Can you elaborate what you mean with your social skills? I personally think social ability is context and situation dependent. That is, a person’s eloquence, willingness to be social, etc, etc all depend on the situation that they’re in.
So a person may be very good shit-talking with their friends at their home but be incredibly bad at socializing at a workplace or talking in some professional/business meeting.
I’m personally objective-driven when it comes to talking. So I have zero problem talking with someone when I’m trying to buy something or talking to my coworkers or superiors at work because I have a very clear objective in mind. I’m very confident and get my point across well. This is also how I got over my fear of public speaking; though to be honest I’m in no hurry to test that out. I am utterly horrible with small talk or talking to people when out on dates because I either don’t know how to get to the objective without looking like a crazy person, or I just plain don’t know what the objective is.
Confidence is also situation dependent. I’m confident to the point of being arrogant when it comes to my career and I know for a fact that I have evidence to back this up. And yet I feel so self conscious about my achievements when it comes to talking myself up with prospective romantic partners. I literally feel tiny and have this voice in the back of my head saying ‘why on Earth would this woman want to be with someone as insignificant as me?’
I think it ultimately ends up being what T3hPwnisher says- you have to fake it until you make it. I call it a different thing- you need to mind control yourself into becoming the person you want to become.
Everyone on this forum is ostensibly doing this right now- we’re either constantly trying to convince ourselves (or have successfully convinced ourselves) that what we’re doing is going to help us achieve the physique or obtain the physical abilities we want to achieve.
I’ll end by saying what I say to every young folks these days- Stop fucking overthinking everything. It doesn’t help you. I spent my 20s overthinking everything and that is honestly one of the few things I regret about my 20s.
No article, no, but he wrote two books (Comprehensive performance nutrition) which were great reads and has done a bunch of table talks with Dave Tate.
He’s big on carb cycling to help accomplish that. Always seemed like a nifty idea.
I hope they gave you more constructive criticism than “small talk skills are not good.” That could mean far too many things to make a good judgment imo. My gut reaction to being told that would be that we simply didn’t get along all that well, or that person didn’t find me particularly approachable.
The whole evaluation process is weird honestly, especially since my intern coordinator (a dude who is not supervising me 24/7) filled out the checklist.
Everything he checked off “average” or a level below that, all tied back to me not talking to everyone on the jobsite. It’s a huge project, 700 million dollars, which needs a huge staff. Now I have talked with a good amount of people, but not everyone.
That was honestly the only thing they could hold against me. At least I know now, so I can crush it on my next internship. I’m going to be overly curious and talk to every single person. I know I can do that, it’s just that in my introverted nature, it’s not a learned habit.
I actually came back home to my parents house today and told them everything. They were very supportive!
I would say I feel as though people (intern coordinator and project manager, which were the last evaluators) made assumptions.
Ngl I really thought this whole losing fat thing would be linear, but I guess not. I could use a diet break, I’m sick of counting, not sure how long I’ll be on one, I guess just until my body adapts.
It always seems like the key to fat loss is time/patience. @SvenG had a great transformation that took a year.
I think that’s true, generally. Getting from a fat 210 lbs down to a lean 165 took a long, LONG time on (sometimes severe) caloric restriction.
Granted, I didn’t really approach that particular transformation the right way, so I yo-yo’ed a lot and messed up my view of food during that time, which I highly recommend NOT doing…
And in the end I prefer my current 190-ish but clearly muscled look over my lean 165 lbs self—and that took me about a year, give or take.
But just to be clear: I’ve NOT been on caloric restriction or any kind of diet this past year. I overhauled my training, aligned my eating with that, and then stuck with it, day after day, week after week, month after month.
You know this, @tlgains, as I believe you’ve been following along for most of that time, but it’s worth clarifying in case others haven’t.
I like to point out that the body never reacts in a linear, predictable and fixed pattern. We can influence it, but it moves on it’s own timeline. You are doing an amazing job of beating it into compliance, but it will do everything in its power to adapt. It’s why I’m so big on “Chaos is the plan”, and why the Gym bros were so big into muscle confusion. It’s why phasic training AND nutrition works so well. We keep changing the demands and forcing the body to pivot.
Patience is definitely the secret. You’re doing a lot better than your peers in that regard.
Here’s more info from (Dr) Mike Isreatel. He gives a lecture that’s like something out of a textbook. Instead of detailing One “method” or one “style” like many lifters or coaches, he tries to present the overall “theory” or like “science” of training.
40 minute lectures on how to think about lifting weights may not be on the right wavelength for everyone, but if you’re into it, dude has Lots of good info.
Here’s some stuff about making long term progress, and linking different “blocks” or “macro-cycles” together. Or how to train and eat one way for a few months, then make adjustments for the next few months.
In that case I necessarily wouldn’t lose much sleep or think that there’s something I need to improve. That kind of stuff is very subjective; what one person considers ‘lots of small talk’ is obviously different from what another person considers ‘lots of small talk’.
when you lose weight, your bench is going to drop. I’m sure some people will say it shouldn’t. I can tell you, mine absolutely has. I will also argue that I am nearly as strong as I was with a bigger bench, if not stronger. I dropped weight. My bar now has to travel further to hit my chest, my leverages aren’t as favorable, and it’s not as easy to get tight on the bench. Just grind like hell on the bench, and then you can really grind back to big numbers once you are at your goal weight.
weight loss is sure as hell not linear. Let me show you a photo
Here is my 4 week weight tracker:
Not even close to linear. Weights jumping all over the place. Yeah, I had a few bad meals here or there, but for the most part I have been doing the same thing this entire time. How about we expand the timeline a bit.
Those variations look a hell of a lot more linear when you zoom out. Don’t sweat the day to day. Do what you know works, trust in the process, and be more patient than you want to be. Trust me, I get the pain. It’s worth it.
I tended to do a little diet break about every 6 weeks. Not long, just for 1-2 weeks. Whenever I did it, I found my weight actually didn’t change that much, or I even continued to drop. Bumping calories now and then during a cut is nothing but a good idea. (For de-fatification anyway, don’t ask me about stepping on any stage lol)
leadership is tough for a lot of people. I am naturally pretty extroverted, and honestly feel that a lot of my best leadership growth was through high school sports or college associations. I will say that there are a thousand good books on leadership, reading just about any one of them is a good idea. I think it’s more important to read one or two and make a dedicated effort to put them into practice, rather than reading 50 and then doing nothing to act on them, but whatever works for you. I will just say this, your people care if you care about them. Not the project, not the sales, whatever. You need to know your people. Know their goals, know their ambitions, hell know their hobbies or that their kid does piano. If you are competent at your job, you have 50% of the battle accomplished. The rest is just getting your team to buy on to the project, which really means getting them to buy on to you, and the best way to get a person to buy on to you, is for them to know that you have a vested interest in them as a person.
Others may vary, but in my own experience both leading and being lead, this is what I think matters.
I’m backing off of training for this week just to really nail down a plan with my training and diet at least for the next 12 weeks.
I started the diet break a couple days ago (as soon as @T3hPwnisher threw the idea out there) so I’m slowly increasing the calories, which will probably be every 2 weeks or so until I find my maintenance then just keep it that way. I want my weight to stay within 215 - 220 lbs.
Yesterday I watched those videos @FlatsFarmer posted which gave me a realistic grasp of just how long this body transformation will take. I have accepted that it will take AT LEAST a year.
I plan on staying on the diet break for 12 weeks then after that start another fat loss phase.
I think it would be in my favor to make my training a little structured. I can plan out a whole week beforehand, so when I go to the gym I can do my thing. I can do the same thing with diet as well.
Just posting to concur with this. I pretend that I am a very confident, well-spoken individual who likes interacting with people; essentially cosplaying as an extrovert and, after a decent amount of trial and error, it has paid off and is no longer requires a huge amount of effort.
Also, yea, benching as you drop weight sucks, just how it is.
I’m glad you were able to get something out of the info!
It’s really hard to take your foot off the gas and slow down, just when you want to plow forward and kick ass the most. But learning how to adjust and blast forward again, instead of lingering around going Nowhere is important.
Honestly dude, I suggest that you try out T3hPwnisher’s “Do conditioning every single day” idea. I think it works for everyone. Personal anecdotal evidence suggests that it really helps with this whole body recomp thing as long as you’re feeding your body good nutritious food.
