Bulking.

I was losing weight for a while, in total I ended up losing around 85 pounds. I plateaued after 85 lbs, I tried everything, upping my cardio, cutting carbs, lifting lighter for more reps, switching cardio machines, nothing was working. Now I've made the decision to start bulking. I'm going to be "clean" bulking. Eating plenty of healthy foods to go up in muscle mass. Here are my daily meals.

For breakfast I wake up at around 9 when I don't have work and eat about 30 minutes after I awake. I eat 4 eggs, a whole wheat bagel, and a protein shake. The protein shake has one scoop of ON whey, about 2 tbsp of peanut butter, and a banana. I also try and eat yogurt in the morning as well.

My next meal usually is another protein shake for post workout. Its the same thing as the one I have for breakfast, except for I double everything up.

My next meals are all pretty much the same from here on out, I try and eat this 4 times a day, Usually it's Chicken or Tilapia, with some sort of whole grain carb, sometimes breads, bagels, tortilla, but as of recently I've started cooking brown rice to go along with my meals.

and that's about it for diet.

For lifting it surprised me as to how weak I got. So I've taken up a variation to Mark Rippetoe's "Starting Strength" a basic 3x5 program, to put on muscle and strength. Just by doing basic power movements such as Squats, Deadlifts, and Bench Pressing. I also do 10 minutes of light cardio before I workout out, and I do 10-20 minutes after, just to try and stay lean.

as of 8/29/11 I'm at about 176 with 17% bodyfat. My goal is to be able to squat 1.5x my bodyweight, deadlift 2x bodyweight and bench 1x bodyweight by the end of 4 weeks. (August 31)

DAT FITNESS

Ever since I can remember I was always the chubby kid. My family always played the "big boned" or "You don't have to watch what you eat, you're a growing boy" card and I always used that as my excuse. I wasn't super obese but I always wanted to be skinny. After I got staph infection and went on Independent Study I began to miss out on daily exercise that school provided and just played video games all day everyday. After about a year of not exercising and eating whatever I wanted, I was at about 255.

I got my first girlfriend and was at her house A LOT. Not wanting to eat like a pig at her house, I barely ate much, even if I was hungry. Two months went by, and I noticed my pants fitting looser, having to use a shoe lace to keep them up. She finally convinced me to weigh myself and I weighed 235. I was surprised, 20 lbs gone. Another month went by and eventually my girlfriend and I, were split up. I changed my eating habits a little and maintained the 235 for another 2 months, then I decided to get a 24 hour membership. That's also the time I started to try and eat around 1500 calories a day.

The first day I went I had no clue what to do, so I hopped on one of the bikes and did that for an hour, my first real test of mind over matter, "You're going to have to ride your bike home anyways so just go for 30 minutes", I told myself no excuses and finished the hour. Eventually I started working out with my step-dad and friend. First week and I had only dropped about 2 lbs. I was extremely irritated and wanted to quit. I was expecting to drop like 7 lbs a week. I eventually learned that to burn a pound you need to burn 3500 calories. I trained harder and harder and still only dropped 1-3 lbs a week. My step-dad finally told me after I texted him one day "It's a marathon, not a sprint". I was at 227 when he told me that. Another month had gone by and I was at 215.

Holidays came around and I didn't think my gym membership was paid so I stopped going for 2 months. I learned that the membership was in fact being paid and I went in to the gym weighed myself and I weighed 205, I was shocked I thought I would have gained weight over the holidays. Two weeks later I weigh myself and I couldn't believe it, the scale said 199. The first time in a LONG time I was under 200 lbs. That was about 3 weeks ago, and now I'm at 193 and at about 23% body fat. My goal right now is to lose my gut, after that I want to start trying to get big.

TL;DR I was fat and lost weight.