About

Welcome!

For those of you reading this that don’t know me, my name is Jonathan.  I’m a 26 year old Digital Media Artist for a nursing school in Orlando, Florida.

You can figure out my hobbies from my profile, but that’s not the point of this blog…

To paraphrase Steve Martin in “The Jerk,” “I was born a fat funny friend.”  Basically, my story is that I grew up without a sense of nutrition or exercise.  Once exercise was brought into my realm of knowledge, it wasn’t anything I found enjoyable or sustainable.  I’d run a few laps around my grandparents’ house before a MASSIVE dinner (not too shabby fried chicken for an Irish Catholic woman) and guaranteed dessert (I can still remember the taste of that lemon cake), but it was a very hamster-wheel type of thing that ended in the reward of satiety and, more often than not, overindulgence.

To make matters worse, I didn’t really have any sense of discipline or responsibility to myself when it came to both exercise and nutrition.  In high school, my schedule was so hectic (International Baccalaureate student, Editor of the school newspaper, drama club, varsity baseball) that convenience trumped everything.  Our school’s cafeteria had your basic prison food, but it also had a KFC and a Papa Johns kiosk.  What do you think a busy (yet, kinda lazy) adolescent is going to pick?

Even playing baseball, I coasted purely on talent.  I hated conditioning in the fall, so I’d either fake an injury or flat-out quit the team and come back in the spring when coaches begged me to play.  When your school is known for it’s basketball and football programs (home of Mitch Richmond and Asante Samuel), baseball is desperate for talent, so I was able to get away with it.

By the time I graduated in 2004 was a whopping 240 lbs. Within hours of my first day of orientation at the University of Central Florida, I was nicknamed by my new friends “JB” (as in Jack Black…I guess I can see the resemblance in that graduation photo).  Wanting to lose weight, I totally went about it the wrong way by eating less frequently and working out (with no real plan or routine ) one day, feeling too sore to do anything the next few days, and then it was very much lather-rinse-repeat.

I could go into more detail about my self-esteem issues and all that fun stuff, but this isn’t about me and my past.  This is about sharing what I’ve learned and where I am today.  With this blog, I hope to accomplish that.  You can expect some good posts about exercises, routines, supplement reviews, dietary tips and maybe even interviews down the road.

Today, if you haven’t picked up your copy of the June 2012 issue of “Men’s Fitness” magazine (…what are you waiting for???), I’m currently at 165 lbs. and 5.2% body fat.  My diet and exercise routine has totally been restructured since I was 20 years old and I can proudly say I’ve changed mentally, as well as physically.  I bring a work ethic into the gym that I also bring into my job and my personal life: if I can walk away from something knowing I made a difference and gave everything I had, it’s a good day’s work.

This is going to be touch-and-go at first, since I want to know what works and what doesn’t.  That’s where you, the reader, come in.  I want you guys to leave me any and all comments or questions.  I will personally respond to them all, because one of the things I love to do is help people learn from my past mistakes.  You can also follow me on Twitter (@TheNerdyGymRat) or e-mail me (thenerdygymrat@yahoo.com) if you’re a little shy about leaving stuff in the comments section.  I encourage sharing links to anyone you think could be helped by my advice.  The more the merrier!

Now, without further ado… let’s get this thing started!