Baron's Journey to Single-Digit Bodyfat

I'd love to say I'm already there and that I'm just cruising to the finish line over the next few weeks, but that's not the case. It seems like for each pound of fat I lose, the next pound is literally twice as hard to make go away. I never really factored that in from the beginning. I will need every last day to achieve this goal. And if I don't make it, it won't be for a lack of trying, that's for sure.

I'm currently taking in 2,100 calories per day, and each day I'm ok for the most part until about 8 pm. That's when the hunger really starts kicking in. To combat that, I eat a stick or two of bok choi, which are kind of like celery sticks... a lot of volume and fiber with hardly any calories. It seems to shut my stomach up until I can get to sleep.

Oh, and in regards to sleep, my sleep pattern has completely changed. I used to go to bed around 11 PM and get up around 7 AM every day. Nowadays, I go to bed at 11 PM and wake up at 5 AM. Some mornings I will wake up feeling alert and ready to start my day only to discover that it's 3:30 AM. When that happens, I force myself to get back in bed until 5 AM because getting up at 3:30 just seems ridiculous. So in a nutshell, my sleep has gone to shit, but other people that have dieted for bodybuilding competitions told me this is just how the body reacts when you're short on calories for a prolonged time.

On the positive side, since I'm getting up so early, I now workout in the morning upon waking instead of the afternoons like I used to. So the 5 AM - 7 AM time frame has become my personal time every day, and you know what, I really like experiencing that part of the day because everything is so peaceful and quiet. Everyone else in the house is still asleep, and the only thing you can hear when you go outdoors are random sounds of nature.

So since I've got this new found personal time in the morning, I decided I needed to take advantage of it to do some things I've never done before. I never stretched much in years past, but now I dedicate the first 20 minutes of my day to doing a stretch routine. And after that, I do my workout using the 3/7 lifting protocol discussed here in a different thread, followed by some HIIT cardio. And then after that, I jump in my pool and do a little swimming followed by 15 - 20 minutes of meditation poolside. I've never really gotten into the meditation thing before but the serenity of the day at 6:30 AM outside when the birds are chirping has turned out to be a perfect time and environment for it. Then I go inside and do the whole breakfast routine. So the stretching, the swimming, and the meditation were all things I never did on a consistent basis before until now. In a way, this restructuring of my daily routine makes me feel like a more disciplined and balanced person than I was before I started this journey, so I'm pretty happy about that.

In terms of muscle, I've definitely lost some, which was expected from the beginning but it does suck busting my ass in the gym from week to week and seeing less muscle over time. But that goes with the territory. It's like nature has a price for fat loss. You must pay 1/3rd of a pound of muscle for every pound of fat you want to lose. So although I'm paying it, I'm definitely not liking being held hostage to that ransom.

That's about it for now. I will schedule my DEXA scan around the 25th of this month and will update with final pictures and results at that time.

 

Absolutely. I have zero desire to go backward at this point. I have a journal that I write down the goals I want to achieve in the next few years, and currently, there are 67 goals on the list. I had 75 on the list, but some of them have been achieved or no longer desired. The first goal I wrote down on the list was:

1. Achieve and maintain single-digit body fat.

So my goal isn't just about getting to the destination to say I did it and then just going back to the way things were. No way. I want to achieve and maintain.

Whenever I get to where I want to be, I will gradually start increasing my daily calories. So the gameplan is to increase my daily calorie consumption by 100 calories per day for the first week, then 100 more calories per day for the second week, and continue that pattern for the next four or five weeks until I get up to around 2800 calories per day. That would work out to be four 700-calorie meals per day and I would have no problem sustaining that over the long term. That meal plan combined with 5 days on/ 2 days off weekly training cycle should be totally doable.

 

I have a wife and a 13-year-old son.




My son doesn't give a flying flip what I do, and that's fine with me.

My wife and I originally met at the gym, and she works out regularly to this day just like me. But with that said, she is in a maintenance phase right now, not a cut phase. Her opinion of my journey is "You look fine to me just like you are. But if you want to put yourself through that, do whatever you want to do. I don't care. Just don't expect me to do it along with you."

Although there's no support in the sense that she's trying to get shredded with me, there's no criticism either, which is good.

But with that said, she's not going to deprive herself of a pint of ice cream, ordering pizza, or champagne with the girls when opportunities like that present themselves, even if it means she's doing it right in front of me.

So at the end of the day, my family lets me be me, and I let them be them, which is about as much as you can ask of each other.

 

Yep, that's where we were.

I won, like always.