So my family went home Tuesday night and yesterday I finally returned to clean eating, six meals a day.

I've decided to bump my calories up from 2000 to 2300 for a while to see if that helps my fat loss. It seems counterintuitive but I keep reading people on this forum and others insist that cutting too low is bad.

Tonight I will lift again after not lifting last Thursday, Sunday or Tuesday. I am hoping the extra calories and rest will be evident tonight at the gym. I'm going to take along my Darden HIT book as well to plan out my new workout regime.

This morning I weight in at 189.5. Two days ago I was at 193.5. Mostly water weight I assume. I figure in another day or two I'll be back in the 187 range and then I'll give this new increased caloric intake a few weeks to see if anything is different.

If nothing changes I'm going to look at possibly calorie and/or carb cycling.

I suppose if all else fails I'll have to go back to doing cardio but given that I already lift three days a week it's hard to justify more time away from my family.

I've also been reading some very interesting articles about training to failure and how it isn't really necessary. This is confusing as hell given my recent reading of Darden and other HIT advocates.

Well, I guess that's it. Back to business!

On Tuesday I had a great workout. In addition to my normal single set to "failure", I've been doing breakdown sets and negatives to pound my muscles as hard as I can, and take them as close to true failure as I can get.

I like it when I have trouble picking up my notepad and pen from the floor after lifting because my arms and hands won't move exactly how I want them to. Seems a good indicator of a good lift

I continue to make progress on the assisted chin up and on the bicep curl, but others like the overhead press are just not progressing at all. In fact I think next time I am going to move down in weight and really work hard on form for that particular lift.

I've also been incorporating some combination lifts into my routine, like starting with leg extensions followed immediately by leg press. That's a good bit of pain right there!

My family is coming to visit this weekend for my oldest son's second birthday so I won't be lifting tonight or Sunday, but I figure it's a good chance to make sure I'm fully recovered and to refeed a bit by eating more than my usual 2000 calorie diet. I will be going out to eat a few times but I'll try to stick with healthy food. Of course after they're gone it's back to business with lifting next Tuesday and my usual dietary regime.

I continue to procrastinate but soon, very soon I am going to change up my entire workout and follow the beginner's routine laid out in Darden's "The New High Intensity Training".

I guess that's about it.. I probably won't update again until next week. And I'm still planning to post pictures, I promise!

Until next time.. work hard!

I weighed in this morning at 187.2 so I am losing weight but it's still coming off very slowly.

The Omron body fat analyzer I have says my body fat is between 15 and 16 percent. A few weeks ago it was reading 17% so who knows if that means anything.

I am going to get my VO2 max and hydrostatic weighing done on June 30th so I am looking forward to that. I will know *exactly* what my true BF% is! It will be interesting to compare it to the Omron device, and to gauge the accuracy of calipers when I buy them.

I had a pretty good workout last night, though gains are still coming very slowly. I guess it's because I'm eating at a caloric deficit. I'm making pretty good progress at the assisted chin up and the bicep curl but I cannot seem to improve at all on the overhead press.

I still plan to post pictures but I'm so busy it's hard to find time.

Until next time!

Hi everyone! My name is Barry. I am a 30 year old software developer living with my wife and two sons (ages 2 and 5 weeks) in Maple Grove, a suburb of Minneapolis. I'm originally from Oklahoma City and I moved to Minnesota in 2000 after graduating from Oklahoma State with a B.S. in computer science.

After going through a chubby phase as a pre-teen, I thinned out and remained 6'1" and under 165 through most of high school. After I started college, I added the "freshman fifteen", and then later the lesser known "senior twenty" as I was preparing for finals and eating plates of late night nachos like they were going out of style. By the end of my college career I was up to 205, and in the years following my weight crept up slightly to 210.

I lifted weights some in high school when I took a weight lifting class, and then a little on my own in college, mainly because lots of hot girls also worked out in the campus gym. Beyond that I have never been very physically fit, and due to my interest in computers I've spent many, many hours moving nothing but my fingers and eyeballs.

Fast forward to 2005. I went for my first visit to a new dentist for a routine cleaning. They asked if I had any medical conditions, and fortunately, I suppose, I said that I was diagnosed with a heart murmur as a teenager. They agreed to do the cleaning but said that before my next appointment I would need to get a letter from a doctor stating that it was okay to clean my teeth. Apparently, bacteria dislodged during a dental cleaning can cause some sort of complication with the heart if there are problems with it such as a heart murmur. I went to the doctor for a full physical, including an EKG. The doctor said they saw an abnormality, and I was referred to a cardiologist for a full echocardiogram. A few hundred dollars later I got the results of the echocardiogram and they told me that I was fine. The heart murmur was the result of a "slight curvature" of the mitral valve and that, save for any heart problems, would never pose a problem for me. Well, that was the rub. See, I had been diagnosed in the physical as "pre-hypertensive". That's not a disease, but rather a designation meaning that unless I made some changes to my lifestyle I would eventually become hypertensive. Combine high blood pressure with the slight curvature in the mitral valve, and we're talking major problems. An enlarged heart would exacerbate the curvature eventually possibly allowing blood to flow the wrong way in my heart, and heading me on the path to an early grave. At first I thought I would try 'water pills' to thin my blood and lower my blood pressure. That didn't work. Then I tried taking some standard over the counter vitamins and supplements that were supposed to help. Again, nothing.

In June of '05, my first son was born. I was a new dad, under stress and out of shape and it was effecting my temper with my wife. Not good. I decided we both needed to join a gym and get fit so we joined the local Snap Fitness and I have been going ever since. At first I went twice a week and did cardio on the eliptical. Eventually I felt like I wasn't getting enough so I started going three times a week. All the while I was increasing the intensity/resistance of the workouts. After a year that was not enough so I was then going four times a week. By this time my stress level was way down, I had lots of energy, and my mood was positive almost all the time. Not only that but my face had slimmed down. The fat on my chin was gone. I weighed about 195, and I wasn't even watching what I ate. Four times a week of fairly intense cardio was enough to drop my weight by 15 lbs!

Then my life of fitness took an unexpected turn the day I was browsing the Digg.com website and came across a post about John Stone's amazing transformation. I couldn't believe it! I had no idea anyone could make those sorts of changes in so little time. I did some digging and after finding his website and seeing what it took thought to myself that I could never do that. However it kept nagging me in the back of my mind for a few weeks. Eventually I decided to call the owner of my gym and get a tour of the machines and free weights. He gave me quite a lot of good information and introduced me to the concept of training to failure.

So about a month ago, I started lifting weights and doing research. I found out about High Intensity Training and began reading Ellington Darden as well as some others like Poliquin and McRobert.

I've already noticed subtle changes in my physique and I am looking forward to starting Darden's HIT program outlined in his book "The New HIT".

Since I began lifting my weight went down further. Today I weigh 187.6 lbs.

My goal is 165 lbs, although I think I should reformulate that in terms of body fat percentage. I'm just not sure what a good goal for body fat is.

I have been 'cutting' on a diet of 2000 calories for three weeks. The last two weeks the weight has come off very slowly, which I find frustrating.

Tonight I will post some photos of me from a couple of weeks ago. They're pretty embarrassing but I think they'll be great to look at a year from now when my physique is much better.

I will try to update this journal every week, but with two kids it can get a little nuts so I might not get to somtimes.

I look forward to sharing my progress with you.

Best Regards,
Barry