My Fitness Story and Motivation – Lewis Hiley
In January 2012 it suddenly hit me that I had become out of shape. I was podgy; I looked skinny wearing a t shirt, but fat without one. This had been a change from my more active years as a child and teenager and I was well on the road to becoming the “average” pizza junkie man of the modern world. Like many people I had slipped up when I had moved away to university (college) – I suddenly went from leading a fairly active lifestyle and eating moderate amounts of mixed food, to gorging on Pizza and Cheeseburgers every single day and doing nothing in the way of exercise and before I knew it I had laid on 25lbs of FAT in the space of a year! I would eat cheeseburgers at least once everyday, sometimes even twice, as well as a host of other crap that I was putting into my body! It got to the stage where when I was low on cash the guys in my local takeout would just let me take the food for free that day – knowing that I would be back tomorrow to pay them!
This illustrates my changes so far and the time it took to do them. 6 months in total guys! Thats not a load of effort is it?!
I didn’t like what I had become and wanted to do something about it. I started getting back into Martial Arts and that provided me with some motivation to get back into shape but it was never enough.
In January 2012 I started dieting and cut my calories to around 1,400 per day (about that same as in 1 cheeseburger!). I introduced a gentle home exercise regime which simply involved doing supersets with a resistance bar that I had and some old free weights. I would do these for around 30 minutes per day, coupled together with my diet and in 3 months I had lost about 20lbs!
The problem now came that I was skinnier than ever before! Although I was still revelling in my weight loss, so this problem was placed to the back on my mind. Throughout March to August I simply maintained my habit of what I was doing and lost a few more pounds and toned my muscles a little. Yet when September came I decided to kick it up a notch, I wanted to get into the best shape of my life!
Here it is from the back. This illustrates my changes so far and the time it took to do them. 6 months in total guys! Thats not a load of effort is it?!
My motivations for this were pretty complex and ranged from a variety of things. Like most guys I wanted to be stronger, bigger and more athletic than everyone in the gym (not that hard when your gym is mostly populated by 70 year olds). Yet I had other motivating factors as well, I loved the little ego high I had after my weight loss and found that getting a pump from lifting weights was like a tiny little version of this effect. Another reason which sounds pretty stupid to a lot of people was that I wanted to be the best for my girlfriend! I didn’t want to go to a beach and feel out of place, not wanting to take my shirt off. I wanted to have the best body for her as well as myself! These were all self-motivating factors for me and as such I never really needed the boost we crave from online videos or “motivational posters”.
September arrived and I pretty much went berserk with my nutrition and exercise regime. I would eat around 15 different fruits and vegetables per day in shakes (video below) and then eat lean chicken with peppers and onions after my workout. This was effectively all I ever ate until December! With this combination I got pretty ripped while still adding muscle. Regardless of the 2,000 calories I was eating I was adding muscle due to being new at weight lifting!
Once December came around I went home to stay at my parents house for a month or so and during that time lost all track of my exercise and for the most part nutrition. I was still eating healthy but there was a lot more of it I was forcing down my throat! Food which I would never purchase on my own was readily available and the temptation was always there! I sympathise for people living with others who are trying to get healthy – its a damn hard thing to do when other people are not sympathetic and supportive to your cause!
Once I returned home in January I decided to hit the gym again and seeing as I had already put on a couple of pounds over the Christmas period I decided to do a bulk. We are now in March and I have been on my bulk for around 1 and a half months now and look like this:
My goals towards the future are to continue bulking until the beginning of June and once I get back from my vacation in Berlin I am going on an 8 week cut to get beach perfect for my summer vacation in July! After that I have no idea where I am heading but wherever it will be I will always take fitness with me! I may not be the fittest, the strongest, the most ripped or the biggest but that just means I always have more goals on the horizon!
P.S. I will be posting more about my fitness story as it progresses! What my bulk was like and how I am getting ripped in the cut to come next!
