Enjoy the Beefcake. The First One's Free

So I’ve debated weather to do post this for awhile now and figured that I should just go for it. We are all friends here, right? OK, whatever.

So the masses of you that read this blog regularly have probably been wondering, maybe even aloud and daily, “Mat just isn’t posting as often as he used to. I hope he’s OK. Maybe he’s busy doing something?” Yes, the truth is that I have been keeping myself very busy with two rather large projects.

One is an ongoing big, big project of remodeling the house. I’ve finished the living room and am now in the dining room prepping, painting, re-sheetrocking and replastering. This is gonna go on for awhile but I have just about finished the first Living Room post and photos. Stay tuned and curious.

The other big project is something that I’ve been putting off for sometime as well, like for 20 + years. I still remember the days of chugging a Coke and having a Butterfinger Big Bar for breakfast, thinking, “Someday I’m going to exercise and eat right… but not today. Later.” Well later finally hit me as I got so sick and tired of looking at my saggy white ass and being tired all the time. I realized it wasn’t going to fix itself so I needed to do something about it.
That was the hard part, what to do. I half assed a plan and gave it a good shot about five years ago. I told myself that I would give it 3 months of working out and eating well and see what happened. It went OK but I stopped seeing results after about a month and gave it up after three. In retrospect it was clear that I had plateau’d and needed some help to get past it. Anyway, frustrated I lapsed back into a not horrible diet and no exercise (this is supposed to be a before photo but I'm too embarrassed to post the real one).


Flash forward to almost three months ago. Starting the new job recently gave me a fresh start on things and I figured I’d throw getting healthy into the mix as long as I was changing everything else I was doing anyway. I was talking to a co-worker about it and he said, guardedly, that he had felt the same way a few years ago and bought into this infomercial DVD work out plan. He warned me it seemed TOTALLY cheesy but I had to trust him. He repeated this several times so I knew it must be really bad. Well, it did, in fact the kind of thing that I, and most of you, spend our entire life laughing at and avoiding. It’s called Power 90. I decided to go for it anyway. Not much to lose.

OK, all that said, I feel like I need to post some photos cause it actually did work. It isn’t anything really unique or groundbreaking but it gave me the structure that I needed to get moving. Basically work out for 90 days, 6 days a week, for 30 to 50 minutes a day (alternating cardio and lifting). Also eat good food 5 times a day (no white anything – bread, sugar, cream…) lots of vegetables, no processed fast food and lean meats. The results are that I’m down to 165 from 182.5 in 73 days. I missed 2 days and had a couple of meals I shouldn’t have but in general stuck with the plan about 98% of the time (total guess). I’ve got tons of energy and am in the best shape of my life. It feels great but kind of weird when I look at myself because it has been so dramatic and so quick. I’ve still got 2 weeks to go and am having trouble sticking with it cause I feel like I’m where I want to be. So it makes me realize that I’ve got to figure out a new life that incorporates a way of living that supports this lifestyle to make it really stick. Old habits die hard for sure. I’ve got 40 years of them to work through but this was the first and maybe the hardest step. Enjoy the beefcake!