Posted: June 25th, 2010 | Author: ERIC | Filed under: Body | Tags: change, goal, goals, lean, lifts, obsessiveness, phase, reflect, review, success, weight loss | No Comments »
I originally tried to cover my thoughts on this in my workout post, but it was getting a bit cluttered so I decided to reflect a little more in a proper post on the subject.
The first question to answer: Was this Phase a success?
At this rate I'll be the strongest twig in the world.
Yes
- I lost weight
- Lifts are still going up
- My face looks leaner
- It wasn’t difficult
No
- 66% of the weight I lost was lean mass
- My torso still looks like shit, shit on sticks, because my legs are tiny
So, yes!
After the first couple weeks I dropped the obsessiveness I thought was implicit with dieting to a low body fat percentage. I know I’ve been favoring carbs pretty heavily, as per my strength goals, but I think that I’ve been too “oh I’m at maintenance today I don’t need so much protein” devolved into not eating much protein ever. There aren’t really a lot of protein foods I enjoy that I can eat on a regular basis, so I just… don’t worry about it.
But now I’m worried about it.
What worries me about continued lean loss is if it’s really only coming from muscle.
I like training fasted, I’m pretty used to it by now. The day of my workout I’m rarely hungry, though, and I think that’s contributed heavily to lean catabolism. (However, I do consider “the day after” to be post-workout as well, and I DO eat substantially on this day.) In combination with my PWO cardio dabblings, I really should not be surprised.
The second question to answer: Given the results, what’s the goal for the next phase?
I really liked how much fat I lost. I do NOT like how much lean mass I lost. So that’s what I’m going to change.
If lose half as much lean mass in Phase 2 as I did Phase 1, and lose the same amount of fat, I will just BARELY lose more fat than lean mass. That’s the direction I want to go in. I want to lose at least two pounds of fat, and less than that of lean mass.
So if I lose 2lbs of fat and 1.999lbs of lean mass, Phase 2 will be a success.
Final Question: What is being changed?
Just two meals added to my routine:
- A protein-in-water shake before I leave for a workout (it will probably muck up the effects of my preworkout EC. I don’t know, and will find out.)
- A cup of cottage cheese or some eggs in the last meal of the day, training or not.
I know next-to-nothing scientifically about the protein requirements of anything. I’m still not going to try to hit some calculated protein target per day. That has made me fatter in the past, as I slowly trend to paying attention to those grams rather than total calories. This seems like an easy thing to fix, but I’ve fucked it up frequently enough to not want to risk it.
But I don’t see the value of STARTING with too much.
One thing about difficulty: I can’t think of any immediate complaints, because I don’t constantly worry about it. If there’s one major pro to all of this, it’s that the mental load is relatively minimal.
Yes. This is minimal for me.
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Posted: June 25th, 2010 | Author: ERIC | Filed under: Body | Tags: crunch, fat loss, lean loss, press, pull, strength stall, weight loss | No Comments »
So, drying out for every single progress pic? Not going to happen.
I fumbled my depletion attempt horribly. Though I’m sure a lot of the weight I put on was water and food in the belly, I can’t help but be bothered by the fact that I still WEIGH less and my body fat percentage went up. It feels like I dropped all the water out of my muscles, and my fat was carb-and-water loaded. The fat I do have is waaay more jiggly than it ordinarily would be so I know I’m holding onto water, and I know I’m not going to drop it by tomorrow for a proper reading. If I’m going to do a diet-only depletion I’ll have to save the reload for after the reading.
It’s just really frustrating. I should have just kept going along as I had been and not done anything differently to manipulate for a ‘better’ reading. That shit should be saved for the end, haha!
But, excuses don’t change the numbers. I’m just going to roll with what I’ve got and accept it as truth even though in the back of my mind I know it’s a little off.
(Being depleted made this workout hell. My BRAIN felt hot, some kind of weird fever or allergies [I don't actually know if I have allergies yet] made focusing really difficult. I still made some decent progress.)
Workout A1 for Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Bench Press
- 45lbs x 5
- 65 x 3 (brain is REALLY not working, should have loaded 55)
- 75 x 2
- 95 x 4
- 90 x 5
That second warm-up set really threw me but I pushed on anyway. I probably could have only gotten one more rep on each working set if I had ramped properly, which still wouldn’t have put me in the range range that calls for an increase. Kind of off-putting because I wanted to start benching triple digits finally, but, oh well. It was difficult so I’m not going to add five pounds and wind up with a single where I wretch my neck or something trying to get it off my chest.
I’m trying to get in the habit of pausing longer at the bottom.
I actually didn’t try for a specific amount of reps on the drop-set but I was very slightly amused by the fact that it wound up as +1 anyway.
Incline Bench
- 50lbs x 3
- 65 x 2
- 85 x 6
I really dig doing less warm-ups for things that are probably warmed-up a bit anyhow. I do the two warm-up sets that I do just to get in the groove of the motion. I’ll probably wind up adding more warm-up sets as I lift heavier weight but, for now, it’s good.
Oh, and I made the rep range. Increase!
Hammer-Grip Horizontal Press
- 55lbs x 3
- 75 x 2
- 95 x 6
This is starting to feel weird on my thumbs. I may be moving to free-weight close-grip benching soon after all. I made reps, though, so increasing for next workout.
Pushdown
- 37.5lbs x 3
- 42.5 x 2
- 47.5 x 4
Haha, not even close to the range here. Looks like the lessened warm-ups doesn’t ALWAYS save me :)
Pulldown
- 45lbs x 5
- 75 x 3
- 95 x 2
- 120 x 2
I’m going to have to change this to pull-ups, I think! This is starting to pull me out of the chair. Not expecting that to happen threw off my set, so I let it go.
Next time I’ll be doing the pull-up assist machine, offsetting whatever to simulate 120lbs.
Crunch Machine
- 45lbs x 3
- 65 x 2
- 40 x 35 (contest!)
- 80 x 5
- 85 x 5
I was going to skip this because the rest of my workout went so horribly. Then I decided to do them BECAUSE of that.
There was this girl there (Suzie) with her friend, their first day at the gym, apparently here seeking the magic of spot reduction. She stole the machine I was using and asked me to help her with her form.
Sigh.
Eventually this led to her realizing there’s another, identical machine directly next to the one I was using. I had just left the machine (I leave my notebook on the machine though) for a drink of water, so, yeah, that’s pretty typical. Anyway, she wanted to do a contest with me to see how many crunches we could do at 40lbs. I agreed, and just kept crunching until she failed-out at 30. Then I did five more. Then I rested for about five minutes because BURNING.
In all, I did way too many crunches.
Body Weight: 159.5lbs
Body Fat Percentage: 16.6%
I didn’t even bother with pictures. I should just be happy with minor progress from week-to-week rather than trying for monthly milestones.
I was going to continue dieting if my bodyfat was above 13%, but I think I might have done something screwy to my metabolism. I’m going to be a little more lenient with my calorie intake (meaning more) and I’m going to TRY to adhere to a 16-8 fasting-feeding window ala LeanGains rather than the 24-hours-when-convenient of Eat Stop Eat.
ESE is great and I love it, but I feel like I’m eating too much when I do eat, which mandates more fasting, which… runs ideologically against the selling point of flexbility of ESE. ESE seems like something I’ll be using once I’m at the weight I want to be at, and looking to maintain. There are days where “I ate more than I should” is a gross understatement, and I think twice-weekly 24 hour fasts should be able to cover it while eating whenever I want will cover the inevitable social prestige of looking awesome. Snort.
Plus, if I’m fasting more, hopefully that will encourage me to consume more protein. It’s definitely been lacking.
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