So, it’s been roughly 3 weeks since I’ve writ­ten any­thing on here, which is much longer than I had antic­i­pated. In fact, I didn’t want to stop writ­ing at all.

There was an unin­tended con­se­quence that hap­pened after the chal­lenge. I nose dived, and hard. I’m sure it was a result of three sep­a­rate fac­tors: loss in moti­va­tion due to the con­test being over, men­tal fati­gu­ity from focus­ing on lit­tle but train­ing for roughly 8 weeks, and going off the supplements.

No, I didn’t start bing­ing on ice cream and waf­fles or any­thing like that. My diet stayed roughly the time, per­haps slightly more lenient, but not so much that it affected my result­ing numbers.

Dur­ing the last 4 weeks of train­ing, I changed up my game plan sim­ply because I wasn’t get­ting the results I wanted. I started IF (Inter­mit­tent Fast­ing) and sup­ple­ment­ing with Biotest: Hot Rox Extreme and BCAAs (Branched Chain Amino Acids), with the inten­tion of tak­ing a break from the supps when the con­test was fin­ished. This might have been a case of “too much at one time”.

The con­test ended on a Wednes­day, but by Fri­day I was a mess. I could feel myself slip­ping into tor­pid lethargy. I just didn’t care about any­thing and all I wanted to do was sleep. Which I did. I’m not a nap­per, never have been, but I spent most of my time between lay­ing on the couch and sleep­ing in my bed. But it didn’t end there, this malig­nant feel­ing fol­lowed me around for the next week and a half and I just felt like I was in a per­pet­ual funk. But then one day, some­thing in my brain decided to switch gears and, after read­ing this arti­cle on Pre­ci­sion Nutri­tion, I started to feel bet­ter again. See­ing all those trans­for­ma­tions from the Lean Eat­ing Pro­gram really inspired me to get back up and keep going.

The Lean Eat­ing Pro­gram is a year long event in which you are given a per­sonal coach that assists you with get­ting into great shape. Just look at the before and after pic­tures on that site, incred­i­ble. And, I’m not try­ing to boast here, but because I was one of the win­ners of the con­test, I get a free year’s mem­ber­ship to Bare­foot Fit­ness and that means that I have some extra cash­flow. What bet­ter invest­ment to make than in myself by doing Lean Eat­ing? On another note, there is a prize for best trans­for­ma­tion in Lean Eat­ing,  $25,000. Yeah buddy. $25K and a bad ass physique, if that’s not inspi­ra­tion, I don’t know what is.

So in con­clu­sion, I feel like I care again. I might start sup­ple­ment­ing again soon, except now I have the knowl­edge that I might crash at the end. I best take it easy and taper my reg­i­men to avoid all that. I’ve already restarted my IF pro­gram. I also stum­bled upon this guy and have been read­ing his stuff, also inspir­ing, if a lit­tle meat-headed.

I plan to update Visu­ally Fit at least once a week from now on, more if  I am feel­ing frisky.

Happy 4th to everyone.