Experiment – Fat, Broke and Stupid

Despite having already lost 98 lbs. and having kept it off for a long time, I was still feeling a little fat, broke, and stupid! I wanted to build not just a skinnier body, but a stronger and more aesthetic body for myself. I wanted to commit to daily exercise. I wanted health and fitness to become more of a fixture in my daily life. And with that, on June 15, 2019, I started doing 100 push ups every single day! I also started this blog and a YouTube channel as a way to document my progress not only for myself, but also to show others what realistic results could look like month-after-month. Perhaps I could inspire others out there, too?!? The year-long challenge ended on June 14, 2020, which equals 366 days and 36,600 pushups. (I had to choose a leap year, right?) Let’s see my results, and have a candid talk about the good, the bad, and the UGLY of doing 100 push ups every single day, without taking a day off, for an entire year! Exercise Caution I may now be a certified personal trainer, but I am not your personal trainer. Push ups are a compound movement that can cause injury. Exercise caution, use proper form, listen to your body, and consult a health care professional of your choice should something feel wrong. If nothing else, read this entire article before enthusiastically beginning a challenge like this. Before-and-After Body Transformation Results: Data I love data, numbers, graphs, and Excel! To add to the before and after photos that I planned to take, I thought it would also be fun and helpful to track my weight throughout the challenge to see how my weight might affect my body compositions. Here is a table and a graph detailing how my weight changed during the course of my challenge. I also included in the table what I weighed at my heaviest 17 years ago! MonthDateWeight (Lbs.)Weight (Kgs.)17 Years AgoJune 15, 2002296.0 lbs.134.5 kgs.Day 1June 15, 2019198.0 lbs.90.0 kgs.Month 1July 14, 2019184.8 lbs.84.0 kgs.Month 2Aug. 14, 2019184.1 lbs.83.7 kgs.Month 3Sept. 14, 2019187.2 lbs.85.1 kgs.Month 4Oct. 14, 2019186.6 lbs.84.8 kgs.Month 5Nov. 14, 2019183.5 lbs.83.4 kgs.Month 6Dec. 14, 2019189.7 lbs.86.2 kgs.Month 7Jan. 14, 2020184.6 lbs.83.9 kgs.Month 8Feb. 14, 2020187.4 lbs.85.2 kgs.Month 9Mar. 14, 2020185.0 lbs.84.1 kgs.Month 10Apr. 14, 2020180.4 lbs.82.0 kgs.Month 11May 14, 2020175.1 lbs.79.6 kgs.Month 12June 14, 2020181.5 lbs.82.5 kgs. As you can see, I lost a fair bit of weight during the first month of the challenge. My weight more-or-less stabilized until around Month 9, where I began focusing a little bit more on weight loss. By Month 11 I had lost 22.9 lbs., and I ended up finishing the year with a total weight loss of 16.5 lbs. This meant that my total lifetime weight loss now sat at 114.5 lbs., which is 52 kgs.! Not too shabby. Before-and-After Body Transformation Results: Pictures And of course, the pictures. Watch this YouTube #Short video to see the whole progress. It's only 57 seconds long... Enjoy! https://youtu.be/rNwT3CY0N5w Have fun with this, too! Drag to compare before and after pictures. The Good I thoroughly enjoyed taking on this challenge. Among other things. I can confidently say that some of the major pro’s of doing 100 push ups a day for a year were that it: Builds Mental Discipline – Forget the physical transformation for a moment. The mental transformation was equally, if not more so, powerful. It is easy to do something when you are motivated. It is something entirely different to make the time and energy to train when you are tired, busy, distracted, or just don’t feel like doing it. Training every day helped me build mental discipline that I can now use in other areas of my life. Some examples include: resisting alcohol, resisting unhealthy food, studying languages, and making time for all of the things I deem important to me. Builds Healthier Habits – I now have the healthy habit of wanting to train and move my body every day! While my current weekly routine is more diversified, the habit of training every day remains. Additionally, I was forced to build healthier sleeping and eating habits which remain a part of my life. I moved further away from alcohol and now reach for non-alcoholic beverages as a habit.Builds Muscle – Of course, I also built some muscle in my chest, shoulders, triceps, and upper-body in general. Push ups are a form of resistance training. Resistance training stimulates muscle growth. Muscle growth promotes a healthier body which is stronger and more aesthetically appealing. Resistance training is also associated with better quality of life as you age and get older. Builds Strength and Endurance – Our bodies respond to the stresses we put on them. My body responded by getting stronger and being better capable of executing pushing movements. It also responded by being able to perform pushing movements for longer, adding to my upper-body muscular endurance. And who doesn’t want to be stronger, right? The Bad “You can’t have the good without the bad.”-Or so they say! Doing 100 push ups every day for a year is NOT a perfect recipe to a strong, muscular body. There are some con’s, too. Among them: The #100 Is Too Hard – If I am being totally honest, 100 pushups a day was probably too difficult for me at the start of this challenge. It truly was a challenge, and while I got through it, I probably would have been just as well off doing 30, 40, or 50 pushups each day while progressively working my way up. Or perhaps I could have done knee-pushups for the first few months to adjust for my initial abilities. Don’t get too hung up on the number 100. Starting with 10 pushups a day and building up from there is a perfectly legit (and smarter!) programming approach.The #100 Is Too Easy – It is also possible that 100 push ups every day will not be enough to stimulate size or strength changes. If you are an experienced athlete, there may be better alternatives. Again, the number 100 seems to have a magical quality around it. (Three digits, I guess.) Don’t let it stop you from doing what is right for you and your goals.Non-Optimal Muscle Development – Push ups are a great upper body exercise for the chest, shoulders and triceps. However, there are limitations. Unlike the bench press where you can overload your muscles with lots of weight, push ups are limited to your bodyweight. Additionally, there are other wonderful exercises and variations for your chest that get neglected when you focus only on 100 standard pushups every day. I did not do these other exercises, and I did not overload my muscles, because I knew I had to train again the next day and I wanted to avoid injury. Other programming options which incorporate 2-3 days rest between chest workouts will probably grow and even more impressive chest that what 100 pushups every day can achieve.Lack of Rest – Again, the lack of rest was tough. Some days I was really sore and I wanted to rest, but I couldn’t. This led to some non-optimal workouts. Rest is quite important in a well-balanced workout routine and for optimal gains. To get as much rest as I could, I split my pushups throughout the day, and for the last 10 months I never went to failure. I certainly left some gains on the table as a result.Doing Anything Everyday Can Get Boring – There were times when I wanted to do other types of training, but I couldn’t because I was focused on my pushups. I only did standard pushups to control the variable of my challenge experiment. Some days were exciting, sure, but other days felt more robotic and routine. I had to find other ways to spice up my training. A well-balanced routine will already account for this. The UGLY!!! Beyond the bad are some potentially very ugly things that can happen as a result of doing 100 push ups every day. Here are some to be aware of before you consider attempting a challenge like this yourself: Serious Injury Risk – Exercise related injuries can happen anytime and anywhere. Repetitively performing the same pushing movement, day-in-and-day-out, without rest, is a recipe for hurting yourself. You can use proper form, balance your training with pulling movements, stretch adequately, eat properly, sleep well, and still hurt yourself doing this. In fact, I hurt myself doing this on Day 355 of Day 366 of my challenge and did not finish the last 10 days. It was devastating to come so close and hurt myself right at the finish line, but it is a reality of this type of training. I am lucky that I only had a minor shoulder/back injury, as it could have been much worse. I am confident that if I had tried to muscle through the last 10 days that I would have ended up in the hospital and in much worse shape. Be careful!Demotivation Leads to Quitting – Sometimes people get demotivated when they do not see the results they want fast enough. It could lead to feeling demotivated, and eventually to quitting. I Would say it took me 3 full months before I started seeing the changes that I was hoping to see in Month 1. Remember that changes in the body happen slowly, and that consistency and patience are as valuable as a solid workout routine. Have faith in the process and never give up! I could not possibly end this section without some additional words of encouragement: “It’s not what happens to you that matters; rather, it's what you do about it that counts.”-Mr. Binghi, my high school calculus teacher Should YOU Try 100 Pushups a Day for a Year? I don’t know. Should you? If you want to, go for it! There are multiple people out there doing pushups every single day with great success. It can be done. That being said, I think a better question to ask yourself is: “What are my health and fitness goals and what is the best way to accomplish them?” I wanted to build a stronger and more aesthetic body. I also wanted to target my “man-boobs” which has been a source of shame for me for most of my life. I also wanted to build a daily habit of physical exercise. I also knew that I was stubborn enough to see it through to the end. Therefore, 100 pushups a day for a year made some sense for me despite its extreme nature. Now that the challenge is finished, however, I can confidently say that there are many ways to achieve a health-and-fitness goal. The most important thing to do is to pick a program you can stick to for the long term, stay consistent, trust the process, exercise some patience, and do your best every single workout... oh yeah, and to have some fun with it along the way! : ) What’s Next for Me? Well, I will NOT be doing 100 push ups every single day for another year! Instead, I recently became a Certified Personal Trainer, a Certified Nutrition Coach, and a Certified Weight Loss Specialist through the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM). I aim to make health a fitness more-and-more a part of my daily life. I have designed my own personal workout routine based on what I learned in these courses. I hope to educate others so that they might do the same. I also hope to inspire others through my actions and my story. The Jack Clancy YouTube Channel You found my website article. I also made a YouTube video based on the results of my challenge. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/ek-0Y2wx5fg If you found this article and video helpful, do consider subscribing to my YouTube Channel and hitting the Like button. Your support will help me in making more helpful and entertaining content in the months and years to come. Until next time, I’m wishing you all the best as you work to become the person you wish to be. Best, Jack