Yeah.
It freakin' snowed last night. About an inch.
That's unheard of where I'm from, because usually it's just cold and wet.
It's been about 2 months since I posted Size is the Prize, and I wanted to give a little update on my progress.
HIGHLIGHTS:
- I've put on over 12 pounds (mostly muscle),
- I added an inch and a half to my shoulders,
- I added an inch to my arms.
Pretty happy with the progress I made, but I altered my plan and am going to elaborate on it now.
I started playing around with more "Golden Age" bodybuilding style workouts, via Julien Smith (@smith.julien on Insta), and really fell back in love with them.
It took a few weeks to really feel out how the workouts fit best into my weekly plan, cause I knew these things:
1) My hands are still healing, and I wanted to give them as much rest between trauma as possible
2) The BB style workouts take about 2 hours, and I need to use the gym for it's machines for most of them
3) I already go to the gym to train a client on M/W/F, so I used those days as definite BB days
4) Leg Days are TOUGH, but FUN, and I wanted as much recovery as possible for my job, so I stuck those on Friday
5) Leg Days sometimes had Deadlift variations, so I put Lats/Traps/Neck Days on Monday
6) This left Shoulder/Triceps/Chest Days for Wednesday
7) I wanted to add in Running into my Aerobic work
so my Weekly Plan shifted to this:
Monday
- Lats/Traps/Neck, whatever the most recent The Daily Pump (Julien's) was for this group
Tuesday
- Aerobic Work, alternating Airdyne Bike and Running, using my pdf Cardio King programming
Wednesday
- Shoulders/Triceps/Light Chest (I do 2 of those and every 3rd week 1 of Chest/Biceps/Light Shoulders), again from The Daily Pump's most recent post for these groups
Thursday
- Aerobic Work, same idea as Tuesday
Friday
- Legs, again, whatever the most recent Daily Pump was for these
Saturday
- I don't have a strict Saturday, but I try fitting in some of the GymnasticBodies Foundation work, because I want to still get all 7 movement patterns once a week
Sunday
- Aerobic Work
- I try wrapping up GB F movement patterns I haven't yet done for the week
- GB Tumble Locomotion (things like monkey walking, table walks, lizards, etc)
If I'm feeling good an any particular day, I'll toss in some of the Ab work from Julien, or may try sneaking in the GB work earlier in the week to get it over.
So far I'm feeling better with where I am, I'm up to 191ish, and it doesn't look like I've put on much, if any, body fat.
Now for the nutrition side of things.
I pulled out some old reference books I have, like Advanced Sports Nutrition and worked out what amount of Protein I really need to support my pursuit of growth.
Apparently, a lot less than I remembered.
In the book, he says 1.2-1.7g/kg of bodyweight, but for Bodybuilders, he says 1.5-1.7g/kg of bodyweight, so I went with the latter and found if I used 1.7g/kg at the 185 I was at, how big could I get until I was only eating 1.5g/kg?
185/2.2 (turning pounds into kilograms) = 84.09kg
84.09 x 1.7 = 143g Protein *** this is the base of my macro calculations for later
143g / 1.5 = 95.30kg
95.30 x 2.2 = 209lbs!
I like this!
If you're eating more Protein than is necessary, your body has to break that Protein down into fuel, and you're basically just spending more money for food while making your body work harder to fuel itself.
It's downright dumb to eat more Protein than you need. I feel like that shouldn't need said, but I know that it did, because if you're anything like I was, you may have always tried eating 1g/lb of bodyweight, or even more!
Being able to eat only 143g of Protein and support my growth from 185-209 is great, because I won't have to constantly change how much I eat or buy for a while (at the rate I'm growing though, it's only going to take a couple months).
I tried using a handful of Calorie Calculators online, and found a range of answers; some said I need as little as 2400cal, and some were as high as 3900cal - just to maintain my weight!
I settled on starting with a macro split of:
150g Protein / 330g Carb / 54g Fat
600cal Protein / 1,320cal Carb / 486cal Fat
2,406cal
While I'm starting with the lower end of the spectrum, I figured with hitting the required Protein, at absolute worst I'm going to keep the muscle I have and burn fat, but at best I'll add muscle without adding any fat.
In the Advanced Sports Nutrition he says Protein should be about 25% of caloric intake, so once I found the upper end of my Protein Needs, I used that and found I should need about 2,400 calories.
He also suggested having Carb Intake set to 55% of caloric intake, that's how I got the numbers above that I did, and I feel pretty confident in them.
Honestly, though, I'm not really tracking things too closely, because I like eating when I want and eating what I want.
But, I also eat mostly the same thing every day anyways, so take that last sentence with a grain of pink Himalayan salt.
Breakfast, I have a couple packs of oatmeal.
PostWorkout, I have 2 scoops of protein powder.
PostDinner, I have about a cup and a half of jasmine rice mixed with half a can of spicy black beans.
Those few things get me most the way in my daily needs, and from there I kind of wing it (I've tracked macros and weighed my foods for a long time over many years, and have a pretty good eye for food size, so me winging it is different than someone winging it that has never weighed their food - I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that if you haven't weighed your food before, that you give it at least a month to get calibrate your eye).
I'm planning on running things this way for now, but will keep updated you on any changes in my next post.
Until then, if you haven't gotten your free copy of Cardio King, you should. Just signup for my little newsletter and I'll send you it.
Till next time, keep growing.