Yeah, I’m a fatty. Making matters worse, I’m a fatty with, like, zero muscle mass. Diets, 6 weeks hard in exercising programs, I’ve done it all in an effort to get more fit. The only that really kinda stuck was hiking. I LOVE hiking, and in the summer of 2021, while still living in Albuquerque, there was a stretch where I hiked literally every weekend. I loved loved LOVED it.
Then we moved to Iowa.
Winters in Iowa are brutally cold, summers are oppressively hot and humid, and spring brings the ticks out, so, aside from a brief couple-week period between the winter and the spring, the fall is really the only time to comfortably hike. Needless to say, my activity level has dropped drastically since we moved here. In fact, the best chances I have for hiking is when we’re traveling.
But what to do for the rest of the year?
At my heaviest, I weighed in at 420 lbs, many many moons ago. In 2014, at the age of 39, I head a heart attack. My labs were out of control, I had untreated sleep apnea, I was a mess.
Fast forward to 2019. I exited a supremely toxic relationship and decided to redo myself. I started seeing all my doctors regularly, went in for a sleep study, got on meds to control my blood pressure, cholesterol, and hyperthyroidism, and started the long, slow journey toward health.
Skipping ahead to 2024. Brandy got on Zepbound and quickly lost a good chunk of weight. A year later, I decided to follow her and got on the drug myself. Insurance is not paying for this med at all so we are paying $1,000 a month out of pocket for it.
But my Gawd, is it worth it. We’ve both lost a good chunk of weight. When I started on the med, in May of 2025, I weighed in at 369. My first weigh-in at the beginning of my re-composition on February 22, I weighed in at 333 so in nine months, I lost about 36 pounds. Not a bad start, but I am still woefully under-muscled.
So, I’ve decided to recomp – the process of losing fat and gaining muscle simultaneously. It’s a delicate balance of weight training, protein consumption and caloric deficit. It’s usually much easier to do one at a time, but I have a goal of getting as trim as possible before we leave for a trip to Portugal in June.
My goals are to lose body fat (getting under 300 lbs is my primary goal), primarily in my gut, while building up my shoulders and arms, tightening my chest and firming up my core. I know 15 weeks isn’t a great deal of time for all this, but I’m putting in the work to get as close as I can.
And it’s working! At my weigh-in this morning, I weighed in at 326, so seven pounds in the first week. I know it’s mostly water weight and that is going to slow over time, but it’s still encouraging to see.
Sundays will be devoted to recaps of the week prior, keeping myself accountable for showing up every day, whether it’s to lift, to walk, stay on nutrient targets, getting the sleep I need, all that good stuff.
My Routine
I’m on a very basic 3-day PPL (Push, Pull, Legs) routine for now. I’m lifting first thing in the morning, after my last efforts saw me lifting at lunch time in the middle of the day, so getting used to the time was paramount, then, after I’ve done it a few weeks, I will re-work the routine to work more focused muscle groups (like back, arms, shoulders, chest, legs, core) as opposed to “pushing muscles” and “pulling muscles”. I also plan on working some stretching, yoga and tai chi into the routine as well, but baby steps. Let’s get past week one first, eh?
Nutrition
With ChatGPT’s help, I have nutrition goals of at the absolute minimum, 1,900 calories per day, and 180 grams of protein per day (ideal is 2,100 – 2,400 calories, and 200 g+ of protein per day.) With a suppressed appetite while on Zepbound, consuming that much, especially early in the week after shot day, is exceedingly difficult. On a normal Monday, the day after my shots, I was comfortably consuming fewer than 1,000 calories a day. Stuffing myself with nearly twice that is hard, but I’ll get through it.
So, follow along, won’t you, as I do my best to reach this goal.