When I turned 29 in March 2019, I sat down on the couch and had one of those deep thought moments about life. Then I came to terms with myself one of my goals was to be “as fit as possible” when I turned 30. With the job I had at the time, I was traveling all over the country year round to work live sporting events for FOX Sports. I would have an “off-season” from traveling for about 3 months, but would be getting ready for the next 9 months of traveling.
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| April 2019 |
Few months after I turned 29, I started my work travel to help broadcast USGA Golf events, where I would be gone for a week at a time, maybe more. During my second trip of the year in Charleston, South Carolina, one of my co-workers was on his own journey of weight loss to get ready for his wedding. Whenever I saw him at the office, he would be eating his salad and tell me about how he’s been working out since he knew I trained from time to time. So while Charleston, he told me one day,
“Why don’t you come work out with me in the morning?”
“What time?”
“I’ll be there at 5 (am).”
“That’s early man.”
“I guess you don’t want it that bad.”
I didn’t show up that first morning he asked and when I saw him at the TV Compound later in the morning, where the trucks would be lined with trailers to broadcast the sporting event, he said, “Man, I’m disappointed in you.”
Not that I felt bad at the time, but I also didn’t want to hear it from him again. So guess what, I showed up at 5am every morning for the next 4 days.
That was the only trip we worked out together/ we did work together the following week at Pebble Beach, CA but we were at different hotels but we kept each other accountable if we worked out or not.
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| August 2019 |
When I didn’t have any one else to workout with, I would still kept going to the hotel gyms even if they had little-to-none equipment whether if it was in somewhere along South Bend, Indiana; Toledo, Ohio; Stevens Point, Wisconsin or in Starkville, Mississippi.
After the USGA Season was over, I went right into football season.
During football season, I would only travel for 3 days so I did my best to carve some time out of the day to go workout at the gym I had at the condo I was living at at the time.
For the football season, I worked with a director, who is one of the nicest and also best dressed person in the sports TV industry for 3-4 years where his eating habits was very particular when we went to a work dinner (Asparagus cooked in no butter, no oil is what keeps replaying in my head). He would also make a Whole Foods run before getting to the stadium to bring his own food since the catering wasn’t always the greatest.
When we would get fly into a city, where we had a game, he would find an OrangeTheory and would religiously go to class, even if he was traveling for work. He made sure he made time for that.
This director, a Texas native, told me in a past life, he would eat whatever was around when he was traveling, but after years of doing the job, his body didn’t feel great. So he decided make a change.
After I talked to him about his lifestyle and habits, I decided to change my nutrition. I didn’t go too extreme in 2019 but was really mindful of what I was going to order and also how much alcohol I was going to be consuming. I allowed myself one glass of wine per week at a work dinner.
What also intrigued me was I came across an article on NBA start Dwight Howard on how he changed his diet from eating 24 candy bars a day to taking in very little sugar. He went on a strict diet.
Of course, Dwight Howard is a multi-million dollar athlete and probably has all the resources in the world, but after reading the article, that really made me start my journey of nutrition.
I knew it was going to be a long journey of weight loss at first and had to be mentally tough that it’s marathon, not a sprint.
In November 2019, what I decided to do to start my own journey was to do intermittent fasting, one of the things that was mentioned in the article that Dwight Howard went through. I started with the 16/8 rule, then eventually got to about the 20/4 rule (Ok, so maybe it got extreme). Then, I chose a protein I was going to religiously eat for every meal: Ground Turkey. Lastly, pick a vegetable to put with my ground turkey: Green Beans. My one meal would be right after I worked out. I didnt measure, scale or track anything at the time but ate only until I was content. And if I was still hungry, I would drink a shit ton of water throughout the day.
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| Mid-January 2020 |
Once the football season ended around February 2020, I lost about 20 pounds. I remember going to workout with Kyle Henmi early in the morning one day, he looked at me and said, “You look sick.” I went from about a chub-185 to a leaner 165 pounds, and I still felt good and strong.
Then COVID-19 hit in March 2020. It was a very unfortunate situation across the world, but as weird as it sounds, it changed me for the good. Being stuck at home and doing the workouts DEUCE Gym programmed relentlessly every single day, along with doing two-a-days with their Delta Bravo dumbbell program, my goal was to keep going with my training any way I could. It also helped my roommate at the time was also in on working out with me. There was a point I worked out for 100 straight days since the start of COVID.
As far as meals, I was still intermittent fasting and limited myself to one meal a day, but a protein shake after my first workout, if I doing two-a-days.
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| February 2023 |
What improved most was the amount of sleep I was getting. I would religiously sleep around 10pm and wake up at 6:30am every morning to start my day. Why 6:30am? Just incase work started back up and I wanted to be on a regimented schedule and not try to adjust when it was time to clock-in again.
Fast forward about almost 4 years later, I still follow a similar regiment of eating habits, though I do eating recklessly and might go over in my macros at times (no ones perfect here). Training has been different now that I am training for a competition and moved from bodyweight and just dumbbell workouts to working out (and now working) at a gym. I track my macros and aware of how much I am calories and macros I’m consuming.
Looking back to the start of my journey, I’m glad I relentlessly stuck with my training and nutrition to get to where I am
today. But the journey doesn’t stop here, I can always be and get better.
I get asked from time to time, “How do I get to where you are?”
My answer: Be committed. Be consistent. Be relentless. And do it for a long time.
Keep going.
Jun
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