Fit 2012

Ten years ago when I was 49 I went into the gym on my fitness quest, I've done great. I've lost a lot of weight and built muscle, every year I'd set goals, sometimes achieving them and sometimes not...but, I was always hurting myself. Last year one of my goals was to bench press my own weight which I did, and promptly screwed up my shoulder so bad that I thought I wouldn't be able to surf fish. So this year I decided to start acting like an adult and just strive for overall fitness and it couldn't be going any better. One of my goals is absolute....I HAVE to lower my cholesterol. My other goal is to get leaner, that jelly role around my mid section is driving me crazy and this summer I had settled in a little over 200 pounds. Since I started 10 years ago 200 pounds was my Alamo, I said I would NEVER weigh over that amount again. Here's a pic taken of me today and what I've been doing different this year.

So how many 59 year old body builders have you ever seen? Not too many right ? Well, you're looking at one less. Its no wonder my cholesterol was off the chart. For years during my training season I was eating 15 or 20 eggs a week, red meat and protein shakes. Done with that, since my blood panel last April I've only eaten a few eggs and steaks and no shellfish. I've tripled up my fish oil and am using quality fish oil thanks to the recommendation of my friend Greg Davis. I'm eating lots, and I mean lots of oats. Vegetables, a load of those babies. I started on the diet September 18th and weighed 203 pounds, this morning I was at 192.

I'm still lifting weights. I used to think that if you add weight you add muscle, now my strategy is to maintain the muscle I have with less weight, more repetitions. Instead of lifting every day I'm lifting every other day. For the first time in many a year ALL my joints feel great, I'm almost entirely pain free. I actually had myself convinced that success in the gym meant tolerating pain....yikes.

Every morning I do 40 minutes of hard cardio. Every week day in the afternoon I walk 2 1/2 miles.

My new snack food is celery and hummus. Instead of trying to get 200 grams of protein a day I'm eating enough chicken , fish and turkey to supply half of that.

I haven't eaten a  single DQ blizzard, Lays tater chip, black licorice or any of the things I'm weak for since September...Its kind of funny, I have great discipline when I set my sights on something, my only problem in life has been that I haven't spotted to many of those 'somethings'.

I used to think carbohydrates were the enemy. I've learned that you gotta have them, they're the fuel for your energy. But, complex carbs only..." if its white, it ain't right".

For the last 5 or 6 years I've tried to go to Mazatlan under 190 pounds, it hasn't happened but it will now. I was just eating to much and getting to big, the leaner me will walk farther, fish harder and live better. The way its going I might even qualify for another Speedo picture eh?..(sept. 2010)

That's our friend Zack Loyd doing pull ups, pretty cool deal. With October being Breast Cancer awareness month some of the folks at the gym decided to stage an event for a mens health issue, prostate cancer. So Zack stepped forward and took pledges, how many legal pull ups can he do in 4 hours ?...I guessed 500....wrong. Zack did 1025 pull ups in 4 hours and raised well over 3000 dollars for Prostate cancer. I'm proud to say this is the kind of people we're hanging out with....I'm just glad I had a gamblers instinct and donated a set amount, the folks that donated per pull up, well, ....ouch.