This.
A bigger muscle is a stronger muscle. You can add strength to a point through other methods, but inalmost every case, a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle.
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I guess I am the exception proving the rule.
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The problem I have with gaining is that I will have to cut. I don’t want to cut.
I have trouble sticking to 1700 kcal consistently for a week, much less 1500. Maybe I’ll just have to suck it up…
My strength also doesn’t seem to go up as fast as bodyweight so I’d technically be weaker. I’m still pretty far from my old deadlift and bench ratios.
Squat and press ratios have improved but over all I’m still weaker
We know you’re special 
I thought you needed to put on weight consciously for BBB, no?
Yes. I just get fatter.
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The cool part is that I know two other profs like this.
One of them is such a good teacher that I walk out of lecture with more energy than when I walk in. He changed my mind about what I want to do in grad school.
The other one is not as available but seems to have a high opinion of me. He’s considered one of the founders of my major. I didn’t think I’d meet him at all Apparently I remind him of his daughter. He’s personal friends of the prof I want to work with/for in grad school so that’s nice
I also have a research advisor that I tend to complain about, but honestly he’s great. I cold called him at the end of summer break 2020 asking to work on a research project. The first three emails I sent him I forgot the subject line but he still got back to me. We’ve actually spent more time talking about cats and Chinese culture than the project 
he’s also been super helpful with grad school stuff. The project in question is more or less just for fun and going nowhere but he’s still on board
I love my school
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Your experience might be unique to you, but I’d encourage you to be open to that cutting would feel easier if you weren’t consistently perched on the edge of maintenance. I used to personally feel that cutting would take too much willpower but after longer stints where I allowed myself to grow it feels significantly more approachable
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You would eat more calories while losing since you would have more muscle.
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This sentence describes 50% of the reason I even lift weights.
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I’ve reached a point where I have to mainline food just to hold onto the tissue I spent so long trying to build, to speak nothing of building more of it.
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I see two flaws in this statement, separated by a “.”
- Your strength may not increase 1:1 with weight, but if your strength IS increasing, then that weight can be lost whilst strength maintained, thus bringing your relative strength up in the long run.
- your old deadlift:bench ratio is irrelevant IMO. You’re still young and growing in physiological ways that don’t always make sense. I have always trained squats and deadlifts equally, and the weights I lifted for both were effectively equal until I was about 26. Then my squat stagnated at around 405 and my deadlift has been consistently increasing to over 500 (calculated 1RM) now (I’m 28). I did neither specialization nor periodization during this time, just straight PPL. Your previous strength ratios are irrelevant and will continue changing for a little while longer IME.
Lastly, you are running BBB without bulking, correct?
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You would not be technically weaker. You would be stronger. We don’t look at Hafthor Bjornsson and say he’s technically weaker than a 150lb powerlifter because of bodyweight ratios do we?
- Bulking would increase your maintenance calories due to increase in muscle mass
- 1700 Kcals is low for your activity levels (probably due to constantly refusing to listen to your body’s signs for more food). You can actively change that.
I think you need to stop looking at it as “gaining to get stronger” because clearly that has negative connotations for you. I think you should look at it as “slowly increasing your caloric tolerance while focusing on strength gain”.
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Okay. So Here’s the plan.
- Continue with another cycle of BBB
- Increase calories by 100 (to 2k) and see what happens
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Very small adjustments in calories like that typically result in the body adjusting to that baseline and not actually making use of them. Helpful if your goal is to simply increase your baseline: unhelpful if your goal is to follow a program like BBB.
100 calories is effectively mis-measuring your salad dressing. It is around half a serving of peanut butter. You are a very intelligent human, so I am sure you can imagine what the impact would be if you gave an athlete half a serving of peanut butter extra on top of their normal amount of food.
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What he said. Probably add 500 for BBB, your body will make good use of it.
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When I say 100, I mean “100”. The actual increase will probably be much greater due to inaccuracies
I managed to gain 10 lbs without increasing anything on paper
Those inaccuracies go both ways. 500.
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What you wrote does not change the message of what I wrote.
I am not writing what I am writing to tell you to change your plan Anna. I know what your goals are, and I have no idea how to accomplish that. You wanted to “see what happens” and I figured I’d save you the hassle there.
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Week 3: day 1 (yesterday)
37min fitnessblender cardio kickboxing and abs
Skull crusers: 3x20-8lb Dbs
- got HR up and felt good, not much to report
Week 3: Day 2
Squat: 1x5-40,60,70; 1x3-80; 2x2-90 
; 1x12-60, 1x10-65, 1x8-70, 1x6-75, 1x4-80, 1x2-85, 1x1-90
DB rows: 5x10/side-25lb DB
Paused squat: 5x4-60kg 1310 tempo
Deadbugs: 4x10/side
200 walking lunges
Conditioning: 5x(20sec kbs-45lb+40sec air squats)
- felt pretty good going in and throughout the session, very disappointed at how 90kg felt. decided to take the back off sets up a notch for some fun, rest of the session went fine, low back actually felt better with the higher weights
@SkyzykS (and others)
- There is a chance that the school will kick us off campus again. Since mum is gone, I don’t mind spending another semester in FL (aka skipping PGH winter/spring rain) the issue is that I have ~30lbs of chicken that I don’t want to go to waste. Any ideas?
Option 1 is to sell to classmates in PGH, but I’m not sure how viable that is. I also looked at donation sites and it seems that they don’t accept fresh meat
Option 2 is to get a cooler and transport to FL, but between cost of cooler and cost of checked baggage, cost transport> cost meat
Option 3 is to just throw it out. But I get high disutility from wasting meat