Get Strong Get Lean: A Year of Barbell Training, Intermittent Fasting, and Eating Lots of Protein: Home Gym Strong, #3

Introduction

Over the course of three books in the Home Gym Strong series, Work Out Pig Out, Sink or Swing, and 40 Days + 10,000 Swings, I’ve tried to show the reality of what happens in the daily struggle for fitness. I’ve worked through many different programs from many great fitness experts. I’ve given you a taste of what they have to offer. Work Out, Pig Out showed how jumping from program to program led nowhere until I focused on one plan. Sink or Swing and 40 Days + 10,000 Swings showed how that focus could pave the way for eventual success, only to have life throw roadblocks in my path.

Exercise is one the of the most popular book categories on Amazon. We are a nation — a world — obsessed with getting in shape. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are littered with images of and boasts about doing one fantastic feat or another, garnering millions of likes and followers and retweets in the process. Gorgeously toned bodies glistening in the light, teasing what you, too, could have if you just worked hard enough: the Protestant work ethic’s holy grail.

What those immensely popular accounts don’t show are the emotional and physical tolls and the real struggle that goes into getting into that kind of shape. Millions of people battle in vain, never quite reaching the goal, always missing out for some reason or another, berating themselves for not being strong enough, lean enough, hot enough. Then they work doubly hard, thrice as hard, still never quite achieving the fabulous bodies featured in perfect lighting through professional lenses.

Most people don’t flash their half-naked bodies on the web for the world to see. They quietly go about their lives, fitting in fitness as time allows. They work their jobs, trade stories and secrets and diet and exercise tips with their co-workers, share what they’ve seen on T.V. and read on the Internet, spouting secondhand, watered-down ideas from so-called experts. Sometimes these co-workers and experts get it right; often they get it wrong. But they keep trying, day after day, to live healthier, happier lives. Anonymously. Their numbers are legion; much more than the infamous Instagram stars.

I’m not an expert. I’m not a famous fitness guru. I’m a 6’4" forty-something guy with a job and a wife and an obsession with fitness, partly from vanity and partly from wanting to live to be a hundred years old. With this series, I’ve listed my struggles and accomplishments, highs and lows, successes and failures. All while living life and dealing with those things on a daily basis.

My wife and I don’t have kids, and I work from home a lot and use that extra time to work out. Most people don’t have that luxury. Working out and getting in shape is still a struggle for me. I don’t have all the answers and never said I did. But what I’ve wanted to show with these books is what happens on a daily and yearly basis, warts and all; the embarrassing and the happy things that happen to an average person, working a full-time job, living a life that includes fitness, sometimes to the point of obsession. I hope that sharing my experience helps you, if nothing else, at least to know what to avoid.

Chapter One: January 2016

6’4"

259.2 pounds

46" chest

40" waist

Week 1 — January 1–2

2015 sucked. We had no love lost for it being over. Good riddance.

As a new year dawned, full of the promise of better times, my wife and I were both in rehab mode. For me, it was a mental and spiritual recovery. For my wife, it was mental, spiritual, and physical. Still healing from the foot surgery two days earlier, she was feeling little pain thanks to the drugs. Her doctor prescribed codeine, but they knocked her out and she fell. I had to carry her up the stairs — and we had a lot of stairs — so she quickly changed to ibuprofen. After a mellow New Year’s Eve watching Nick and Nora on A&E, we greeted the day and the dawning year with pizza, just like every other year.

Bored from sitting on the couch watching T.V. all afternoon, I faced my fear that evening and took my blood pressure for the first time in ages. It was high, way higher than it should have been. While this might not be advisable for everybody, I’d found over the years that working out helped me when my BP was high.

Even though it was already 6:00 P.M., I went upstairs and changed into my workout clothes. Then I dragged my butt to our basement gym. A commercial gym would have been filled to the rafters with New Year’s wannabes, which was why I’d converted our utility room to a home gym in the first place back in 2012. I filled it with all the tools we needed to get in shape: a squat rack, bench, barbells, plates, kettlebells, and treadmill. I only needed the motivation to show up and get it done. And a few layers of long-sleeved shirts to stay warm. A basement in January in Chicago was cold!

I continued with the Power to the People plan of deadlifts and bench press. After spending the prior month doing that workout, it was brainless. At that point, the less I had to think about, the better. I’d do sets of 5 reps, 3 reps, and 2 reps with 235 pounds for deadlifts. After a short rest to reset the weights, I kept it light with 135 pounds for 5, 3, 2 on bench press. I ended with a set of three dead-hang chin-ups. It was an easy workout for me, but I hadn’t lifted since before Christmas so I wanted to back off from anything heavy.

I also vowed to write for an hour each day. I had no idea what I’d write, but if I wanted to continue to call myself a writer, I had to write. Once my workout was over, I grabbed a glass of cherry Crystal Light. Then I sat my butt in my office chair to spew forth words on the virtual page.

I kept to the routine on Saturday: a quick workout in the morning followed by an hour in the writing chair that afternoon. I’d always heard it took 21 days to make a habit. I had two down and 19 to go. We still had pizza left from the massive pie on New Year’s Day as well as my favorite chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and gooey chocolate caramel almond ice cream. Unlike 2015, I wouldn’t go a month without either.

Week 2 — January 3–9

At this point, I was fat, or fluffy, or full-bodied or whatever kinder, gentler language people use to soften the reality of being fat. Whatever the sugar-coated term, I was fat. After four years of marriage, my wedding ring also didn’t fit, much to my wife’s chagrin. I hadn’t worn it in nearly a year since almost breaking my finger with too many kettlebell swings. The extra layer of blubber made my finger that much bigger. My wife dealt with it, but silently let me know her disappointment whenever we left the house and I didn't have it on.

Wanting to get un-fat, I went back to my usual January routine of Lyle McDonald’s Rapid Fat Loss program. Like every other year, I’d force myself to lose all the excess weight I’d packed on during the previous five hellish months. After so many years of starting the new year that way, it was routine. This time, though, the chicken was unbearable, no matter how much I tried to mask the taste with salt.

The next day I quit the Rapid Fat Loss plan. I slept like crap Sunday night, and my blood pressure was sky high on Monday morning. Plus, I couldn’t face another day, much less another few weeks, of chicken. Pavel Tsatsouline is said to have once called it a weak bird, and that was good enough for me. I never wanted to eat it again. Instead of straight black coffee, I added in my beloved heavy whipping cream and got on with a workout of deadlifts, bench, and chin-ups.

It felt good to work out. Compared to the extreme kettlebell workouts I’d forced myself into the year before, they were enjoyable. They didn’t kill my hands or break my bones. It’s said that the best workout program is one you can do for days, weeks, months, and years. Power to the People was that one for me.

I grabbed some potatoes from the store on the way home from work and threw them in the oven for an hour. Slathered with yummy grass-fed butter, I happily abandoned the no-carb plan. Too bad I still had a week’s worth of chicken to choke down. I never wanted to eat it again. I couldn’t just throw it out and waste it, though. I tried to make it bearable by having a juicy slab of red meat to go with it.

I slept much better that night after yet another hour of butt-in-chair writing time. In addition to freewriting to get my thoughts flowing, I was plotting my next book about what had happened the year before. It proved to be good therapy for me, going through it in my head, trying to remember all the sad details of how our lives had crashed down around us.

Knowing we were going to be traveling at some point in the year, I checked my passport. Oops, it expired soon, so I needed to get it renewed. They aren’t valid for international travel within six months of the expiration date. After some web searches, I found out that it was a painless process, only taking a few weeks. I could even get one within a day if it came down to it. With my wife literally getting back on her feet while also looking for a job, we didn’t have any Caribbean trips booked yet. The only vacation ideas at that point were trips to Sanibel with her family in June and then another back to Florida for Labor Day. I filed my passport renewal away, thinking I’d get to it sometime. I wasn’t in shape for either trip but I still had time.

After another great night of sleep, aided by the fact that it was a Wednesday and neither of us had to wake up to an alarm, I awoke refreshed and ready for the day. It showed in my blood pressure, a welcome 124/80, the best reading I’d had in months. Sleep could cure many things, and I was growing accustomed to getting the extra shuteye. My wife was enjoying the rest as well. Four years of long hours and erratic deadlines made this a more enjoyable way to live.

She relaxed on the couch with a Top Chef T.V. marathon and cracked open a bottle of Bordeaux that afternoon. In my best Poe impression, I used a glass of it as a writing aid that night. An hour was a long time to sit with my thoughts, the more mental stimulation, the better. I kept to it, cranking out the words as fast as I could think them. Whether it was any good was immaterial, just the practice of sitting down and writing was a step in the right direction.

Christmas candy was still floating around the office the next day. It was all too easy for me to give in to the temptations of Hershey’s Kisses. I made my penance by force-feeding myself a chicken breast. That was the drawback of planning a week’s worth of meals, gung ho from willpower I no longer had. It was gross. I scavenged some leftover potato wedges from a meeting, along with a few small desserts. Once home from work, dinner was more chicken. Really??? Even with the obligatory eye of round, the chicken was ugh-inducing.

I weighed in on Friday, down a few pounds and slight measures on my waist. The workouts and attempted healthier eating, aided by a lot of extra sleep, worked. Another day of deadlifts and bench called — 265 pounds on the former and 155 on the latter.

My wife’s candy bowl from her last job suddenly tempted me while I was writing that night. I hated hard candy. Yet there I was, sitting at my desk, sucking on Now & Laters for the first time since warming the bench with Jimmy Martin in 9th grade basketball. Neither of us was serious enough, or good enough, to play the actual games. Watching from the sidelines, we’d store them in our socks, suspicious bulges above our basketball shoes. Now, in our house, someone was bound to eat them. So I did.

We got word that Saturday morning that David Bowie had died the night before on his birthday, after a surprise album release. It would be the first of many celebrity deaths in 2016. With Let’s Dance being one of my signature songs from my music days, along with Bowie being a huge influence on many of my favorite bands, it was a major shock. With nothing else to do but watch T.V., we stayed in and cooked up a giant batch of chili and imbibed several bottles of wine, mourning the loss of an icon.

It was also the night of the GIGANTIC Powerball drawing of $1 BILLION. That was enough to even get my wife’s attention. Despite the snow, I drove to both the gas station and the grocery store to buy tickets. Dreaming of the riches that awaited us, we decided we’d buy Club Med Turkoise and retire to paradise.

We won $28.

It was better than nothing. Like most lottery drawings it was still a losing proposition considering what we paid for tickets. Oh well, it was fun to dream for a while.

Week 3 — January 10–16

We had more chili the next day and thawed out a batch of mostaccioli left over from before the holidays. It was a relaxing Sunday, and my wife was finally feeling better.

We slept in again on Monday morning. It was becoming too much of a habit, steadily sleeping later and later. By the time we woke, I had to get right to work. It was a good thing I only had to walk 20 feet to my office down the hall. As usual, I was able to break away during lunch for my workout, slowly bumping up to 285 pounds on deadlifts and 165 pounds on bench. I ate a light dinner around 4:30 P.M., with some pork chops to tide me over for my writing session. Then I planted my butt in my chair promptly at 5:00 P.M., a quart jar of Crystal Light at the ready.

Whether it was the extreme cold of January or the fact that I was the only one in the office the next day, I was in a bad mood on Tuesday. Even cookies and Hershey’s Kisses couldn’t brighten my mood. I struggled through the day, trudging home in the darkness. I got a late start on my nightly writing, barely finishing in time to grab some dinner and call it a night before bed.

Something with my morning coffee on Wednesday didn’t make my stomach happy, but I made it through my workouts, adding 10 pounds to deadlifts and 5 pounds to my bench press, steady, easy progress. Heirloom oranges were back in stock at the store, too. It was stunning how much better they tasted than regular navel oranges, so juicy and sweet.

I slept all night again, and woke to the news of another celebrity death, this time Alan Rickman. He was 69, just like Bowie. I saw Die Hard with my friends on my 16th birthday, and it was still one of my favorite movies. 2016 was off to an ominous start.

After spending so much time lately with my wife, going into the office was a struggle. And yes, there were still more cookies for the taking when I got there. They held me over until mid-afternoon when I had my pork chop with Tabasco. The difference between pork and chicken was night and day. Pork easily won the flavor contest, no matter how lean it was bred to be now.

Despite all the extra cookies, my weights and measures were heading in the right direction, albeit slowly. I was down about a pound and a 1/4" on my waist. As long as I was making progress, I was okay with it.

The next day was our friend’s birthday party. He had a big house in Rogers