I lost another pound and a half during week 4. Better than
nothing but I really want to lose at least 2 pounds per week
and would rather be closer to 3 pounds per week.

So here are my changes I made for this current week #5.

1. Increased cardio from 5 days per week to 7 days per week. 
Keeping it at 45 min

2. NO diet changes this week.

My though process was that well it was almost two pounds
last week so if I bump my cardio up a little that should get
me to the magic two pounds per week.

Well week 5 is almost over and I haven’t lost but maybe a
half pound so far….not good. So no matter where I end up
this week I will make the following changes.

(I will come back on Monday and give you the actual
amount lost for this week)

1. Cut my chicken from 8oz per meal to 6 oz per meal

2. Go from two whole eggs to one whole egg at meal #1

3. Increase intensity on Cardio by moving from a level
incline to a 4% incline

Basically what is happening is that my body is adapting
to the new “stresses” I am adding each week much
quicker than I anticipated. There could be a number of
reason why it’s adapting quicker. It could be due to the fact
that I was semi-dieting since the beginning of the year. It
could also be that my body is remembering how things were
the many years ago when I competed regularly. It could also
be that I am getting older (booooo).

A similar thing happened the last time I competed. It took
a tremendous amount of cardio and food manipulation for my
metabolism to kick in. But once it did……it took off and I was
a fat burning machine.

I actually forgot about that until I couldn’t figure out
why I wasn’t losing weight quick enough and decided to
go back and review my notes from my last competition diet.

Sure enough that is what happened, and it all came flooding
back and I now know what I need to do……I still am not
going to make really drastic changes since I am not under
any real time crunch….so let’s see what happens….next week.

Oh yeah……Week 4 total weight loss is 7.6 pounds and if
I can actually squeak out a pound this week it will be 8.6
pounds at the end of week 5.

I know this doesn’t seem like a lot and you may think I
don’t want to diet for 5 weeks and only lose 9 pounds but
just watch it will pick up and I will make up for it in the weeks
to come…….doing a diet this way is priming your body and
metabolism for some serious fat burning.

You could have started out at a much more drastic diet and
even more cardio but I bet by week 5 you would be burned out
and have plateaued without any way to realistically cut more
calories and you would have given up….and you would have
probably cheated on your diet a few times or completely
given up by now…..

Keep watching this will work……see you next time

P.S. Hey if you like my articles…..please comment,
Tweet or Digg the post, or use your favorite social
bookmarking service. I have a large number icons/links
of the most popular ones below each post to make it
easy for you. thanks again and take care….

My weight loss has slowed down considerably
I only lost about a half a pound this week. These
are the times when it gets tough mentally and
you have to push on through….

I have accessed my plan and decided to make
a few changes.

• Increase cardio to 45 min each session, still 5 days per week
• Cut out the oats at Meal #4 which will reduce my caloric intake by 150 calories per day

I don’t want to make too drastic of changes since
this is the first week of a major slow down and
it is entirely possible I could be retaining water due
to a slight cold that is starting to come on.

So we shall see what the next week brings….

If you are a “bodybuilder” why did you let yourself
get fat and out of shape?

The answer although quite simple is one that most
“bodybuilder’s” don’t like to admit.

Click the link below to read more…

We are not any different than any other average
person walking down the street when it comes
to what we want to eat or how we want to
spend our time.

We may choose to eat egg whites or plain
bland chicken breasts rather than eat pizza
and ice cream.

We would much rather watch TV, play a
video game, or tweet to our friends on twitter
rather than do another 45 minutes on the
treadmill.

Most of us would rather eat pizza and sleep in
rather than get up at 4:30am to do an hour of
cardio. So it stands to reason for some of us
when we lose the desire to compete we slip
into bad habits and all the things that we
deprived ourselves of when we were competing.

For me I stopped working out for a variety of reasons:

I started a new business and was working too many
hours at work and was too tired at the end of the day.

I was depressed and had no motivation to compete
anymore and in the end I was simply too busy and I
thought what was the point anyway.

Etc.. 

Heard any of these before?   I can think up probably
a hundred more and so can you.  We are all good
at making excuses.

I know… I know…..you are asking yourself
“but you are were a bodybuilding and don’t
most bodybuilder’s eat “good” and healthy
all the time?” 

Well some do and some don’t.  I would always
make up for the weeks of dieting by over eating
when I wasn’t dieting. 

My weight would balloon up and down just like
Oprah’s.  You know, come to think of it she should
have it easier than all of us since he can afford to
have a private chef cook her food perfectly whenever 
at the snap of her fingers.   I digress….

Simply, it’s hard for a lot of us bodybuilder’s and
non-bodybuilder’s alike to stay lean.  For me unless
I eat large portions I never feel full and no matter
how long I stay on the diet I still don’t feel full unless
I eat a good healthly sized portion.

It’s hard for a person who has no idea what
it’s like to not feel full until you are as my 3
year old son says “stuffed up like a turkey”.

I have had so many people tell me to simply cut
back on your portions.  Yes, it does sound simple
but it’s easier said than done especially when your
brain is screaming for food and then you begin
rationalzing why should have that extra roll or
piece of cake…..arrghhhh!!!

With no motivation to keep me in the gym and
watching what I ate. My diet started consisting
of un-healthy and fat laden foods.  Pizza, Burgers,
Fries, potato chips, etc…

Add to it the fact that I enjoy eating….not so
much candy and sweets but carbs are my
weakness and when the white flour type carbs
(breads, pasta, crackers, etc…) sneak into
my belly I blow up like the King Kong balloon at
your local car dealership.

The Good News….

Because of all this over eating on my part I had
to figure out how to strip fat of the human body
and not because some book told me how to do
it but because I had to. 

When you are going to get on a stage in front of
thousands of people in the teeny tiny posing trunks
you have to figure out how to make the human
body do things it doesn’t like doing, specifically
burning fat for fuel. 

Burning fat is not an easy process for the human
body.  It must be coaxed and even sometimes
tricked into burning fat and over time I have learned
many tricks on how to get rid of fat and build muscle
and I want to share my knowledge with you in a
way that is hopefully entertaining and meaningful.

As you can see I am not any different than any
other average person walking down the street.
I have learned over the years how to manipulate
my body into doing what I want it to do (burn fat).

As you continue to follow along with me on this
journey over the coming weeks I will be showing
you many of the tricks that I have learned to
force your body into burning fat.

take care and have a fantastic day!!!

P.S. Please leave a comment and let me
know you are alive!!!!

So here is my starting diet….as my diet changes
I will post updates so you can see the changes…

Thomas Rieke - Beginning Diet

Click on the thumbnail to see the picture full size…

Let’s see other things that are not discussed in the
above diet.

Drinks (no sugar or fat) include…water, coffee, tea, and crystal light

Condiments (very low to no sugar or fat) include….salsa, balsamic vinegar, mustard, equal or sweet-n-low

That’s it….let me know your questions and I will answer….

But before I get to that I wanted to say that I hope
everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you
didn’t blow your diet too bad. As for myself, I stayed
the course and didn’t cheat one bit. I did, however,
replace my usual 8 oz of chicken with 8oz of turkey breast
for one of my meals.

But no pies, no cakes, no sweat potatoe casserole, no
stuffing…..I was hard core….and thankfully the scale
showed my hard work was worth it.

I lost another 2 pounds this week bringing my two week
total to 5.4 lbs…not bad…but not great considering when
I used to compete I would lose that in the first week.

I know, I know…I am getting older and my metabolism
is starting to slow down. Also add in that I haven’t been
“training” for many years as well. It will take some time
and some prodding to get my body to respond like it used to.

Don’t worry it will. Just as yours will. It may be tough
and it may get harder to coax our bodies into responding
to get the results we want.

However, I can promise you that if you “keep on keeping on”
through the hard times and push through the plateaus you
will achieve the body you have always dreamed.

talk to you later…..

Thomas

P.S. Hey, got a couple of questions for you?

Will you leave a comment and let me know what types
of things you want me to cover in my blog?

Or if you have any specific questions please leave them
below and I will answer them in a future post?

And if not just leave me a comment…saying anything
good, bad, ugly……just show me that you are there.

I know, I know I was a little behind in getting up
the last video post which explained my fat loss plan.

But in any event here we are a full seven days later
and I know you are ready for the results…did I lose
weight, did I cheat on my diet…what happened….

Drum Roll….please….

Click the Link to Read More

I am happy to report that my weight is 242.6 lbs
down from 246, which if you do the math is 3.4 lbs,
after being on my diet for the first week.

Not bad, but nothing to write home about either. You
will usually lose a significantly larger amount of weight
your first week of a diet. Mostly the weight lost is
water weight and not all fat but hey it always feels
good to see the scale down almost 4 lbs no matter
the reason.

My goal weight loss each week is 2 to 3 lbs and as
long as I continue to lose this amount I will not make
any changes to my diet or exercise routines.

There isn’t any point in making it worse on
yourself as long as you are losing the fat….
I am in this for the long haul and I don’t want
to burn out early.

This is a mistake I see a lot of people make. They
think…”Hey I lost 4 pounds doing this little amount
of exercise and not really restricting my calories.
I should cut back my food and do more cardio and
I will lose even more.”

While it is true you may have another large scale
drop the next week, the problem is that you will
not be able to maintain it. Once your body adapts
and your weight loss plateaus you will have to cut
even more calories and do even more cardio to
keep the fat loss going.

My philosophy is that we only do the minimum
that is necessary to keep burning fat consistently
each and every week. And only when it is necessary
will I make a change. This way when week 5 gets
here we aren’t having to do hour long cardio
sessions on a calorie restricted diet and wondering
what I will have to do next when I plateau again.

I have been there and I can promise you it’s not
fun and most people are not able to hack
it and end up quitting. A lot of diets out there
set you up for failure in this way because they
don’t address this fundamental issue of dieting;
which is helping you to stick to the diet.

As you follow along these next many weeks I am
going to try and show you the various ways that
I structure things that help you stick to your diet
and ultimately achieve your goals.

Alright, talk to you at next weeks weigh in……

I have worked up the courage to show you my “Before” pictures.   I am utterly embarrassed
to show these pictures but my hope is that you see that I am a just like you and sometimes 
I ate one too many slices of pizza and had one too many beers (OK… it was a few more than one). 

But over the course of the next 16 weeks you will see the exact steps I take to lose the fat
and how you too can lose the fat and achieve the physique that you have always wanted…

So…..Who is Thomas Rieke?

You may be asking yourself who is this guy and why should I bother
listening to him?

Is he a Dieting Expert?  Is he a muscle building guru?

To read more click below:

He is probably another one of those Internet hucksters who wants to sell
me some crappy e-book about how “You will lose 10 lbs in 10 minutes
without dieting and exercising“.

Or maybe he’s selling some new “snake oil” that will have “You lose weight
while sitting on the couch eating a bag of potato chips” — “It’s Guaranteed“.

First things First;

According to the so called “Experts” you probably shouldn’t be listening to
anything I say or write.

In order to give you full disclosure and be completely transparent here goes:

I am not a doctor, nor a registered dietitian, or even a certified personal
trainer. I don’t have a degree in pharmacology, biology, or any “ology” for
that matter.

I haven’t written an e-book or even a real book on any subject; let alone
about dieting or weight loss.

So why should YOU listen to me or at least pay attention
to what I am doing.

Because the one thing that I have done over and over for the last
15 years is lose weight, specifically fat weight.

Being a nationally ranked competitive bodybuilder every time I have dieted
for a bodybuilding competition I lost an average of 50 pounds; with 75 pounds
being the most I have every lost in a 12 week period.

My body fat was at such ridiculously low levels that Lonnie Teper of Ironman
Magazine gave me the nick name “Freaky Rieke“.

Fast forward to today…and just to be completely honest with you I am
extremely embarrassed to be telling you this. 

I have been away from the gym for many years and have “bellied up to the
feed trough” a few too many times and sadly lost the physique that garnered
the nickname “Freaky Rieke”. 

Now with the big “40″ quickly approaching, I took a hard look in the mirror
and decided it was time to do something about my weight and get back into
shape instead of being a shape.

You can probably relate how hard it’s going to be for me completely let
down my guard and show you exactly how bad I let myself go and then
let you into my private world and watch me get into shape.  

But I really enjoy helping others to achieve their weight loss or muscle
building goals and that is when the light bulb went off and I thought why
don’t I chronicle my fat loss adventure on this blog in both print and video
for the everyone to witness. 

What better way to help others than to show you every step I make in
my journey from a fat and out of shape physique to a lean and muscular bod. 
You will be able to witness the methods and tactics that have been
used time and time again that will allow you to absolutely melt
away the fat  and build a lean hard physique.

During the upcoming weeks you will see the good, the bad, and the “ugly”
(those with a weak stomach should divert their eyes from my before pictures)
will be displayed here for you watch and learn what to do as well as what
not to do.

The big difference between myself and all the other “Experts” is that I actually
struggle with weight loss every day, where most of these guys and gals have
never really had to lose any weight. 

These “Experts”  tell you to do this or that without ever having to really
experience the cravings or the depression of looking in the mirror and
seeing a fat person staring back at them. 

You will get to witness a “real” person going through the daily struggle of losing
the fat.  I am no different than you, the only difference is I know the exact steps
needed to lose the fat.

My sincere hope is that you will learn a tip or two along the way
that will help you in your own weight loss journey.

yours friend,

Thomas “Freaky” Rieke

P.S.
Also you should be forewarned that I am not a writer, actor, speaker, etc.
so if you are reading my posts or watching my videos you will no doubt find
spelling and grammatical errors, and most certainly some Uh’s and Um’s. 

Also I should be upfront that I am a total dork and don’t be surprised if
sometimes out of no where I do something totally silly.

But seriously, it’s not the fanciness of my words that you should be paying
attention to but the information that is presented because it will be priceless. 

P.P.S.

Please comment and I would love to hear from You about your weight loss
struggles or weight loss achievements.

Thanks for following me.  I created this short (about a minute) video to welcome you and tell you a little about myself.

Please comment!!