I’m specifically asking about healthy wage, sweat coin, and achievement. All promise to pay you for activity and weight loss.
Feel free to comment and discuss any fitness app you’ve had experience with in the past.
Gotta keep this short, as I’m typing this from my iPhone before work. I appreciate anyone who decides to read, but please understand that I am typing this for me. This post is an affirmation of my goal, and I am stating the facts:
Fact 1- I started going hard at it 6 months ago. I was also going hard at it a year ago. I went hard at it 3 years ago. I did even better, than those other times, 5 years ago. My continual issue has been discipline and consistency. There are huge gaps, between each attempt at fitness, where I have gotten more out of shape, more gross, more overweight, unhealthier, more unfocused, lazier, and more depressed.
Fact 2- I am the heaviest I have ever been at this point in my life. I weighed myself in at 268 lbs.
Fact 3- I have a long ways to go and I can’t trust every number I see. My scale is basically telling me, “yeah, you’re overweight but look at your body fat %. Only 20%.” The problem is that my scale is wrong and I shouldn’t believe that number. I have since taken body measurements with tape and a caliper and my body fat % is typically close to 30% when I average between my 3 results. Even that may be a low ball number.
Let’s place these facts together, shall we?
I’ve gotten out of shape because I find myself wanting to believe I don’t have a problem. I have trusted obviously faulty numbers regarding my body fat %. I’ve believed “that Three Musketeers won’t be that bad”. I’ve been living day to day without a routine and have had little to no discipline. I’ve made a victim of myself and spiraled out of control.
Today, I tell myself…. I am taking control of my life back. I will develop more discipline. Over the past week, I’ve begun by developing a routine. I now have a bed time, and a time to wake up. When I wake up, I eat breakfast and work out. Then I get ready and often have time to relax before work since I work second shift.
This is going very well so far and I am feeling like I have a lot more energy. I will strive to do more, and I will succeed. I want to, no…. I will be the best version of myself.
Disgusted that I’ve let it get this far out of control, but again… I will take control. I can do it, and I will do it.
It’s been two years!
I’ve only worked out off and on in this timeframe. I definitely haven’t been blogging a lot. I had the domain maxedoutmuscles.co for a while through bluehost.
Once my domain expired I opted to go .com through WordPress and start the blog back up. I am missing a few posts I made on the bluehost site, but that’s ok. As I said, these things were few and far between.
I would like to introduce myself to anyone new to maxedoutmuscles. My name is Christian Boyles, I am 23 years old. I work at a factory as a supervisor, and in my off time I love to work out. My goal is to ultimately own my own gym, a MaxedOutMuscles fitness center(or maybe named something else), and dedicate my life to fitness.
I will be making an effort to post here at least three times a week. Lots of site changes are going to be made for a better viewing experience. Welcome to my page and feel free to read from any of the hundreds of posts that I have available from 2015.
Yesterday I stated that there is never a bad time period in your life for lifting. When I say that, I don’t mean you can’t take an occasional day off. I am just saying that you should meet all of your challenges with a fight. Have a drive for success and greatness, and you will be there someday.
You will be great.
However, you have to work for it! In fact, no matter what you want to “be” in life you will have to work for it. If you put in the work, it will be worth it. Set your sights high and work hard! So in respects to everyone, including non-lifters, this applies to all of us. Here’s some examples:
Notice that those three things are completely unrelated! But it’s all relevant to the point that you will have to work hard and practice to be the best!
I come to this point that hard work is the one of the most important things(if not the most) and I want to leave you with another quote by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
A lot of the posts on my site have been about passion. Passion is incredibly important because, when you love something, you will probably work harder on it.
While passion is so important, there is really a lot more to succeeding than having passion. With passion, you’ll need to follow through on your dreams and work hard. Then you’ll have to know how to reveive and share that passion and hard work to others.
I was watching this video from Elliott Hulse on passion and he answered a question titled “Worthless Passion”. As he stated in the video below, Obama isn’t handing out passion checks so we have to work hard to make our dreams happen. Feel free to watch his video and join the conversation in the comments below.
What I noticed right away is how this video impacted me today.
…and just today!
I have been watching his “Yo Elliott!” series for a year now and when he posted this it didn’t impact me. But now, I’ve been pursuing my own passion and sharing with you so I understand.
So on top of the message he made clear in his video, I noticed that it is so cool that he walks the walk. And I’ve walked the walk also! I’m going to stop before my arm gets tired patting myself on the back. 🙂
Metaphorically, Think about the garden Elliott talked about. If you at least leave something for the world, you’ve been successful. I just noticed that he has hundreds of videos up and that in a sense is his garden. You can pick what video(his work) you need in a specific moment for advice, and then another video when you’ve grown past needing help with the same subject.
So I will continue to try and emulate that mentality. I will continue to write new articles and share content with you so that I can be of some service. Maybe the things I post today or tomorrow won’t be helpful, but someday you may see the exact article in a related search bar and it may be more relevant to your current situation.
So in conclusion I want to ask you a question:
What are you doing to pursue your passion? Also, are you helping others?
..and since this is so relevant today,
“Life’s a garden. Dig it,” –Joe Dirt
As I mentioned in an earlier post, SMART goals are used by businesses and many professionals in achieving whatever goal they have set for themselves. SMART can be used for any goal ranging from fitness to business, and it works well for your accomplishments. Today, I wanted to focus on something very specific for a post to you but also because that is the first thing you have to do when setting SMART goals. Without further ado, a SMART goal is this:
And today I want to talk about eating healthier to become a healthier, happier version of yourself!
become a healthier, happier version of yourself!
I don’t often hold the idea that you “are what you eat” in a physical sense but I do believe that if you eat awful food all the time you will feel a lot worse than if you eat clean. With that being said, it’s best to set these SMART goals now so you can enjoy the benefits of clean eating as soon as possible.
First, you will want to map it out like I did above…I will do this again in actual terms of eating healthier and some of you who enjoy fast food will be able to use my SMART goal to become healthier.
Goal: No longer eat fast food and no delivery.
I encourage you to set SMART goals for yourself and achieve them! You may not struggle with the example I listed above, but you can always find a new SMART goal to create that could help you boost your success rate by 100%!
Just as Christian Bale left Gotham to undergo serious soul searching and to receive training from Liam Nielson, I have to ditch the hit TV show Gotham to work out more effectively and commit to my own journey.
I think that sometimes we become so wrapped up in fantasy that we don’t live out our lives. It can be fantasy, or some idealistic picture you have in your mind. But the way to make things happen is to ditch the fantasy and make reality happen.
Make reality happen!
I’m not saying you should fight crackheads with your underwear over your pants, but I do think you could ditch the remote and pick up a dumbbell!
Image courtesy of joyreactor.cc
Or don’t pick up a dumbbell, but do something. Do something that will ultimately strengthen you and prove resourceful to your own Hero’s Journey.
To those of you who don’t know, The Hero’s Journey is your own call to adventure. It is an outline made of all heroic narratives, like BATMAN!, by Joseph Cambbell. If you’d like to read up on the Hero’s Journey, I found a great webpage on it here.
There is a lot of talk in the fitness world regarding weight training vs cardio, diet vs exercise, and paleo vs vegan!
All of this crazy talk about which side of every fitness debate you should choose, but you should probably try to choose…
All of the above!
Weight Training or Cardio
Weight training is an excellent way to increase strength and can be used for hypertrophy. By lifting heavy weights and working out consistently over a period of time, you will achieve great results. Weight training has also been proven to actually strengthen your structural integrity and protect your joints, as long as you are lifting with proper form.
Cardio is an excellent way to increase endurance and burn fat. By running or walking, or riding a bike consistently over a period of time, you will achieve great results. I’ve also, personally, noticed that when I go for a run and do some cardio I manage to work out a lot of the stress I have. It seems that we hold a lot of tension in our bodies and some intense cardio like running could be just what you need to go the extra mile(see what I did there?).
Basically, if you choose to do both for a period of time you can be a strong person with nice, tone muscles with barely any fat and you can be as calm as can be! What’s not to love about that? I notice when I’m just lifting weights, I’m often angrier and it isn’t enough activity to keep me from gaining fat at any amount of calories. If I simply rely on cardio, I become fairly skinny and in the past it caused my joints to suffer. Here’s a picture of me running cross country my junior year:
Running from all the gains I didn’t have 😉
Now we have another end of the spectrum
Diet VERSUS Exercise
Should I do a lot of exercise and train frequently or should I just drop my calories below my basal metabolic rate(BMR) and wait patiently for the fat to fall off?
You should do both! Some of us are just genetically wired for losing weight to be difficult. I know that I put on weight somewhat easily. If you drop your calories a little bit, and add some form of exercise you will lose weight and you will lose it faster. I also mentioned earlier that I experienced cardio as something that was therapeutic for me in the sense that it reduced stress. Those benefits are also great and I think that having reduced stress due to some form of exercise will help you stay positive during all the trials and tribulations associated with losing fat.
Paleo vs Vegan
This one was more of a joke! (haha) Anyways, I don’t really see the need in following any kind of fad diet unless you really believe it has some sort of profound effect on you.
If you choose not to eat meat and dairy because of ethical or dietary reasons, go vegan and be happy! If you choose the exact opposite route and want to eat bacon and cheese, go ahead cavemen!
Do what makes you happy with yourself when it comes to dieting and do your research. If it’s anything extreme just make sure you follow a doctor’s advice and get your blood work done.
But with dieting, as well as the rest of this post, just find balance. I don’t see the need to cut out anything I like as far as food goes, and neither should you. To join in on the conversation with dieting, click here.
Overall, find balance in your life with fitness and nutrition and you may become a happier, more healthy version of you.
JTC
Join The Conversation!
I want to know how you diet.
I have tried many diets on my own and experimented with my calories and macros to see what works for me, and I believe I found what works! I, personally, can eat about 2300 to 2500 calories a day and still lose fat as long as I am slightly active. I eat a high amount of protein in my diet with fat as a byproduct and I strategically place my carbs at the beginning of my day and after workouts.
When I border on eating too many calories or when I decide to take a cheat day, I simply add more cardio to burn the calories that I added.
Please let me know in the comment section down below what you do! I want to hear everyone’s view on diet and exercise, and how you have found what works best for you!
Thanks,
Christian!
Sometimes you may cheat on your diet or you may be struggling to lose some extra weight, so cardio is a great method to burn off extra calories and burn fat!
A lot of people in the fitness industry have fear mongered and made people fear that they would lose muscle if they did a lot of cardio.
and that just isn’t true! Here is a video by Elliott Hulse explaining why cardio burning muscle is a complete myth!
