The online diary of a gay courtesan.

I get asked fairly often what I’ve been doing in the last year or two to get my fitness results. I’ve decided to be very specific, despite the fact that each person has his/her own gender, age, body type, metabolism, race, motivation level, and other host of factors that will affect his/her ability to implement any of this. There is one overarching factor that will help you, no matter what type of exercise regimen you follow: Discipline.

I was going to say “consistence;” however, that is a misnomer. Yes, you have to consistently work for a long time, but you cannot repeat the same formulas over and over. Variety is very important. That can be applied in many ways: How many times a week you workout, time of day, what types of exercises you do, the order of the exercises, whether you focus on the concentric/essentric/isometric phase of exertion, the tempo of repetitions, how much rest you have between sets, whether you do supersets/pyramid/reverse pyramid/circuit/etc, blah blah blah.

Variety is key, because your body is extremely adept at finding the most efficient way to perform effort (i.e. the path of least resistance), and will adapt to repetition by burning fewer calories. If you do the same workout more than about three times in a row, you will see a drastic reduction in effort/caloric burn. Mix it up. Always.

Me Personally

I workout only 2-4 times each week. I workout for only 45-60 minutes for each session. However, when I do exercise it is with a focus on intensity and good form (proper alignment, proper use of breath, appropriate resistance loads). I also do not do the same workout more than once in a week. Plyometrics (explosive training that focuses on jumping/landing, locomotion while implementing resistance of some kind, and skill specific motions like throwing/catching) is very important for me, because I’ve been active so long that anything less demanding simply won’t shock my system.

Breath

What happens if you do not breathe? You die. That’s hyperbole in this instance, but you get the point. Without breath there is nothing else. You must not only breathe, you must do it with the proper coordination, in order to deliver oxygen and remove waste efficiently. Toxins in the body prevent progress – breathing properly and hydrating will help elimenate these substances.

The simple rule of thumb for breathing: Exhale on the exertion, inhale on the return. Often this means that you should exhale on the concentric portion of the repetition (i.e. flexion – decreasing the angle of the joint. e.g. bending your elbow). You would exhale when bending your elbow to do a biceps curl, and inhale as you lower it during the essentric portion of the repetion (i.e. extension – increasing the angle of the joint. e.g. straigtening your elbow). This isn’t always the case: You would inhale to go down in a pushup (when the elbows bend) and exhale to go up. So, exhale when you do more work, inhale when you do less work.

Visualization & Three Dimensional Symmetricality

Get it out of your mind right now that spot training is helpful. If you are saying, “I want to improve my (insert body part here),” you still need to implement the whole body, even while bringing some additional focus to the part in question. Be aware that the cosmetic muscles (i.e. the most superficial: biceps brachii, pectoralis major, gluteus maximus, etc.) are the furthest from the core of the limbs and torso, and although they are the prettiest to look at, they are the least important in terms of efficient development. The deep musculature is closer to the joints, and these invisible muscles are the foundation upon which the superficial muscles are built.

With that in mind, bring your focus to a deeper place within your visualization of what you are doing. Yes, imagining yourself doing an exercise will help your results, but try to think deeper than the muscles you can see. The biceps brachii (the muscle you show people when they say “make a muscle” and you flex your elbow in response) is not the primary flexor of the elbow: The brachialis is, because it is closer to the lever of the joint. When you do upper anterior arm exercises, be sure to keep this fact in mind.

In addition to working on a deeper level, also remember balance. As above, so below. What you do on the front, do on the back. If you do it to the left, do it to the right. You are a three dimensional being. You are a whole entity. It is a very Western concept to chop the body into parts without concern for integration. Eastern philosophies of the body (and the universe in general) focus more on wholes rather than portions. What does this mean for you as an exerciser?

If you do a chest workout, at some point in the next week you also need to do the back. Whether you do it immediately (Chest/Back day) or a day or so later (day 1: push exercises, day 2: pull exercises) doesn’t matter so much as finding the balance at all. Muscles work in pairs: Muscles can only pull, they cannot push. If you do not work both sides of a muscle pair you will create imbalances that will result in lowered results and greater risk of injury. Create balance on all sides of a joint.

An obvious example would be right/left symmetry. Would you only workout your left leg or your right shoulder? No. That would be ridiculous. Bring your left/right awareness into alignment with your front/back and upper/lower symmetry as well. In the movie “The Lady in the Water,” by M. Night Shyamalan (one of my favorite directors of all time), there is a character who works out only one arm. It has narrative significance for that movie, but otherwise it is exactly what it is: bizarre and unbalanced.

This brings us to upper/lower symmetry. It absolutely drives me bonkers crazy to see a huge torso sitting on top of a chicken. How gross. Ridiculous. The legs are just as important as the arms. The butt and hips are just as important as the chest and shoulders. Imbalance in upper/lower symmetry is a fantastic way to not only look like a cartoon character, but to also promote injuries. If your entire lower body is not as well connected to the core as your upper body, you will have an incredible amount of instability and weakness that will eventually lead to the break down of the whole. Whether you enjoy exercising the legs or not, you absolutely must do them: They are the foundation of everything else. You cannot build a cathedral with fancy towers and stain glass windows without a strong foundation to hold it all up.

Cardio tips

If you are going to do cardio (I personally do not, because my particular metabolism would not allow me to maintain mass gains if I were to do cardio on top of the dancing I already do), the first order of business is to make sure you can do it without hurting your joints. If you want to run, and if you run more than about 10 miles in a week, then you should plan to replace your running shoes every 90 days. Speed walking burns almost as many calories, and it puts only a fraction of the strain on your joints. Swimming, if you have access to a pool, is a fantastic form of resistance cardio that doesn’t put as much stress on the body because it is in a “zero gravity” environment.

Your cardio session should not exceed 50 minutes: 5 minutes of gentle warm-up, 40 minutes of oscillating intensities of cardio training, and 5 minutes of moderate/gentle cool-down. The warm-up and cool-down are vital, because they allow your cardiovascular system time to adapt to demands. You should generally avoid doing more than 40 minutes of cardio training, unless you have a particular goal (i.e. run a marathon), because after 40 minutes the body no longer works aerobically. Your cardio workout will switch over to anaerobic activity, and you will start burning protein, rather than carbohydrate and fat. In layman’s terms: After 40 minutes you break down muscle instead of fat.

ABSolutely not

It has been a widely accepted piece of wisdom in the fitness industry for years that sit-ups and crunches alone do nothing to help you attain physical fitness. It’s infuriating that people still get duped into buying gimmicky pieces of crap to get better abs. I think a single crunch burns something like 1/10,000 of a calorie. There are 3,500 calories in pound. So, to lose a pound from doing crunches alone, you would have to do 35,000,000 crunches. Mhm.

Abdominal work is indeed very important. In fact, core strength is one of the single most important factors for attaining and maintaining fitness; however, remember what I said about spot training: It doesn’t work. To strengthen your core (which is not just the abs – it is the abdominals, lower back, hip complex, butt, deep rotators, etc. ad nauseum), you have to implement it while doing everything else. Working out on one foot and then the other, standing on instability surfaces, jumping while performing a repetition – all of these activities force the core to stabilize the entire body. Feats of balance will train your entire core much more effectively than crunches, which train you to have bad posture by over-strengthening the abs and pulling the torso forward.

Your entire workout should be an abdominals/core training session. Every moment of every session you should be doing abs/core. Where possible, use free weights rather than machines: You standing and controlling the weight brings more exertion into play than sitting and sliding on a machine, more calories get burned, and your core works harder. Graduate off of two-dimensional machines as soon as it is safe to do so.

Doing abdominal specific exercise will help define each head of the rectus abdominis (the six-pack muscle), internal, and external obliques but those exercises will not, in and of themselves, give you a six-pack. You already have a six-pack. Everyone does. You simply have to shed that which is obscuring it, and that requires whole body exertion and an improved body composition (i.e. get your lean:fat ratio in better alignment).

Something else to remember: Think deep. The six-pack and obliques are the pretty muscles you can see… Remember that the deep muscles are the important ones. If you do not train the transversus abdominis, you will never have a flat stomach, even if you have a lumpy one. The transversus abdominis is a layer of muscle in your core that works like a muscular sac that is wrapped around your lower trunk. Its job is to stabilize and to hold your intestines in place. To engage it, try to keep your belly button pulled up (without sucking in so deep that you can’t breathe/move) at all times. Have you ever seen someone with a six-pack who still looks pregnant from the side? Or how about a very slim person with no visible subcutaneous fat who still has a potbelly? Both of these are possible examples of a tranversus abdominis that is too weak to hold the intestines up inside the cavity of the torso.

Mass vs Tone

The generalized rule of thumb for building mass versus creating definition is simple: To get big do heavy weight with few reps, and to get cut do light weight with many reps. Let’s get a tad more specific. That might be helpful.

To build mass you will need to ingest about 1 gram of protein/pound of your desired body weight (if you want to weigh 150 pounds, eat about 150 grams of lean protein each day with your whole grains and veggies), and you will need to do sets of 8-10 reps. To increase tone, you still need to eat 1 gram of protein/pound of your desired body weight, but you will need to do sets of 12-15 reps.

To gague whether or not you are working with the correct weight load/resistance you will have to be honest with yourself, and you will have to be willing to adjust alot until you find your target resistance. For gaining mass: reps 1-3 should make you feel energized and powerful, reps 4-6 should require deep exertion but not strain, and reps 7-8 (as well as 9 and 10, if you can do them safely) should exhaust your temporarily. You should genuinely need to rest 60-90 seconds after the set. If you could have kept going, you should’ve used more resistance. To encourage tone: reps 1-5 should require little effort, reps 6-10 should induce a warm sensation in the muscles, and reps 11-15 should fatigue you to the point that you are uncomfortable. You should genuinely need 45-60 seconds of rest after the set. If you could have kept going, you should’ve used more resistance. Generally you should do 3-4 sets of 2-3 exercises per body part in question.

Diet & Rest

Diet is 70% of success. Like it or not, you are what you eat. Exercise itself is 20% of success, and rest is 10%. Respect that.

You should be eating 4-6 smaller, snack-sized meals, rather than 1-3 huge and filling meals. Providing your body with several smaller portions allows the digestive tract to completely break the food down, giving you access to the nutrition in your food, and it also keeps the metabolism high.

Digestion requires energy. By grazing lightly throughout the day on lean protein, whole grain foods, and raw veggies (go easy on the fruit, it has as much caloric density as candy) you keep your body buzzing with activity. You also avoid starvation mode: Eating less frequently confuses your body, which doesn’t know there’s not a famine. It simply knows that it’s hungry and will then hold onto all the fat you eat without using it, so that you can get through the “lean” times. Avoid stuffing yourself – you should feel satisfied without feeling satiated. Drink at least 64 ounces of water each day (the bare minimum to live), and munch often.

In this hectic world it’s hard enough to get five hours of sleep a night, but you need more than that probably. At least if you intend to get fitness results. The body evolved over millions of years, so it really doesn’t give a damn that you have a full itinerary. I’m not going to tell you to get eight hours of sleep a night if you don’t need that much, and if it’s impossible for you to do; however, napping, if possible, is nice. Get as much rest as you can. The body heals itself and grows while you sleep.

Also, avoid working the same muscles on back-to-back days. Exercise tears muscles fibers at the microscopic level. Stitching them back together is what makes them firm and grow. If you break them down repeatedly without giving them time to heal, you will not gain mass and your road towards becoming toned will be longer. For mass building, avoid working the same muscles more than once in 5-7 days, and for tone, avoid working the same muscles more than once in 36-48 hours.

In all honesty, most women at clubs ignore me completely: I’m shorter than most dancers, I’m nowhere near as aggressive or shadowy (which girls at male strip clubs seem to want more than the nice guys they can see anytime at home), and I make no secret of the fact that I’m gay. I understand completely why I would be invisible to most women at a strip club – there’s really no fantasy that they might seduce me. But every once in a while I will inadvertently charm the ladies. This is becoming more common as I gain muscle mass (because I’ve gradually, over the last several months, become more and more mistaken for heterosexual – it happened three times Friday night and twice on Saturday). Passing for straight isn’t my goal or my priority, but it can be fun playing with people’s expectations, now that presumption doesn’t sit at 100 percent.

There were three women sitting at the bar. Everything I did titillated them. I actually enjoyed this, because I absolutely love women. When I finally came around to them, so that they could talk to me and tip me, they were lovely. Once I was actually there in front of them, two of the three were reluctant to touch me at first. It was taboo, I suppose. The married one had no trouble at all. I thought this was especially marvelous. They liked my ass, biceps, and abs in particular.

“Oh my God! You make me want to go home and fuck my husband!”

“Well… that’s my job.” (I didn’t really know how to respond to this, since I don’t get a chance to chat with girls much at work.)

“It’s too bad you don’t like me.”

“I do like you!”

“It’s too bad you don’t want to fuck me.” (Aha! They do know I’m gay!)

“Susan, I will respect you more than any man you will ever meet.” (Said very coyly with a wink as I kissed her hand.)

“Oh, damn… Respect me some other time!”

I love my work.

The question has come up (not worded exactly this way, but pretty close), “How did you maintain a balance between staying small and getting bigger?” In other words, how do anorexia and Dysmorphia co-exist? Well, to be frank, they don’t balance, and they don’t co-exist. It’s like being pulled apart – I would actually feel that kind of shearing force in my brain. It was horrible, and looking back I don’t know why I held onto that turmoil so long.

Ups and Downs

Constant fretting was a part of my life because of these two situations both vying for my attention. I desparately wanted to put on lean muscle, but every time I inched up even two-tenths of a pound on my digital scale, I would figure out which meals I could skip “to make up for it.” It doesn’t make any sense. I knew it didn’t, even when I was in the middle of that terrible dichotomy. I wanted the look of muscle without the numerical “score” of my weight going up (I suppose it’s a game, like Hearts, where the fewer points you have, the better?). At any rate, it was a dizzying, confusing, and frustrating teetering act.

And it had other repercussions, other than my body composition. I am already prone to mood swings; however, when you do not eat properly your body systems get out of kilter. All of them. Including your hormones. One hormone in particular, serotonin, is in your gut. This hormone affects mood. If you do not eat properly this hormone gets out of balance, and then your moods get out of balance too. So, my eating disorder also escalated my emotional stress. I’ve been blessed to never have had any major injuries – I can presume only that taking vitamins protected me from difficiency disorders, because my teeth, bones, hair, skin, connective tissues, and all other systems seem fine to this day. If I’d not been at least taking vitamins, I could very well be falling apart already. That happened to my friend Cheryl. She was anorexic for 18 years, never took supplements, and now her teeth, bones, and joints are a wreck.

Janet Jackson + Chris Evans = hot mess

One day I was looking in the mirror for the 497th time that day, and a flash of insight caught me off guard: I was trying to blend two people, whom I looked nothing like, together into one body. Although it hurts my feelings a little when people remind me of this, I am not, in fact, a beautiful Black woman. Also, although I am a White man, I do not look anything like Chris Evans. I don’t understand exactly what amalgamation I was trying for, but recreating myself as a collage of these two was definitely not working well. I look back on this moment, and I realize that it was the instance where I almost pulled myself out of this vortex by myself. But something happened immediately afterwards that distracted me from this little thunder bolt of logic…

Stupid boy

I was with the only guy I had a long term relationship with during college. He was a pudgy little dude with crazy brown hair, and I thought he was absolutely marvelous. When he poked my belly and said, “Getting a little soft around the center, huh?” I took him seriously. It didn’t occur to me that he was being facetious. Over the next few weeks I dropped from 120 pounds to 110. I started passing out in dance class. It was scary. The pic of me that I just posted where I weighed 125 pounds is bad enough – at my worst I weighed 15 pounds less than in that picture. You could see my spine and hip bones. And I thought I was staggeringly beautiful (for a few moments each day between long bouts of self-loathing).

Whether it’s his “fault” for upsetting me, or my “fault” for being so sensitive, or no one’s “fault” at all, that “soft around the center” comment was the driving force behind my eating habits for the next eight years. The effect of the comment lasted years longer than the relationship with Shane.

Emotional instability and therapy

One of the long-term side effects of this “balance” between being small and getting big is that my moods shift very easily and quickly. I feed off the moods of others without realizing it, until after the change has already happened. Also, if I get hungry, I get mean. If I’m ever randomly rude to you just say, “Bitch, do you need a doughnut?” I probably do need to eat something, but a doughnut won’t be my first choice (although the humor will make me smile). My rages would get out of control particularly when I felt people were being mean to me without provocation.

I finally went to a therapist while I was at UCLA. I went because of an incident during my African drumming class. One of the other students (who never attended class, and didn’t know the rhythms) told me I was defiling the drums with my “White hands,” and proceded to push me away from the instrument while grabbing for the mallet in my hand. Well, I was already feeling angry about something else. She tipped me over the edge, and I vented all over her in front of about 100 drummers and dancers. It didn’t help that she was Black, and that everyone knew I was from South Carolina. It immediately became a race issue to them without me ever intending it. They didn’t know what I was already contending with, so on the outside, without any insight into me, I understand why they would assume that. It hurt my feelings they would jump to that conclusion, but it does make sense. I was forced to enter “anger management” classes.

I’m glad. It gave me the opportunity to finally address some of my demons. From that point forward I started improving. But it still took a few years after I completed that therapy to finally let go of my desire to have Janet’s waist and Chris’s chest.

“Better” days

Everything started improving consistently and quickly after I left my last boyfriend in October, 2006. You want to know what finally forced me to let go of alot of my obsessive compulsions? Exhaustion. Pure and simple. I’d been working seven part time jobs to support myself and Scott. When I found out he’d cheated on me with about 30 people while I was out working day and night, and that he was opening credit cards in my name (as well as hiding the bills, maxing them out, and then not making payments), I finally had to work so much that there simply wasn’t time to worry about what I looked like. It didn’t matter if I made the bed or washed the dishes. It didn’t matter if my books were alphabetized by subject/author/title. Suddenly avoiding bankruptcy mattered a whole lot more.

During the months after I left Scott I simply got out of the habit of worrying about my appearance so much. I had a whole new catastrophe to work on (and on a dark level the martyr in me loved the torture). Nearing two-and-a-half years later, I’ve become completely financially independent again, with my credit score being even better than before Scott’s interference. And ironically my eating disorder gave way to fiscal survival. It seems that all I needed was a crisis severe enough to completely distract me from calories.

So, the eating disorder is gone. Done. Good riddance. There are still some traces of the Dysmorphia, in that I can’t see how I’m shaped when I look at myself in a mirror. I see only a flat shape with muddled undulations on the surface. Only in pictures, which are removed from the same space-time as my viewing of myself, can I see me. I need the removal of “now.” By looking back a few moments into the past at how I looked then, I see my curves and proporations. But even then I still don’t trust that 10 seconds later the same holds true. This is getting better as I (slowly) mature.

I look forward to the day, not when my see-saw is balanced, but when I decide I’m no longer interested in the ride.

Yesterday I went through the narcissistic process of showing how my body has changed over the last few years. The reason I did that is so that today’s posting would have more weight (no pun intended… oh alright, yes it was intended).

Those of you who have read my postings about Swinging Richards know that I’ve had a few rough patches there, in terms of how the place affects my self-esteem. However, I have come full circle. It is time to create new ads for the club, and therefore it is time to take new pictures. Some of the dancers are asked to participate in various shoots.

I have been asked to do a photoshoot for Swinging Richards. If the shoot yields any images worth keeping, then I may very well end up becoming one of the posterboys for the club. The advertising shows up in places like the Damron Guide, and in ad campaigns in other various local, regional, national, and international publications. I won’t get paid for the shoot, but my name would be in any ads with my picture in them, so people could ask for me specifically. I’m excited, not only because of the compliment and potential visibility, but because it means the powers-that-be think I’d represent them well.

I’ll keep you posted on developments. It will take weeks or months, so don’t expect to hear about this again immediately. Oh, and per a request from a reader, I’m going to work on getting some videos of me posted on Youtube. I tried last night, but their server never completed the upload process. Is this a common problem?

Hello everyone! Wow. I took an entire week off from posting – a few of you have emailed to make sure I’m okay. Yes, all is well – I was on the road alot last week, and wasn’t able to post in that time. But I’m back now, and I have a few ideas up my sleeve.

Tomorrow I will have a posting about Swinging Richards (a good one, don’t worry!), but before I address it, I want to go through the process of explaining better how I got to this point (in terms of what I will tell you later about Swinging Richards).

People remark with some frequency about the level of fitness I have, and sometimes they will even acknowledge how difficult it is to achieve/maintain; however, for the most part I find that people think there is some magic/science that gives me some advantage that they will never have. This is simply not true: For people without metabolic disorders and other health scenarios that preclude fitness, I would venture to say that the lion’s share of people can achieve their goals to whatever measure they are willing to invest in doing so.

I have been working out (not necessarily properly) since I was 15 years old. To quote “Hamlet 2:” “It doesn’t matter how much talent we lack, as long as we have enthusiasm!” I was spinning my wheels for the most part. What you simply must embrace in your fitness adventure is that DIET IS 70% OF SUCCESS. Exercise is 20% and rest is 10% of success. If you do not eat properly, you simply will not achieve visible (and in some cases, practical) gains. While I was anorexic I was doing nothing but putting myself at risk of injury.

So, the results I have achieved are not only recent, but lately they are also sudden. This has been a very long journey (with no end in sight just yet), so what I want this entry to do is bring attention to a fact that most patrons don’t always appreciate, but which most adult entertainers struggle with constantly: Achieving and/or maintaining the look demanded by our profession requires us to have a job to have a job. Fitness, and the various means people use to attain it (or the semblance of it), is an enormous undertaking. When people use the metaphor “carved in stone,” they are right: It is a slow, painstaking process. The rock evolves slowly into the statue, the landscape erodes over eons.

I’m not going to go back to when I was 15. For one, I don’t have digital copies of the pics to do so, and for two, I have experienced enough changes since 2005 to make the point that even three years is sometimes only just barely enough time to get results. I say this not to discourage people on their fitness journey, but to emphasize that patience, consistency, and discipline are the means by which you gain advanced results.

In November, 2006 I was still at the beginning of my total recovery from anorexia. I still weighed only 125 pounds or so, but I wasn’t obsessed with mirrors and calories anymore. I was very lean and cut, but I just couldn’t add any mass. I was still working out too frequently with the same body parts, and not eating anywhere near enough (though more than I had been). This is a picture (click to enlarge) from a theater production I was involved in at the time. You can see that I’m thin and strong, but rather shapeless and out of proportion in some ways. This is a very honest look at how Dysmorphic Disorder (there, I finally said it!) brings a warped sense of priority to some parts of the body, while ignoring others.

By February, 2007 I was trying to gain weight. The problem is that I was doing the workouts by Cathe Freidrich, which (in the series of workouts I was using for the most part) focus on very, very high numbers of reps. You cannot gain muscle if you do high reps with high weight for a long period of time (the muscles don’t get enough of a chance to heal and build). Tone = high reps, low weight. Mass = low weight, high reps. Athletic training = a wide VARIETY of challenges. Match this with the fact that I was living off of protein bars and shakes, and you have a recipe for disaster. I went to the hospital four times in 2007 because of exhaustion, malnutrition, dehydration, and infections. I have never been sick so much or so often as when I was living off of whey protein products. You must have a balanced diet. In addition to illness, I gained fat, not just muscle. By November, 2007 I was up to 165 pounds, but I was sick, lethargic, and hurting. My body frame does not comfortably support that much non-lean weight.

In 2008 I finally started getting on track with what would become the various programs that helped me begin to achieve my fitness goals. January-March, 2008 I improved my diet (with immediate improvements to my health) and went to see a personal trainer. She helped me bring balance to my workouts, and her sessions were so demanding that I had no choice but to eat properly. However, I was still eating too much sugar (in the form of fruit), and although I was getting stronger, I wasn’t getting leaner. The lighting in this picture is flattering – but if you look closely around my abdomen, you will see that I still have a girdle of sorts around my lower abs.

April-June, 2008 I did P90X religiously. It is a fantastic program for those who are already at an intermediate level or higher, in terms of fitness. I saw all sorts of incredible gains in strength and definition. I leaned back down, and I went from doing 10 sets of 20 push-ups and 7 pull-ups to 10 sets of 30-32 push-ups and 18-22 pull-ups. However, there is something you need to know about P90X: Its philosophy is that you need constant variety. That means you also need variety away from P90X. July-September, 2008 I did P90X again, but only sporadically. It was beginning to hurt me. All the calisthenics was creating repetitive injuries. Remember, you need rest, so that you can rebuild. I hit a plateau around September, and that’s when I finally had to go to the gym (something I had always, up to that point, loathed and feared, because of the over-machismo horseshit I’ve always experienced in them).

The new variety of exercises immediately began paying off. October-December, 2008 I was able to allow my body to heal from the P90X, which although amazing, is far, far too intense to maintain without variety for more than 90 days. If you are going to do P90X I would suggest doing it for a rotation, then going away from it for a rotation. By taking a break from the calisthenics and moving to heavier freeweights and machines, I was able to work muscles from angles new to my body. I had never used gyms before with any consistency, because I find them dirty and intimidating places where rude people socialize too much and workout too little. I also was always afraid that people looking at me were thinking, “Who is that little turd, and why is he bothering?” What I find now is that when people watch me, I get the impression it’s because they’re interested in what I’m doing. Switching to the gym allowed me to fill out some more, and to continue improving my body composition (lean mass to fat ratio).

January, 2009 has been pretty low-key. I’ve needed to rest, and I’ve not been allowing guilt to bother me (too much) about taking my time getting back to it after the holidays. However, I’m about to start going back to my trainer again. I’ve done a rotation at the gym by myself, but the exercises weren’t as complicated as what I need to shock my system. I’ll go see Carrie again, because she’s brilliant at plyometric training. When I saw her last year, I was working out only with her. This time I’ll see her, but still go to the gym as well. What has surprised me is that recently, although my working out and caloric intake are both DOWN, I have had a growth spurt and filled out anyway. That’s the power of rest. The pic to the left was taken January 23, 2009. The one on the right was taken January 25, 2009. I hope you will understand now why I said in various posts recently that my pics on this site no longer look like me.

Going forward I think I can finally say that after well over 10 years of working out, I am getting to the point where I am looking the way I’ve always wanted to. I eat what I want, when I want: The anorexia is completely gone. I don’t even have the inkling anymore of thinking that not eating is okay. I’m proud that I’ve done all of this without steroids. I’m still working through the process of being able to look at myself and see me as I am, but I do feel more confident and relaxed in the presence of the Swinging Richards gods. Which brings me back around to why I wrote this long entry: I have some good news to share with you tomorrow.