The Fiat 500 and his journal of training and food been training for 3-4 months now. currently on an emergency mini-cut for 5 weeks before a beach holiday. it caught me in the early stages of a bulk due to being booked at quite short notice.
cue much cardio and as good a diet as humanly possible (well, at least for 5 days/week).
i hope you enjoy my journal - here is something i recently wrote about why i like to train/eat right.
why i think i like training and stuff
by simon r porter (25) intro there are obviously a number of factors which contribute to an individual's pursuit of, and involvement in, any particular activity. IMO (which has been hastily thought through) there are a readily identifiable traits/characteristics which may draw people to the combination of weight training and diet control that i suppose cannot be referred to in any other way than bodybuilding. such characteristics may be: dissatisfaction with physical appearance, a preference for discipline and routine, a propensity for self-criticism and perfectionism, a naturally competitive nature, a desire to distance one's self from past failures/indescretions (regarding food or otherwise), a wish to exert control on one's life generally. These may all be linked in some way to eachother and I am certain that one of the above will often play a role in a bodybuilder's motivation whether they be professional of purely recreational.
I am not a bodybuilder, I believe a moniker (sp.?) like that must be earned through years of sustained training, learning and application reaping results. Perhaps the best way to describe myself, as relative hereto, would be someone who enjoys practicing and learning about weight training and nutrition.
nutrition although in bodybuilding nutrition seem to go hand in hand i believe that in my case they appeal to me for different reasons. i could definitely see how an individual could potentially enjoy one without being especially interested in the other.
i have been bulemic to a varying degree for about 4 years. i'm fairly typical in that it comes and goes in terms of both severity and the period which i (let?) myself be affected for. it's difficult, and irrelevant to my purpose here, to discussthe reasons for such tendancies so i shall move on.
in following an organised, nutritonally sound food regime i know my body is getting roughly what it needs when it needs it, helping to facilitate my goals in terms of my physique/appearance. it allows me to banish the chaotic roller coaster of bulemia: i gain satisfaction from displaying the sustained discipline required to eat x food at y time for z purpose; binging becomes less desireable as a result of this satisfaction. i don't like/seek to be mediocre or run-of-the-mill - my nutritional choice is, in main-stream terms, none of the above and said choice helps my body to escape that categorisation.
weight training as anyone who knows me (or has played me at any game ever) i am quietly, fiercely competitive. i hate to lose. not a natural sportsman i found an outlet in endurance sports (i trained, in an undeucated manner, up to twice per day) in my teens before socialising got in the way.
i turned to poker a few years ago and played fairly seriously and quite succesfully for that time. although i was successful in the long-run, poker can be a very cruel game, even to the very good player over a shorter period - a week, month, even a year or two. it is a luck game with an element of skill so such things are to be expected. and that is my problem with poker - over a period which feels very prolonged such as 2 months a player can be punished for playing well. for me this was unsatisfactory and frustrating - doing barely more than breaking even whilst playing better than your opponents is infuriating, the game becomes a pure, tough, fruitless grind.
so i quit in search of something more rewarding, an interest in which my efforts and desire to learn and improve would be reflected over shorter periods of time as well as longer ones. as a big fan of statistics i sought something i could measure improvement in over weeks, months, years. it is my competitive nature as much as my desire to change my physique which motivates me to lift more with better form for more reps than last time.
i find it incredibly satisfying to improve lifted weights and physical measurements, to look back and see change, to set goals for the future and and apply my fledgling knowledge and experience as best i can to those goals.
end after 4 months of being interested in recreational 'bodybuilding' i can forward to weeks, months, years of (1) dietary control and discipline helping to put my food related problems squarely in the past (2) my competitive streak yielding improvement in weight training and that in turn satisfying my statistics fetish (
i think i wrote this to rationalise my thoughts on the topic and to reaffirm my motivation. it was probably also more than a little cathartic . maybe it willhelp someone else realise the positive underlying motivations which lie beneath their liking for weight training and stuff.
cheers if you've bothered to read this.
fiat500
<message edited by fiat500 on 04 July 2008 11:38>