On March 14, 2004, I was 21 years old and weighed in at 285lbs; the weight had to do with mental and physical factors.
Mental: I was so skinny growing up that I had to run around the shower to get wet; if I turned sideways and stuck out my tongue, I would look like a zipper. I wanted nothing more than to be muscular and strong.
Physical: I had been physically weightlifting and physically stuffing my face with anything available in order to grow. I was young and uneducated; I thought, “Any protein + any carbs = muscular growth.” Some of my norms were eating two double Whoppers daily, engulfing a minimum of one box of pasta for supper, inhaling dozens of whole raw eggs, and double fisting such a ludicrous amount of submarine sandwiches that if he was privy to what I was doing, poor Jared would have slung his head in shame and moped into obscurity.
I thought I looked great! In my head, when I donned a baggie t-shirt, it resembled throwing a drape over the marble bust of the Farnese Hercules. My chest jutted out like an anvil ironing board, and my arms filled out my sleeves like hot water bottles ready to burst! However, what was going on under my shirt wasn’t so pretty.
On the night of March 14, 2004, I caught my reflection in a garage door window, and I realized the truth: I may have been muscular, but I was overweight. I had a triple chin, a stomach that folded shut across a greater diameter than a standard folding chair, and skinny little legs that wouldn’t offer a chihuahua much in the way of a stable enough base to navigate his way through life (they were skinny because I didn’t train them!).
I cried myself to sleep and decided to change. Here is what I did:
1. I lifted weights six times per week. Hard. I attacked every weightlifting session with almost demonic possession. I never missed.
2. I saved up enough money and sent away for a training program written by an expert. This was a big deal for a 21-year old kid who was working his way through college and paying all his own tuition and bills; boy, did this guy come through. My new training program looked nothing like what I had previously put together with all my infinite high school and college knowledge derived from bodybuilding magazines. I now had a map to success to follow. Oh, yeah, I started training legs and almost died. I distinctly remember doing 10 reps on a leg press, with 45# plates on each side, and almost vomiting.
3. I only wore sweatpants and a sweatshirt when training. I didn’t want to look at or think about my body; I just wanted to focus on my weight-lifting session. Rather than being confident, as this was my first “diet/cut,” I was hopeful that my body would change if I kept my head down and worked hard.
4. I became more diligent about my nutrition. What is about to follow is by no means the best nutrition plan and is not what I would necessarily recommend to someone today. At the time, my nutritional knowledge was confined, again, to what I read in bodybuilding magazines; however, I remember exactly what I did (measurements are excluded):
Meal 1: Protein Shake + Egg Whites + Oatmeal
Meal 2: Tuna Fish + Low Fat Mayo
Meal 3: Tuna Fish + Low Fat Mayo
Meal 4: Fish or Turkey or Chicken + Salad + Fruit. My occupation at the time was the Front Desk Clerk at a Hotel. I oversaw setting out the food for the dinner buffet. As I served this smorgasbord, I would hide multiple plates of food in a kitchen cabinet for myself to eat as the night progressed. The fish and chicken boasted delicious, breaded armor and were always D.O.A.—cause of death? Drowned in an ocean of zesty white sauce. I still remember commandeering napkins and wiping each piece dry until they were devoid of any of the delectability that rendered them worthy of middle-of-the-road hotel dinner fare.
Meal 5: Repeat of Meal 4.
10pm: I finished work and would go to the gym and train.
Meal 6: Post workout shake. At the time, it was protein powder blended with water and fruit.
Meal 7: Grilled Chicken breast salad + Italian salad dressing.
I was consistent. I never veered from the meal plan; I never missed a training session. Nothing else in my life was as important to me. I also worked security at a nightclub during this time and had access to free drinks; from the time I started my nutrition plan, I never touched one. Going to pig out at Jim’s Steakout with my roommate was a thing of the past. I was all in.
I weighed in, mid-June, three months later, at 225lbs. I’ll never forget it—I was ecstatic, on the cusp of weeping in the gym locker room when I saw that weight. I had to strain to contain the well of tears filling up my eyelids. I couldn’t believe it was me; I even had a semi-decent six pack.
And that’s how I lost 60 pounds in three months.
I lost sixty pounds again in under three months at a different point in my life, albeit, in a much smarter and strategic way. More importantly, the overarching tenets of success in both cases are the same.
1. Be consistent. There were times I wanted to quit, there were times I was tempted to go off track—I didn’t. Consistency breeds success, which breeds even more success, until you have an entire family tree with success weighing down each branch to the forest floor until it resembles a weeping willow of success.
2. Do the right stuff. Simply, I was training wrong for me. Someone got me in line, and I took off.
3. I guess that’s it!
Consistently do the right thing, and you will succeed. Does it get much simpler than that? Does anyone else have any similar stories of consistently doing the right thing and succeeding?
About the author
Chris Rombola
Chris is the owner of Fit House. He's run the training departments at several commercial gyms, and after years of seeing how awful those environments were for his clients, he opened his own studio. He is devoted to getting people strong, lean, and healthy.
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