Have you checked out my consultation services? I’m presuming your answer is ‘yes’ given the growth of my online client roster, so thank you. That said, I want to share with you, my readers, a testimonial that found its way into my inbox a few weeks back. It made me smile over my morning coffee and near spill my coveted Breakfast Blend all over my counter-top. It’s from one of my former clients, and, well, enough preamble. Here you go:

“I hate getting training and weight loss advice from people who’ve been thin and fit their whole lives. Listening to someone with a naturally amazing metabolism talk about their diet tips is like getting business advice from someone who inherited all their money – yeah, they have what you want, but they never had to work for it.

Ryan Zielonka is different. I’ve known Ryan for years, and I watched from a front-row seat as he went from significantly overweight to cut, ripped, and lifting weights that should have squashed him like a bug. More importantly, though, I watched how he did it – saw the countless hours of research and education, the science and methodology, and the sheer grit that went into it. In the end, it was watching him transform himself that convinced me there might be hope for me as well.

Unlike a lot of trainers, Ryan understood my limitations, my apprehension. Working under the significant constraints I requested – no more than a few hours of working out a week, plus my eccentric vegetarian diet which most people said could never mesh with bodybuilding – Ryan crafted a unique workout and diet plan designed to maximize my gains with minimal impact on my life. What’s more, he was able to succinctly and specifically answer my questions about the science behind each choice. Understanding why we did things didn’t just satisfy my need to know, it also made it easier for me to get out there and do the work.

When we started, after several years of fruitless exercising on my own, I was among the weakest and slowest of my friends, with zero muscle definition. With Ryan’s help, I began making steady advances almost from day one, and in no time at all I was packing on muscle, losing fat, and lifting more than I’d every imagined – I even got asked to pose for a charity swimsuit calendar. But most of all, I’ll never forget that first moment in the gym when, after several months of Ryan’s instruction, I dead-lifted well over my body-weight for reps and was hit by the sudden realization that I was someone who could dead-lift. A lot. Me. The wimpy, nerdy kid. Somewhere back in middle school, a twelve-year-old me smiled.

Talk to Ryan Zielonka. He’s been where you are now, and he’ll get you where you want to be.”

There came a point in my obsession where I realized I couldn’t keep jacking up my mileage and eating less every day. Over the course of the year I’d started to lift weights but relied on hear-say to build my routines. I feared weight lifting in the early period of this first phase of ‘transformation,’ concerned that I would ‘gain weight’ and ‘bulk up.’

It didn’t take long before I recognized that great physiques were built by iron and not by cardio. I found myself more and more in the weight room and less so on the track or trail. I started to flip through Men’s Health rather than Runner’s World. I still didn’t know anything about nutrition, or really, anything about exercise. But I wanted six-pack abs. Even at 120lbs, I carried so little muscle I still had none.

When I finally prioritized weight lifting my hunger skyrocketed. I started eating again. All the endurance training helped blunt my appetite while weight trained seemed to encourage me to eat. Instead of listening to my body and making rapid and efficient gains I, with brilliant idiocy, felt that all I needed were a few then en vogue tricks of the trade – no carbs with fat, no carbs at night, no high GI carbs, only monounsaturated fats, tons of protein, and of course, ‘keep it clean’ to put on muscle and gain no fat.

And then I started to fall apart… again.  With low-carb mania at its peak, bodybuilding websites reflected the trend.  With my exercise regimen putting me close to 12+ hours a week of intense exercise, I embarked down a long road that carried with it feast, famine, and an eating disorder.

***

I started pairing extreme diets with extreme workout protocols.  High intensity interval training three times a week?  Awesome.  Full-body workouts four times a week?  Most excellent.  Hideously and dangerously low-calorie and low-carb, even compromising protein?  Sure ‘nuff.

There was no limit.  I’d learned that results were had from deprivation, from uncompromising commitment, and a never say ‘no’ attitude.  I dove into the supplement culture.  I devoured every article I could.  It became my new obsession.  I tracked every calorie, counted every carb, freaked when I couldn’t get what I thought to be a ‘proper’ meal in, and turned into an utter headcase.

And then the binging began.

Whether it was the mental stress associated with the ‘rules’ of eating, outside life pressures, chronic deprivation, or overtraining, I can’t say.  What I do know is that I began consuming as much food as humanly possible ever-single-weekend for about a year.  I recall one legendary weekend where I tracked my calories.  In a twenty-four hour period I ate close to 20,000kcal.  I gained 24lbs that day.  I was like a bodybuilder on a permanent pre-contest cut.  I thought I was going insane.

Living in a state of constant food paranoia is something I’m sure too many can relate to.  It’s as though your entire world, your entire life revolves around what you’re putting (or not putting) into your mouth.  I would go out to dinner with friends, refuse food in favor of coffee, and be on the brink of passing out.  I would often leave social gatherings to eat ‘clean’ foods and, in the end, binge anyway.  It was a vicious cycle, the dark underbelly that goes by unspoken by too many.  When you live your life online amidst fellow obsession compulsives plagued with similar afflictions, it’s difficult to identify the ‘dis’ in the disorder.

Fed up with it all, crippled by rampant binging, my social life gone, instead replaced with a paranoid hermitic existence, I made some drastic changes.  I abandoned the gurus and promises and left behind notions of rapid and maintainable progress.  I came to accept that I needed to slow the fuck down and get my head screwed on straight.

* * *

A chance e-mailing with Alan Aragon ruptured my crazed neurosis.  Not since that first run had there been such a sharp break in my world view.  I went from orthorexic, restrained eating and painfully debilitating exercise to logical and reasonable nutrition coupled with progressive training.  Overnight I discarded all that I ‘knew’ about nutrition and found myself, alongside my new mentor, abreast PubMed articles and Medline.  I’d taken guru-talk at face value and had ignored what my body had told me for too long.   I should note, it’s not that the recommendations of online fitness authors were wrong per se, nor did they fail to net results; they did.  The twist was that I was obsessing, expending far too much effort over details that made no difference in the end.  These marginal matters stayed too central and occupied mental space better spent on my studies.

Over the next two years I would rebuild my body with less stress, more confidence, and smarter choices.  My progress wasn’t linear – the obsessions of the past caught up with me about a year into my recovery as I was diagnosed with clinical overtraining.

I can’t say enough about questioning any advice given to you.  One of my great discoveries of the past year, in contrast to advice ad infinum from sources around the Internet, is that I do spectacular on a higher carb diet.  I presumed that carbs were behind my ‘insulin’ resistance.  I presumed I was glucose intolerant.  I presumed I had contraindications swirling about me like plagued pigeons.  I never bothered to find out what happened if I just follow my instincts.

Bodybuilding, fitness, diet, physique transformation – it all serves to distance you from all the biological and physiological signals your body pumps out.  Too many people are willing to sublimate their own tastes and desires and instead follow scripted guidelines from authors who know nothing about them.  To the extent we’re similar, we each carry wildly different psychological profiles.  Where brute force and a never-say-quit attitude may carry someone their whole life, others need tempered approaches more cerebral in nature.

Some authors may intone here that there may be a perfect ‘fit’ physically that doesn’t fit psychologically.  I don’t believe this to be true.  To a certain degree, I believe we shape our physical selves through the cerebral games we play.  Our brains are the first and last points of entry and egress for our actions.  We must think before we do.  At a very basic level we think ourselves thin or think ourselves fat.  We think ourselves muscular or we think ourselves emaciated.  The notion that some optimal protocol exists that contradicts your psychological reality is an absolute falsity.

Find your own route and realize setbacks just refine your means to progress.  The world is rarely black and white.  Look at the shades involved in everything you do.  Not just training and diet but everything in your world.  There are many hidden surprises to be found among what would seem to be otherwise the straightforward, trodden paths of life.

While this article series may be over, subscribe and follow Ryan’s physical pursuits on his website at http://www.ryanzielonka.com. And if you want to learn how to avoid all the pitfalls he fell into, click on the Services link at the top of this page to learn about his consultation  practice.

Body transformation isn’t just about looking better in the mirror. It’s about realizing a new life, a new reality.

In the middle of  my transformation everything seemed to flow outward for me. I looked better, I felt better, I even started acting better. By the end what that I now refer to as my “turbo manorexic phase” I was unrecognizable. Close friends who hadn’t seen me in a few months looked at me like I was crazy.

Researchers call my need to succeed and the obsessive drive fueling it the “rage to master.” Prior to my my big turn from fat kid to fashion model (hah!), my band garnered found some success in the local scene. We were being approached for gigs and receiving decent press. One of our friends had, as a gift for us, drawn exaggerated versions of  all the band members and in the process highlighted our most distinguishing traits.

You can probably guess how this turned out.

Yes, I looked like an ill-shapen mound of Play-Dough, and this massive, jiggly, round, shockingly disparaging caricature had the audacity to stare back at me. Oh, of course everyone else loved their paper iterations. But me, no, on paper I stood half as a tall and looked to be twice as wide as my three fellow musicians.

Disgusted and frustrated, I would come home days later after an afternoon of hot wings and beer-battered pretzels which, while delicious on the way down, seem to lack on the way up. I was determined to change. Me, my 44 inch waist, and flat soled Vans decided were going on a run.

This quickly turned into a  sad fat kid affair two blocks from where I started. I could feel buffalo wing grease sputtering up my throat amidst panicked breaths as I struggled my way home where hyperventilated for an hour. That’s right, an hour. The next day I did the same. But this time, rather than two stumbled blocks, I made it four respectable ones, and again, walked home to hyperventilate. Again.

You may notice a pattern here.

Within a week I’d made it close to half a mile through sheer willpower. I hurt incessantly. I had no clue what I was doing. All I knew was that so long as I was hungry and so long I was running I had to be getting unfat.

Dietarily, I ate shit tons of carbs limited fat as much as possible. I dropped my Coca Cola intake from roughly six liters a day to zero. Cold turkey. Withdrawal was brutal but I buried my cravings in exercise. And any time I would head to a restaurant I’d be sure to leave at least half the portion.

While writing this article I found an ancient Word document outling my daily intake. Toward the end of this ‘manorexia’ phase which lasted about a year I was running 8 miles every day. And not an easy jog – I was busting my ass throwing in sprints, even stopping to do push-ups on the side of the road. Atop that, if I had a free momemt I’d do sit-ups, push-ups, and dips where-ever I’d happen to be. Given my activity levels I was probably burning close to 5,000 kcal a day. So let’s take a look at how close my intake matched my output:

Breakfast
1 cup Special K cereal
1 cup Fat-free Milk

Lunch
Chicken Noodle Soup – 2 cups

Run

Dinner
Bagel w/jam
2 eggs

Snack
1 bag fat-free Kettlecorn

There’s quite the disparity between my caloric intake and expenditure, if you couldn’t tell.

My results? In eight weeks I’d plummeted, at a height of 5’7”, from 200lbs and a 42-44 inch waist to 140lbs and a 32 inch waist. Two months after this first massive drop I’d be hovering around 120lbs with a 28” inch waist which I’d hold until the following. I was all about the concentration camp survivor look.

Having been the literal and figurative ass of all jokes, I took a unique thrill in my newfound ‘look’. However, I’d soon realize you can’t just keep running to stay thin. Something had to give.

A lot of people say they were ‘fat’ or a bit ‘chubby’ growing up. But there’s a huge difference in carrying around a little excess pudge and being both the shortest and the fattest kid in your middle school classroom. Having a forty-two inch waist by age thirteen is something a touch difficult to relate to unless you live it, especially if you’re only five feet tall. Like I was.

I started getting fat around age seven mostly because of genetics. I was raised in a family of skinny people, genetic ectomorphs if you will, so there was always junk food around. And when I began my transformation I found myself working twice as hard as everyone else to maintain what amounted to an unimpressive, decidedly normal physique. The disparity between the efforts I put into exercise and the results that came out led to a great deal of frustration. This frustration ended up inspiring my interest in the science of body recomposition, and in turn this site. My war against poor genetics. So this is my story for everyone else dissatisfied with their body: from excess corpulence to a GQ-worthy physique. Hell, if I can do it, you can too.

* * *

During the golden years of my youth a day began with coffee and an added three tablespoons of sugar. This mega-dosing of sucrose, you’ll find, is a necessity if you’re addicted to extra tasty, extra carbonated, extra pretty much everything real Coke. None of that diet crap touched my lips.

A stop off at Starbucks would follow, a croissant, maybe two, and a grande full fat mocha would top off my morning. A solid six to eight hours would pass and then I’d come home where I’d eat non-stop until I fell asleep. Sounds awesome huh? Cookies, chips, pasta, it didn’t matter.  My ass was parked firmly in front of the family computer, gaming amidst pizza, cheesy sticks, and ice cream. It was fun it a very hedonistic sense, but never filling.

Now let’s back up for a moment. Is this that different from any other teen? All of the guys (yes guys, because no girl would come near me) I spent my time with ate like this yet stayed lean. This was pre-metrosexual revolution of 2003, when suddenly every bro in America read Men’s Health. Too many fitness authors rail on the dietary habits of the public which, in large, are learned habits bred from a lack of information. The RDA is ambiguous enough to allow for serious transgression – pizza has starch, dairy, and fruit by means of tomato sauce – that’s, like three food groups!

I remember playing basketball, taking Taekwondo classes (imagine the hilarity of a sweating mound of flush leaping in the air doing spin kicks), throwing Frisbees, and even (egads) running to stay in shape.

But the food was always faster it seemed.

By age 19 I was sick and tired of people throwing rocks at me because they could. I was too small in stature, too fat, and carried not one ounce of social credibility. When you finally get lean and people can’t use you as their emotional piñata you start ditching the assholes in your life and instead make people prove their worth to you. That was  a huge revelation for me.

I remember not enjoying food even if I ate tons. It was always there but I never tasted nor cared about what I put into my mouth. Was it an emotional escape? Maybe. I grew up in an environment of constant anxiety, enduring the agony of adolescence and in consequence used food to compensate.

Imagine being awarded a black belt in Taekwondo and your school not having a belt large enough to fit you. My size felt like a cancer, or maybe a really bad case of publicized herpes.

That was me until a chance discussion with my band, the end of a relationship, and a friend’s painfully accurate caricature destroyed all I believed about myself.

Check back soon for Part Two. And if you haven’t subscribed for updates, you should, by clicking the link at the top of this page!