So, I’m back to cutting again.

In the last 6 months, I discovered much about the way my body reacts to exercise, sleep, and nutrition. While I had been busting my butt at the gym hitting extreme PR’s for me, I was also feeding my body with lots of clean nutrition.

There was one problem though. I was gaining weight, and plateauing on my body fat. Why was this? I discovered that my body is extremely sensitive to diet- and I don’t mean this in a trivial way. What I found was that while I’d eat clean 6 days a week and was allotted that 7th day to have one cheat meal, I would go so ham on that cheat meal that it would actually destroy all the progress I had made that week. I’d eat and drink my fill, as I love to do.

Upon blood work after such hamming, I actually found that I only had a marginal improvement from my baseline in December 2018. This meant that all of my hard work, all the weeks and months of suffering, all was negated by a few nights of indulgence here and there. The doctor even told me I was at hypertension Stage I – high blood pressure.

So, I changed things up, yet again. I don’t give up. I never give up. It’s who I am.

In 2012, when I broke up with a cheating girlfriend, my mind was in a complete mess. I was a zombie, and I was picking up the pieces of a shattered heart. My outlet at the time was a bunch of drinking, but also, 4 hours of cardio each day. I did this for 30 days, and cut from 195 lbs to 162lbs. Sure, I lost muscle, but along with it I lost a bunch of fat, and I looked my best. I also happened to have the best blood work I ever had in awhile! It was shocking to see. I enjoyed every bit of it. It felt like revenge. It felt sexy. I felt unstoppable. I got my mojo back damnit!

But then over the years I had switched back to my traditional workout pattern of lifting/cardio, 40 mins of each activity 4-5 times per week. I gained my muscles back, along with the apparently required fat. My social patterns hadn’t changed, and I was still eating kind of poorly and drinking almost every other night. Fast forward to 2016 or so I had gotten back up to 185lbs or so.

Before an impending wedding in 2017, I went through another stint of 3-4 hour cardio per day to cut weight. Same results as last time- only not as extreme (I wasn’t a heartbroken zombie at the time). After cutting to 178lbs and getting married, my wife and I set out to Asia and Europe for 8 months, living in hotels and Airbnb’s, and eating everything in sight with our savings. Oh- 2018 was a monster. We were like Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man going all around the world and living it up. This would possibly explain why when I stepped on the scale in December 2018, I weighed in at 212lbs!

It was then that I began the weight training + nutrition regimen. I had a trainer who had (just like so many other trainers) poo-pooed the idea of needing cardio to achieve results. It would cut into muscle growth. It wouldn’t be necessary. Others I’d talk to would say it is SO BORING that they would die doing that much cardio. For me, since I simply do not have the capacity to be bored, I’d enjoy the cardio. It’d be like my own escape for the day.

Nonetheless I listened to my trainer and avoided the cardio section of the gym. I started to lose weight while gaining muscle, and cutting body fat- an extremely difficult thing to do if one has any kind of social life. But at a certain point, I couldn’t go below 16% body fat, and my weight stabilized around 203lbs. This stayed this way for months no matter what I tried. But I still stayed away from the cardio.

Then I saw my doctor, who did a thorough blood panel on me a few weeks ago. Besides saying I had high blood pressure, my cholesterol was still at 235, which put me at risk for CHD and cardiovascular events. And after hearing that a few friends had heart attacks in their early 40’s, I knew I needed to change it up.

So now I’m back to the tried and true. I found that doing endurance cardio for me brings all my blood work numbers into line, while achieving the physique results that I want. I found that I while I can be a bodybuilder if I want to, it means sacrificing a social life. This means no drinks, no going out to enjoy a delicious meal, and generally living life. I found that this is a hard constraint on me. No matter how hard I try at building muscle, it all gets waylaid by a friend asking me to go to happy hour on a Tuesday. My solution is simply to cardio the hell out of it, and enjoy my damn cake too.

I also have found that I rather enjoy endurance training as well. It’s meditative for me, and I can see results MUCH faster than weightlifting. I don’t need to wait days with mixed nutrition to wonder why I’m not getting cut. This does it for SURE. And it’ll save my heart too.

Also, I have written this entire blog while doing cardio. 🙂