Boy Moves To A New Town With Optimistic Outlook

Vegreville feels much smaller than it used to.

I've been back in town for less than a week, and I'm already starting to feel cooped up. I rollerbladed around the entire town last night. It took a depressingly short time, and I didn't find anything that interested me. I don't really have any friends here. My family is starting to get on my nerves. The whole place feels empty, stalled, a sort of hyperbolic time chamber where I wait for school to start again. For the first summer since highschool graduation, living at home and working in Vegreville doesn't feel like a good fit.

Unfortunately, it's too good a deal to pass up. Mom and Dad's roof over my head, Mom and Dad's food in the fridge, all of it for free. A full-time job outdoors with an extremely generous boss, who unquestioningly gives me time off whenever I need it, and pays me probably more than he should. A part time job where half my shift is standing around twirling a whistle, and the other half is sitting in an office surfing reddit on my phone. If a guy wants to make money over the summer, this is the way to do it. I don't even know what I'd do as an alternative summer situation, as this has become the default, but you can be sure that if this keeps up, I'll be looking for next year.

In the meantime, instead of sulking about being cooped up and not having friends in town, I've undertaken a project. When I got back from Florida, I noticed something in the vacation pictures: I was fat. I was noticeably, off-puttingly fat, and I needed to do something about it.

Dad had recently lost a lot of weight using Fitbit, a pedometer that syncs to an iPhone app where you record all the food you eat and activities you do. It tracks how many calories you burn and how many you eat, and puts it all in front of you to see. I got one too, and started the 500 calorie deficit per day program.

The first few weeks were tough. I couldn't get to sleep at night. I'd lay awake, craving fatty, meaty, starchy foods. Ginger beef. Steak. Pizza. Chicken wings. Burgers. Noodles. I was hungry all day, every day, even right after meals. Despite all this, I stuck with it and out-performed my program. I got my intake down to under 1500 calories a day. Coupled with my outdoor job burning ~3000 calories a day, as well as working out for at least an hour every evening, I started to shed pounds. Fast. I lost 12 pounds in 3 weeks. The whole family got into it, and we all started working out and watching what we ate. We even put in a kick-ass brand new home gym in our basement!

As I researched more about the topic of weight loss, I quickly discovered that while running a 2000+ cal/day deficit would drop the pounds fast, it was not a healthy way to go about it. I found that the maximum daily calorie deficit for cutting body fat, without losing muscle tissue as well, is a mere 800 cal/day. Since I'd been eating dramatically less than that for the previous month or so, I now feel like I'm feasting like a king! I fill up on lean meats, fiber, yogourt, vegetables, protein shakes, etc. No more empty starches or fats, like bread, white noodles, pizza, or pop. Feels good man!

I already feel so much lighter, quicker, more confident, healthier, and stronger. I can fit into some of my old pants again. Most of all, I'm looking sexier than I have in years, and it's only been a month! At the beginning of May, I was at 23% body fat. As of today, I'm at 15.8%. My goal is to be at 10% by the beginning of July, then start building some more serious muscle.

Who knows if I'll be able to keep this up during the school year. Probably not, at least not to the same degree. But as of right now, I can't imagine going back to the way I was, and I'm only a month in! I'm excited to continue sculpting this body for the rest of my summer in this tiny town, then hit the scene in the fall with a vengeance!