Can I Be A Fanboy For Just A Minute?

Theoretically, when you post a blog or tweet a little bit, anyone in the world can read it.

The reality is, though, that most blogs attract a readership of about 17 people -- relatives, close friends, and your boss the one day you say something bad about work.

So I was really, really surprised last night when I logged on and discovered a comment from Mark Webster.

Who is Mark Webster?

He is, in the words of FiveThirtyEight.com's Walt Hickey (or at least his headline writer) "Some Dude (Who) Ate Like The Rock For A Month." The Rock, of course, is movie star, professional wrestler, and former Miami Hurricane Dwayne Johnson.

Why's that impressive? Well, just check out this Muscle and Fitness article on what The Rock eats. Really, click on the link and read it -- what he eats is astounding. I won't go through the whole thing, because you can just click on the little link and see for yourself, but it includes THREE POUNDS of cod, a half-pound of steak, a half-pound of chicken, and loads of other food every single day -- ten pounds of food in all.

If you've read some of my earlier blogs, you know I'm a big eater. A dozen tacos? Not a problem. Two-and-a-half pounds of hot wings? Hey, that's a good appetizer, but where's the real food? Krispy Kreme doughnuts? Do I really have to share my dozen?

But those kinds of foods are packed with fat, empty carbs, and sugar. You can get loaded on calories without actually eating much.

The Rock's diet is something entirely different. It's a clean diet -- lean protein, loads of complex carbs, and a relatively small amount of fat. It's a huge volume of food, more than I think I could eat.

Then there's The Rock's workouts. If I tried one of those workouts...well, go ahead and have the ambulance waiting at the door, because I suspect I'll be keeling over about 20 minutes into it.

Here's a look at that workout regimen, as published by Mark Webster on his blog.

So Mark decided he was going to do The Rock's eating and workout plan for 30 days (I think he actually went 33 days). As FiveThirtyEight said, just "some dude" who decided he wanted to challenge himself. Check out his account of the 30 days at Rock'ing For 30 Days.

Anyone who reads through the eating and workout plan has to come away impressed. It's easy to say someone like Dwayne Johnson could do that because he's a big-time movie star with people to do his cooking, no concern about the cost of food or gym memberships, no worry about office hours or having to build his schedule around a 50-hour-a-week job.

But that's not really true. It still takes an almost inhuman level of commitment and discipline to do that sort of eating and workout plan. There are plenty of multi-gabillionaires in the entertainment industry, yet how many look like Johnson? How many are willing to pay the price for staying in that level of physical condition? Not just getting in shape for a movie role, but doing that every day as a lifestyle. Sylvester Stallone, maybe Brad Pitt, Mark Wahlberg, and then...well, I can't think of a single big-time star who keeps a physique like these guys all the time.

So, while The Rock has the advantage of money, a cook, and a less-then-demanding schedule when compared to many of us, it still comes down to individual discipline.

And that brings us to Mark Webster. He's not some big superstar (at least as far as I can tell), nor a multimillionaire, just a regular guy who decided to take on a rather extreme fitness challenge.Thirty Days on The Rock's Fitness and Workout Routine.

Reading through his blog, it's clear doing this really became the central focus of his life for a month, from planning and preparing meals, spending hours in the gym every week, hours cooking every week...it's really impressive. The discipline and focus needed to do this, even for a month, with a "regular guy" job, a family, and all the other stuff most of us deal with was quite amazing. So much so, he even managed to attract the attention of a few websites who wrote about him,which in turn got him a few personal tweets from none other than The Rock Himself,

Reading Mark's blog isn't the reason I started this fitness plan. As I've written before, I've done the up-and-down weight loss before, working out, dieting. My family's used to it, and saying I'm going to loss weight -- and even losing weight -- is generally greeted by yawns and "yeah, okay, that's great" kinds of statements because...well...it's really more of the same old same old.

But, reading through Mark's blog gave me the idea to start MY blog...to publicly chronicle what I'm doing. And I have to say, when you start blogging about this stuff, whether it's 17 people or 17,000 people reading your daily success and failure, that tends to keep the motivation a teeny bit higher.

So yeah, I was really excited when I found that Mark had read through some of my posts and left a comment. Kinda made my day. And also made me a little more determined to stick with this, because now The Dude (Who) Ate Like The Rock For A Month might be checking in from time to time. If he can down three pounds of cod every day for a month, I can shed a few dozen pounds, right?

Anyway, that's all for my Fanboy post. I'll be on later to write about today's diet and workout.

Thanks for stopping by.

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