[quote]Tonino wrote:
[quote]mr popular wrote:
If you follow my transformation more closely you see that yes, I was lean when I was 130lbs (if you can call it lean), but I didn’t actually start bodybuilding seriously until I’d leveled out to a more average weight and average bodyfat percentage.
You’re over-thinking this, and in the grand scheme of things I believe the last thing you need to be doing is “trying to get down to 8-10% bodyfat” before gaining any remarkable amount of muscle mass.
Nothing takes as much time, commitment, and seriousness as building up an initial foundation of muscle mass. If you haven’t done it yet, you are just letting your body float around it’s happy homeostasis level of body weight and composition.
Another thing to realize: as you gain muscular bodyweight, as long as most of the weight you gain is muscle, your bodyfat percentage will steadily be going down the heavier you get.[/quote]
I think my biggest hurdle has been overcoming the thought of being “fat”. During my last bulk, after the first 20lbs gained, everyone commented on how I was adding muscle mass. But then as I gained another 5, everyone started commenting how my midsection was growing. This was essentially what led me to my decision to “re-comp”.
I still need to learn how to ignore the nay-sayers. I know I’m not the only one, but those closest to me basically condemn me to failure before I even start towards my goals of increased muscularity.
Regardless, in a couple weeks I plan on starting up the bulk again. I’ll make some slight adjustments based on things I’ve learned about my body during the process, but most importantly, I’ll really focus on my goals alone, and try to prevent the concept of being “fat” becoming a crutch.
[/quote]
Sounds good. Listen, there is nothing wrong with cleaning things up a little once in a while and slowing down your gains while you eliminate junk from your diet, or up the cardio a bit, but there is really no reason for you to launch into a cutting diet until you’re closer to 200lbs or more (unless you do something dumb like make brownies a staple carb source and wind up truly gross). TRUST ME ON THIS ONE. I have slowed things down and “recomped” several times, but never tried an actual cut until I was over 200lbs.
And no you aren’t going to look pretty the whole way through, almost no one does unless you have (a) access to drugs, (b) excellent genetics for leanness and muscle gain, and/or (c) you are incredibly incredibly meticulous and consistent with your diet (see Kingbeef, but you can probably also lump genetics into that one too lol).
However, on the bright side, when you do things right people will notice your muscles above anything else. Adding an inch to your arm is a lot more apparent than an inch on your waist. As long as MOST of what you gain is muscle mass, you won’t become a fat guy.
Try to look at things this way: Nobody ever got fat from eating steak, eggs, vegetables, and whey protein. You just won’t ever see that happen, they aren’t food sources conducive to fat storage, period. Add a high-calorie food like peanut butter or pasta into the mix to fuel your workouts, and now you’re in a positive nitrogen balance all the time, allowing you to add a few pounds of bodyweight each month.
Let’s say hypothetically you gain 4lbs every month for 9 months. Even if HALF of that is fat (which, with a diet like the above, hard training, and occasional cardio, I doubt it), after those nine months of training hard and adding 50-100lbs to your lifts (this part is mandatory), you have still put on 36lbs of bodyweight, 18 of that being pure muscle, and you are at the same bodyfat percentage you were before.
And hey, if you had the energy and commitment to refuse seeing any excess fat storage while you gain, you could eat very clean, create an excess of calories with things like oatmeal and sweet potatoes, do cardio 4-5 days a week, and only gain 2lbs of bodyweight every month… and still wind up 24lbs heavier after one year, while having LOWERED your bodyfat percentage, and added probably 2 inches to your arms. It’s just that a lot of people don’t have the willpower to go about it like that, eating clean every damn day, month after month, for an entire year. But some people do it. (Kingbeef, Dylanj, Alpha, Joeschmo from bodyspace… it’s not impossible).
If you can keep your mind set hard on those next 10lbs on the barbell, and gain a pound of weight every week or two, you will see the results coming little by little as the months go by. But you’ve got to commit to gaining that way for 4-6 months as a bare minimum, or it just won’t pan out. Patience is a hugely understated principle in bodybuilding. You can’t rush things, as much as any marketing hype would have us believe, but you’ve got to keep a forward momentum to break your body out of it’s comfort zone too.
“Muscle gains come very slowly whether you gain fat with it or not.”~JoeSchmo. lol
Sending you a PM to go with this post.
(it’s a good thing mr popular chipped in!)