Getting Back To My Skinny Boy Game

I read an Assanova post the other day called What Every Skinny Guy Should Know and he really made a lot of good points and got me thinking.

I mean, I’ve always been a skinny guy.  I think junior year of high school, I was probably 5’10″, 145 or so.  That’s when I started to lift weights.  I hated being skinny back then.  I always ate a lot and ate whatever I could – not eating healthy at all.  My metabolism was so good that it didn’t matter what I ate.  I start eating like 5 times a day, and I’m talking like fast food, high calorie shit too.  Hitting the weight room 3-4 times a week and shit and drinking weight gainer protein shakes every night.

It worked.  I got up to 175 lbs in about a year.  But, I kind of plateaued there.  I couldn’t put on any more weight no matter how hard I tried.   I think I was able to creep up to about 180 over the next 6 months or so.  That’s about where I was when I graduated high school.  5’11″, 180 lbs.  Muscle though, not fat.  I was kind of solid, but still small-framed.

Then, I got a job that summer, and busted my ass.  I didn’t get off work until 11pm everyday, and my gym closed before then, so I wound up cancelling the gym membership.  I was working manual labor, so I didn’t particularly lose too much of my muscle gains, but since I wasn’t working out anymore, I chilled out on the shakes and creatine.

After that summer, I hit college, still around 175 or so.  In college, I’d always start semesters off well with hitting the gym and shit, but I’d fall off pretty soon once the semester got underway.  It’d happen every time.  I started freshman year off eating my normal 5 meals a day and I’m talking about counting a whole pint of ice cream as a meal, and then burgers, fries and a soda as another meal.  It’s not like I ever researched clean calories or anything.  Shit, I was still trying to get bigger, so I figured I had to eat anything and everything to get there.  I mean, I was naturally skinny.

Then, I ran out of money freshman year.  College student = broke.  That was me.  I went from eating 5 meals a day to eating about 2 meals a day.   You heard about the freshman 15 right?  It was the opposite for me… I lost 15 pounds freshman year.  Back down to 160.

Sophomore year, I probably fluctuated between 160 and 165.  But the biggest change came during my junior year.

Junior year was the year I turned 21.  I don’t know if it was the beer that did or if my metabolism finally caught up to me and changed on my ass.  But, it was probably a little of both, more of the latter I think though.

All of the sudden I had a belly.  I’d never had this before.  I was always a skinny dude.  It just got worse too once I graduated and got a job sitting in front of computer all day, not eating healthy and then hitting up happy hours and shit.

I easily got back up to 180 and surpassed it, almost reaching 190 lbs.  And this wasn’t from weight lifting.  I’d hit the gym occasionally, but let’s just say 22 year old me who weighed 15 lbs more than 18 year old me, probably had a max bench of around 80 lbs less than 18 year old me did.   Get the picture?

Hell, when our company’s Christmas party rolled around that year, I pulled out my suit that I bought during my senior year of high school.  I couldn’t fit the pants.  I had to go get them tailored and get a few inches added to them.

I’d hang out with guys at happy hour who were 38 years old and weighed 215, all fat and they’d say stuff to me, like “that’s just the way life is.  Hell, I weighed 160 in high school, I’ve never seen 160 since.”  And, “A man’s metabolism changes every 7 years.”    I almost started to accept it as a fact of life.  Will I really never be able to be at my high school weight again?

My Asian friend/co-worker went out drinking with us all of the time and ate fast food at lunch and shit and he was still skinny as shit, and he was three years older than me.  Damn, Asian metabolism, I resented that shit.

My little brother didn’t help either.  He’d see me and poke my stomach, “what’s up fatty!  Where’d you get this spare tire from?” and I would tell him, “just wait 3 years, your metabolism will catch up to you too.”    Then, one day we were lifting weights together and I couldn’t bench near what I used to in high school, and he started taunting me, “Willy Wonka peaked in high school!”  Man, I felt like choking him!

Eventually, I said enough is enough, and in the summer of 2009, I started to work on eating healthier.  I gave up drinking for a whole month, and started waking up at 5am and going running about 3 times a week, and then hitting the weight room up after that.  In only a couple of months I dropped about 10 pounds and got back under 180.  I went back to drinking occasionally (cuz, I only promised to give that up for a month – I need my vices!), but I tried to drink more in moderation – mainly just on weekends and less happy hours during the week.   I continued with the waking up at 5am about three times a week for the rest of 09 and I was able to maintain between 175-180 with a little, fluctuation here and there.  I still had a belly though, it wasn’t gone, but it was a little better.

I kind of fell off on working out early this year, because I hate going to the gym in January when it’s full of the whole “New Year’s Resolution” crowd, so I took the first 3 weeks of the year off and then started going again.

Then, in February, I decide to push it even more.  I was going to go back to bulking up.  I was going to bulk and then cut, like professional weight lifters do.  I thought if I really eat a shit ton of lean calories everyday, I could get up to about 200 lbs by the summer, and then I could do a more a cardio based workout and cut back down.

I got a workout plan off of some bodybuilding website and I started eating like 3k-4k calories everyday.  Big ass breakfasts that I’d cook for myself every morning (or force Crush to cook for me a couple of times).  But, I wasn’t able to keep the calorie intake up for very long.  For one, it was expensive to be eating that much every day, and two, I would feel bloated and full all day, and my farts smelled like eggs (because I was eating a lot of eggs everyday).    Then, I spent a lot of time in the restroom – I mean, I was probably taking a shit about 5 times a day, no joke.

Eventually, I got sick of that, and when I moved into a new apartment in May, I figured I’d need to find something else to do to get in shape.  A lot of my friends on Facebook and Twitter were attempting p90x, so I was intrigued about it, and then Rookie got into it too, and I really got curious.  If these dudes can bust their ass for 90 days straight, surely I can too – hell, I ran track and played basketball in high school!

When, I started p90x I weighed 176.  I really didn’t even expect to lose weight, as I had already figured I’d never weigh less than 175 again in my life.  I mean, hell, I hadn’t weighed less than that in 3-4 years.

Well, I’m in my last week. I only have a couple days left and I’ll be through my first round of p90x, and I weigh…. 164 lbs.   My stomach hasn’t been this flat in years.  I’m not super-toned by any means yet, but I seriously haven’t been this skinny in a long time.

Remember those suit pants I said I had to get tailored bigger just so they’d fit me at the end of 2008?  Yeah… well, here’s how they fit on me, now….  

I’d say I’ve definitely lost a few inches off of my waist in the past year and a half.   Now, I have to go them tailored again if I ever want to wear that suit again.

Now, that I’m back down to 165, this whole thing has me thinking.  And, Assanova’s post had a lot of good points on that that really got me thinking.  Why did I ever want to hit the weights and be huge?  I think to some extent it goes back to high school – back then the dudes getting all of the pussy were the football players.  I mean, I knew dudes that were my height, but weighed 215 and were jacked as fuck, but they were linebackers.  I didn’t play football in high school, but if I did, I probably would’ve been a DB.  I could never be 215 and be healthy, unless I was some kind of dedicated to professional bodybuilding type dude.

Like, Assanova said, the Orlando Blooms and Johnny Depps and male models of the world that girls swoon over, aren’t meatheads.   Even when I was trying to hit the weights, the girls I dated would tell me not to, “I don’t like big muscley dudes, you look good skinny, why don’t you just stay skinny?”   Why did I never really think about it.  The more I think about it now, the more I realize, fuck that bodybuilding shit!

I’m done trying to get huge.  I need to accept that fact that I’m a skinny dude and just tone up and use it to my advantage.