My Bad Knee.

When I first started working out to get back into shape my right knee was very bad. It was so bad that when I tried to run I was at the risk of hyper extending it backwards. In fact one time when I was playing baseball with my friends it did just that to a minor degree. For a few days it was very sore. It also made me apprehensive to try and stand on just my right leg for fear of it bending backwards. The joint was very sloppy, it caused me pain whenever I tried to move weight with it, and it was much weaker than my left leg (I am right side dominant).

This was a big concern for me as I was starting to do weights. I knew that I had to strengthen it and slowly work it out to get it back to being healthy. Even after starting to do heavy weights on my upper body I was still slowly working on my right leg. For gradual progress I did very light weight and a medium amount of reps. I continued to do my leg exercises but made sure to take it easy with very low weight on the exercises that aggravated it the most. During this recuperation period I made sure to pay very close attention to the aggravation and the pain. If anything at all felt more aggravated than normal I would take additional breaks and do less reps. If it was too much still I would lower the weights even more. If my knee just wasn't feeling up to it sometimes I even had to take a week or two off from doing a particular exercise to let it recuperate. 

I had to baby my leg along for months but eventually It started getting stronger and having less pain. As the pain gradually got less I would slowly add additional reps first and once I could do more reps I would bump up the weight a little bit. I would rinse and repeat doing more reps up till I could do 15 - 20 reps then up the weight again. I would say it probably took me about 8 to 10 months of this slow progression till my knee started to feel much better and became stronger. After about a year and a half I would say my knee was back to 100% strength and all the pain was gone. It took me a long time but the functionality and strength in my right knee returned. At this point I could stand on my right leg and it would crisply lock into position without me having to worry about it hyper extending because it was so bad. I was then able to get in the gym and start doing some serious leg workouts with squats and leg press.

So if you guys, like me, have certain body parts that ache or are bad make sure you still work them out. Even though it may hurt a little these are the most important places to workout to make sure you get completely healthy again. So when you start don't ignore them, instead start with really low weight and reps and make sure to be very careful as you work them. If you are not sure what to do yourself I would highly recommend talking to a physician or a physical therapist to get advice on what to do and what exercises to use. Also they can give you advice on what to avoid or take easy as well until it starts to heal. And when you start to workout these body parts make sure to be attentive to pain and don't over do it. Injuring yourself further will only set you backwards in your progress.  So make sure to strengthen your weak body parts and be careful while you do it!

Beginning my Diet v1.0

As I got started into the fitness portion of things on my way back to getting healthy, I also decided to start taking a look at my diet and doing something about it. All I knew for sure was that I definitely ate way to much and that I needed to do a bit of analysis on my diet and change what I was doing for my food intake. The first place I started was to try and figure out how many calories I was eating on a typical day. I went online and started looking up all sorts of calorie information on foods I was eating. After a bunch of meticulous searching for caloric information I found out that depending on how much junk food I was having during the day along with the regular meals I was consuming anywhere from 3500 - 5000 calories. When I realized this I was absolutely shocked. It never occurred to me that I was eating such an exorbitant amount of calories per day. Food I ate that contributed highly to this were things like greasy foods such as burgers, fried chicken, and french fries or lots of soda and juice or lots of junk food like cookies, cheesecake, and ice cream. All these high calorie foods along with the fact that I love to eat and eat large quantities was a bad recipe for me putting on weight.

Along with eating way too many calories throughout the course of a day I also had a couple of other bad habits that needed changed. For one I often would eat my dinners very late at night right before I went to bed. This is another very detrimental thing to do if you don't want to put on weight. Eating right before you go to bed will cause the food when it is digested to more actively go towards fat storage because you are using minimal amounts of calories while you sleep. I would also get up and have midnight snacks which is another big no no because it will also cause the same results of additional storage of calories to fat.

After figuring out how many calories I was taking in in a day I decided to change it up. I didn't do anything too crazy as far as investigating diets (I do later on as I progressed with my fitness and diets) or figuring out how many calories exactly I should have, but I did decide to aim for 3 meals a day at 750 calories each for a total of 2250 calories. The second thing I wanted to focus on was to get rid of all my snacking on junk food and to swap from drinking soda and juice to just drinking water. The last thing I decided to change about my eating habits was no more late night meals right before bed and no more midnight snacks. I figured this would at least be a step in the right direction for starting towards a more healthy lifestyle in my eating habits.


I had tried earlier in life to do some extreme type diets that I wound up failing, so this time around I decided to try an take things at a slower pace since this was going to be a permanent change for me. The benefits of starting gradually and working your way to a more strict diet are numerous. First by starting off with something that you can handle easier in the beginning you will be less likely to cheat on it. Also I didn't really eliminate any foods my diet but was focusing on much less overall calories which made it easier for me since I could still eat things when I had cravings for certain foods. Being able to eat any food also helped me not want to cheat. I would eventually go on to much stricter diets and watching specific things like carbs, protein and fat consumption but for now I started off easy. The other benefits of starting off gradual with your diet is as you begin to lose weight you will probably eventually run in to the ever dreaded plateau where weight loss will slow down for a while because your body is becoming accustomed to your diet and workout schedule. When you plateau this is a good point in which you can tighten up your diet some more to help bolster your weight loss again.

So when you are starting off remember that no matter who you are you can't out exercise a bad diet. You have to get your eating under control and be careful about what you eat. If you do you will have much better results and become healthier faster. If you want go ahead and start slow to make it easier on yourself so you will be less likely to cheat and quit your diet, but remember you eventually need to get it to where you are eating balanced and at a caloric deficit (I'll cover this later on in Diet v2.0).

Rebuilding my strength

Back when I began figuring out what to do for my workout routine I had an eye opening experience about my health. When I first got started I was just doing some stuff like push ups and sit ups and light body resistance type exercises. Then I decided to brave the world of cardio because I knew that it would be effective in helping to shed pounds faster. It was an unbelievably nice day out when I decided to start so I threw on my old gym shoes and was going for a jog. I figured I'd make a lap around my neighborhood and see how it went. I did a couple light stretches and rushed out the house and started down the side of the road. After maybe 2000 feet I was already completely out of breath and had a side ache and had to stop to rest. I sat there for a few minutes and still couldn't hardly catch my breath, so I started walking back to the apartment. By the time I got back to the apartment by walking I was again completely out of breath, so much so in fact that I was getting dizzy and had to lay down on the sidewalk. It was at this point I realized a cold hard truth that I was terribly out of shape. Just because I used to run lines in basketball in high school doesn't mean that after 8 years of not working out I'll be able to jump right back into it at a full speed.

After this incident I watched several YouTube videos trying to educate myself about methods for getting back into working out. After watching these videos (as well as my jogging incident) I learned the importance of needing to rebuild your base strength when getting started after having not worked out in a long time. You can't expect to do things like intense cardio or a heavy lifting weight routine if you are starting from being horribly out of shape like I was. I then realized that it was going to take me some time to build up enough stamina and base muscle strength to get to the point where I could work out like I envisioned.

I accepted the fact that I needed to take it slow at first and get back to where I was healthy enough to be able to push hard. I then started instead of jogging to walk on a treadmill with a slight incline for 3 sets of 10 minute intervals. I would gradually increase my speed or incline a little bit as I got better. Pretty soon I was able to do 1 30 minute session of an inclined walk. For my weight lifting I did lots of reps with low weight to all my muscle groups. By doing low weight with high reps this will help your muscles become accustomed to being active and it will prepare yourself for when you start upping your workout. If you do start at a gym using the weight machines is an excellent way to start off. The weight machines give a slight mechanical advantage for starting out easy as well as helping you learn good form. If you try to lift too much too quickly you run a very high risk of hurting yourself. After about a month at home working on rebuilding my base strength I signed up for the gym (now that I didn't feel completely embarrassed about my lack of fitness). I then started to slowly increase my weight while lifting and my intensity during my cardio.

Remember folks getting started and doing your workout and sticking to it is important. But please understand the importance of rebuilding your base strength. If you haven't worked out in a long time like I had you will want to build your stamina and strength back to a point where you can start to work hard again. If you don't you will run the risk of injuring yourself and setting yourself even further behind in your quest to get healthy. Besides hurting yourself physically you might also hurt your pride. I know I did and it makes it hard to continue on when you see how bad it is. So start off consistent and with a real expectation of what you are capable of with your current health. In no time flat you will regain your stamina and be able to push harder!!

Finding motivation and starting

Getting myself motivated was one of the hardest parts to getting started. It is also the most important factor when starting down the path towards regaining your health. Looking at the road ahead can be daunting and seem like your goals are so far away. The good part though is that your goals are attainable and you can get there. You just have to find your motivation and keep it to overcome the that initial speed bump of doubt.



For me a big part of becoming motivated was that I had recently just watched Expendables. I saw this movie and was amazed at all these old action actors that still look burly. For instance Sylvester Stallone is in his mid 60's and he is still in great shape and pumping out action movies. This really spurred me to want to be in great shape even into my later years in life and I set that as a goal of mine. Another big thing I used for motivation was that I would visualize a clear image in my head of what I wanted to look like when I reach my goal. In particular I visualize myself  getting a 6pack, the slim indents on my hips, and the "V" shape of my upper body from my back muscles. Setting realistic attainable goals is an excellent way to get motivated and to help keep you motivated. These are some good long term goals that I had set. It is also good to keep some goals that are short term. When I started my short term realistic goal was to lose 1 pound per week. These are important because it helps you focus on the small successes.


Another way to help build my motivation was what I like to call the "Nike" method, get out there and JUST DO IT!! It really does sound cliche but it is an amazing help. Getting started is the hard part, a lot of times you just need to grit your teeth and jump into action. After you get past that initial mental road block of getting started motivation winds up naturally coming to you as you do your workout. I know for a fact when I didn't want to work out but did it anyways I always felt great about it after I was done, never once did I regret it.


For me another big thing that helped in getting started was the fact that I came to the realization that I wanted to get back in shape and not ever fall back into being unhealthy again. This for me was going to be a lifestyle change. If I had approached it with the attitude that I would diet and lose some weight and then stop once I hit my mark I would have fell victim again to failure. A couple of times I had used extreme diets to lose weight, however when I stopped because I had lost the weight it would get put right back on. If you can shoot for a lifestyle change, rather than a quick fix diet, that is how you will best get results and keep them.

Despite what you see on TV there are no "shortcuts", miracle drugs, or gimmick diets that are going to get you results and keep you that way. It all boils down to hard work and being determined to eat healthy consistently. The best thing about fitness though is once you can wrap your head around the fact that you will have to put in some effort and use a little will power with your diet is that ANYONE can get healthy again.

The last method I employed to help keep me motivated was to keep track of my success. This gives you a good way to remember just how far you have come and allows you to celebrate your progress. It is much better to look at the road you have traveled and the progress you have made than to worry about the road that lies ahead and how long it will take for you to get there. In keeping track of your success using multiple methods is always best. The scale isn't always the most accurate way to keep track of how well you are really doing. The scale can give you a good indication of your weight loss but it can be misleading when you are getting stronger and putting on weight from building muscle. I still use it but I look at other methods as well. My favorite is taking pictures it gives an awesome visual of the progress you have made and how much healthier you look (and sexier ^_^ lol). Another good thing to notice when you are taking pictures is how much bigger the smile on your face will be as you get towards your goal!! I also like to take note of how my pants and shirts fit. It is fantastic to see your clothes size dropping and feels good when you go buy new slim clothes.