just left PiNGPoNG.CoM a month earlier for the job I have now. (PiNGPoNG was going under and I needed stability.) In the months before I left, Susan and I were trying to encourage each other to get in shape.
She was a competitive swimmer in college, but had let herself go a bit. Swimming seemed like great exercise, so I took it up as my exercise of choice. There was a pool in the courtyard of our office building, and until I quit, I had been swimming there in the evenings after work. (Yep - swimming in a heated outdoor pool in January/February... gotta love Southern California!)
We traded gossip in an email thread for a bit before I turned the subject to fitness.
---------------------------------------------
Thursday, 2/8/2001 10:58 AM
...I'm afraid I haven't been swimming in ages! In fact, its been so cold at night I stopped running outside and started running at the gym on a treadmill. Early in January, I finally had it with my bodyfat level. I work my $@% off but can't ever seem to lose weight... SO I hired this [amazing] personal trainer. Her name is Carla and she's a competitive fitness model (WOOF!! LOL!) (Actually, she's probably in her late 40's - but she looks fantastic!) She has slowly steered my diet and exercise on track.
When I hired her I told her that my goals were 1) lose the bodyfat. I want to see my abs. 2) work on symmetry and 3) bulk up. I'd like to be in the 240-250 lb range eventually with 10-12% bodyfat. We've been working twice each week since Jan 11. Oh my GOD things are going well. When I was at PiNGPoNG I weighed 238 at my heaviest. After running and swimming, I dropped down to 230... then 220 or so... but got stuck! This was about the time that Carla came along.
She said she wanted me to put something healthy in my mouth every 3 hours. Eating every 3 hours keeps your metabolism up all day. It sounded reasonable, but I didn't think it would make that much of a difference... Since what I was doing currently wasn't working -- what the heck -- I'll give it a shot.
In 3 weeks I went from 220 to 210... losing 2% bodyfat. In the next 2 weeks I gained 3 lbs but continued to drop bodyfat. If I can keep this pace up, we're betting I'll be in happy 6-pack land in 4 weeks. WAHOOO!!! Bodybuilding [RULES]!!! I'm in the gym for an hour a day 5 days/wk and doing 20 min of hard cardio work 3 times/wk. Protein intake is around 200-250 grams per day... All I have to do is watch the fat in what I eat.
The clincher in all of this weight loss-muscle gain game is keeping a food diary. Its amazing how much it makes a difference.
------------------------------
This was my first step into a bigger world. It took more than 4 weeks to get my abs - to be sure, but I did eventually get there.
Some interesting things worth noting...
1) I currently weigh what I did in 2000. Appx 235.
2) The immediate loss of 10 lbs when I cleaned up my diet, followed by a slight weight gain is EXACTLY what happened when I started on this path back in December 2007.
3) I was almost 29 when I wrote that email in 2001 and had abs before I turned 30. I'm 36 now. I want to do it again - and do it better than I did before.
4) I miss having a personal trainer. If you can afford one, hire one (by referral only! There are 100 bad ones for every genius)
1 comments so far.
1.
a decade ago
So glad you are back on track! I love nostalgia too. I spend too many hours on it but it is so great! And I have so many more years to look back on than you! Be thankful!
:) Eliza
by ELIZA