My Way, Not The Way
These are the strategies and motivations that I used in college to lose weight; a lot of weight. While the techniques and motivations are unique to me, there are no doubt, many golden nuggets of information for you to pull and out to use in your life. This is how a fat college kid became lean. This is not a generic blueprint on how to exercise and eat right, but rather shows the evolution of how I did it.
The Kick in the Ass
I was sitting in the DMV in Harrisonburg, VA anxious as hell. I was only getting my driver’s license renewed, but that’s not where my anxiety was coming from. Instead, I had to get a new driver’s license picture that day. My number was called. I sat in the chair to get my picture taken and I distinctly remember trying to stick my face out in front of my body as much as I could. It was a feeble and unsuccessful attempt at trying to hide my double chin.
In life, we have several defining moments. There is the life before the moment and there’s life after the moment. When my license was ready and I saw that picture; that became one of my defining moments. That moment changed the trajectory of my life. That day I began the transformation from being the fat party animal to the lean health conscious person I am today. This was by no means the first time I wanted to lose weight, but it was just the moment where I put my foot down and truly decided to stop fucking around.
My Motivation
I was a junior at James Madison University. My life revolved around bong hits, drinking to the point of blacking out and eating whatever I felt like. I was 20 years old and with 1 to 2 years left in college, my window of opportunity to lose my virginity in the best environment was closing quickly. Early on, this was my primary motivation for losing weight: to get laid.
The Recumbent Bike
In the start, I didn’t know much at all about fitness, health or nutrition. In fact, the only thing I really knew was that in order to lose weight you need to diet and exercise so thats where I started. On most days I would go to UREC, the on campus fitness facility, and ride the recumbent bike for about 20 minutes. I enjoyed it. The bike had a back rest and I could read a magazine or people watch. I usually finished the bike workout with a good sweat and realized it felt fuckin good to workout.
At the same time, I tried to cut back on late night meals. I kept this routine of riding the bike for 20 minutes and cutting back my late night eating for about 2 weeks before I noticed that my 20 minute bike ride didn’t seem as hard to do as it used to be. I started alternating variables such as the length of time on the bike and/or intensity. I started doing some of the preset programs on the bike too. After a few weeks, people started to notice that I was losing weight. When I got a compliment, it only intensified my desire to work harder and lose more.
Steel Reserve
The next thing I had to figure out was how I could keep losing weight despite my heavy keg beer drinking. Beer added a ton of extra calories and my mentality, at the time, wondered how I could cut back on the amount of beer I was drinking and still get fucked up. I decided to give up keg beer and switch to drinking 40 oz of Steel Reserve Malt Liquor. I discovered that if I drank 2 of these, I would be FUBAR. Steel Reserve was as effective as drinking keg beer all night but instead of drinking 15-20 16oz cups (240oz-320oz) of beer, I was getting nearly the same effect with 80oz of malt liquor. And it worked! I was able to cut back on the amount of beer I was drinking and the weight continued to gradually come off.
Summer Job #1
When school was out for summer after my junior year, I was feeling pretty good with my progress. If you saw me for the first you would still see a fat kid, but I was less fat and those that knew what I looked like a year prior could see the difference. Going back home to Va Beach that summer, I vowed to continue my progress. I got a job at a garden center. The position would have me working outside in the heat of summer with lots of manual labor. This would help me check two boxes:
1. Sweat off the pounds and
2. Get a nice tan
I worked 8-4 most days and went to the Great Neck Recreation Center after work to get on the recumbent bike. This was also in 2003/2004 era where Hydroxycut with Ephedra was still legal. I would pop 1 or 2 of those pills and and sweat my ass off on that bike. That summer all I did was go to work, go to the rec center and repeat. I didn’t drink much alcohol that summer and the weight loss still wasn’t amazing; but it was steady.
1st Senior Year at JMU
Entering JMU that fall I had a different perspective of things. I had a good idea of my fitness and nutrition routine, but I also knew I would have to increase the intensity of my workouts since I was going to be drinking hard again. As for nutrition, my knowledge was still very limited and I stuck to not eating late night and trying to avoid fast food. For my meals, I went to dining cafeteria a lot and loaded up on Tuna Salad and not much else. I didn’t know much about what I was doing at the time, but in hindsight I was reducing my sugar intake but cutting carbs. If you don’t already know, I am now very dialed in on what affect carbs have. Click here to read my post about cutting body fat if you want to learn more. And in case you are wondering, I was still a virgin and time was ticking. The recumbent bike was getting boring and I needed to lose weight fast.
The Next Defining Moment
I had always heard that running is one of the best forms of exercise. Growing up I hated running. I couldn’t stand the 1 mile run in PE. I hated running at Fork Union Military Academy (where I went to high school). At Fork Union, running was one of the things the fat kids did as punishment. I couldn’t picture a worse form of torture then running laps on a track for 30 minutes.
But, the situation had changed. I was 21, in college and a virgin. Desperate times call for desperate measures. One day at UREC instead of riding the bike I headed up the indoor track. I had a Walkman and was still wearing the boots I wore all summer working at the plant nursery. Looking back, I can’t recall how far I ran that day, but what I do remember was that it didn’t feel terrible; I didn’t hate it! I went back the following day and the day after and the day after, etc. From that point on I became a runner.
It was a huge defining moment for me. After sticking with this new habit for 2 weeks, the weight began falling off me like crazy. People I knew and people I barely knew were noticing my weight loss and giving me compliments. That added fuel to the fire. I became a running machine. I learned about proper foot wear, form and stretching. I fought through it all, learned what I had to do to overcome these obstacles and kept going.
Here I am in 2021, 16 years later and running is one of my favorite and most therapeutic things to do.
V Card Taken
I was really starting to lose weight and lean out and was really starting to feel myself. I never before saw myself as a handsome guy, but I started seeing the potential. That’s when I met her. I don’t recall how we met, but I think we had a history class together. We ran into each other one night at a party and hit it off. She took me back to her dorm room and the rest is history. The experience wasn’t all that memorable but it made me even hungrier for improvement. This getting in shape thing wasn’t so bad. Since starting to exercise and eat healthy, I had lost weight, gained confidence and gotten laid.
Summer Before Final Senior Year
That summer I had the same plan. I was going to double down on my weight loss. Rather than get a job at the nursery again, I got a job with Deer Ridge Landscaping. They had taken an ad out in the paper and the number was called. Jerry was the owner and I explained to him that I was a college kid home on summer break and was looking for a job. He hired me and I spent that summer laying sod and doing flower bed installs. It was the toughest work I have ever done. I burned a metric shit ton of calories everyday. For lunch, I ate a home made sandwich everyday while the other guys went to McDonals or Taco Bell. I snacked on nuts while everyone else went to 7-11 for Big Gulps and hot dogs. I was in the zone of losing this weight and nothing would stop me.
When I got home from a long day in the sun doing manual labor, I yearned for my run. I couldn’t wait to put on my earphones and got lost in my run for a while. My mom was also trying to lose weight and we worked together putting together healthy meals for dinner.
My Final Year at JMU
When I arrived on campus that fall, I was nearly unrecognizable. I came back to JMU a few weeks early and was finished up a workout at UREC when I saw one of my fraternity brothers working out. I had just finished my run and approached him. He barely recognized me. When he finally did, he stopped me mid sentence and said “What the fuck have you been doing?” This reaction made me so proud that I decided to go back upstairs and bang out another lap.
I wasn’t just a fat guy losing weight, I was now one of leanest guys in my fraternity, in my circle of friends, and in any of my classes. That year I lived in one of the off campus frat houses. I was confident, fit, and I had only a few months of college left. My final year at JMU was the best time of my life.
Summary
So if you want to lose weight, all you have to do it start. Start walking, start eating less sugar than you did yesterday and start your new habit. Habits have a way of being exponential. A small habit you start today will lead to something bigger and greater down the road if you just stick with it. My habit on the bike led to multiple other healthy habits that I still practice and build on today. I started using the recumbent bike and did that for year before attempting to run and now I can say that I’ve run 2 marathons and a handful of half marathons. Where you start is not where you’ll finish.
