The feared "Before" pictures

Today I started my first workout with my trainer Mark. Mark is my trainer, but also my personal training boss. He is an extremely smart man who has completely changed the way trainers do their job at Acac. This has been a great change and something that has changed my whole outlook on working out and food in general. His guidance not only comes from his personal training background, but also his knowledge of healthy food through his second job as a farm owner.  Awesomeness x2!!!

 I am excited to start with Mark again as he has already helped me once before, but as always I failed to follow through to the very end and accomplish my goals. Mark and myself have a lot of conversations about why people and even why I fail. Sometimes, people are afraid to fail, but at least in my case I feel at times I fear succeeding and the unknown. Even though, many people do not want to admit more people are afraid to succeed than fail I believe. This occurs a lot in the fitness industry because many of our clients workout almost everyday. However, they never want to push themselves past what they believe they can do. Most of us (including me) when we hit a road bump or a wall we give up. I tend to give up when I am not losing enough weight or don't see enough improvement soon enough. This is something that Mark has really helped me with. He has changed the way I think of lifting and eating. Workouts are important, but for myself getting enough sleep and eating the right food is far more important. Having a good diet and enough sleep helps get you past the wall you are facing and allows you to train even harder. My goal is not to worry about my weight, but to see the changes in my clothes and my body. This is one of biggest things I try to tell my clients, which are usually women. Since, they are lifting heavier weights and doing less cardio they will see more improvements in the shape of their body than a large drop in weight.

 My goal is to gain muscle and lose fat, which in the long run will drop my weight as well. Here is my before picture and at this time I weigh 218.6. Even though, this is a terrible picture it is nice to know I can only improve from here since I have decided to make this final decision to get my body in the best shape of my life.

One area that I really want to get rid of is my stomach as this is super unattractive, but the health issues that come with having large amount of belly fat is something I rather not deal with. Well there you go first pictures and hopefully an update each week on my progress.