13.1
Four months ago, I never ran past half a mile. Yesterday, I ran 13.1.
I like to shoot the shit with my clients while we’re training, and one day, I said that if you gave me two years and I did nothing else but train, I could run a marathon in like two hours. Someone who ran a marathon before said, “Oh yeah? How about you do the half marathon first.” This happened in December. I signed up for the Brooklyn Half through NYRR and had the unfortunate pleasure of being picked. I asked Joe Holder if he had a program I could buy, and he told me to download the Nike Running Club app. It was free, and honestly, for someone new to running, it’s exactly what I needed.
I started running in late January and became injured within three weeks. I took two weeks off and came back apprehensive but determined. I also didn’t start running outside until one month before The Half and thank god I did because the race would’ve been tremendously more challenging. My only regret was that I didn’t run outside earlier in my program. I joked with people saying I have too much melanin to run outside, but that was bullshit. Running in the cold is hard, and I also foolishly thought I’d get sick—not true because I also ran in the rain and was gucci.
Leading up to the race, I half-jokingly said I wanted to get hurt so I had an excuse not to run. One part of that became true—I strained my right calf six days before the race. I did what I could to alleviate the pain and man up. I came too far to give up. I also pressured myself to finish the race in under two hours, thinking that would make me happy and seem legit. That was bullshit. The win isn’t the time you take to complete a goal; it’s in the journey. The destination is just a cherry on top. You discover parts of yourself you didn’t know existed through adversity.
The support I had from close friends helped. The guidance and encouragement from Marlon and Fitz were invaluable. One important lesson from this period is “pay it forward.” These two guys have done several races and just wanted to see their brother succeed. I’m forever grateful.
Throughout training indoors, one method I used for motivation was two shadows. On the treadmill I used, and because of how the lighting is set up, I had two shadows running with me five days a week. I made up that my dad and mom were there to support me. When I told my mom I was doing the race, she told me it was her dream to run a marathon when she came to this country. Sadly, that didn’t happen. She also told me how proud she was to hear of what I signed up for.
I got as much sleep as I could for the race. I was nervous and fine at the same time. When I feel overwhelmed, I talk less and think more. It’s like a calm before the storm moment. When I got to prospect park, I met two women with an incredible story. Everyone has a story; you never know what people have been through or are going through. Melissa came from Louisville, Kentucky, and Cecilia was from Texas. Mel’s husband died earlier this year from cardiac arrest while training for the race. Cecilia was his coach. Melissa decided she would run this race for him, and Cecilia was there to support her.
I’m at the start, and it’s indescribable how it feels to move with a wave of people as one. I felt good and free of pain or worry in the beginning. There were random moments when I couldn’t stop smiling because I couldn’t believe what I was doing. Good things happen when you commit to a process. The moment I felt I would give up came approaching mile 9. The rain got the best of me and my feet. It felt like my toes were jamming into a wall with every stride and like someone was stabbing the arches of my feet, especially the left one. But I didn’t come this far only to come this far. I ran and walked the rest of the race. I was no longer concerned with time, only that I wanted to finish and see the smile on my mom’s face when I told her I did it.
I finished with a time of 2 hours and 16 minutes. If you told me a year ago what I would do a year later, I’d call you crazy. It turns out I did something crazy after all. It always feels impossible until it’s done.
Blood Pressure Update
“No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other means.” ― Maimonides
Five months ago and for the first time in years, I went to the doctor and got a check up. I knew I was unhealthy but unless you have numbers in front of you, it’s hard to quantify the feeling of being unhealthy.
“What gets measured gets improved” - James Smith
If you don’t follow Jordan Syatt, you should do that right now because he was the first trainer I saw on here that started promoting monitoring your blood pressure as another means of progress.
As a personal trainer who only cared about hitting macros for a long time, this was a foreign concept to me. When we look at fitness influencers, the focus is on how your body looks, not how your body feels or performs. When you have visible abs, your body fat percentage is low which has adverse effects on your hormones that most people don’t know or realize until they reach that point.
Back to the point, my doctor gave me three months to get my shit together or else I’d be put on blood pressure medication. Why? My BP was 150/90. INSANE!
Honestly, I didn’t start until March to lose weight because the fear of medication didn’t hit me until then. You can only delay the inevitable for so long. It’s not like I could go to my doctor in april and tell him, “could you give me another three months?” You know what could happen by then? I could drop dead at any moment.
In march I lost 19 lbs and I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t through fat burners, a waist trainer, detox teas, or any other kind of “fat loss supplement”, here’s the list as simple as possible:
Calorie Deficit (tracked my calories every day making sure my deficit was between 500-1000 calories)
Protein (My range was 200-240g daily)
Strength Training (2-4x/week with a lower/upper/2 full body workout split)
WALKING (the cardio I did was walking on a treadmill for 20-60 mins low/moderate intensity for an average of 5 days/week) (sometimes i added in high intensity but this should be relatively less in your program)
Sleep (from below 6 hours/night, I was able to get in a range of 7-9 hours every night)
This photo was two days ago, 4 months of hard work and dedication.
If there’s anything I can do to help, send me an email and I’ll be happy to assist - Email
Keep Dreaming, Keep Believing, Keep Working, Be Somebody!
The Reverse Transformation
I don’t have to spend much time talking about how much damage I did to my body during Covid because a lot of people experienced the same hardships. The challenge I face in my industry as a fitness professional is having a body that not only looks strong but looks good, and the latter is more important as far as first impressions go. The predicament I found myself in was this: what's the point of eating healthy and exercising regularly if there's no one to see, and if there's no one to see, who cares and why bother keeping up with a routine?
That was the beginning of my downfall. I indulged every desire I had, going back to bad habits such as smoking weed consistently, and eating the most delicious foods every single day with no regard towards calories or health. Maybe this is where you found yourself too, filling the void with questionable decisions in the most questionable time period of most of our lives. If the future is uncertain, so will my ability to get back on track. When you’re not motivated to do the right things, you find out where your priorities lie.
The only type of transformations you see on the internet are the ones where someone changes their body for the better and tells you all the things they had to sacrifice to become better. What about the transformations where someone gains an absurd amount of weight and discusses the decisions that led them there?
Your environment influences your habits and decisions. If you make it easy to choose bad habits, you only have so much willpower until you give in. I was lucky enough to receive unemployment, and with that money coming in without having to do any work for it, I spent it just as fast and easy as it came in. Every meal was ordered on doordash and if I didn’t feel like driving or riding my bike downtown to the gym, uber was on immediate reserve. I rarely bought groceries, I didn’t meal prep, I didn’t have a night time routine or set bed time, I worked out when I felt like it and that feeling of wanting to better myself decreased as the amount of time staying at home increased.
I believe that everything in life happens for a reason and life comes at you in phases. I believe for how hard I worked at being a personal trainer for 4 years (at the time) taking very little days off and spending most of my waking hours serving others, I was burned out. I’ll never get to experience that type of freedom again in my life and based on the results from the first experiment, I don't think I want to experience that type of freedom again. When you don't have someone to answer to, when you don't have anywhere to be, when you don't have any goals you're working on, is that the kind of life worth living if you are just existing?
When you know what you should be doing but don’t, how do you make the change you need to? You’re always one decision away from a completely different life. I’m not here to tell you how to be better because that would make me a hypocrite. I guess the point of me writing this is to tell you you’re not alone and we share more in our struggles than we do our successes. I’m also here to remind you that you have the power to change at any moment, but if nothing in your routine changes then nothing in your life will change either.
I’ve lost a considerable amount of weight twice in my life, the first time was 63 lbs starting at 250 lbs,
The second time was 30 lbs starting at 217 lbs.
Today, I’m writing this waking up to 238.8 lbs, 3 months away from my 33rd birthday.
Let’s see where I end up and hopefully my honesty inspires you to do the same. Be honest with yourself because you can only put up a facade for so long...