Build Muscle Mass, Gain Strength, and Lose Fat with Project Physique » Motivation

My Story: A Bodybuilding and Fat Loss Body Transformation- Part 2

admin — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:23:42 +0000

This is a continuation of My Story: A Bodybuilding and Fat Loss Body Transformation,

I had to lose the weight fast. I didn’t want to spend the next two years losing weight and fat because my goal was to build muscle and strength. So I had to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new routine and fat loss diet. And that’s what I did.

Luckily, the books I read on how to build muscle also taught how you can lose weight. In bodybuilding, there are basically two main phases: bulking phase and the cutting phase. The cutting phase is the cycle where you drop the fat that you’ve gained from bulking up with a calories surplus diet. So in bodybuilding-speak, I set out to “cut.”

Losing Fat

Though I did get a lot stronger, getting to a near 300 lbs on the bench press, I knew I had to do something about my 39 inch waist. I re-examined my training and dietary regimens since I kept daily journals and logs of all workouts and what I ate. I looked at what worked initially, what went wrong, and went on my first fat loss program to lose the extra fat I was carrying. And so my fat loss journey began.

Basically I put together a program what all the information and knowledge I’ve gained from reading the books and magazines I had. I came up with a balanced diet of 40/40/20 carbs, protein, fats ratio, reduced my calories down to 2,700 calories gradually, started running 3 miles every other day, and maintained my strength training program with a focus on keeping the workouts shorter since I was doing additional workouts with running and cardio.

Then I threw in 2 HIIT high intensity cardio sessions. So I was working out 5-6 days a week, but each workout lasted no longer than 30 minutes. I trained at a high intensity, trained frequently, paid more attention to what I ate and the quality of foods I put into my body.

And then after 5 months of hard work, I dropped down to a lean 156 lbs and back to my current waist size. I was looking good. I had lost 50 lbs in a little over 6 months of consistent hard work. Over the course of that 6-month period, I compiled my own training and nutrition manual for body transformation. The contents of that manual is shared throughout Project Physique here. Many of the articles and posts you find here are based on my own training and dieting experiences over the years I’ve been active for fitness.

And throughout this fat loss period, I had also gotten a lot stronger and made a lot of strength gains. Strength is the foundation of fitness. This is a basic universal fact, a principle that is tried, true, and tested.

My next goal was obviously to continue building a better body. To get even stronger. And get back on course to building muscle.

Building Muscle Again

By this time I even had a six pack. But I wanted more muscle. I wanted a more muscular body. This time, I set out to do it right. So over the course of the next 2 years in college, I bulked up slowly and gained another 20 lbs, shot up to 192 lbs. Again I gained some fat, but this time not as much as when I started. So I dieted and cut down to 174 lbs…this time refining my dieting and training routines aimed specifically for maximizing fat loss in the fastest time possible. Then slowly I worked my way back up to 182 lbs , now staying with the same 32″ waist size at 11% body fat.

And now I’m at a lean and muscular 184 lbs. And I still haven’t stopped. I’m still continuing to train intensely, find out what works best and better, experimenting with new routines, analyzing the results, and just having fun following a fitness lifestyle.

Because in the end, the fitness lifestyle is all that matters. It’s the journey that brings success.

Now I had my setbacks and things didn’t go as smoothly but in the interest of time to spare you all the little details, I remained persistent with a strong self-belief that I could achieve what I set out to do. It’s all about taking action. Testing. Finding what works. Finding what doesn’t work. Continue doing what works. Dumping what doesn’t work.

As you see, I’ve been through both sides of the body transformation journey with weight gain, muscle gain, and fat loss. I experimented with many routines, programs ,and diets along the way in the last 9 years. The articles, training programs, strategies, and techniques you find at Project Physique is based on my compilations from the training manual of the past 9 years.

The 4 Rules of Body Transformation Success

And so to sum this all up, for transforming your body, I’ve discovered there are 4 truths leading to goals, results, and successes,

I’ll keep this brief so you can think it through and over

1) Knowledge

Knowledge is about applicable training and dieting information. Know what to do and why you’re doing it. The facts. The “how to” and the “what” of bodybuilding and fat loss. You have to first acquire the knowledge, the facts, and the information first before doing something. And this was what I did when I bought all those books and magazines during the first summer starting.

And then I came up with a nifty little equation that conceptualizes all goals of fitness, be it building muscle, strength, or losing weight,

I call it the Fitness equation

Exercise + Nutrition + Rest and Recovery = Muscle Gains and/or Fat Loss

2) Consistency and Focus

You have to remain consistent and focused on what you’re doing. It’s about positive planning, but more importantly, positive action. When you come up with a workout program and diet, go out and put them to use. Follow your program and train hard. Train intensely. And train smart. Don’t give yourself excuses.

3) Action

Action is action. Take action and train hard, eat properly. Achieve your goals.

4) Training Modalities

This pertains to using a variety of exercises and routines that incorporates body weight exercise, strength training/weight lifting, cardio/HIIT conditioning. By using a combination of at least 2 training modalities, you’ll greatly magnify your results, especially for fat loss.

Overall, all this information is nothing new. It is out there in bits and pieces scattered around but I’ve deciphered and weeded out a lot of the useless info and formulated some clear plans for you to follow with the training and dieting programs here on this site.

I don’t consider myself, or at least call myself an expert. An expert comes across as a know-it-all. Rather, I see myself as a fitness enthusiast, contantly experimenting, improving, learning, and keeping up-to-date. The fact is, anyone can be an “expert” too with experience, eating right, and being consistent with their workouts. Practice what you preach.

Hopefully you’ll find the information on this site useful. Don’t hesitate to leave me any feedback, comments, or questions.

Email me at ZQH245@gmail.com or ZQH250@gmail if you need any help on starting a fitness program for fat loss or building muscle.

To your success!

My Story: A Bodybuilding and Fat Loss Body Transformation- Part 1

admin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:50:48 +0000

I explained what Project Physique was all about in the “About” page post. And now, here’s the more extended background info of myself so you know where I”m coming from and how I got into this whole business of training and bodybuilding. I’m going to detail my training experiences with losing weight and building muscle over the past 9 years.

I’ve been at both ends of the body transformation game, both in gaining muscle and losing fat through many experiments, trials and errors over a period of 9 years. Maybe you can relate to some of my journeys and experiences in the quest for a strong, lean, and muscular body.

My Body Transformation Journey

I never grew up being very athletic. I was never really one of those physically fit, muscular genetic freaks of nature, you know, those guys who have never touched a weight in their life and are 200 lbs of rock solid muscle with abs to show for. Nope, I was never one of those genetically-blessed individuals. In elementary school I had trouble finishing 4 laps on the track. That’s barely a mile. I couldn’t even run a mile. I was an out-of-shape kid. A skinny kid.

I was never a jock. In fact I was very weak. Weaker than the average person for my age at 16. At 16 I weighed in at a soaking wet 124 lbs at a height of 5′9″. I could barely bench 100 lbs or curl a 20 pound dumbbell. Embarrassing.

I was Weak

But up until then, the realization never came to be that I was weaker than most people. Then during that summer, as a good student, I enrolled in the NYC summer youth employment program (SYEP for those who are familiar) as a summer job. They paid minimum wage but the experience was golden and looked good on a resume for future jobs.

I was assigned to be a youth counselor/teacher’s assistant to a summer school class of 2nd graders at a middle school. And so one day on the job in class, my hands shook obsessively and I had trouble lifting a full tank of water (around 2 gallons) for a science experiment for the kids. As I carried the tank of water from the sink to the table for the kids, I almost fell and tripped over. My arms were shaking and I was swinging side-to-side struggling with the tank. It was embarrassing. And the kids were just laughing because I looked weird.

I think it was that day that I finally came to the realization that I was skinny and weak. I started to become more self-conscious of my strength and body…and my health. I had little muscle or fat on me. I looked like crap. I was so skinny I could shop in the kids section for clothing. I didn’t look good in clothes at all. I was in poor physical conditioning. I ran out of breath easily. I even had trouble climbing up 5 flights of stairs.

So right then I knew I had to do something about my awkward body and poor physical fitness level. I also had to do something about my health too. Because after all, if I’m weighing 124 lbs and barely able to run a mile in under 12 minutes, something was wrong and I couldn’t be in good health for a teenager. I wanted to be stronger, more muscular, and fitter than my friends. So obviously, I had to do something about it.

Building Muscle and Strength

I began subscribing to a wide variety of fitness magazines and muscle magazines: Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, MuscleMag, Flex, Muscular Development. Then I went out and bought books on working out, strength training, and bodybuilding in general. I became somewhat obsessed immediately after the realization. Looking back now, it was unhealthy and unnecessary to consume myself with my body image every single waking second then.

The first book I picked up from Barnes and Noble was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding” in hardcover format. Other titles I bought included, Dr. Fred Hatfield’s “Hardcore Bodybuilding,” “Ultimate Sports Nutrition,” Joe Weider’s “Ultimate Bodybuilding,” Stuart McRobert’s “Brawn and Beyond Brawn,” and Leo Costa’s “Big Beyond Belief.” Over the years, I’ve amassed a decent collection of bodybuilding and strength training books in my library.

With those books and magazines, I was introduced to sets, repetitions, repetition maximums, drop sets, negatives, supersets, and all the other bodybuilding and strength training terminology we’re familiar with.

So during that summer and for the rest of the year, I must’ve spend at least 3 hours a day reading all the information I’ve acquired and another hour working out, training, and experimenting with diets and routines. And I kept my workouts consistent, never missing a workout. It gets easier and easier once you develop working out and training as a habit…just like brushing your teeth every morning.

I worked out a lot for the next 2 years without seeing much muscle gains, very little results. I gained barely 5 lbs. But I was persistent. I was still in that obsessive stage. I had my off days but I never forgot about working out. The internet was also taking off so I started going online. I began “surfing” the web (yes, web surfing was what we called it then) and came upon a bodybuilding site that couldn’t be more obvious, Bodybuilding.com. I came across articles by more experienced natural bodybuilders who’ve gotten better results than I.

And after reading the many articles on bodybuilding.com, I “re-discovered” the importance of calories surplus and what it really means to eat a lot to gain muscle mass. Because of information overload and rushing straight to the workouts without paying much attention to proper eating and muscle building nutrition, I skipped this crucial step of the bodybuilding process. So then I started eating a lot to provide my body with the surplus of calories for building muscle. The way I look at it now, those 2 years weren’t wasted as long as I corrected my mistakes. And I did.

I continued training with full body and push/pull/leg splits, the basic stuff. The basic strength workouts that old time bodybuilders and strongman were using. To this day, I still recommend newbies and beginning lifters to start out with basic routines. Build a strength foundation first before prioritizing to build muscle. I got strong…

But I also got Fat!

And in another 18-month period, my weight shot up from 130 lbs to 206 lbs. I also grew an inch at my current height of 5′10″. But it was not all 216 lbs of pure muscle. I overdid it. I overdid it on the bulking cycles. I ate too much. I ate like a slob, 5,000 plus calories a day, which was really too much, even for a hardgainer like me. I didn’t know the difference between bulking up for muscle gain and pigging out. I ignored the importance of macronutrient ratios and ate all the junk and crap foods I had at my disposal.

So most of the “gains” were fat, not muscle. I had to lose the extra weight right then and there. My friends and parents started noticing my fat gain in such a short amount of time. I mean, I went from being near anorexic to being practically obese in under a year and a half. They thought I had some health condition.

And right then I knew I had to do something about my fat-ness. My second major mistake was getting too fat. Some fat gain is inevitable on a bulking diet to build muscle. But most of my weight gain was fat, not muscle.

And I made the decision to diet down and take action again.

Continue on to part 2 of my body transformation journey here