Anything noticeable? Sleep? Recovery? Carpal tunnel pain?
Pretty good in all regards. Hands are good and I’m getting and staying lean pretty dang easy. Just ready to get this knee thing done with lol
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I envy this statement as I’m trying to shed a few pounds of fluff. I hate not eating everything in sight.
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Have you tried different types of diets? Different macro nutrient ratios? I recently (6 months ago) started keto and I was amazed at how shredded I became. Still maintaining the leanness but working on adding lean gains. Its been pretty amazing. You could try keto or paleo or carnivore. Sometimes thats all it takes.
I lost 40 lbs from Nov '18 - April '19.
If I try a restriction diet then it lasts about one day. I like carbs. I can get lean but I got tired of being hungry. It’d be nice to be lean and satisfied but it’s not in the cards for me.
Not to sound combative but if you were hungry then you weren’t doing it right. Fat keeps you full and maintains you. Carbs just fill you full of extracellular water that you dont need. For every gram of carb you eat you retain 3 grams of water. That stubborn weight you cant shake could be just excess water weight. I get it though. If you dont have discipline then this diet isnt for you. I wish you the best of luck on reaching your goals
I think I’ve manipulated my body weight pretty well. It’d be awesome to be ripped all the time but it’s not enjoyable. I maintained a lower body weight for about six months before I got tired of obsessing about it.
I don’t think it’s possible to walk around at 10% body fat or less and enjoy life unless you have help. I don’t judge people like Jack who are on TRT and do a blast every once in awhile (and some GH when injured), but you can’t downplay the effects it has. I’m 35. I can’t eat the way I did when I was 20 and my hormones were high.
I’ve never had a full blood panel because my primary doc doesn’t do that. I had a total T test a couple years ago. I think it was in the high 600s or low 700s. I’m guessing you guys might not even get that low before you pin again.
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Yeah my levels stay around 900-1000 in the last few tests. I agree with you for the most part. It’s easier to stay lean and maintain muscle for sure when on TRT and the occasional blast. That said I know plenty of guys who are not remotely lean who also take Test. It’s consistency with diet that is the big player IMO.
I did the keto route for quite a while and found it to be true that fat was filling and I was not overly hungry most of the time. Also the body fat melted away. It just wasn’t sustainable for me as I felt the food choices got pretty boring. I’ll vouch for it being dang effective though. I simply prefer to have carbs in moderation and generally don’t crave fats very much so miss them less.
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That’s awesome that you’ve found a eating style that’s working so well for you man! I know from experience that it’s exciting when you find something that not only works for your lifestyle but also gets results! What’s the current physique looking like now?
I’ve always sympathised with you from a hunger standpoint. I recently tried eating every two hours, which suck from a convenience perspective, but it’s the first time I don’t have hunger be my routine state of mind. Does your hunger ever subside? 4+ hours, 6+ hours, 8+ hours, 16+ hours? Also, my diet is stupidly high in protein.
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1/8
Woke 168.8
Wow wasn’t expecting quite a drop so quickly but I’ll take it! Looks like I’ll be back to 165 in no time at all.
Today’s work
Shoulders
Superset one
Barbell OHP
Dumbbell OHP
Superset 2
Plate raises
Front delt dumbbell raises
Superset 3
Incline reverse flys
Rear delt cable pulls
Superset 4
Lateral raises
Heavy lateral partials
Excited to see if my shoulder will do ok through this. It’s been feeling a little better last few days. Did some handstands yesterday and everything felt ok so maybe I’m on the mend.
There’s always something though… sigh. My gout is a little angry this morning so hopefully that doesn’t escalate. Probably all the extra fat and booze over the holidays lol
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Yeah in contest prep I always knew that no matter how hungry I was is at least get to eat again in a few hours. Currently I’m doing just coffee in the morning then:
Meal 1 1030
Meal 2 1230
Meal 3 330
Shake 530
Meal4 730
Shake 930
So sort of a wimpy intermittent fasting thing. I miss my breakfast but we’ll see how it goes.
Is that calorie counts or timestamps? Because if it’s the former, it’s hilarious that it increments as if it were timestamps.
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Definitely time stamps lol! That would be a crap ton of calories…
Bulking. Done. “Right”
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Yes, but for how long is variable. Yesterday I ate two protein pancakes with a little vegan butter and honey at 730. The pancakes were 440 cals with 26g of protein (mostly carbs). I ballpark the meal at about 600 calories.
I didn’t get hungry til about 1115. I ate two chicken wraps with about 6-8 oz of chicken total. That meal is around 600-700 cals with 50ish g of protein.
I was starving at 1400 so I ate a 300 calorie, 30g protein bar. I had another at 1615 because I was starving again.
Carbs seem to fill me better than anything else. If I eat potatoes then I’m usually full for a few hours because I can get a high volume of food without a lot of calories.
If I try high fat then I run out of food options immediately. I avoid dairy with the exception of a little cheese (and eggs) because it gunks up my mucous membranes and makes my allergies worse. I can only breathe out of about 70% of my nose on a good day.
I know how to get more fats but the options for actually eating food are limited. I like to feel full - not stuffed but enough satisfied. I’d prefer to eat a larger volume of food for the same or less calories. High fat doesn’t do that.
Example - 6 oz of chicken vs 6 oz of 85% lean beef.
180 cals, 39g protein vs 360 cals, 33g protein
I can eat double the chicken which does a better job of filling me up which helps increase the time before my next bout of hunger.
You guys know I can cut fat to get lean. I just haven’t found a way to be lean without depriving myself of things I enjoy. I need to correct some things because I ate like an American over the holidays but I’m confident I could maintain 220ish lbs while not being hungry all the time and while enjoying my favorite foods and drinks (beer).
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We most certainly do
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11/9
Woke 166.8
Was super stoked yesterday that I got through the shoulder workout without much pain at all. I dialed down the weights a little bit not much and had very minimal pain. Hopefully thing is coming to an end.
Had date night last night along with a few too many vodkas so today’s a slow morning. I don’t have anything todo before my workout at 11:30 so no harm done. Nutritions been perfect this week other than the cocktails last night and feeling good overall.
Today’s workout
Chest and triceps
Flat cable press
Dirty 30 flys thanks @Frank_C
Incline cable press
Incline dirty thirty flys
Tricep bar push down
Dumbbell kickbacks
Single arm rope tricep extensions
Skull crushers
Finisher incline underhand pushups and alternating press/fly till failure
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I’m curious to see what you think. They looked good in the video.
How many calories are you eating right now? I suspect it’s higher than me and that’s just not fair. My maintenance seems to be around 3000. That falls on the middle to low end of all of the online calculators but I came up with that number with all of my old data from My Fitness Pal (ya know, back when I tracked everything). I’m 6’5" and well over 200 lbs and I kind of feel like my metabolism is giving me the middle finger.
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I don’t know much about these calculators, but as far as T-nation articles go I’ve read multiply your weight in pounds by 13-15 depending on your activity level to get your maintenance level calories which would put you at the high end of maintenance.
One thing that seems to have fallen out of favour is the idea of a set-point. To be fair, I believe the idea originally was “body-fat set-point”, but I’ve been pondering the notion of there just being a weight set-point. That there is some amount of mass our body expects us to be at.
Maybe the set-point theory stuff got thrown out at the same time as everyone stopped subscribing to the idea of us all falling neatly into the ecto/meso/endomorph-labels (good riddance), but anecdotally at least I have failed to pay attention to anyone making statements that would run contrary to this idea.
I.e., it seems as if there is a weight at which if we are below it we are essentially perpetually hungry, and if we are above it then to gain weight we must either force-feed or eat less clean choices. Again, gathered through anecdata, the formula I’ve arrived at is,
If you are an X cm male, that is physically active (weight-training, etc.) you’ll be hungry as a hippo if you are below X kilos. If you are at X+10 kilos, you’ll probably be satisfied if you are eating to maintain, and eating to gain becomes a struggle.
At your height, @Frank_C, that X+10 would be 230 lbs (at which you’d be having to eat 3450 calories a day to maintain your weight assuming a *15 multiplier with regards to your BW in lbs).
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