[quote]creasey21 wrote:
Just thought I would give you guys an update …
Last monday I was 133.8lbs and… Today I’m 136.2lbs so think it safe to say I’m going in the right direction now [/quote]
Nice, man. Stick to it. The consistency of it all is going to be key. Keep up with the once a week weigh-ins and, like I’m telling Rez, stick with a good lifting program and make sure you’re seeing progress in strength/performance.
Cheers chris 
yeah I been eating much better and it seems to be paying off - new pbs in gym yesterday flat bench press 176lbs for 4 reps and incline bench press 154lbs for 6reps
Ok I have started to stay the same so I need to change things around a bit this Is my new diet please could you all help me and let me no if its any good baring in mind I want to bulk and eventually go for a miami pro physique.
Breakfast - 100g oats 300ml milk a serving of whey and a serving of flaxseed
Post workout - cnp pro mass and 5 dextrose tablets
Lunch - 7 whole eggs and 2 wholemeal bagels
Snack - cinammon and raisen bagel and a whey shake
Dinner - egg noodles quarter chicken leg sweetcorn and soy sauce
Snack - home made protein bar (320cals 50p 25c 4f)
Night - another protein bar
This works out to 3670cals 329p 91f 385c
How does that sound?
Also most sites say 0.5g of fat per lb of bw but that would mean only 72g fat? So is 90 odd grams of fat too much?
Thanks guys
Would you say that you are a person with relatively high nervous energy, who can get “keyed up” fairly readily and moreso than most people?
While I can’t prove it’s always so, my observation over time has been that people at the higher end of nervous energy tend strongly to bulk better when keeping training time and training days per week fairly moderate, to considerably less than what you are doing.
For example, to 40-45 minutes four days per week rather than 1.5 hours per day 5 days per week.
You’ve been getting some great advice above; glad to see that your results are now moving in the right direction?
90 g of fat per day is by no means too much.
Hi bill thanks for replying
Yeah I would say that I’m quite a hesitant person but I think that is because of my history coming from anorexia like when I got out of rehab I started going gym and tried not to look back
I think it is my hesitancy that sees me only putting on 1lb a week at most when really I should/could be gaining 2-3lbs a week??
In actuality 1 lb of muscle per week is an excellent rate of gain, and sustaining that will do just fine.
I don’t know whether the pattern I’ve seen would be related only when having a born tendency of having the higher nervous energy, or might apply whenever that’s the case, whether from that or recent experiences.
But if you’re adding 1 lb of muscle per week, or with most of it being muscle, then you don’t need to change the training program. However in general, 1.5 hours per workout is for most overdoing it for bulking. The exception comes mostly in a strength training situation where rest time is very long between sets. If that’s your reason for the long workouts, then it may be fine. But if your rest period is more like a minute, for bulking at this point, I’d cut to an hour at most.
Yeah my rest periods are usually 2minutes long and I like to focus on a body part a day, atm I seem to be putting on around 0.8lbs a week and that’s getting weighed in morning on empty stomach.
I am seeing better lifts and more heavier weight apart from bench press which seems to be lagging behind which makes me think I may be using my shoulders too much as they are developing quite well whereas my chest doesn’t look as good
[quote]creasey21 wrote:
Ok I have started to stay the same[/quote]
What’s your bodyweight today?
How has your strength improved on the bench, incline bench, and other basic lifts?
What does your training look like now (days, exercises, sets, and reps)?
I forgot if it’s been mentioned, but how’s your bodyfat doing? Not a percentage, but are you still pretty lean, getting a muffin top around the beltline, etc?
What you just wrote isn’t all that different from how you were eating two months ago (when you started this thread). Depending on how much weight you’ve gained since November, it might be worth significantly increasing calories for a while. I get that there’s a mental hurdle to overcome, but if you keep your eye on the big picture (no pun intended) and stay focused on the long-term goal, it should be manageable.
Hi chris thanks for the reply
My bodyweight is 142lbs first thing in morning
My incline bench has improved but my flat bench hasn’t and things like deadlifts and squats have improved
I still have a visibble six pack but starting to gain a lil fat on lower abdomen
My training is
monday - chest 5sets 10r 8r 6r 6r 3r
Tuesday - back same set and reps
Wednesday - legs same set and reps as other days
Thursday - arms
Friday - shoulders
Yeah you are right there is not that much calorie difference from the first post maybe I should look to start at 4000cals
I am not saying that you are having or will have the possible problem I’m about to describe, or even that it’s likely for you. But only that it can happen and it can be a good idea to keep track of it.
Some can gain surprising amounts of fat without looking much fatter, particularly if looking at only one point as a reference.
I’ve done quite a few dumb things over time, but have tried to learn from them. One of the dumbest, 20 years ago when just starting to lift, was to follow the ideas of a certain lifting guru who insisted that if dietary fat was low, and carb intake was from things like brown rice, then it was impossible to get fat and his advice for fast muscle gain was to eat 10,000 calories a day!
I followed his recipes, doing things like blending brown rice and tuna and drinking these mixtures many times per day. I wound up “limiting” myself to 6000 calories a day because I was putting on weight very fast and really 6000 calories seemed plenty, to say the least.
Soon I went from a somewhat fat 160 (weight if at say 10% bf would probably have been about 147 or maybe even a bit less) to 190. I did not think I was fat. Success!
Well, then I realized that I was fat. I didn’t do a body comp, but I continued training with more moderate diet and slow fat loss and ended stronger and at 158 lb and 6% bodyfat as measured by underwater weighing (not accurate in my case) and 8% by skinfold.
So in other words I was at least 30 lb too fat when at the 190 lb point. This diet was not the way to go. I had to lose a lot of time that could have been devoted to better muscle gain, had I not needed to diet the lard off.
Okay, my actions were particularly stupid and I was following a diet plan much worse than what you will. However the point of the story is, it’s a big waste of time to put on a lot of fat and then have to lose it, and it’s possible to not realize just how much fat is being put on until the problem has gotten, uh, very big.
The solution to this is to buy an inexpensive skin fold caliper and measure several convenient points. They don’t have to be “standard” points, but instead can be points that you personally can measure easily and precisely (if measuring several times in the same day, you get about the same result each time). For example, you might pick a particular spot, which you can go to the same spot everytime, somewhere near the navel; another spot on the thigh, and another spot on the chest.
Keep track of the sum of the measurements. If you let them double, then you are getting twice as fat, roughly speaking! If the total is clearly creeping up only very slowly, then you’re doing just fine.
Even where someone is at no risk of getting too fat, this can be useful because on seeing these values not increase, or increase obviously only very slowly and unimportantly, can give the confidence to eat more.
That was an interesting read! Would that sort of co incide with visceral fat? If I was starting to put fat on but the scales wasn’t moving up that much would that be the same sort of thing and if so how would I go about fighting that issue?
According to the skinfold test I have 6.5% bf so may look into buying a caliper and keeping track
It might for some coincide with visceral case; if tending to put on a potbelly then the thing to is to measure the waist at the largest circumference.
In my case it was from putting on fat very evenly all across the body, so there were no “ugly” thicknesses anywhere even though bodyfat percentage became pretty high, and all the abs were still visible, though of course smoothed.
Being at 6.5% bf now by skinfold, absolutely you haven’t been eating enough for optimal bulking over the last few months, or even over the last month really. If you allow a fat gain of half a pound to one pound per week over the next, say, 12 weeks, you won’t be getting too fat by any means, and the caloric excess will help in gaining muscle.
Yea over the past month or so the weight gain has been slow and I’m active throughout the day
I think what I should do is buy caliper and also take waist measurements to see if it is going up too fast
I have stopped cardio other than the walking I have to do to get to work etc and although that will help the weight gain I’m thinking it may have a negative effect on cv health
Not to worry on that – there would be truth to it if going on a years-long plan to avoid cardio, but not if it’s just for the present time. Or more accurately, there’s no evidence for there being any problem to that.
[quote]creasey21 wrote:
My training is
monday - chest 5sets 10r 8r 6r 6r 3r
Tuesday - back same set and reps
Wednesday - legs same set and reps as other days
Thursday - arms
Friday - shoulders [/quote]
There has to be a miscommunication going on here. I hope. Please. You’re doing 5 sets per bodypart? As in, one exercise for 5 sets and you’re done for the day?
Significantly increasing calories and getting on a well-designed program (like the one I linked to earlier) is still the most straight-forward answer.
Also, I get what Bill’s saying about bodyfat gains sometimes being subtle, but I don’t think tracking your bodyfat with calipers is necessary right now, between your history with anorexia and your current leanness. Using a combo of photos, actual measurements (inches around neck, upper arms, nipple line, waist, thighs, calves), scale weight, and strength in the gym, you should be able to monitor things well enough.
Mostly agreed; I didn’t have the 6.5% figure when making the suggestion and wouldn’t have thought it a particular thing worth pointing out if having it.
Still, as cheap as they are, there is value in having a reference.
And there can still be utility because rather than being there to hold back eating, because if bodyfat doesn’t increase at a moderate pace then they can show that eating should increase yet further. Or if readings increase at a pace showing a substantial (but still very tolerable) fat gain, then there can be confidence that finally caloric intake is sufficient, with no worries of not doing enough there.
But a key priority to take these measurements at this point? Definitely no, not when at 6.5%!
With my training I do 5sets on each exercise so say mondays chest will be
Flat bench
Incline bench
Chest press
Db bench press
Incline cable fly
Legs -
Squats
Seated leg press
Leg extension
Leg curl
Donkeys
Back -
Deadlift
Lat pull down
Seated back row
Single armed back row
Arms-
Barbell curl
Tricep dips
Preacher curl
Tricep extension
Laying db curl
Shoulders -
Military bb press
Shoulder press
Db press
Lateral raises
Shrugs
That’s my training routine I do 5sets for each exercise with 2mins rest inbetween
Yeah so at this time in my bulking as I am still lean visible six pack etc I should just be wary or bf increasing but not to worried as it inevitable that’s there will be a small amount of fat gain and that’s something that can’t really be changed?
Well with regard to fastest muscle gain it’s not only inevitable but desirable. No one, or if so the person would be very rare, will gain muscle anything like as fast when keeping bodyfat at 6.5% compared to when eating enough to cause it to increase at a moderate rate.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Well with regard to fastest muscle gain it’s not only inevitable but desirable.[/quote]
Agreed.
Creasey, you’re so lean right now that you’ll see bodyfat and muscle gains as you go along, and that’s 100% fine. Mark Rippetoe has a pretty good quote about it:
"Let’s say you put on 40 or 50 pounds in six months. That’s going to have a huge impact on how you look and how strong you are.
But let’s say you do the ‘gotta keep my razor sharp abs’ horseshit. You’ll be lucky if you gain eight or nine pounds. What do you think is going to have more effect on how you look? 50 pounds, 30 of it muscle, or 8 pounds?"
And, just to repeat what I suspected, your training plan does need an overhaul ASAP. Your current routine is poorly laid out with redundant exercises (almost nobody needs three different kinds of preses on shoulder day, for example) and a pretty rough looking setup overall (very little pulling/lots and lots and lots of pushing, I’m not sure a full day dedicated to arms is necessary, etc.).
There are tons of programs in the Article Archives and almost any one of them would be an improvement and should get you back on track to seeing the kind of results you’re after.
Cheers guys! So if I got this right I should eat big and put on some decent size as this will help overall appearance and strength gains and also I should do a better workout program maybe 531 or a push pull split routine mainly focusing on compound big movements and not to much if any isolated exercises?