Blake Ponuick talks with with Movement Food

Quick Stats:

Age: 50 (turning 51 October 20^th)
Height: 5’9 ½“
Weight: 198lbs

Social Media:

How did I get started?

I worked out when I was a kid and loved it, then in my early 20’s we had kids and my career took off. Like so many other people, weight training, the gym and a lot of my personal interests took a back seat to family and career. My gym visits were to the steam room. It wasn’t until almost 5 years ago when I was 46, I got re-inspired by my youngest daughter’s high school boyfriend, Kyle Faustino @kylefaustino. I hadn’t seen Kyle for almost a year, during which time he had made some incredible changes to his physique. He was just getting serious about the sport at the time, and we started working out together. I was pretty much starting from scratch. I was active with hockey, but no real strength or muscle.

We worked out together for almost a year, and I was hooked. It had become a habit and lifestyle for me at that point. I think that because I was so close to Kyle, his passion and seriousness for the sport rubbed off on me. I’m not sure I would have ever taken training as serious as I did or contemplated the idea of competing if it wasn’t for Kyle’s mindset and the crew at Sandcastle Fitness. For a relatively small gym, there are a lot of competitors, so there was a lot of encouragement from the Sandcastle Fitness family as well.

What motivates me to push harder?

It was really just over a year ago, as I was approaching 50. I made a decision that I wanted to be in the best shape of my life at 50 and capture that moment. Kind of an “in your face, this is 50” moment. That morphed into deciding to enter a Competition to force me to be serious and have a commitment and impending event. I hired Dawn Alison as a coach, who is amazing. Dawn put together a workout and nutrition program for me and recommended using a meal prep service. I reached out to Joseph at Muscle Food and started ordering pretty much out of the gate. With my work schedule, there is absolutely no way I could have gotten my diet on point without Muscle Food. My wife and I are both very busy with our careers. She loves it too. We tried food prepping a few times, and it was just too time consuming, notwithstanding our food wasn’t as good. So major fail. I’ve been ordering Muscle Food weekly now for almost 8 months and even had it delivered the day after my competition so I had for the next week. I am even more motivated now to see what is possible at my age. I view this as the starting point of the new me.

How many calories do I consume and my progress:

Joseph helped me figure out my BMR and macro’s, and we ended up targeting around 2,500 calories a day, so I had a deficit and would start dropping body fat. I was dropping weekly, and about 8 weeks out from the competition, I did a BodyComp Imaging X-Ray to see where I was at. I still hadn’t registered or fully committed mentally to the Competition, so it was down to the wire. Since my last BodyScan 11 months earlier, I had dropped 4.7% bodyfat (9.9 LBS), and gained 7.4 LBS of lean muscle! To put it in context, the prior 12 months BodyComp Imaging showed that I had plateaued, with virtually no change despite working out religiously.

My approach to training and diet, and bulking or staying lean.

A so many people who go through the experience of their first competition say it’s a real enlightening experience. I now understand what they mean and how impactful it is. It’s been a real awakening, which not a lot of people are fortunate to have at 50. This was my gift to myself, and I am now really inspired and motivated o see what I can do with my physique at my age – and to making 51 even better than 50, and so on. My intention is to stay lean year-round and focus on lean muscle gains, so I’m increasing calories modestly. My training hasn’t changed much, 5+ times per week, and now I am working hockey in now that the season has started (3 teams), which is a lot of cardio.

I like having a goal, as it forces discipline, so I plan on doing another competition as early as next year. Now that I know what to expect, I will commit earlier and plan on really improving on the last one.