Overcome

Last weekend I had a chance to step on stage again, this is my third year competing after winning my personal battle against obesity . Even after 3 years of going through this process of getting ready to compete, I’m still learning how my body behaves for every competition, and this one was no different, it was unique, tough and enjoyable.  When I say enjoyable is because ultimately you have to have fun, if you spend all your prep just complaining about the food, about the amount of cardio and the strict regime, maybe you need to reevaluate if this is really for you. This time I incorporated many changes to my regular routine, including more HIIT workouts. Read Destination Transformation Challenge Workout Series – HIIT for more information about it. Bottom line is: you MUST have fun! You may (matter of fact you will) suffer to get there, but you need to digest this and understand that it’s all part of the process. This is no different than studying for a hard exam, you wi...

I still remember in 2003 when I moved to US and a friend in Brazil told me: man, now you will get really fat, because everything there is big, and you will only eat burgers . I heard, but I didn’t really process the information since deep inside of me I knew that I will only eat what I wanted, nobody could really force me to eat. However, he was right, I jumped from 220 lbs to 280 lbs from 2003 to 2010. If this was muscle gain I would be happy, but it was pure fat….36% body fat in 2011. Although he was right, I was also right, because even on my deepest days of “fat boy” eating fast food and thinking about my past shape as soccer player in Brazil, I was like: why am I’m damaging myself?! In between thoughts I asked for more French fries…it was a black hole! But the fact that I never tried to find someone or something to blame (other than me) also helped me to be more determined to change, because I knew I was the one in control. If I could damage myself so much in 7 years, what c...