Hey Slamdog,
Good job on the progress so far! It’s very hard for people to make such huge adjustments to their lives, but you seem to be going just fine. Keep going forward and don’t look back!
I do have a few pieces of advice for you, though.
The first is simple: don’t try so hard! It’s so fucking easy to get into good shape! People make it sound incredibly complex at times, but seriously, all one has to do is eat right and exercise right.
Now don’t laugh at me! If you’re an olympic athlete, eating and exercising right is very complex! But as an average guy that just wants to look good and be healthy, it’s SIMPLE!
If you used to eat pizza 5 times a week and smoke 2 packs a week, cut it down to 1 pizza a week and 1 pack a week. If you give it enough time, you WILL see results, and you can keep going from there. Some people do better cutting everything completely and just training like an animal and going hardcore, but MOST people don’t. (By the way, I’m not telling you to start smoking again haha)
Unless you’re one of those rare personality types, don’t obsess over ANYTHING other than simply getting good meats, vegetables, fruits, and fats in your diet on a consistent regular basis. Forget about getting 37g of protein in your body every 3 hours on the dot! It’s not something you need to do right now. I’d recommend John Berardi’s 7 Habits, which you can find on this site. Just follow them as best you can!
Same with exercise. Don’t worry about training with 6 reps versus 10 reps or 5 sets versus 10 sets of 80%RM. Just figure out a few APPROPRIATE, basic exercises, and do them a few times a week or just whenever you have the time.
The second piece of advice I have for you is on exercise selection. I’m sure by now, thanks to wonderful T-Nation, you are concentrating mainly on the bench, dead, squat, row, pullup, etc. The big exercises. That’s all good and everything, but no offense, as a 40 year old truck driver who recently spent a few days in the hospital for a spinal injury and who already has a knee problem, you should probably look into some exercises and some habits that will help you fix those physical problems of yours.
I’m not saying to ditch those amazing exercises, but that PERHAPS, some of them may not be the best choice for you right now. And that others may be exactly what you need.
I would also seriously recommend adding in some bodyweight exercises to your regime. If you can only bench 120 pounds, train until you can do 20 perfect form pushups, then jump back to the bench. Don’t bother loading plates for a backsquat if you can’t do 20 ass to grass bodyweight squats. Know what I mean?
Here are some easy and important things for you to do, consistently:
1)15 minutes a day, as many days as possible when you wake up, do some light dynamic flexibility work, around your major joints. Nothing too crazy, just something to keep your joints healthy. I’d also recommend this whenever your body is stiff or sore.
2)Single Leg exercises - there was recently an article posted about these. Check it out! Your knee might thank you!
3)Self myofascial release - I’m sure you’ve heard of this before, using foamrollers/tennis balls/baseballs/etc. on your muscles to correct muscle tissue quality. My tip for you would be to put a tennisball or something a bit harder on the wall, press your back into it, and SLOWLY (THIS IS KEY) move your back up and down, twist slightly, arch side to side, etc. Find spots that hurt like a BITCH (obviously not bone!) and just keep the ball in that spot for 30 seconds or more before moving on. Just use your intuition and go where your body needs help.
4)You mentioned you read that article about Toxic People. It’s been a while since I read it, but even if it’s in there its still worth repeating: YOU could be that toxic person in your life. If you are honest with yourself, I’m sure you can probably think of times where your mind said to do one thing but you did another. We all do. Maybe you could have eaten better but you chose to eat something else. Or maybe you were supposed to do another set but you “were just too tired.” Maybe something worse! I don’t know you, so who knows what you think like.
If you catch yourself doing something other that what you KNOW is the right thing to do… ask yourself, what the fuck am I doing??? This won’t help me at all! Why the hell am I doing this? Just keep yourself on the straight and narrow path to your goal! If you screw up here and there, no worries! Just be consistant, thats all it takes. The body will adapt to what you force it to do, eventually.
Anyways, I’m always long winded but hopefully I helped. I’ll stop now and just wish you good luck!