I’m 6 ft and i’ve gained 25lbs the last 4 months and as of today i am 208lbs, most of it appears to be fat. My diet is on the advice from the eating for strength and size chapter from Jim Wendlers 5/3/1 second edition.
In the morning i buy 2 litres of milk mix it with 30gs of oats a banana and 2 scoops of protein powder.
Meal 0ne: 4 whole eggs, 2 slices of brown bread, cheese, 60gs of oats mixed with milk + 500mls from the shake i made.
Meal 2: 165gs of ground beef + 165gs of wholemeal pasta + shake + fruit.
Meal 3: Dinner usually beef stew or chicken curry or spagetti + shake.
Meal 4: 165gs ground beef 2 large potatoes + shake.
Thats it. Im just wondering if im eating to much? Im not worried about eating big or give a shit about abs. I just dont want to be a lard ass. Oh and at the moments im doing the simplest strength template.
consider lightening up on the milk or leaving it out entirely and seeing if your performance suffers or not, or see if you can leave it in and add conditioning work.
I don’t understand why you would gain 25lbs if most of it appeared to be just body fat. If your strength wasn’t going up and your muscles weren’t getting bigger, then you shouldn’t have kept gaining weight.
I am also CONVINCED that most of you guys who complain of this are lacking intensity in the weight room more than anything. If you don’t fix that, your body has no reason to turn food into muscle for no reason just because you followed the numbers in a internet routine.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
I don’t understand why you would gain 25lbs if most of it appeared to be just body fat. If your strength wasn’t going up and your muscles weren’t getting bigger, then you shouldn’t have kept gaining weight.
I am also CONVINCED that most of you guys who complain of this are lacking intensity in the weight room more than anything. If you don’t fix that, your body has no reason to turn food into muscle for no reason just because you followed the numbers in a internet routine.[/quote]
I thought most of the weight people gain is fat anyway? Yes my strength has gone up especially my upper body lifts. My muscles have got bigger but ive also got quite a bit fatter. Is there a certain point where your just eating too much? your body can only covert so much to muscle and the rest is fat?
consider lightening up on the milk or leaving it out entirely and seeing if your performance suffers or not, or see if you can leave it in and add conditioning work.[/quote]
They are going up, I do but not that much. 2-3 hill sprints a week. Perhaps i should up the sprints to 4? and light cardio on off days. I may switch to low fat milk this will help im sure.
I thought most of the weight people gain is fat anyway? Yes my strength has gone up especially my upper body lifts. My muscles have got bigger but ive also got quite a bit fatter. Is there a certain point where your just eating too much? your body can only covert so much to muscle and the rest is fat?[/quote]
No one here knows what “quite a bit fatter” means without pictures. I have gained a good deal of weight over the last two months. Most of that was not fat. Some fat came along with it and my waist isn’t as tight as it was before, but I accept that because the overall gains have been positive.
You’re a newb. I have no doubt you don’t even know what to look for…and most of the people responding here will either be shooting in the dark or just repeating what they read somewhere.
Post pics or get generic advice.
No, most of what you gain should not be body fat. I don’t know where you heard that.
I thought most of the weight people gain is fat anyway? Yes my strength has gone up especially my upper body lifts. My muscles have got bigger but ive also got quite a bit fatter. Is there a certain point where your just eating too much? your body can only covert so much to muscle and the rest is fat?[/quote]
No one here knows what “quite a bit fatter” means without pictures. I have gained a good deal of weight over the last two months. Most of that was not fat. Some fat came along with it and my waist isn’t as tight as it was before, but I accept that because the overall gains have been positive.
You’re a newb. I have no doubt you don’t even know what to look for…and most of the people responding here will either be shooting in the dark or just repeating what they read somewhere.
Post pics or get generic advice.
No, most of what you gain should not be body fat. I don’t know where you heard that.[/quote]
No before pics im afraid. Any advice/help would be great.
Like I said, I would blame lack of intensity first. Second, you gained 25lbs in only 4 months. You only do that if you have the genetics for it and are gaining the muscle to justify it.
Yes, you ate too much OR didn’t train hard enough. My bet is both.
You are in the gym how many times a week?
You spend how long working out?
These are workouts that other serious lifters would watch and say, “wow that guy works hard”?
[quote]Professor X wrote:
Like I said, I would blame lack of intensity first. Second, you gained 25lbs in only 4 months. You only do that if you have the genetics for it and are gaining the muscle to justify it.
Yes, you ate too much OR didn’t train hard enough. My bet is both.
You are in the gym how many times a week?
You spend how long working out?
These are workouts that other serious lifters would watch and say, “wow that guy works hard”?[/quote]
currently 4, it was 3 the last 3 months. I spend roughly an hour in the gym. Yesterdays workout was.
Dead lift: 1x3@97.5kg
1x3@110kg
1x3@125kg
Squat:1x8@65kg
1x8@72.5kg
1x6@82.5kg
Good mornings: 3x10@20kg
Leg curls: 3x10@30kg
Ab circuit: 10 weighted crunches, 20 kettle bell Russian twists, 10 leg raises, 20 side bends each side@20kg.
[quote]ineedskins wrote:
Im just wondering if im eating to much?[/quote]
“Too much” is relative to your specific goals, the progress you’re actually seeing, and your training.
Even though you said you’re “not worried about eating big or give a shit about abs”, if you’re gaining more fat than you’re comfortable with, it’s easy enough to scale things down. The first and easiest step would be to decrease calories on the days you’re not training. When you don’t lift, you don’t need to start the day with 2 liters of milk, for example.
[quote]I will be hitting prs next week of:
Squat:110kg
Bench:65kg
Dead: 132.5kg
OHP: 45kg[/quote]
I took a quick look at your training log. These numbers are better than you started with, but you’ve still got a long way to go. Not to discount what you’ve done so far, but as a young dude lifting and eating plenty, I’d have hoped to see your strength shoot up more rapidly.
Anyhow, it does seem to be the case where your food intake just isn’t matching your training requirements. Either tweak your diet (cutting calories on off days, increasing overall protein) and/or increase your training demands (adding conditioning and/or training volume).
Maybe it’s just me, but I think you’re having a problem a lot of guys have, trying to do too much too soon. I see a lot of guys that decide they want to gain muscle, so they drastically increase the amount of food they are eating and put on a lot of fat. You have to realize that just because you force yourself full of food, that doesn’t mean your going to blow up with muscle.
Just like developing strength, it takes a long time to gain a lot of muscle. The vast majority of people just aren’t going to be able to gain 25 pounds that quickly and have it be very “clean” weight, for a lack of a better term.
I think this is what a lot of people that get fat while training on a Starting Strength or 5x5 program have problems with. It’s not the program, it’s the fact that the people who use it so often overshoot their calories by a lot, and don’t dial it back when they start gaining a lot of fat.
5/3/1 focuses on the long term, not the here and now. Getting big and strong is a long process, and just like you aren’t going to put 100 pounds on your bench in a couple months, you aren’t going to get huge in that time frame either.
Jim W has answered a lot of quesitons on diet before, and has stated his philosophy to be that he doesn’t worry about “cutting” and “bulking” and that he just eats good food until he is full. This is a good plan. If you are actively trying to put on weight, I would suggest you cut back on how much you’re eating, because as you can see it is too much too soon.
Something isn’t adding up here. Are you really 208?? I am the same height and weight as you and train in the exact same manor and to me you look like 180 of well fat.
So you are doing good mornings with just the bar?? Dude my 105 pound wife does 43kg, so I suggest you drop these and do stiff leg deadlifts to build up your lower back and hamstrings since it seems like you can load up the weight more judging from your deadlift numbers.
I wish I could help more but your weight/look/lifting numbers just aren’t adding up to me.
[quote]CrewPierce wrote:
Something isn’t adding up here. Are you really 208?? I am the same height and weight as you and train in the exact same manor and to me you look like 180 of well fat.
So you are doing good mornings with just the bar?? Dude my 105 pound wife does 43kg, so I suggest you drop these and do stiff leg deadlifts to build up your lower back and hamstrings since it seems like you can load up the weight more judging from your deadlift numbers.
I wish I could help more but your weight/look/lifting numbers just aren’t adding up to me.[/quote]
I have to agree…but I am also learning that a lot of these guys put about the same effort into lifting that I see middle aged housewives doing when they sit on the leg abduction machine just to talk.
These are newbs. Short of having the worst genetics on the planet, I would expect way more progress being made overall.
They get the hard copy stuff right…like the “specific number of calories” or “the exact number of reps”…but intangible concepts like putting everything you have into that lift can’t be learned over the internet.
he seems to be doing more of a powerlifting type routine. He needs to do a bodybuilding type program. YOu need to do more reps. stop with the low rep stuff. that will only build strength and do very little for changing how your body looks. Get in the gym more often. 5-6 days per week. do each bodypart more often. do more reps. more time under tension.
If all your doing is deadlifts for back, your back isn’t going to get much bigger or muscular. Deadlifts, i don’t care what anyone says, is a lower back exercise, meant for strength. it won’t build much size. if you want size and muscularity, start doing rows, pulldowns and different variations of them.
I think the type of program your doing is more suited for an ectomorph(skinny) you are not an ectomorph.
From your pictures, the last thing you should be on right now is a bulking diet. You look at least 30 pounds overweight (fatwise, not musclewise) and seem to be getting some gyno or pseudo-gyno (a consequence of excess fat turning testosterone into estrogen, leading to female body fat distribution).
If I were you, I would keep up the weight training as currently but cut calories significantly until you have leaned out quite a bit. Less fat means less conversion of testosterone to estrogen and as a result less gyno, easier muscle gain. Less fat also means that you will look more muscular even though you weigh less. Once you are sufficiently lean, you can then increase calories as long as you eat clean to gain mor muscle.
[quote]seekonk wrote:
Less fat means less conversion of testosterone to estrogen and as a result less gyno, easier muscle gain. [/quote]
Yes, let’s keep the tall tales and bs out of this. You won’t be “converting more test to estrogen” just because your body fat percentage is a little higher. Please provide proof of this if you argue further.
I have a thing about people spreading flat out false bro-science as truth until everyone just believes it. That is how “roid rage” came into existence.