Before and After

Over the last "fat" year, people have been asking me how I did it. And by "did it" I mean losing all that weight. (In total it was around 75 pounds, give or take a few fat cells.) The answer to that question is easy and everyone who asked it already knows the answer. I didn't take any magic elixir or do any crazy asshole cleaning. Or drink just lemon juice for twenty days. Even though those diets are out there - and I have tried to do all of them - I did it by making a decision. And the decision was I didn’t want to be fat anymore. Not for my wife, not for my shitty friends, not even for my health. I just wanted to be able to run if I wanted to run or bend over and tie my shoe without gasping for air. I wanted to be able to button things again and zip things again. I wanted to be able to take my shirt off if it was too hot. Or use a dressing room in a store without feeling embarrassed if the door didn’t shut all the way. The decision I made was to change who I was.

The reason you can’t lose weight for anyone else is because people don’t want you to change even if it’s for the good. Because then you make them look at who they are. I was a lot of people’s fat barometer. They looked at me to gauge how bad they(italics) were. "As long as I’m not as fat as Bob, I’m cool.". No one cared if I was fat. Most people close to you can't even tell how fat you really are. Sometimes you can't even tell yourself. I never knew how big I was until I lost the weight. Then I tried to put on my old pants and it was fucking astonishing. You could have fit another human being in there with me. And to think at one point that other person was a part of me, attached to me. Now it is gone, thank god.

And this wasn’t the first time I made this decision to change who I was. I did it with drugs and alcohol a long time ago. And it was just as hard.

There are three stages, you could call them,, of change.
The first, is Pain. You have to feel psychological pain. It has to hurt really fucking bad. You have to look into a mirror and want to fucking break down.
Pain brings you to the second part, Awareness. "Why am I feeling so fucked? Oh I’m fat I hate myself. That’s why."

And then through that pain and awareness comes the third part- Will.
Arriving at a willingness to change is a process.

I don't think most people can wake up and just say," Hey, I’m going to change who I am today." There are a few people that can but those people fucking suck. Fuck them and their parents that are still together. Most of us are eating bad and being lazy because it makes us feel better. It takes us out of reality for a few minutes so we don’t have to be in our own heads. We have been chewed up and spit out and we need a fix. Something that will make us feel good. And a piece of cake and a glass of ice cold milk just as you sit down to watch your favorite movie for the thirty seventh time is euphoric. It is better that any drug out there. You known like the feeling of waiting for takeout delivery? Oh god, do I get excited just knowing that some man is on his way to my house with a bag of goodies. But in reality that bag isn’t a bag of goodies. It’s a bag of loneliness. That bag is, was my friend when I was feeling lonely. It’s someone to hang out with. Something to do to take me away from thinking about all my shit.

Most of us have to go through some horrid shit to hit bottom. And only then can you work your way back up. You have to take away all the excuses, all the bullshit. You have to get rid of the "It’s-my-birthday-It's Thanksgiving-Its-Martin-Luther King-day-I- can-have-some cake" mentality. No, you can't. You just have to admit you feel like shit and then let the emotion sink in. That’s right, feel it. I don’t like feeling bad. But it is part of being human. You get to feel good sometimes and then sometimes you get to feel really fucking bad.

But isn't it bad to feel bad? No. Feeling bad is good. If you can find out why you are feeling bad you can try and change it. That means you’re alive, you're feeling things asshole.

After you´ve made the decision that you are too mushy and need to stop stuffing your face with shit food, the most important thing is this:
DONT EAT SHIT FOOD! Cut out of your life for good the following: white flour, sugars and anything fried. In fact, don’t eat any carbs or sugars - that includes carrots, corn and fruit - for two weeks. No soda or juice, just water. Have one cup of coffee in the morning and that’s it. Wake up and have cottage cheese and egg whites with some ham. For lunch, have a salad or a soup with no bread or noodles. No cream soups either. Just broths with veggies and/or meat. For dinner, have chicken or beef with veggies and salad and, if necessary, light dressing. You should really get “light” everything. For in between snacks, have cheese sticks or a fist full of almonds. And if you really get a sugar craving, one scoop of light peanut butter will take away the hunger pains. The best way to go about a new way of eating is to seek a pro that knows what to eat and why you should eat it. A nutritionist will also give you the right protein you should be drinking during the day and at night so your body doesn’t go into fat storing mode. That’s right. If you work out hard and go to bed hungry, your body thinks its starving and starts to store fat and eats muscle. What you want to do is eat so much good food and the right portions of it that your body is always burning fat to repair the muscle you just tore up at the gym. Your body becomes a furnace. So seek a pro to help you. The money you spend on a pro probably adds up to one day of stuffing your fat face with goodies. You do the math.

The next thing I had to do was simplify my life. I got it down to focusing on three things:

• 1 – Creativity - I’m a comic so my job is being creative. But this can be different for each person, whatever pays your bills. It’s important to focus on what you chose to do in life and do it well. I don’t care if you work at Subway.


• 2 - My mind - I go to see a therapist once a week. And I talk to my shitty friends about all the bullshit in my life. You have to verbalize your pain with someone. You have to get it out. Ask for help if you need it.


• 3 - My physical well-being – That means eating right and going to the gym.
  

So that is a summary of what you need to do. Or should I say, that´s how I did it. I simplified my life.

Just know you have to work to make money, to pay bills. The other free time you have is yours to do with it what you want. You can watch TV, play video games, sleep, jerk off or all of the above.

But none of those tasks will help you lose weight. I’m not saying you have to cut those things out of your life. I still do all of them in that order, pretty much every day. You just have to cut them down a little and not let them keep you from focusing on the important things.

Just think about it. If you take out one hour of TV time from your day and go to the gym instead, you will lose weight. I know what you´re saying. “I have to get there. I have to change into gym clothes when I get there. I have to get back from the gym. That’s like three hours. It takes so fucking long to go to the gym and work out. I don’t have the time.” You´re right. And that was one of the things that fucked me up. I didn’t think I had time to work out. I hated going to the gym. Not the gym itself. But getting to the gym was the motherfucker. But after I worked out I felt fucking great.
So here is what I did to make it easy to work out.
You’re going to need to go shopping. And if you’re an addict like me that should make you feel good. You get to fill the hole with some new shit. So here are some things you need to get to make going to the gym easier:

• 
  1. gym bag (You should keep this packed with all of your work out shit so you can just grab it and leave.)


• 2. lock - something you can attach right to your bag so you don’t forget it. I even went a step further and got a lock that goes right on my keys. You´re not locking up gold bars and diamond’s so you don’t need anything to hefty, just something to deter someone from breaking into your locker.


• 
  3. gym clothes -five shirts, three pairs of shorts. Use shirts that you don’t wear anymore that are big on you. Don’t wear something tight to the gym. There are mirrors all over every gym and the whole time you will be looking at yourself and feeling like a big pile of shit. Wear something loose fitting so you cant see all your fat wile you´re working out. Get a few pairs of shorts that will fit under your jeans. Not some bulky shit but shorts you feel comfortable in but that you can wear under your pants so you can just take your jeans off and be ready to go. Saving that one step of taking off my pants and putting on shorts and repeating the same when I left saved time and energy for me. And I don’t have a huge cock so I didn’t have to be naked in the locker room.


• 
  4. water bottle - You have to hydrate. Most of us drink coffee all day and eat a lot of salt. If you´re not sweating you´re not hydrated enough. So have that water bottle and keep drinking water.


• 
  5. work-out gloves - These are very important to me. They keep my hands from getting all fucked up. And they give me a better grip, which makes me feel stronger. I put these on during weight training only. If you wear these during cardio you are an asshole and should be shot. It’s like those fat guys who ride ten speeds in New York but they have the whole regalia on like they just cycled the tour du France.


• 
  6. cheap headphones - so you can watch TV or listen to music at the gym. I love TV and could watch TV all day, every day for the rest of my life. But going to the gym sucked because I would be in my own head the whole time I was on a machine. Then I thought, “Oh wait. I could put headphones on and watch some of my favorite shows, like Ellen, while I’m working out.” Problem solved. I suggest some news shows too. That way you can get some smarts while you´re working out. Lord knows I need some smarts, tee hee.


• 
  7. toiletries (deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste, baby wipes)
  You need help. No one can do this on their own. I´m not saying that you won´t go to the gym by yourself. You will and it will suck for the first few months. But you need as many people as you can get to know what you are trying to do. They can help motivate you when you are feeling weak. I had people I could call when I was sitting outside the gym thinking of ten billion reasons why I didn´t have to work out that day. Call your chick or your friend and tell them, “ I fucking don’t want to go.” And hopefully they will tell you to get your ass in there and do a little, even if it´s just thirty minutes. And usually, once you’re in there, your energy kicks in and you do more than you thought you could do.

The next thing is you have to know what you are doing in the gym. The one thing that would fuck me up is I didn’t know how to use the equipment, or how many reps to do, or how much weight to put on. This is where, again, you need a pro. I went to a good friend of mine who is available to anyone who reads this. This person put me on track to lose weight. Knowing what you are doing in the gym helps you get out of there faster and makes you feel less insecure.

Also there were a lot of things I was doing wrong. I was working my ass off and I lost like twenty pounds and then it all stopped. But I was still working my ass off with little or no results. That’s when I got in touch with MJ, a fucking pro.
I’m going to let her talk a little right now and you can use her as I did to help you. She put together a new diet for me with protein drinks and vitamins. And told me when to eat, how much to eat. And she gave me a whole different weight-training program that I didn’t believe was going to work because it was actually easier than the one I was doing. But it did. And it is still working for me.

Enter MJ Kovaleski, USBF Figure Pro Competitor and Fitness model.

Bob is so right when it comes to DOING IT RIGHT! There is no cookie cutter diet out there and there is no cookie cutter-training program. Just like snowflakes, each of our bodies are different. So the people who go on cookie cutter fad diets, ALWAYS FAIL. People who follow someone they see at the gym or do what their buddies told them to do ALWAYS FAIL.

Did you know that your blood type plays a HUGE role in how successful your diet is? Did you know that there are 15 basic questions that you can answer to determine what your body type is? Not everyone will respond to low weight/high reps. Not everyone will respond to high weight/low reps. Not everyone will respond to short breaks between sets and some people actually store excess fat by doing TOO much cardio.

Bob had the majority of it figured out. He had the vehicle. He just needed direction and the fuel to get to where he wanted to go.

We needed to determine what the appropriate diet was for BOB. Not the diet for me, or you, or for Joe Blow down the street. Bob needed his own special diet based on his lifestyle. So do you.
Bob was also training incorrectly. Not just screwing up some of the actual movements but the weights he lifted and the amount of reps he did.
This isn't easy. Trust me, I know. I've lived it. I've spent countless hours of research and obviously, countless hours of training and dieting.

Go ahead, say what I've heard a million times, "Yeah, but MJ, you're at a different level than me. You're a professional competitor..."

Blah, blah, blah.

That's right. I am a Pro. I wasn't always. I had to start somewhere and just like Bob I had to work my ass off to get here and make the same sacrifices Bob does every day. If you need an electrician, you're not going to call your dumb Polack friend next door to come rewire your house. You're going to call someone who knows what they're doing and how to fix what's broken. You need a PRO. If you're going to spend the time and make the sacrifices, shouldn't you do it right?

One more thing before I end this. It helped me to think in these terms so it might help you.

You have to take the time limit shit out of your head. I’m going to do this diet for two weeks. Or I’m going to work out for a month with a trainer friend of mine. YOU WILL BE FAT AGAIN AND FAIL.

Look . I quit drinking and using drugs 24 years ago and the only thing that got me through it was talking about how hard it was with someone who was going through the same thing. One simple phrase, one day at a time. Fuck yesterday and tomorrow because you have no control over either one. You can do it today. You can’t be looking two months down the road because chances are you will look and feel better in two months. And then you might stop and slowly put the weight back on. Then you´d have to do this shit all over again. Or you might just get discouraged because it´s not happening fast enough for you and just say FUCK IT! But if you just make the decision that this is the way you´re going to eat from now on. And that you are going to go to the gym and do something for the rest of your life, however long that is, then you will lose weight. It took me over a year before I started getting compliments. I was getting smashed for being fat the whole time I was really busting my ass to lose weight. But I had no choice. This was who I was now. I ate well and worked out. Not for the compliments but for myself. Now I’m not there yet and it is even harder when you’re in spitting distance of being the weight you want to be. And I have slipped up a few times. And you will too. But keep it moving. Get help from your friends and go to the gym, even if it’s for twenty minutes. And you will see results. Trust me. So that’s what I did for the last year to lose weight. I wrote this whole blog for me really to get some of it out. But I thought maybe it might help one of you fatsos out there. If you have any questions, don’t ask me. I still have twenty pounds to go. And I’m very busy trying to become famous. Just kidding. You can email me at rkfan@robertkellylive.com. But get a pro and Stop stuffing your face. And fuck everyone. Because nobody cares about you, except you. Believe that!!