Congrats.
Your skin actually seems to have held up really well compared to most people I have seen.
Look at the bright side. If you add muscle real quick you wont have to worry about stretch marks. You will just be filling it in 
sounds like youāve done a great job with dropping the fat! congrats. i eat like you except for legumes, nuts, (>65% cocoa) chocolate, and raw dairy.
diet wise, iād put a halt to those fasting jogs. a small carb snack (fruit) would be great. as others have suggested (and i have experimented with via Surge) peri-workout carbs is where i would most likely consider making changes. just go slow, so that you can see how it hits you over a period of a few weeks.
i wouldnāt go with starch carbs like white rice or bread very often. these are just junk food and if you are like me, youāll get sick the first few times you try them. that or youāll have poor performance. think instead, legumes and fruit, maybe raw dairy if you can get it in your area.
as for training: since you are going back to work (and doing real work) iād switch your gym emphasis to heavy/less volume and more compound mvmts.
I have another quick question, Im reading about keeping the food log, I did keep one before but Im going to do it properly this time and go and get a scale and some measuring tools. Iām just wondering how do I go about measurring the nutrients in a meal such as mixed veggys and lean ground beef?
I cook enough to eat for dinner and then at least lunch the next day. SO I need to measure out each cup of brocoolli, each cup of beef, each cup of cauliflower, each cup of red pepper and so on? Damn hahah thats going to be a lot of cups to measureā¦? Am I missing something simple here?
Thanks a lot ahead of time
[quote]thruxton45 wrote:
sounds like youāve done a great job with dropping the fat! congrats. i eat like you except for legumes, nuts, (>65% cocoa) chocolate, and raw dairy.
diet wise, iād put a halt to those fasting jogs. a small carb snack (fruit) would be great. as others have suggested (and i have experimented with via Surge) peri-workout carbs is where i would most likely consider making changes. just go slow, so that you can see how it hits you over a period of a few weeks.
i wouldnāt go with starch carbs like white rice or bread very often. these are just junk food and if you are like me, youāll get sick the first few times you try them. that or youāll have poor performance. think instead, legumes and fruit, maybe raw dairy if you can get it in your area.
as for training: since you are going back to work (and doing real work) iād switch your gym emphasis to heavy/less volume and more compound mvmts.[/quote]
I like the way your thinking there to man, Im going to do that mass diet after the surgery like I spoke about (the link that he said has the picture that will make me feel better (good idea???)) But untill then Im thinking Iām going to add a few things such as legumes or beans and such, Iām thinking some legumes in my salad, some oatmeal in my shake, sound about right?
Also man, what type of workout are you meaning? Compound movements, isnt that squats and deadlifts like I have? I am 100% willing to change up my training, to be honest Ive been doing the same shit mostly for a fucking long time, Iām just always so thrown of by some of the programs complexity that I get to scared to try it. (Im a fucking pussy when it comes to change when I know something is working)
The reason I was thinking of weighing everything out is so that I can get a total amount of calories and protein and fat and so on. In the link with the clean bulking, it says I need to keep a food log,
Im going out right now to grab some beans and lentils to slowly add into salads and other shit.
First of all: Congratulations! It takes serious dedication to lose that much weight. Seriously man, congratulations.
I think what you are after is aesthetic physique. No doubt you are going to have to add some muscle for that but it doesnāt have to be over night. I doubt most people in this thread have gone through what you have to get to where you are. Hence some of the comments about just fucking eating and donāt worry about measuring.
Iām sure youāve discovered Shugartās articles and by now. His stuff is really good for guys like you (and me). Iād devour that.
Iād add in some carbs before you workout. Your workouts will go better and will be far more enjoyable and intense.
Iād measure everything out so you can actually adjust things as you go forward without having to completely guess.
Aim for a slight calorie surplus for a while if you think you can handle it mentally but just keep it healthy.
thatās all i got for right nowā¦itās warm for the first time this year and Iām headed out for a walk with the wifey.
seriouslyā¦you should feel awesome about what you have accomplished so far and excited about the possibilities of what is coming if you continue to work hard and change your focus a little.
Are you still trying to eat at a caloric deficit?
If so, stop, and try to maintain for a few weeks. Heck, you can even introduce the extra calories in the form of carbs.
It looks like you didnāt have any sort of sit-ups listed in your exercise routine? I would think if one were trying to tighten up their stomach, they would be focusing on core exercises to get this done. If you need some ideas for ab work let us know. I do abs every workout to varying degrees.
Also I would definitely try adding a quality fish oil supplement to your daily food intake along the lines of what bushidobadboy was saying in regards to needing some more fat; just make sure it is the right fat. A good fish oil will go a long way for you Iād expect.
sorry for not throwing that in with the routines, everytime i jog i do ten sets of 30 or so situps
Great Job losing all that fat. As stated and admitted you have a fear of getting fat so I propose a simple solution. There is a ton of value in what previous posters have said about bulking up and putting on mass by increasing calories/good fats etc.
However, after reading this site for a year or so one realizes that the bigger guys (stronger/muscular not fat) tend to believe that the best advice is from people that have been there already (stong and muscular) to really know how it is (Prof. X is a huge proponent of this mindset : Note- nothing wrong with such thinking and it is actually quite logical and more often than not valid). However, not many on this site have gone from 300+ pounds of fat to 190 so it may not be helpful to tell you to just bulk etc because you have a very real fear of getting fat again.
My proposed solution is to go into very controlled bulk cycles, meaning that you bulk X number of pounds and then cut back down with the hopes of keeping most of the muscle you gained. You seem to be this for the long haul and over time you will see net results. Before getting flamed I am aware that you will probably not receive OPTIMAL muscle or strength gain in this fashion BUT it may be the best option available for your current mindset.
Note: Bonez tends to give good no BS advice. āfill it out with musclesā ā>simple yet so true.
Note: BBB tends to know his stuff all around but especially with the more technical/scientific areas of nutrition.
Good Luck
If I was you and really that fearful of getting fat I would just hire someone like BBB (if he does that via internet), Shelby Starnes, etc to lay out your food intake. Most professionals dont charge much for off season diets and can almost guarantee success diet wise if your putting the work in at the gym. If your not willing to experiment I would deff suggest you find a professional.
[quote]bushidobadboy wrote:
[quote]carltmac wrote:
sorry for not throwing that in with the routines, everytime i jog i do ten sets of 30 or so situps[/quote]
If you did 10 sets of 30 reps for biceps, would you expect them to grow optimally? Not really and the same goes for the abdominal muscles. Most people seem to (erroneously) think that ab muscles are somehow different in their makeup to all the other muscles and train them in ways youād never train other muscle groups. ED training and high reps mostly, which donāt really work as well as heavy weights/low reps and E5-7D training.
BBB[/quote]
What do you consider to be heavy weights/low reps 1-3? 5-8 and WTH is E5-7D training ?? your posts are some of the best on this site.
[quote]Hazzyhazz24 wrote:
[quote]bushidobadboy wrote:
[quote]carltmac wrote:
sorry for not throwing that in with the routines, everytime i jog i do ten sets of 30 or so situps[/quote]
If you did 10 sets of 30 reps for biceps, would you expect them to grow optimally? Not really and the same goes for the abdominal muscles. Most people seem to (erroneously) think that ab muscles are somehow different in their makeup to all the other muscles and train them in ways youād never train other muscle groups. ED training and high reps mostly, which donāt really work as well as heavy weights/low reps and E5-7D training.
BBB[/quote]
What do you consider to be heavy weights/low reps 1-3? 5-8 and WTH is E5-7D training ?? your posts are some of the best on this site.
[/quote]
Sorry if Iām stepping on toes, but I think I can man this one: E5-7D means train the abs with a frequency of once every 5 to 7 days. Heās saying that you should treat the abs like any other muscle group, so if you normally stick to a certain rep range for most other muscle groups, then apply that to the abs as well. The abs need to be strength trained! Anything from 2-15 reps fits the bill, but you have to determine how you respond best. Mix it up and see!
[quote]carltmac wrote:
sorry for not throwing that in with the routines, everytime i jog i do ten sets of 30 or so situps[/quote]
Iām not sure if anyone else has mentioned this, but drop the jogging!
Seriously, itās not doing you any good at this point. Either go harder or easier.
Youāll be better served by running sprints of some type, but if you must do some form of steady state cardio, look into rowing, cycling, swimming, or even incline walking on a treadmill.
Iāve always found my abs to respond best to high rep sets, as many days a week as possible to keep them tight and un-flabby. Without the high rep sets multiple days a week I just donāt think I could be as lean as I am.
And they seem to hold up better than any other body part (at least for me) with little or no total days off. I would hit other things like abs if I could, but I would end up with injuries after a while and the bigger muscle groups just seem to need more time to rest.
Probably my favorite ab exercise lately is the āMike Tyson push-upā where you take a small hard rubber ball and line it up under your abs and do push-ups as fast and hard as you can - slamming the ball into your abs each time. If you make it hard on yourself and use a good ball, it is like a punch to the stomach every time. I saw Tyson doing it in an HBO documentary once. 50 rep sets are my usual target. 2 of those is about all of them I can handle in a single day.
Also you can lay face down on the ground with the rubber ball in between your abs and the floor, then take your hands off the ground and let all your weight press down on the ball through your abs and just hold it there. Or roll the ball from side to side over your abs (this time with the hands on the ground to help you move).
Alternatively take a heavy dumbell and lay on a bench and just hold the dumbell flat on your abs, just barely using your hands to hold the dumbell and keep it from falling off you.
I definitely know more ab lifts than anything else. Maybe that is why I do them so much? =)