"Extremely exciting and unbelievably fascinating…"

- New York Times

Oh, wait. That was actually my rave review about my own bio. No pressure, right?

Well, for starters, let's get the boring stuff out of the way. My name is Brandon, I live in Richmond, Virginia, and I was born on September 7, 1984 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

I was always very skinny, and when I shot up to 6'3" during my last two years of high school, I went from being a spaghetti noodle to a spaghetti noodle that had been pulled through a thinning machine. At my most Skeletorian, I weighed only 160 pounds at that height.

The frustrating thing was that I was always working out and lifting weights, even recruiting a personal trainer at one point, but I could never seem to gain weight, no matter how many disgusting weight gainers I choked down.

Of course, the fact that I was a certified gym rat and played basketball 24/7 didn't help to calm my raging metabolism. I did manage to "balloon up" to about 170 near the end of high school (class of 2002).

Since I started school early, I had always been a year younger than my classmates, and I graduated at age 17. Personally, I was never a big fan of school in general (disclaimer: "education is vitally important and the current school system does help millions of people go on to lead successful lives" yada, yada, yada).

After I learned the basics (around 6th grade), I found the rest of the following subject matter to be boring and largely irrelevant to the things I was interested in. Nevertheless, due to my insane obsession with competition and the fact that learning came fairly easily, I ended up graduating high school with a 4.3 GPA and a 1350 on my SAT's.

Those numbers only helped fuel my "too cool for school" attitude, so I decided to take a well-deserved year off before beginning college, since I was always a year ahead of everyone anyway.

So, what's a young intelligent suburban white kid to do with his year off? Why, become a rapper of course! Yes, you read that right (I bet you didn't see that one coming…).

I had always been interested in music and finally thought to myself, "Why can't I do this?" I bought a cheap microphone, wrote down some lyrics, recorded my first song, and launched Fokissed.com.

I chose the name Fokissed as a play on the word "focused," because it sums up one of my strongest qualities. As I improved with each new song, people began listening and things picked up quickly from there.

Several agents and managers contacted me, I signed with one, I started touring, doing radio interviews, and selling CD's.

Then, when my year off was up, it was time to enroll for college. I knew it wasn't for me, but I decided to try it for two reasons:

1. I was curious to see what all the hype about "college life" was about.
2. A lot of people thought once I took the year off that I would never go back. Thanks to my enormous ego, I wanted to prove those people wrong.

So, I signed up at VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) which is only about 15 minutes from my house. Surprisingly, my good grades got me a full academic scholarship, even after having taken the year off.

Once in the door, I found it to be nearly identical to high school and perhaps even more uninspiring. My breaking point came two weeks in when I was in a lecture class. It was time for our first test and this is literally how it went: The teacher would read verbatim a page from our textbooks that was projected on a screen, then the very next slide would be a multiple choice question pertaining to exactly what he just read. Then, rinse and repeat.

Are you kidding me? Most of the students thought this was great and an "easy A," but it only reinforced my idea that I could be doing much more for myself elsewhere.

I took an extended leave of absence (read: permanent) and went right back to touring. I had a blast for a few years living the (amateur) rock star life. Then in late 2006, my manager and I began to see things differently, so we parted ways professionally, but still remain friends.

All the while, I had been continuing to train, and it was also in 2006 that I really dove into the health and fitness world. I applied my same learning habits from school and read every book and magazine I could get my hands on.

I began to understand a lot more about building muscle and changing body composition. I had underestimated the importance of diet and nutrition all these years and also made the classic mistake of trying to train more and more frequently when I was frustrated by not gaining weight.

If I had to pick one book that could best sum up everything I learned in all those hours of research, it would definitely be Scrawny to Brawny. If there are any other "hard-gainers" out there, this book is an absolute must-have and will spare you years of frustration. The workouts are great, but John Berardi's section on nutrition alone absolutely changed my life, body, and health for the better.

Armed with my new knowledge, I began eating healthier foods (and A LOT of them!), while experimenting with different training techniques and schedules. Finally, I was actually putting on weight!

In fact, I was so happy to be gaining for the first time, I took it a little too far and got all the way up to about 215 pounds. While that definitely wasn't too bad for someone my height, I was getting a little "fluffy" and knew it was time to cut back.

I eventually settled in at around 180-190 pounds for the next several months, with a much more toned and healthy (read: fit and buff) physique.

This brings me back to my parting with my manager in late 2006. I figured if I was ever going to do it, this would be the best time to do what I had been contemplating for a few years. I had always had a significant underbite (protruding lower jaw a la Jay Leno, though not quite THAT much!). Hardly anyone ever noticed it, until I would bite down and show them how my teeth were aligned.

From the outside, it wasn't immediately noticeable, but hardly any of my teeth actually touched when I would bite down. This made chewing much less efficient, and the doctors said it may continue to get worse and could even lead to bigger complications.

4/24/2008 at 11AM - Wow! This is turning out to be MUCH longer than I expected, and I've got to go handle some bizznass, so I'll finish this up when I get back…