I've just passed the three-week mark of my fitness journey, and I'm pleased to share some encouraging results. Altogether, I've lost approximately 6 pounds of fat while gaining about 1 pound of muscle. This body recomposition progress indicates that my approach is starting to yield the desired results, particularly in the last week and a half.

Strength Progress

Since beginning on February 4-5, I've seen notable improvements across all major lift categories. All exercises are performed as 3 sets of 8 repetitions:

Most Significant Gains:

• Bench Press: Increased from 135 to 175 pounds (+40 pounds)

• Leg Press: Improved from 480 to 540 pounds (+60 pounds)

• Military Press: Advanced from 85 to 105 pounds (+20 pounds)

• Bent Over Row: Progressed from 155 to 185/195 pounds (+30-40 pounds)

Moderate Improvements:

• Incline Bench Press: Increased from 135 to 145 pounds (+10 pounds)

• Bicep Curl: Improved from 27.5 to 30 pounds (+2.5 pounds)

• Triceps: Seeing similar moderate increases across various exercises

What's particularly encouraging is the quality of these lifts. For example, when I started with incline bench at 135 pounds, I was failing early on the last set. Now I can consistently complete all 3 sets of 8 reps at 145 pounds.

Nutrition Breakthrough

Perhaps most importantly, I feel like I've finally dialed in the numbers for effective weight loss. The majority of my fat loss occurred in the last week and a half, which coincides with my improved understanding of my nutritional needs. By calculating my Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), I've been able to establish appropriate targets for my macros and calories.

This more precise tracking has been important for creating the caloric deficit necessary for fat loss, while still supporting muscle maintenance and growth.

Looking Ahead

As I move into my fourth week, I'll continue refining my nutrition and training approach based on these positive outcomes. The data suggests I'm on the right track with my current balance of strength training and dietary management. I'll maintain careful tracking of both my body composition changes and strength metrics to ensure continued progress.

To further optimize my nutrition, I've developing a personalized meal planning app. This tool takes inputs including age, gender, current weight, target weight, and dietary preferences (paleo, keto, etc.) to calculate BMR, TDEE, and target daily calories. It then generates a comprehensive meal plan with best practices and specific example meals tailored to these parameters.

Currently, the app focuses on point-in-time meal planning, but I envision expanding its functionality to track progress and eventually map out a complete 12-week progression plan covering both nutrition and training protocols. While the expanded tracking and long-term planning features remain future development goals, I'm excited to start using and refining the current version based on my own needs and experiences.

The past few weeks have shown mixed results as I work to dial in my approach. On the positive side, I'm continuing to see some recomp - pretty substantial recomp actually, including strength gains. However, I'm still not losing weight at the velocity that I want. That's not to say I'm not losing weight - I am - just not at the speed that I'm hoping for.

Challenges

The main obstacle I'm facing is balancing multiple competing goals. While I need to focus on weight loss, I've been getting caught up in chasing strength gains in the gym. The problem is it's really hard for me to let go of this - I really like to see gains week over week. Since I've picked back up again, I've seen pretty substantial week-over-week improvement. While some of this is just getting back into the swing of things, some represents legitimate strength gains that are potentially interfering with my primary goal.

Training Adjustments

To address these challenges, I need to shift my training philosophy. Instead of chasing progressive overload, I'll focus on movement quality and muscle retention. This means maintaining good form and consistent volume without pushing for constant improvement in weights.

The walking program also needs adjustment. While I've been consistently hitting 20,000 steps daily, this high volume is creating excessive hunger that makes it difficult to maintain my calorie targets. Reducing to 10,000 steps per day should help manage hunger levels while still maintaining a good activity baseline. This will also simplify my calorie tracking since I won't need to make as many adjustments for exercise expenditure.

Action Plan

Moving forward, I'm implementing the following specific changes:

• Bring my calorie intake down to closer to 2,300 - 2,500 calories per day (down from 2,800). I may adjust this down again after a week or two.

• Bring my steps down from 20,000 to 10,000-12,000 steps

• Continue going to the gym to lift 3-5 times per week, but with a focus on volume and movement quality rather than progressive overload

Next Steps

To support these changes, I'll be developing a new training program that emphasizes movement quality and consistent volume. This will replace my current progressive overload approach and better align with my primary goal of weight loss while maintaining muscle mass.

There are several possible culprits. My BMR calculations might be off, or I could be overestimating how many calories I'm burning during workouts. I also know that my calorie tracking hasn't been as precise as it could be.

The simplest and most effective adjustment would be reducing my daily calorie intake by about 300 calories. But easier than that will be simply sticking to the eating plan I originally outlined. I haven't been. One of the reasons I've enjoyed slow carb is that it doesn't emphasize calorie counting, yet it's still very hard to overeat if done right. So, I’ll continue to track calories, but put more emphasize on eating plan-aligned foods.

As for exercise, I'm keeping things steady. My current workout schedule and daily walks are working well, so there's no need to adjust the physical activity side of the equation right now.

The blood work I got back adds another interesting layer to this puzzle. While most of my health markers look good, my testosterone levels are hovering at the low end of the normal range – significantly lower than they were a decade ago. This helps explain why weight loss feels substantially harder now than it did in my mid-to-late 20s. Age is clearly playing a role here, and it's something I'll need to factor into my expectations and planning.

Starting this week (tomorrow, day 10), I'm doing a new gym routine. I have to be careful not to overdo it lifting weights, since I tend to get very hungry when I lift, and that is counterproductive to my weight loss goals. I'm actually not looking to gain much muscle; I'm primarily looking to lose fat and maintain muscle. So I'll probably be shifting away from any sort of progressive overload and just into a maintenance mode on the lifting.

I'll continue to get as many steps in per day as I can. I'm currently doing 10,000 to 20,000 per day, with an average of about 17,000. While walking, this tends to make me quite hungry. So once again, I just have to make sure I'm not overexerting myself, which—if I do it without eating enough—causes me to overindulge later in the day. I need to be a little bit more careful about my calorie intake and my exercise to get those in the right balance.

Now that I'm "semi-retired" (read: willfully unemployed), I've started navigating private health insurance in Texas. My employer coverage extends through February, but March brings a new challenge: unsubsidized healthcare costs. The marketplace offers options, but our situation has a complication—my daughter's specialist doesn't accept most marketplace insurance plans.

Here are the costs:

• Monthly premiums: $2,000+

• Annual out-of-pocket maximum: ~$15,000

• Estimated total yearly costs: $30,000 to $50,000

Looking at these future costs made me reflect on our past medical expenses. Our family has faced several acute health challenges:

• My son arrived three months early, generating hospital bills over $1 million

• My daughter was also born prematurely

• Another daughter needs ongoing treatment for a congenital vascular anomaly

These past events were outside our control. But that million-dollar hospital bill reveals something important: acute health events carry massive costs. While we couldn't prevent our specific situations, many people face similar-sized bills from health issues that build slowly through daily choices. A lifetime of poor habits can lead to a single, expensive crisis—like a heart attack, stroke, or chronic illness.

We write our best insurance policy through daily choices. Building a foundation of health today shapes our family's future tomorrow.

I'm about three and a half pounds down and I know a lot of that is water weight, but it's still encouraging to see things moving in the right direction, even after such a small amount of time. I expect that to go up and down as I retain and lose water throughout the week. The last time I did slow carb, I would lose about two or three pounds during the week and then gain about five pounds on cheat day. I would always net out about two or three pounds lost, but the fluctuations would be basically a seven pound swing, which is pretty wild.

I'm probably not going to do daily weight measurements. I'll probably do weekly ones or maybe semi-weekly ones. Even though I'm doing my daily checklist now, I don't think it's super helpful to look at the scale every day because it's not a good indicator, and can be discouraging/distracting. While it's nice to see the fluctuations in hindsight, it's not particularly useful from a progress perspective day to day. So as a refinement to yesterday's post on daily routines, I'll track weight but try not to look at it as much as possible during the week, only really focusing on the weekly trends to see progress.

I was thinking more yesterday about my daily step goal, and in particular, I was thinking back to around 2014 when I was doing a lot of walking. I'm currently in the Houston metro area and it's practically impossible to walk here. Ten years ago, I was in Seattle, and I would basically just go out in the evening and walk around Capitol Hill, downtown, South Lake Union, and Queen Anne for like three hours at a time. It was very hilly but very enjoyable. That memory, comparing it to where I'm at today, really has made me contemplate how important your environment is when it comes to helping you get baseline exercise.

If you're in a place like Houston where everything is a 30-minute drive away, where part of the year is 105 degrees and incredibly humid, where nothing is really built for being done outside, and there aren't many pleasant walking areas (especially in the commercial areas), it just makes it really hard to get your exercise in through your daily normal activities. No one walks to work in Houston, at least not outside of the downtown core—and even there, I doubt they do. It's just too hot in the summers.

This is something that's bothered me since we moved here in 2022. We've been thinking about leaving here basically since we moved here, but it's hard to build up the momentum necessary to do that. In particular, as we're looking at maybe growing our family more, it's hard to imagine moving away when we're about to have another little one and having to reestablish ourselves with new doctors, a new midwife, and a new church community. That's last one is something that my wife in particular has come to appreciate in our time here.

But I really don't see us in Houston long-term. It's just not for me. If it had more of an outdoors culture or if the town were split up differently such that you had more pockets of culture and walkability, then I maybe could be convinced to stay. But as it is, it's pretty tough. All the really great restaurants are in Houston proper, and as you radiate out, you basically get further into the suburbs where you have these large master planned communities that are mostly commercially supported by big box stores and chain restaurants. There are some small businesses but none that are locally famous, especially near us, which is discouraging.

Maggie really likes our church, and there are parts of it that I like too. From a community perspective, she appreciates how there are multiple sub-communities within the larger congregation of about 8,000 members. I've found it a bit large and overwhelming compared to what I'm used to, as I grew up in a much smaller congregation. That said, I haven't put much effort into getting involved yet. Maybe I would find it more welcoming if I invested more time in it, but it hasn't been a priority for me right now.

Reflecting on these environmental differences between Seattle and Houston has made me think deeply about the DRX principle of environmental design. While it's easy to reminisce about the walkable streets of Seattle and lament Houston's car-centric design, that's not particularly productive. Instead, I'm trying to apply the deconstruction principle here: understanding how my environment shapes my behaviors and identifying both the constraints and opportunities it presents.

Looking at my environment through this lens shows how physical spaces shape our behavior. In Seattle, the physical environment naturally encouraged certain behaviors. Those evening walks served multiple purposes: exercise, stress relief, social activity, and environmental engagement. Here in Houston, I'm learning to be more intentional about creating these benefits through different means. The under-desk treadmill I'm using right now is a perfect example of environmental optimization—I'm literally writing this post while walking, combining physical activity with productive work in a way that wasn't possible during those Seattle strolls.

This connects directly to the holistic approach to physical transformation that DRX advocates. Physical transformation requires understanding the interconnected nature of our activity patterns, work routines, and daily habits. In Houston, while we lack those walkable neighborhoods, we have other advantages: world-class gyms, excellent medical facilities, and comprehensive amenities all within reach. Yes, they might be a 30-minute drive away, but that actually creates an opportunity for more structured, intentional training sessions.

This is evolving into an era of deliberate integration rather than just adaptation. My physical environment has pushed me to be more strategic about how I structure my day. Instead of relying on casual, opportunistic movement, I'm creating systems that combine productivity with physical activity. The under-desk treadmill ensures I get movement throughout my workday. The distance to amenities has encouraged me to batch activities and create focused blocks of time. Even the climate constraints have led to more intentional exercise planning.

The DRX framework identifies four categories of environmental influence: physical, digital, social, and temporal. I'm actively optimizing each of these:

• Physical: Setting up my workspace with the treadmill desk for consistent movement

• Digital: Using technology to track and encourage activity throughout the day

• Social: Taking advantage of professional fitness facilities and their communities

• Temporal: Structuring my day to combine work, movement, and focused exercise

The central insight I'm gaining through this process: successful transformation comes from understanding how environment shapes behavior and then intentionally redesigning it to support our goals. While I might not have easy access to outdoor walks, I've created an environment that supports both physical activity and productivity. It's not better or worse than what I had in Seattle; it's just different, offering its own unique opportunities for holistic growth. Success lies in recognizing these opportunities and intentionally structuring your environment to leverage them fully.

Success often brings an unexpected challenge. This morning, as I reviewed my progress charts from previous efforts, I noticed a troubling pattern: whenever I see initial progress in my weight loss journey, I tend to ease up on my program. It's a self-sabotaging behavior that has plagued my previous attempts at transformation, and it raised an essential question: Why?

The "5 Whys" technique, a fundamental part of the DRX framework's deconstruction phase, helped me uncover at least one contributing root cause. Here's my thought process:

1. Why do I ease up when I see progress? Because I feel like I've earned a break.

2. Why do I feel I've earned a break? Because I see progress as something that deserves a reward.

3. Why do I see progress as deserving a reward? Because I'm viewing this as a temporary challenge rather than a lifestyle change.

4. Why am I viewing this as temporary? Because I'm focused on the end goal rather than the daily process.

5. Why am I focused on the end goal? Because I haven't broken down my larger goal into meaningful daily targets.

This systematic deconstruction revealed the real problem: my goals were incomplete. I was treating my 90-day challenge to lose 40 pounds as a single, monolithic target rather than a series of daily victories.

Breaking down to weekly targets (3.1 pounds, or a 10,850 calorie deficit) still missed the point. These outcome-based metrics perpetuated the same flawed thinking. I needed to shift entirely to process—a daily checklist of specific actions: logging food intake, hitting 10,000-20,000 steps, completing scheduled strength training (building from 3-4 sessions to 6 sessions weekly), tracking weight, maintaining this journal, and planning the next day. My new goal: keep the streak alive, maintain the chain of daily wins.

This insight extends beyond weight loss to any meaningful change. The 5 Whys technique revealed my true obstacles, different from what I first imagined. By reconstructing my approach to match how the brain works—craving small, regular victories over distant achievements—I created a system aligned with human psychology.

In this 90-day challenge, I measure success by my daily actions: completing the checklist, hitting the targets, maintaining the habits. Each completed day builds the bridge between who I am and who I choose to become.

Detailed Breakdown

90-Day Target

• Starting weight: 287.5 lbs

• Target weight: 247.5 lbs (40 lb reduction)

• Timeline: 90 days (February 9th - May 9th, 2025)

Weekly Requirements

• Weight loss: 3.1 lbs per week (40 lbs ÷ 13 weeks)

• Calorie deficit: 10,850 calories per week (3,500 calories × 3.1 lbs)

Daily Requirements

Base Numbers

• Total daily calorie deficit needed: 1,550 calories

• Maintenance calories: 2,800 calories

• Food intake target range: 2,000-2,600 calories

On Lifting Days

• Calories from lifting: 350 calories

• With 2,000 calorie intake: walk for 200 calories (4,500 steps)

• With 2,600 calorie intake: walk for 800 calories (17,800 steps)

On Non-Lifting Days

• With 2,000 calorie intake: walk for 550 calories (12,200 steps)

• With 2,600 calorie intake: walk for 1,150 calories (25,600 steps)

Movement Standards

• Minimum daily steps: 15,000 steps

• Track and log all steps

• Each step burns approximately 0.045 calories

Strength Training Schedule

1. Weeks 1-2: 3-4 sessions per week

2. Weeks 3-4: 4-5 sessions per week

3. Week 5+: 6 sessions per week

• All sessions are 1 hour

• Log every workout

Daily Checklist

• Log all food intake

• Hit daily step goal

• Complete strength training (if scheduled)

• Track weight

• Log all activities

• Review next day's plan before bed

Success Metrics

• Daily: Complete all checklist items

• Weekly: Hit 10,850 calorie deficit

• Monthly: Average 3.1 lbs loss per week

When I first started FatmanX over a decade ago, it served primarily as an accountability tool. This time, it's both accountability and education. These daily logs will capture the raw, unfiltered reality of transformation—the victories, setbacks, and everything in between. While the longer-form posts will dive deep into frameworks and analysis, these shorter updates keep me honest and provide real-time insights into what working on your health full-time actually looks like.

The Daily Details

Exercise Approach

I'm starting with three weekly gym sessions. This baseline allows me to establish proper form and prevent burnout, with plans to scale up to five or six sessions as my body adapts. The focus is on compound movements and gradual progression.

Walking has become my primary movement tool. Using an under-desk treadmill lets me combine productivity with activity, aiming for 10,000 steps daily while writing and reading. This will eventually scale to 20,000 steps, but the key is consistency before volume.

Nutrition Framework

The foundation is a modified slow-carb diet. This approach has historically worked well for me, allowing sustainable progress while maintaining muscle mass. I've adapted it to include some dairy for satiety and protein needs.

Calorie tracking adds precision to the framework. While not strictly necessary on slow-carb, tracking helps ensure I maintain a deficit while getting adequate protein. The weekly cheat day aligns with family time, making the program more sustainable.

Sleep Optimization

Sleep quality is non-negotiable. After years of compromising rest for work and family obligations, I'm targeting 7-8 hours nightly with consistent wake times. The 6 AM wake-up may shift earlier to 5 AM as habits solidify.

Bedtime routine starts at 9 PM. This early shutdown gives me time to wind down properly and ensures adequate rest for morning training. The consistency matters more than the exact hours.

Environmental Design

Food prep has returned as a cornerstone habit. While my wife cooks wonderful meals for the family, having my own prepared meals removes decision fatigue and ensures diet compliance. Sunday prep sessions set up the entire week.

The health routine is deliberately front-loaded in the day. Gym work happens first (1.5-2 hours), followed by treadmill writing sessions (2-4 hours). This structure ensures the most important work happens before daily life can intervene.

Progress Tracking

Regular blood work provides objective feedback. Beyond just tracking weight and measurements, monitoring hormone levels and blood glucose helps optimize the approach. This data-driven view prevents emotional decision-making.

Daily logs capture both metrics and mindset. Short updates here combine with weekly summaries to track patterns and insights, applying the DRX framework to identify what's working and what needs adjustment.

Looking Ahead

This initial phase is about establishing baselines and understanding patterns. As I collect data on sleep quality, energy levels, and workout recovery, I'll be fine-tuning these systems and habits. These dramatic changes will require a period of tuning and adjustment to ensure they’re safe and sustainable. These updates will track those calibrations, showing how each element of the framework evolves as we gather more information.

That was 2012. I was 26, newly married to my first wife, and living a life that looked nothing like I'd imagined when I left my job at AWS. The previous years had been a blur of self-justification: "I deserve luxury because I work hard." Living in a downtown Seattle high-rise, driving a new car, eating out for every meal. My financial mindset was simple: another payday would fix everything.

The Philippines seemed like an escape. Cigarettes cost less than a dollar a pack. Four-course meals ran under $40. But my health was deteriorating rapidly. I'd wake up from my own snores, feel morning lung pain, battle a chronic cough. Basic walking left me winded. Mental fog and depression became constant companions.

That second broken bed frame sparked more than just a need to lose weight. It forced me to evaluate everything: the financial problems, professional stagnation, my ex-wife's emotional state, my overall life satisfaction. I started with Tim Ferriss's 4-Hour Body, adapting the Slow-Carb diet to what was available locally: lots of chicken, beans, broccoli, imported frozen hamburgers. I established a strict daily routine of regular meal times, swimming, and walking.

By January, I'd lost 50 pounds. Switching to Paleo helped me drop another 30. But it wasn't a straight line up. A startup crisis forced an emergency departure from the Philippines, leaving behind a six-month apartment deposit. I used my last dollars to pay the country exit fee. (You can read more about this period of my life at mase.io/fatmanx.)

That crisis marked the beginning of a broader transformation. Over the next decade, I went from being over $60,000 in debt to making millions of dollars and becoming debt-free. My career took off: I led billion-dollar initiatives at Amazon, built platforms that powered Oracle's cloud transformation, and drove major revenue projects at Meta. Each role brought new challenges and rewards, but also new demands on my time and energy.

While my professional life soared, my personal life faced significant challenges. My first marriage, already strained, fell apart in January 2016. The divorce was finalized that summer. Then in January 2017, my ex-wife took her own life.

Instead of letting these challenges derail me, I threw myself into fitness and work. By mid-2017, I had achieved my peak physical condition. The habits were solid, the routine was working, and I felt in control of my health for the first time in my adult life. Early 2018 brought unexpected joy when I met Maggie. Our relationship flourished, and we married in January 2019.

By late 2019, we welcomed our first child. My fitness started to decline—a combination of sleep deprivation, poor diet, inconsistent exercise, and the general chaos of new parenthood. I had just started at Facebook, adding another layer of demands to an already full plate.

Each subsequent child—we now have three—brought another setback. In 2021, just before my son's birth, I took on a high-stress turnaround role as an executive at AudioEye. My son arrived 12 weeks premature, adding intense emotional and logistical challenges to an already demanding schedule. Our third child, born in 2023, also came early.

Let me be clear: I love my children fiercely and wouldn't change my decision to have them for anything. They are the best parts of my life. But the beautiful chaos of parenthood—the sleepless nights, the irregular schedules, the constant prioritization of their needs—contributed to my declining health. Understanding this reality will help me build systems that work while being a present, engaged father.

Last October, I hit another wall. Over my short few years at AudioEye, I had helped transform it from an unprofitable, sub-$45M market cap company into a ~$300M company with sustainable growth. We'd achieved the "Rule of 40" milestone. But my health was sliding backward, and I couldn't maintain the juggling act anymore.

I tried reducing to part-time work. My employer was incredibly accommodating, but after two months, it was clear that half measures wouldn't work. I don't do well with split focus—I can handle one big thing and some smaller tasks, but multiple major priorities leave everything suffering.

That realization led to a decision this January: health needed to become my full-time job. Not just for 90 days, but starting with 90 days of undivided attention. No more quarterly reports, strategic planning, or 6-pager reviews. Just focused, deliberate effort toward rebuilding the foundation I'd once created.

This time is different from 2012. Since my first transformation, I wrote a book called DRX (Deconstruct, Reconstruct, Execute - you can request access to the book here)—a systematic approach to personal change. While it works for any goal, I've never explicitly applied it specifically to fitness. Until now.

That's why I'm relaunching FatmanX. Not as casual Facebook updates, but as a focused platform for both accountability and education. This newsletter will document my 90-day transformation in real-time through daily updates and weekly deep dives into the DRX framework in action.

For at least these first 90 days, everything will be free. If you're here from my social circles or stumbled across this through other means, you're welcome to subscribe and follow along. I may develop premium content later, but for now, I'm focused on one thing: proving that systematic transformation is possible, even after multiple setbacks.

The first time, I transformed my life through desperation. This time, I'm choosing to thrive—to build a life where I can be healthy, energetic, and present for my family for decades to come. Join me as I share what I learn about rebuilding health while balancing life's demands—and help others do the same.