Evolution

It took me a while to figure out what to say. I sat looking at a blank page trying to equate my last year since I've made a post on here.

Life changed. I evolved....I got strong I got weak I got fat I got fit and fat-ish again.

Around this time last year I was coming to the end of a three month stint of diet and training. This year I've actually started around this time. Although I've already started out injured since I joined the gym and then had a minor surgery which placed 12 stitches in my back and apparently my shoulder has decided to give up on me already so no upper body training for a few weeks. But I've been trying to eat a lot better even though I have access to all the pizza you'd ever want.

Instead, I've decided to get back to being a bit fitter and concentrating on just my legs. It's only taken me ten years but I can finally fully squat without my hips screaming for me to stop.

I start each session with getting my legs warmed up and stretched before I jump into either a heavy session, sprints or both. Oh dear good god does it hurt! It's like when I first started out at the gym and was on that constant chest and tris, back and bi's rota. Except 1000 times more painful. But for once my legs are actually staying fit since I've retired from competitive sports.

So I think I'm going to carry this trend on for a while as in my heart I desperately want to get back on the field. But I'll settle for a ripped version of myself to be honest. I've set a goal and my shoulder is definitely stopping me from reaching it at the moment but I'm hoping to have it fixed by the new year with any luck.

As for my posts, I shall try and keep it a bit more consistent as opposed to year long absences. 

Plagued and injuries!

So now it's week 11 of my training since I started and I've been riddled with flu/infections and now another cold but on top of that I decided to go play some flag American football which has pretty much put week 11 out of action.

Nevertheless my gains in strength have been quite substantial. The highest percentage gains have been in my legs and my squat. Taking my 1 rep max to a total of 10 unassisted although yes it's not alot of weight but since I have no training partner it's one of the hardest body parts for me to train alone. 

My bench is through the roof in regards to my strength. 10 x 100kg is again no longer a problem for me. So far I've only attempted as much as 130kg 1rm but I've pushed three reps after 100 and 120 so I think I can push more with a spotter just for my safety. 

Even my biceps although injured have had some serious strength gains but i still have elbow issues in my right arm which tell me when it's time to rest and stop.

So this is my week 11 update picture im pretty happy with my lean gains although people may not see a huge difference. It's my image of a progressing perfect me and that's what matters.

The flu

So I had the most absolute worst illness to date. Right in the middle of my training and it knocked me for six.

I lost some gains but involuntarily leaned out a bit. Not quite what I planned while in the middle of bulking but im back in the gym almost back to full health and hopefully I shouldn't have anymore setbacks of this kind. 

In my weeks rest I actually learnt something about  regrets and grudges. It ties in with training I promise. 

People will see quotes and clichés about how the people in your life are in it for a reason and those who left never deserved to be in it....Lots of variations of this sort of motivational stuff but generally it leads me to grudges when I read into it for my own circumstances. 

I was racially bullied all throughout my school years until I left for college and uni. And to this date I will disagree with all my peers who tell me I should forgive these type of people, when still at this age they can't admit their wrong doings and simply say "he was just someone who had to be bullied" FUCK EM! 

These are the exact people who motivated me through my first year of training solidly. And it worked absolutely perfectly. But, what some people carry is a grudge against people who didn't really do anything to you but are or were someone close and important to you in your life. 

People will say yeah but you can just forget about them, it has no effect on my training. But I do refuse to believe that. When you have people in your life who want to be there, who actually to make you happy and deserve your company, your wellbeing is lifted and no one will argue with me that a better life psychologically won't benefit you physically. 

But when you flip it and bring out the clichés I've learnt that for those who you do want in your life truly, they will be there. But don't wait for it too long, you forget that you are looking out for yourself and living your one chance at life. Don't forget that everyone else is too. 

Lift others as you wish to be lifted yourself and you will always be content. 

Week 4 update....a week late :-/

So I just completed week 5 but i completely forgot to post my week 4 update! 

I'm definitely feeling thicker thighs but just not much definition still. I've gained a stone and i think its mostly come on my legs.  Otherwise I will feel like definition has been created in my shoulders much more and my chest is certainly bigger now that I'm up to benching 130. My diet wavered of this weekend as I had an IT issue where I ended up not actually eating  so I lost a little weight but im back on it this week! 

The struggle is real!

It's been four weeks since I started my journey into a new me. I have to say this is not easy in the slightest! 

Trying to keep up with 4000 calories a day and trying to keep working out every day without hurting myself or having to train around my injuries is exhausting! 

Last week I took a trip to the physio, i was violated but it was actually pretty good so im going back as I've had some long standing back problems that are getting worse. 

I've decided to stop dead lifting and instead concentrate on strengthening my lower back in isolation and also in simple core exercises which I think is much more beneficial for me and much more pain free. 

My elbow pain has actually subsided a bit so ive been  able to put up some big numbers 50kg bicep curls and 110kg bench as a standard routine not a one rep max, a simple pyramid of heavy weights and low reps. 

My legs are still not so used to being blasted like the rest of me so DOMS sets in pretty bad when I got them on my Thursday sessions but it gives me the whole weekend to rest up. I shall update soon with a new set of pictures and as always. Any questions email soheil_maleki@hotmail.co.uk PEACE! 

Update: 2 weeks...be betterer...

I think I need to be better but it's only week two! Unfortunately my back is giving me a lot of problems when it comes to dead lifting so I'm still working out the kinks to get back to peak performance throughout my training sessions.

So here are my updated photos for week 2 of my progress!

Little Hiccup

I had one minor hiccup this week. My leg decided to give up on me with a trapped nerve preventing me from training legs. Its okay though it's almost fully recovered and will be taken care of tomorrow.

I'm definitely seeing improvements but my pains and aches are also getting a bit worse. I've switched up my training to much lower reps with heavy weights and I'm pretty certain it's working as my Max weights are ramping up at a steady pace.

Generally I look a little "harder" all around and will do some new pictures for the beginning of next week.

Dieting is not as easy as I thought it would be. My mental state isn't quite as strong as it used to be when I knew I could train with only DOMS to worry about and not my football injuries.  But my injuries are haunting me with each session which is why i'm having to change things up on the fly in order to still keep working out without damaging myself (dead leg aside)

For example, my right elbow affects my ability to curl and pull up/down. So instead of heavy, palms up, bicep curls. I can isolate with dumbells and twist my grip so that it doesn't hurt. EVEN BETTER, I'm actually not too bothered about my biceps and can concentrate a bit more on my triceps as my biceps peak pretty well (have a few steps along them) so my triceps would really complete my arms all around.

Lets just hope in time (with lovely ibuprofen) I can try and overcome any/all of my injuries as the NHS sure as hell won't be doing anything for me any time soon.

PEACE!

soheil_maleki@hotmail.co.uk

This is tiring...

Let's put it this way. I did legs Thursday and it still hurts to tense them on Sunday! My elbow is still giving me s@#t but it can get me through most my workouts. I bought a support to use from this week and see how it goes.

 Mentally I didn't think id be struggling this much. I find dieting tedious as I always do but I'm just so tired all the time it seems! 

I think I've gained a kilo which isn't bad for a couple weeks work. Had a cheat day today and as it was the opening weekend of the NFL I prepared it very well.

I'm struggling with dead lifts so I shall hopefully have better luck this week lifting a little lighter. I've been reading a fair bit and most articles I've read advise on doing low reps so we shall see how that goes tomorrow. 

Otherwise I think I'm on track to reach my goals. And although progress is slow I shall be uploading more pictures this week!!

Week one....i hate myself...

So here it is, and in my eyes....well i'd like to shut them until the next few months training are complete but as promised I shall be posting up my progress from day 0.

Over the next few months I want to get rid of that little pouch of pudginess on my stomach as well as pretty much defining every muscle individually.

My legs are absolutely embarrassing but I have had success in training without injury so far, so I will strive to keep on that path and try to manage my aches and pains as best as I can. I'm just praying I can live up to my own schedule and diet and deliver on an actual transformation! 

Wish me luck and get liftin! 

PEACE!

 

Scams....and "The Beginning"

I haven’t been on twitter long, but something already gets to me so much that I thought it’s worth a post. 

SPECIAL REPORT: LEAN MUSCLE IN A BOTTLE?

The title reads…on almost every scam page that I come across that some actual reputable companies seem to re-tweet for some strange reason (makes me question their morality and association with these sites) 

The websites all have different names. But they mimic the Mens Health brand with their own Mens “life” and Health banner but it looks very similar and it’s obviously what they play on in order to get people to take them seriously and that what they’re saying is not a load of horse crap in order to scam you out of your money.

It seems to be the type of scam that many people are copying/replicating with different products on each one. But they all spew the same spiel about how it’s amazing and how many celebrities got their super hot bodies from. The most hilarious being Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. I find it very hard to believe anyone gets that big because of this product and it’s lies as he’s never come out and endorsed such a thing as have neither of any other celebrities on these scam sites. 

So I really don’t understand why bodybuilding.com sometimes retweets these idiots and I just had to get it off my chest. Please help me report all the accounts that do constantly tweet the pages even if it makes a tiny difference? I don’t know.

But in other news, my full training schedule begins from tomorrow. 9am wake up sharp, breakfast and gym! Therefore I shall be posting my first set of progress pictures in all my fatty glory. 

Take care and good night all..PEACE!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I joined the gym on Tuesday and I've even every day since. Needless to say I'm in a considerable amount of pain.

Sometimes (leg day) I'm thinking why do I do this...it's too difficult to become like what you see in the magazines and on TV and to an extent I'm not entirely sure how close I will get.

But I also know that I've done all of this once before and it worked out pretty well for me before so I'm going to have a great try at it for the next 3/4 months to see if I can get to where I want to be...

Most people start their summer bodies in like April. I hear it so often around that time and for some it is simple. Cut some weight tone up a little bit and they're done...I'm starting my summer body in August -__- seeing as our summer comes in July I may aswell start 11 months prior to it. 

My meals have been reduced to many many raw eggs per day and a lot of chicken/fish with veg or sweet potato. Thank god I love both chicken and raw eggs. 

On Monday I will start taking my progress photos and will hopefully have an update every two weeks along my journey to see how it goes. But it's time to get back in the gym now for day 6...Sunday is my day of rest hopefully :-)

I'm a DO'ER!

DAY 1

So it begins! My first day in an actual gym and it wasn't the greatest I must admit but it'll get better. I decided to join pure gym Southampton Central and I chose the worst possible time to go 6:30pm right in the middle of the rush hour/post work gym sessions.

The first place I ventured to was of course the bench/free weights section.....I didn't even bother as it was well and truly packed. So I had a mission finding all the machines I needed to use as it was my chest/abs day but the chest machines for some reason unknown to me....are on completely different floors. But I eventually found everything I needed.

While doing abs, I couldn't hear my own headphones on full blast as there was a spin class going on directly to my right and it was absolutely booming out music. But I must admit I was impressed that my new gym wasn't just an absolute dude-fest. A few of my old players and team mates were in there too which is always nice, having something a bit familiar.

My abs workout was very varied but quite minimal as I haven't been to an actual gym for a proper workout in a very long time. I decided to do a fair bit on the mat in the end including my chest workout. With the aid of an upside down balance ball to rest my feet on, and a small-ish fitness ball to put under one hand while I did press ups. After about 40 normal followed by a ball on the right and left hand for another 20 I was well and truly on my way to dead.

So my plan from now on is to workout before lunch... or at least that's what my brain says....not so sure about my body tomorrow!

So I shall leave this post with one last dig at my gym or more the people who're in my gym. I mean seriously, who drinks coke in the gym?

Epic FAIL...

So a couple of days ago in my infinite wisdom, I decided to go on a bike ride with one of my friends just to keep my fitness levels up. I haven't really had a ride since my 200 mile around France back in April. To say I was a little rusty is an understatement.

Me and my friend Joe only intended on covering 8 miles. Unfortunately at mile 7 I decided to power through a hill to shorten the length of time I'd spend climbing and the pain/fatigue that comes with it. This was my undoing since I had intended to catch my breath once I reached the top, instead I was passing out with my head spinning at a hundred miles an hour.

For one reason or another my body decided to start the long process of an agonising shut down and restart. Something I've never actually experienced in the past, but at one point it felt like even the muscles in my face were shutting down or almost melting off, something I've only ever actually experienced in Amsterdam ;-) (those of you who have been will probably know what I mean)

Joe being the friend that he is kindly waited with me to be picked up by my dad by time which he arrived I was pretty much fine but I didn't want to risk any further episodes. Joe also took a picture of me...for my blog of course, so that the world may see the delightful state I was in.

Now what I learned from this is that no matter which way around you're getting fit. Each exercise has it's own method. When I was cycling for my France challenge, I found running a few miles the most difficult thing in the world. But then after having spent the past couple of week running and then going back to cycling I thought it would be a breeze....needless to say I was 100% proven wrong.

And just for the record, I completed 8 miles the next day just fine :)

Rest and recover

It wasn't one day ago I was speaking about injury and when to stop that my old hip injury has come back to haunt me. Although it never actually left me I just haven't aggravated it in such a long time like I did on my 6 mile run yesterday.

So I thought all about rest and recovery today while on a journey to London for a comedy show, and I thought how much my body has changed over the past 9 years.

When I first hit the gym I was hurting like hell and I still managed to carry on training pretty much solid with little to no rest. I could do biceps all day but I try that now and I'm probably classed as full disabled.

The truth is when you're in those younger years training you can do it and you should do it in my opinion. There's no better way to advance yourself and prepare yourself for your more senior years than building an amazing foundation. At least then when you start to hit the wall as I'm finding I am at 27, you have done your hard work and can rest up a little.

What I'm going through at the moment is something I wish I had done a lot earlier as it is TOUGH! Attempting to change my body drastically will most certainly take it's toll. So the length in my schedule will also have a knock on effect as I had to take a rest day today in order to heal up my hip.

DON'T do what I did. Probably my first or second post and I will re-iterate it throughout that you MUST train your legs. Incorporate your core!!! You have to think of the link between your torso and your legs as a gateway or a bridge. If you don't strengthen everything around that bridge, then the weights on either side will cause it to break like I have and it is a long way to recovery when you've done it for as long as I have, almost irreversible but I'm going to try my hardest to fix myself as the NHS wont do anything for me!

Pre-training-training

So I'm at a stage where I'm pre-training...for my training. Yes that sounds ridiculous and yes I am simply just training. But pre-training is what I tell myself I'm doing because I know what I will be doing in a few weeks time is going to be so much harder than what I'm currently doing in both physical and mental terms.

So at the moment I am just going for runs making them a bit longer each day through town and the countryside (as I live in the woods), and it is painful! Both the fact that well..it hurts...and that I'm so painfully unfit in terms of stamina. Which means there's a lot of walking involved in these runs too.

Last week I had to push through a pain barrier in the my right leg just felt dead after a couple hill runs and it haunted me all the way until the end of the week when I went out on quite a long run for a couple of hours. By the end of the run I felt numb which is probably why the dead leg sensation had disappeared but it's something that needs to be done. I remember in my american football days of coaches telling me to carry on pushing through the pain....basically its BS in those cases. I was injured and I was being told to injure myself further which is why I have such bad pains at the moment.

Only you know when your body is injured and when it is simply fatigued. So please be careful you don't mix the head, which knows its hurt and that this can further damage your training, with your heart that simply wants to have all of the results and all of the gains, strength and stamina NOW. There is no short cut to your perfect body so chill out and give it time. Otherwise you will never achieve so called "perfection" which I have talked about previously being what YOU see yourself as. Not what you compare yourself too.

If you have any questions, give me a shout. But for now I'm back off for another pre-training-training run.  

So it's all ended...

Everything's over. Uni, football, partying! It all ended and I'm left with a body that most would be satisfied with.

Most would be but I'm not. Since I don't play a sport any more I've decided to start my second ever body transformation. Some people call it beast mode, I call it God mode. 

That's right I want to transform what I do have into something altogether completely different. Over the coming months I will be training 5/6 days a week in order to achieve a "cover model" look. 

This attitude and transformation requires something else which I've never actually come across. Not something physically but much more mentally to drive me and as such I'll be venturing into the unknown depths of my mind so I will try and share my experience as I go along. 

My prediction....pain. My body has taken all the abuse possible over the years so this type of training will be much more advanced in terms of things like my diet. Actually having to sleep and wake up at proper times incorporating my diet. The addition of cardio pretty much 5 days a week....but first I need a gym! 

So far I've been just getting back into the swing of things to help make the proper training a little easier but I've been doing it outside of the gym and in the park using only gravity! Something I won't be able to continue past a couple of weeks! 

I will try to document it as best as I can with picture etc and as always if you have any questions/enquiries. Soheil.maleki@hotmail.co.uk

A lot has happened...

So it turns out I'm awful at keeping blogs up to date. But a lot has happened and only the talk of blogging last night made me actually thing about starting it back up again so here we go again I guess.

I left off moving onto my second season of american football. I came back to the team in a different position, ready to learn again from scratch. Turns out I was pretty much a natural at it although to be honest I didn't think I was actually doing much. What I do know now is that a good corner  back is like gold dust in the NFL and a position that does get a lot of the stress and blame from being scored on.

This was something that never actually happened to me in my entire British career (my Italian one is a different story) so I think I'm pretty lucky to have had such a decent time playing that position even if it did mean I fell apart after my 7th successive season. Only 4 more seasons on from there and I have actually retired from all American football related activities. I thought about blogging about that too but it was a sad, sad day and not much at all to talk about.

We played that season at Stags going undefeated. 12-0 smashing every record along the way. The culmination of pure athletes amongst great coaches and tactics, I have the best seat in the house to watch some incredible football. I don't think I've seen it replicated since!

Training continued as expected. MONDAY light lifting, TUESDAY practice, WEDNESDAY lift & classroom sessions, THURSDAY practice, FRIDAY lift and SUNDAY game-day/practice. Saturday would be our day off. Usually consisting of chickenland, youtube videos and generally chilling out. My boy Chevy Green was at my flat every Saturday pre-gameday night for this ritual and we still say sleeping at 5am for a 8am wakeup was the key to our success (except for that Reading game where we all watched the Mayweather fight and conceded one score in the very first drive, then hammered them by about 40 points)

Personally while I trained I did a lot of quick powerful movements. People told me I was cheating while I was benching 100kg for 10 x 3 sets cause I was doing them so quick. But I still saw no problem with it when I was levelling receivers off the line, and I don't think many of our receivers enjoyed playing up close against me.

It wasn't until I played receiver where being able to lift a heavy set in more slow movements, that it would come in handy to slow it down. Picking up a defensive linemen twice your size who doesn't gym was always a great feeling. (running into a 6"6 linemen who actually trains on the other hand.....brain damage)

Only recently have I attempted to diet properly for weight loss and it sucks. I still have incredible will power when I want to achieve a certain goal but i'm not sure how much longer I can last. My diet while I was at University was simple. EAT LOADS. Whether it was pizza, pasta, fried chicken or whatever junk or healthy foods it was I just ate as much as I possibly could and it was always a much happier time. (right now I'm salivating over the thought of some Dominos)

As long as you have your goal of what you want to look like in your own head I believe you can achieve it. But only if you really want it. My family constantly ask me why they aren't getting any smaller and how to train etc but all they seem to do is eat as if they have the metabolism of a 12 year old anorexic child. Even I can't do that any more which is why this bout of proper dieting has become so difficult.

I play sport possibly once every two weeks IF my body allows me. But otherwise I try to keep in cardio in my training programme at the gym every other day or so. Otherwise my goals would simply not be achieved. What's the point in having a goal if you KNOW in your mind that what you're doing is detrimental or just isn't going to help you get to it. That how I know the difference between someone who has an end game and someone who doesn't. We work hard for something we know we want but never for something we don't that would just be silly. But if you want something that sort of is a dream type of situation, like a body like Schwarzenegger, then you have to actually want it, not just think you do. But have in your mind every day, that image of 'YOUR PERFECTION' so don't imagine your head on Arnies body but rather YOU on YOUR perfected body.

That's all I have to say for now and I most probably will leave it too long in between my next post. For anyone who does read this and wants to discuss anything with me, find me on either facebook. Soheil Maleki or email me at soheil_maleki@hotmail.co.uk

A new year, a new challenge.

So i'd completed my first year of university and I decided that joining the american football team was a good idea because I had gotten quite built up and always was a pretty fast and athletic person. I had no idea what I was actually getting myself into.

I started with the Southampton Stags and I was fasting for the first month of training with them which didn't help my body at all. In all honesty I wasn't really that good, barely stepped foot on the field and got injured halfway through which put me out of any kind of sport for about 10 months till the next season rolled around.

Something I started to learn though, was about in season and off season weight lifting. Putting that much stress on your body kills the will to train for bulk. We sure as hell tried but it is very difficult to achieve, which is why it's well known that the off-season is for bulking up (not known at all to me back in those days)

When we were in season, I could only really train anything that wasn't hurting (a feat easier said than done these days) so I would mostly train my upper body which wasn't a bad thing as I wasn't bulking and my legs were effectively being trained from all the running. As mentioned before, never neglect training your legs, my earlier blogs explain why.

As it turned out I was playing for the then, current national champions but we lost we in the southern final, which brought on the off season and probably the most amount of gym training i've ever done. Rain, shine, morning and night I would be in the gym. With team mates or alone I was building for a better season although my legs were still killed from injury, bulking was something that was to only later make it worse. But for the time being, what I was doing was actually just in time for what was to be an incredible season and year.

Peace!

Ok ok I lied i'm sorry :-\

So I just went 6 months in between posting even though I said I wouldn't leave it so late again...ooops. To be fair there has been super amounts of different things going on both in the "real world" shit, going on and the "my body is so broken it hates me" department.

Currently suffering from possible hip impingement, definite golfers elbow and deteriorating muscle damage to my neck and the upper right-of-centre of my back. All sport and exercise had ceased up until about 2 months ago or so when I finally felt good enough to start seriously training again as back in August most of these injuries hit me at exactly the same time.

But feeling in almost perfect shape at the moment (apart from the hips which are super messed up) and am in the mood to let everyone know im back up to benching BIG :D

But this isn't to say that i've been totally neglecting my legs. I have also added size and definition, mostly to my calves but generally having bigger stronger legs and it feels great.

So this evening I went to the gym with a my good friend Randy. I walked in and decided today was my 1 rep max day of 130 (something I haven't attempted in over 6 months) and POW I bitch slapped that one rep outta the park following it up with the second with help from my friend spotting me.

Feeling super pumped I also decided to attempt a one arm 30kg dumbell curl which i've attempted about 3 weeks in a row and not even come close. It would seem this evening I decided to become superman just for the night as I also slowly but surely curled the weight all the way to the top, and again with my left arm as well which left me in a shock-awe situation feeling good about myself.

This is something I think people need to be able to break through when training on a regular basis and feeling like they aren't improving on their strength and gains. As most pro's know a key factor of adding mass is adding more weights to whatever your pushing, pressing, pulling etc. So if you're stuck, like I have been since I started back training you need to have a day like I did today.
Just walk into the gym and say to yourself

 F#@K YOU (ARMS, CHEST, SHOULDERS or whatever) today i'm going to kill you and that's whats up.

I genuinely had no idea whether I would be able to press this weight when I walked in but I just decided that being stuck on 100-110 fluctuating between reps just wasn't good enough and I didn't just go in without taking precautions making sure Randy knew exactly how I wanted to be spotted to feel comfortable with attempting whatever it was I wanted to do.

I talk about mind a fair bit because with the wrong mentality, you will fail at everything. Just like my mentality these past two weeks with my diet (I lost 10kgs and have now gone back to being lazy/eating everything including chickenland on a regular basis) I need to get back on track if I want the tour body I envisage for myself for when the time comes. Which is also only 40 days away (SHEEEEEEETTT SONNNNN)

So stay strong up there as well all around your body! Push some mental weights and shift that fat, add some mass and get HENCH/TONED/FIT!!!!

Half a year!

So i've been gymming about half a year so far. Then end of my first year at uni is very close and so far all I seemed to have learnt came from university of bodybuilding.com :-\ My first lads holiday was only a few months away in August so I got on my own case hard!

While everyone left my town to go get fattened up by their parents, I already lived with mine. So i'd cook almost all of my own meals. Thanks to student loans I didn't really need a job during the summer which made it easy for me to settle into my old routine; upper body, upper body and more upper body!

I would wake up, have breakfast, get to the gym, have lunch. LUNCH brings me to my next subject.

Food for beginners!

You can probably go online and search almost anywhere which will give you a whole different range of diets and nutritional information and although I now can do the same, back to basics I feel is what starters need as I once did. What I did helped develop me in such a way that people couldn't believe how quick it was all working.

Three words, which seems to be a thing at the moment; Tuna, Pasta and chicken. If you've ever thought black people like chicken, you haven't seen a body builder bulking. But i'm not too sure whether it's a 'like' as much as it is a necessity.

I would eat piles of tuna and pasta, and after a stint in Rome playing American Football (which doesn't come for another year yet!) I had perfected a delightful recipe. Can't really put up measurements really but it's kind of trial and error more than anything, and what's perfect to me might be a disaster for you (not that anyone has complained yet).

I would start off by boiling some pasta, whatever type you prefer is the best as its perfect for you. But spirals and shells are probably the best choice as they seem to cling onto the most tuna so you don't end up having to just scrape it off the bottom of your bowl at the end, by which point you may be too full to even eat it and it is the most important part of the meal really.

Heat some olive oil in a pan and put one or two cloves or very finely chopped garlic in until slightly browned. If you like spicy food as much as I do, you need to get hold of some pepperoncino, which is dried hot chilli peppers usually very small. You can take the stems off and simply rub the pepper between your fingers rub until its all powdered in. I would only use 2-3 myself as they are quite potent.

Grab some passata sauce preferably with mixed herbs, it just tastes nicer, and mix it in with the oil, chilli and garlic. Let the spices infuse for a couple minutes. Grab a can of tuna and mix it into your sauce using a fork so that you can flake it up instead of just some massive chunks in your pot as trying to break up the clumps that way can result in ruining your non stick pots, or so that's what mum used to moan at me for doing all the time.

Draining your cooked pasta, simply serve in a bowl with the tuna and sauce on top, just like bolognese. If it still isn't spicy enough for your tastebuds, add some tobasco sauce to the pot just before the tuna.

This, for me, was the meal of champions. Since my days of being 70kgs I go up and down as and when I like between 80-90 although usually levelling out at about the midway point. The amount of food that I would eat was my regular portion until I felt full...and then I would force myself to eat some more. I wasn't exaggerating when you look at this on your plate it will look like a mini plate mountain and it may even get cold by the time you've mustered up the courage to eat it, but if you're in the right frame of mind like I was and are looking to put on those pound then this is the way to go.

I won't leave it so late next time, it's the month of fasting at the moment but it's over in a week so I will return with some more of my story.

Peace!