Samul's Training and Nutrition Log

[flipcollar]

that’s excellent progress for 8 weeks, so congrats on that. I’m not going to give any training advice, I would listen to anything Carter has to say. I love his approach to training. I understand feeling small, but honestly dude, you look better now, without question, than before.

@samul

For the past weeks, everyday life has been a gigantic struggle. All I could think about was food and I would fear the time I’d have to go to the gym because of how exhausted I was and how hard the workouts and cardio were.

That’s where mental toughness is needed, and hopefully you have it. That happens for bodybuilders when they are getting close to a show, and it happens to lifters like me when I’m peaking for a comp. There will be times when going to the gym just sucks, and you have to rely on your desire to be special to get you through those times. You have to know that the only way you can separate yourself from, be better than, the people around you is by pushing through the struggle.

Keep at it man.

[danteism]

That’s really some solid progress, man. Yeah, 150lbs is quite skinny, but being fatter just to weight more doesn’t really serve any purpose if physique if the main focus. Besides, it’s a whole lot easier to build from a leaner base.

Great work.

[samul]

Final pics

A 22 lbs loss in 8 weeks. Apparently Paul even posted the pics on his Instagram. Neat! He said he’s proud of me and I’m so happy with the results I’ve gotten.

Can’t wait to start the mass gain phase.

Paul told me I have free eating for this weekend. I won’t have 5k cals a day but I’ll eat some tasty tasty stuff. I’ll post pics. Stay tuned!

[SkyzykS]

Dude, you’ve done really well. Congrats!

[planetcybertron]

Awesome!

[duketheslaya]

Well done man!

[samul]

Way to start off a day.

[samul]

Round 2

First time attempting something like this, I need to try with a crispier type of bread. And next time definitely more bacon and less eggs.

Then I went out and helped my friend (a thin girl with little appetite…) finish her Grand Crispy Chicken Mc Bacon. Then I proceeded to have a slice of pizza.

Now I’m at dinner at a friend’s place and the main course is lasagne. All in all, this has been a fun day.

Something I have noticed tho: this might be placebo or something, but I’ve been feeling “swollen” the whole day. Walking around I felt like I had some “pressure” in my biceps, pecs, and back muscles. I did an extra pump training session this morning (2-4 high rep sets for each muscle group) because I knew I was going to eat a lot and I wanted to take advantage of that, so if anything that feeling is a good sign.

I am feeling MUCH MUCH BETTER both psychologically and physically. The difference is like night and day. Seriously, I didn’t think such a change in how I feel would happen so fast.

Anyway, tomorrow I’ll still have some tasty stuff but less overboard.

[Yogi1]

@samul

Something I have noticed tho: this might be placebo or something, but I’ve been feeling “swollen” the whole day. Walking around I felt like I had some “pressure” in my biceps, pecs, and back muscles. I did an extra pump training session this morning (2-4 high rep sets for each muscle group) because I knew I was going to eat a lot and I wanted to take advantage of that, so if anything that feeling is a good sign.

Yeah, when you’ve been low-carb for a long time and then get a bunch of carbs, salt and water in you, your muscles swell up again. Basically it’s your glycogen stores refilling. It’s how you normally feel but when you’re dieting you get used to feeling flat the whole time and kind of forget how it feels to be full.

[samul]

That is an awesome feeling actually. I mean, on a theoretical level I know that is what’s going on inside me, but I didn’t imagine I’d be able to actually feel it.

[samul]

Update 1 hr later after dinner…

Okay, I think I might have eaten a bit too much. Now my friends and I are watching a film and I’m laying on the couch with my stomach hurting like hell and visibly bloated.

Being the paranoid I am I actually fear, deep inside me, having done damage in this one day. For one, I know the benefits of refeeding with carbs after a period of dieting, but I also ate a lot of fats, and I wouldn’t like to look in the mirror and see I have regained fat today already.

Damn i seem to never be able to just relax.

[danteism]

Just relax man. Even if you ate 10K in a day you wouldn’t gain a massive amount of fat, even less so after being on a diet for a long time.

[samul]

Well thinking of what I ate, I’ve probably had 3 to 4k calories… Actually they might not be much of a problem because I also trained this morning but you know, having been on a diet for so long means my body will also happily gain fat.

I don’t know, Paul told me I could eat what I wanted this weekend but we also talked about how we’re going to increase food slowly from now on so I don’t get again and the amount I ate today is way more what he’ll have me eating for now. So I still kinda feel guilty.

[danteism]

@samul

having been on a diet for so long means my body will also happily gain fat.

There are a lot of things that’ll reduce the fat gain in such small timeframe such as;

• Filling of the glycogen stores (both muscle and liver) which are most likely depleted from the diet
• Filling of the IMT-stores (Intra-Muscular Triglycerides)
• Increased heat production
• Increased amounts of standing, walking and flickering when not actively doing anything (although you said that you try to do this consciously so the effect may not be as great/there may be even a slight drop here)

Now if you were to overeat for a prolonged time you’d run into problems. Having a day or two of free eating, especially at 3-4K calories after a diet is not a problem, but a week or a month will wreck you.

During my latest diet I had a couple of refeeds that consisted of eating humongous amounts of food. I also tried two-day refeeds and if I’m not mistaken the total calories were around 15-20K, didn’t gain fat. Now granted I’m bigger than you are (not exactly three times bigger though) and I went back to diet straight after but my point is that you don’t need to worry. Paul knows his stuff.

If I told a client to have a weekend of free eating and they ate super strict I’d be a bit worried. It’s great if someone enjoys strict eating so much that they do it gladly even when told to do whatever they want, but some of the people who do that later regret it and think they can just have a free day any time because they “didn’t use it”. Before you know it they are lost in the spiral of binge eating. I’m not saying that you’d be one of these people, it’s just what a coach may see.

So enjoy when you can, don’t worry and when you get back on the plan execute it with laser focus.

[samul]

Makes sense, thank you man!

Btw I just received the meal plan for the first week of mass gain (half of it actually, as Paul told me he’s going to give me two different menus so I can alternate day to day) and surprisingly calories aren’t that high yet. We’re talking around 1.9k a day, with very different macro composition than when I was dieting. Much higher carbs and lower protein.

Paul told me we’re eventually going to be really pushing the food though, so it’ll probably be just a matter of a few weeks before I see those numbers going up.

I’m also thrilled to take a look at the training program, which I’ll receive tomorrow.

I’ll keep you posted.

[samul]

So today was a weird day. All Sundays have a strange “feeling” to them for me.

Like always, I let my anxiety take over me and I thought pretty much all day about the damage I may have done over yesterday and I’m always like, “oh man, if I have regained fat I’ll waste all the work done so far because I will get fat again and it’ll be hard to put on muscle during the mass phase we’re beginning.”

Nevertheless, this is what I woke up looking like today

Probably not much different from yesterday, but to my eyes I still lost some details. Wright’s also gone up about 2 kg but that’s just probably food, water and glycogen.

I told Paul I was worried about having done damage and he replied I could fast today, having only 1 meal and that’d pretty much offset it, but it was too late because I’d already eaten; to which he replied that I should just move on and forget about it then.

All in all, today I had only two meals

Meal one
120 g pasta
100 g tuna
1 tbsp olive oil
70 g bread
40 g parmesan cheese

Meal two
130 g ground beef
125 g kidney beans
0.5 tbsp olive oil
Peppers, tomatoes
2 tortillas 20 g each

I’ve now headed out for a walk, I’m planning on walking for 90 minutes

Paul has sent me the new training plan and it looks fun and neat as fuck. It even has arm days! I’m not sure Paul is okay with me posting the program so I’m not going to, but I will post some logged session here and there.

So again, I’m excited as fuck about getting to the gym tomorrow and starting my mass gain phase, but I still haven’t gotten over yesterday’s cheat. Hope it doesn’t ruin things in the long run.

[Yogi1]

@samul

Hope it doesn’t ruin things in the long run

You need to get out of this kind of mindset, as it’ll ultimately ruin your enjoyment of the process.

Remember that progress here is measured in months, years and decades. An occasional day where you overindulge is not going to matter so long as the other 95% of your days are good.

[samul]

you’re totally right… and on some level i understand that too, without the need of being told at all.

but then, on an emotional level, i get attached to these little things that seem to matter in the short term. like, all i’ve thought about during yesterday was, “omg everything was perfect until now and i’ve managed to damage the progress and hard work i’ve done so far.”

bottom line, when i woke up today i looked in the mirror and i couldn’t believe how lean and tight i looked. WAY more than before this weekend, seriously. the opposite of what i fear could happen is what actually happened!

all in all though, i think i might have some actual problem with the anxiety thing: i just can’t take things lightly at times, and when it comes to my physique that is often the case. i try to put it all into my physique but inevitably sometimes i fail, be it because i’m not disciplined enough mentally or otherwise (during this 8 week cut i actually cheated in two instances towards the very last week, and even having adhered 100% to the diet thus far i felt TERRIBLY guilty about it and just plain borderline depressed for a couple of hours after, until i spoke to Paul), and that leads me to feeling terribly guilty.

@yogi1 i know, just to cite an example, that the thread i opened this summer about sleeping late one night was ridiculous. but at the time it really didn’t seem so to me. more often than not i lack the ability to let go of small things and just move on and look at the big picture instead. honestly, i haven’t yet found a way to fix this.

[samul]

So first day of mass phase went by, and like when I started the fat loss diet I need to get accustomed to prepping and eating the new meals. This first week won’t have me eating “a lot” of food by any stretch, and the intensity in the gym will be sub maximal, by the diet feels more varied already and I know food is going up soon.

So here are, one by one, the meals with pics

This is a personal preference that I asked Paul if could fit in the diet, which it did. It’s scrambled eggs, with spinach and mushrooms thrown in, with cheese and bacon. An awesome way to start off the day and I can’t wait till we add some carbs to this meal.

Mid morning

Nothing special apart from the fact that I hadn’t had a banana in ages. Man I can not even begin to explain how refreshing whey + banana is compared to having had only whey for two months.

Lunch is chicken breast with salad & various veggies (this time tomatoes and peppers) and almonds. I had already eaten like half of the almonds when I took this pic so they’re actually more than the pic shows lol

And here comes the fun stuff…

Pre workout: jelly sandwich and whey! Can I ask for more? Paul initially put English muffins in the diet but they’re near impossible to come by in Italy so I had to sub them for bread. This feels like a treat.

And lastly…

Can I ask for a better post workout? Meat n potatoes, with some broccoli thrown in because I want to stay full and I’m hungry as phuk.

Training wise, things were meh. Paul specifically told me to take it easy for the first week, adding weight and upping intensity from the second one on. Still it was hard as hell mentally to keep myself from pushing to failure. I was feeling like I’d waste a workout. Can’t wait to get to week two really.

Now onto the more technical stuff. This program has me benching with a barbell, which I haven’t done in ages. I want you guys to give me a bit of feedback on my technique. I’ll ask Paul of course, but I don’t want to bother him until our weekly check in, so if you guys want to take a look at the videos here they are.

Bench

Bench

Incline

Incline bench

[Yogi1]

@samul

honestly, i haven’t yet found a way to fix this.

And you probably never will! Not saying that to be disparaging; what I mean is that you may just have to always be mindful of the fact you do this to yourself, so when you find yourself doing it then try and take a step back from it and tell yourself “fuck! Here I go again with this shit!”

Being aware of a problem like that and being mindful of it when you are behaving this way goes a long way towards controlling it. You may never “fix” it but you can totally manage it.