My Embarrassing but Powerful Reason Why

So what’s my Powerful Reason Why (PRW)?

Short Answer:

•  I will fulfill my old dream by having a body like Brad Pitt in Fight Club
•  I will live a life full of excitement and outdoor/sporting activities
•  I will be fit and healthy for the rest of my long life, and never look back
•  I will take control of my habits and my choices
•  I will be an inspiration and motivator for my friends and family
•  I will proof to myself that I can walk the walk, not just talk the talk
•  I will be above average
•  I will impress a few “old friends”
•  And finally, and maybe most of all, because it feels GREAT.

Detailed Answer:
(in case you have a slow day)

Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden (Soap Salesman)

Before I discovered the healthy lifestyle I am now enjoying, I’ve been doing nothing all my life. We all know the story, when you are young you don’t really have to count calories, and even without (planned) sports we are a lot more active in the first 30 years of our lifetime. But then things start to change when you get older. With 30 your metabolism slows down they say, when you quit smoking you gain 10 more kilo they say, and some of us are just overweight because it’s in our genes. Nowadays I know better.

I’ve been considerably fit and healthy for the first 25 years of my life, without doing any planned sports. Without really realizing, my primary means of transportation at that time kept me healthy (my feet and my bicycle). Occasionally inline skating or other activities such as swimming in the local lakes to cool down, and of course rushing out for the weekends and for friends, did their share in keeping me fit too. I probably didn’t even have the time and money at that time to overeat in a way to get really fat.

Don’t understand me wrong, doing nothing didn’t really result in an athletic body during my youth. I was rather small, but I looked kind of ripped. Too ripped for my taste in fact. I thought I also had it in my genes to be thin, my grandfather used to be lean just like me.

My (almost) forgotten Dream

Being everything else but strong, I had a dream deep inside of me. I wanted to be strong, athletic, healthy, and most of all cool. I was probably not the only kid with that dream. In fact, I wanted to look like one of these guys in the movies. I don’t even remember any specific person, but it wasn’t the bulky type like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone. I think it was more one of these guys that the girls liked. Tom Cruise maybe, or even something more embarrassing like the actors in Beverly Hills 90210 or Baywatch (which is according to the Guinness Book of World Records the most watched TV show in the world of all time, with over 1.1 billion viewers). Sounds pretty lame, huh? Well, those were the days, and to my defense I vaguely even remember the details. But I know that in my dream there was me, my dream body, and me running along a beach at a dream location. Although I had times when I definitely planned to act on that dream, I never made a move. Ever.

Fast forward between 10 to 15 years and I was sitting on the other end of the world in the big city, on my big sofa with a big TV, a job that made me sit behind a desk all day long. I now had enough money to eat at restaurants and shop at supermarkets every day of the week (the invention of the Internet may have also played a major role, I was a computer geek from very early age). With 30 I was further away from my dream than I could ever imagine and in desperate need to change my health and reverse the damage that I had done.

That’s when my journey to fat loss began. To summarize 24 months into one paragraph of text, let me just say that I started running and bought myself a stationary bike for my living room. I also gave up a couple of times, and was shut down by injuries and late nights at the office, and often pure laziness or lack of results or ways to track those results. I also tried to eat healthy and less food, but you know how that goes. It just didn’t seem to work. I lost some weight, gained back some weight, tried a few other things, and somehow didn’t really succeed and probably thought it was all due to my genes. Things weren’t that clear during those years. Only in 2007 I found the final answer in Tom Venuto’s Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle (BFFM) book.

Strangely enough, during all those years, my subconscious still saw myself in the good old shape I used to be years earlier. Of course I knew that this was not true, but my only explanation is that it may be “hope” that makes us human beings function like we do. How else could it be that males usually tend to identify themselves (subconsciously) with the male hero of a movie? Put two persons in the movie, one good looking popular guy and a big one. Now who do you think will 99% of the audience identify themselves with, even if they more look like the other one in reality?

Who doesn’t want Brad Pitt’s Body?

The new hero is Brad Pitt nowadays. According to fitness trainers all around the world, most of their male clients want to look like Brad Pitt and I am no exception to the rule. This may be a result of media influence or lack of ingenuity, but there you have it it’s out.

Here is something to think about Brad Pitt or all other super stars. They are usually not magically gifted with the greatest genes on earth and get born the way they are. They have to work for it as hard as anybody else. While I admit that a look at their bank account might make it a bit easier for them, they face the same challenges we do (and a few more) every day, in and out of the gym. And these guys (and that’s something I never thought about) actually have to undergo physique transformations for almost every single role they take. Brad Pitt he was slim and ripped in Fight Club, much bigger in the later movie Troy, then ripped again in the Ocean 11 movies or Mr. & Mrs. Smith (click here for an article on this topic).

Will Smith is another example. In Ali he was huge like a boxer, in I, Robot or I am Legend he was how I would want to look like. Click here for an article on his physique transformations.

An example of Brad Pitt

Outdoor Activities/Sporting Activities

Where I grew up Austria, lots of people are active by nature. In that part of the world it is actually difficult not to be part of local sports teams such as soccer, skiers, judokas, runners, tennis clubs or the schools sports teams. There are also plenty of other ways to spend your time in a healthy way (Friends of Nature, Hiking Groups, Lifeguards, Local Fire Fighters, etc), and membership to those establishments usually comes during early age, free of charge and automatically because most of your friends are doing it one way or another. But I somehow managed to evade all this. I liked hanging around on my BMX bike as a kid, doing my own stuff with my friends. I’ve tried a few things occasionally, and I joined the Judo club, skiing club, table tennis club, and even the soccer club for a while. But I didn’t stick with anything and continued all my life to talk about all the great things I _could_ do from my sofa with my lazy friends. When at home we preferred computers and various other forms of entertainment, and when we were out we preferred clubs during the night and to chill during the days.

As we grew older, we spoke about how cool it would be to go Bungee Jumping (available from one of our high bridges in the Alps), Rafting (happening basically “downstairs” in one of the many streams), Mountain Biking (you can do it anywhere), Snowboarding (did I say Alps?), paragliding, water skiing or and lots of other great things. All these things, and lots more, were available to us for little or no money. But when it came to going on one of those mountains, we preferred to use the cable car of course. It was all just talk the talk on the sofa, nothing else. Only when I lived in the big city for a couple of years I realized how much I missed physical activity.

The future is Fit and Healthy

It was one of those days when I was energy-laden enough to walk up a mountain instead of using the cable car. What would nowadays take me 30 minutes and I would consider a walk in the park, took me almost two hours. And to make things even worse, I had to stop several times for a smoke. I regretted that I didn’t choose the cable car up so that I could walk down instead of up. That was one of those moments where I saw how unfit I really was. I believe that was somewhere between 2005 and 2006. I was not only in the worst shape of my life, I also carried around a 20kg spare tire with me.

It might have been after this experience that I started to run, but I don’t remember the exact time anymore. I bought one of these Adidas heart rate monitors and tried to figure out how I am supposed to run using a beginners book. When my heard rate hit almost 200 a couple of times, by running not even 3 laps in the stadium, I thought something was wrong with my heart rate monitor watch. It was those 3 laps I did for almost a year, I simply couldn’t break through the 4th or 5th lap, until one day I gave up and running was behind me (for a while). I basically blamed a frequent right knee pain that would hit me after running (I had a knee surgery many moons ago).

But even at non-sport related events I had my problems with my body. I remember how uncomfortable it suddenly felt to fasten my shoes. Getting down there, with that belly in front of me, was a killer (I kid you not). Then I remember my wife’s birthday in 2006, when we planned a picnic in the park with friends. We had blankets and lots of food, but you cannot imagine how uncomfortable it was to sit on the floor. I was just too unfit for such kind of “tricks” and had to change my position every other minute.

I was also plagued by lots of health problems at that time. My immune system was very weak and my back and various other pains (from sitting 18h per day) were killing me. If I just stayed one second in one of these infamous air-conditions in Hong Kong (my new home), I had a cold not more than five minutes later. And these damn things were everywhere.

And then there was the fact that I didn’t like myself anymore. When I looked at the mirror, I didn’t like what I saw. I couldn’t wear the clothes that I wanted and started to feel depressed about my health situation and my look. What I saw was actually how I never wanted to be, which was reflected in my mood. And that’s something I will never go back to.

My resting heart rate nowadays is below 50, I’ve never been sick since I started a healthy lifestyle, and even all these (freezing cold) air conditions of Hong Kong won’t harm me anymore. I simply feel great after so many years of misery.

People around me have of course noticed the changes I went through. Some react very strange to my physique transformation, but these are the Energy Vampires as Adam Waters would put it. To most people who care about me, I believe I am an inspiration and maybe one day it will help them to take control of their lives. Maybe I already did, who knows. It’s definitely a great feeling to me when I meet some of my old friends, basically doing exactly the same they did 10 or 15 years ago. It’s also those moments when it becomes apparent that doing all this replaced quite a few old (unhealthy) habits from my past.

A Healthy Mind in a Healthy Body

This is what one of my teachers used to tell me. It is a is a famous Latin quotation (Mens sana in corpore sano) and the phrase is part of the author’s answer to the question of what people should desire in life. I may have rediscovered this old school motto with my new lifestyle. I am not exactly sure what’s the driving force, but it feels great to keep moving. Challenge may be the right word.