First Post

Welcome to the official blog of 'Operation: Stop Being a Fat Bastard', one man's mission to leave the land of 'programmer's arse' and reclaim his fitness.

The Operation in earnest started just after my 27th birthday, after seeing this photo (I'm on the right). I got some York weights, a bench, and a chin-up bar, and set about trying to lose my gut. Progress was slow, so I joined a gym, and tried personal training and a variety of fitness classes.
Unfortunately, I have a low attention span, and an aversion to dull forms of cardio, so the longest I've stuck at one discipline was kickboxing (for 10 weeks last summer), or more recently, Bikram Yoga (for 9 weeks between February and April this year). Both were abandoned for pretty much the same reasons; lack of variety in the class, and that heated exercise is deeply unpleasant in warm weather (deliberate in Bikram; the kickboxing gym just had appalling aircon).
As the only form of training I've stuck to consistently is weights; while I'm stronger and fitter now, I'm not really much thinner. The idea is that this blog will track my progress and enable me to train more consistently and effectively.

So, what are my goals? They are fourfold:

1. Stop being a fat bastard! I want to get my body fat percentage down to below 14% at very least, and ideally below 10%. Currently it's 19.7%.
   
2. Get my flexibility and speed up to the point where I can start serious martial arts training. When I was in my teens, I took up Tae Kwon Do (4 classes a week, 2 hours each), and it was the fittest I've ever been in my life. Experience has taught me that I don't find most martial arts varied enough to keep my attention. The only exception so far has been Nam Pai Chuan, though I am also tempted to try Small Circle Jujitsu.
   My goal is to start training twice a week, and yoga once a week - at least until I'm flexible enough to do box splits / high kicks.
3. Continue to improve my strength. My long-term goal is to be able to bench-press my body weight (with dumbells), deadlift 1.5 times my body weight, and curl half my body weight. Currently, I can lift 55%, 66% and 25% respectively.
4. Look as good as possible (anyone who says this isn't a factor is lying). I'll measure this in terms of arm, chest and waist measurements (currently: 11⅜", 39⅛" and 33⅞"; ideally 15", 42" and 31"), as well as taking photos.

The only aspect of my fitness I'm not really interested in training is endurance. Which is a shame, because I'm giving up on our biggest physical evolutionary advantage; but being asthmatic means it's never going to be my forte.

I'm also trying to improve my cooking at the moment, so I'll be using that as an excuse to come up with easy to cook, high protein, low fat dishes (such as the Italian wedding soup I'm eating now), which I may post up here as I perfect. I'll will not, however, be attempting any fad diets.

Likewise, I'm concurrently trying to exert better control over my finances; which means keeping expenses to a minimum. Which means no personal training.
In lieu of a personal trainer - who, expense aside, makes a huge difference - I'll be trying to train with a partner as much as possible, which can be just as good. Fortunately I have a workmate, Andy, who's on his own training mission, and a complete nutter to boot.