My good days, my bad days, my random thoughts

You must have had so much fun at that party! I'm so happy for you two. Brad, you look awesome. Now bulking up will be fun to see too! With all that weight training, it won't be long before you reap the rewards. Thanks for the inspiration...
 
Thanks, Sam! I love dogs, too. Had one my whole life growing up and they're so much fun. This one has been a pain in the ass more than anything else but he's cute as hell and he can't be this much of a dick forever. I hope. He looks so damned ridiculous with his cone on and all he does is walk around smashing into things with it.

Thanks to you too, Michelle. :D Glad to see you're still around! I'm really looking forward to bulking. I don't know what sort of results I will see from my current program based on my eating at a deficit, but I feel like I will make solid gains once I meet my body fat goal and start eating at a surplus. So I'm really really excited to see what comes of all of this.

Today was my 2nd day at the gym on the new program. So far so good. I completed both with time to spare with barely anyone else around. It was awesome. Most embarassing moments have been my bodyweight dips and pull-ups... more to the point, my inability to do them. At all.

The program I'm on calls for 3 sets of dips until failure on day 1 and 3 sets of pullups/chinups until failure on day 2. Well, let me tell you... the dip/pull-up station is out in the middle of the gym for all to see me on it and I imagine they were all impressed by my one complete rep in the dips and my total inability to even complete one pull-up. Good times. Needless to say I'll be happy when those numbers increase.

My diet has been wonky. Not unhealthy or too much, but wonky... all over the map. I'm still trying to figure out how to eat at the new macros I set. My old macros were easy to hit and maintain but I'm having some difficulty in this. The added post-workout protein shakes also complicate matters as I add 50g of dextrose to my protein which is a considerable amount of carbs right there which I have to work around.

My macros so far this week have been sitting around the 30f/33c/37p mark at around 2200 calories instead of the 2000-2100 I'm shooting for. I need to knock off some of those carbs. Hopefully by the end of the week I can have this nailed down a little better.

Until then... I keep on truckin'. Hope everyone is having a good week!
 
Dips and pullups have always been tough for me. Luckily my gym has a dip/pullup assist machine. You stand on a bar and set the plates to how much assistance you want. Setting it to 30 or 40 pounds will make doing multiple reps possible. Look for one at your gym.

I often have time in the middle of the day to hit the gym. It's practically empty and I can really crank through my workout. So much better then 7pm when it's wall to wall.
 
I will check for one, Trops. Thanks. Sounds like that's exactly what I need because I don't know how many 0 reps I could stand to pull off in front of the entire gym.

Well my diet change has gone abysmally. :D I don't know what my problem was but I just couldn't keep my shit straight. Numbers were all over the map or I'd get mixed up and eat something I shouldn't which put my fat for the day at almost 50%. Just ugly. So I'm changing it again.

I'm still changing the diet up from what it was before, but not as much as originally planned. I'll be going for (approximately) 30f/40c/30p. That works out to daily consumption of 74g fat, 223g carb and 167g protein.

Until I figure out how to achieve the above I'm going back to my 20f/50c/30p. I had that locked down pretty good. That gives me the weekend to come up with a plan to meet the new numbers. I'm also bumping up my daily calories slightly. I think I was averaging around 1900 before. I'm going to bump that up to ~2100-2200. I believe that to be still about an 800 calorie daily deficit.

My numbers are a bit in flux right now because of my sporadic diet this past week so I'm curious to see where things end up come Monday.

Tomorrow's gym day. Squats, bench, barbell row and dips. Better find that weight-assist machine.
 
Good luck at the gym tomorrow. Your b and a pics are amazing, you look like a different person. Hope your food intake works out.

and....Thanks to you, I'm going to google macros and figure that stuff out. That's a great way of looking at it and thanks again for breaking up mine for me. :)
 
Thanks, purpleshirt. I'm glad to help out. Diet is the key. If your diet isn't right, it will prevent or retard your progress so I think it's important to put the effort in to learn as much as you can. It is time well spent.

So Friday's are a free day for me. I don't have to be up at 5am like I do Monday-Thursday. But I've not run in forever and I was thinking I may try re-adding it back to my routine... Friday mornings. I could still get up at 5am and instead of going to the gym I could go for a run.

That means getting up at 5am at least 5 days/week. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about Saturdays. I could sleep in and go 'whenever'... or I could just keep on getting up at 5am, get to the gym when it opens and get it over with. I just imagine I'll come up with excuses once the day gets going. Weekends are pretty busy for me (since there's no time to get anything done during the week) so it wouldn't be hard to come up with something if I got lazy. So I'll be getting up at 5am tomorrow morning to see how I feel about it... as a tester but also because Saturday is going to be busy. A bud is having a bunch of people over Saturday afternoon for some beer, BBQ and maybe some poker. Ah, yeah!

And... la piece de resistance, Saturday morning, 11:50am I have my first appointment in over a year to...

Donate blood!

I'm so excited about that. I really enjoyed doing it. It's a simple gesture that helps so many people. Plus my blood type is O-, a universal donor. What that means is my blood can be given to anyone regardless of their blood type. So if there's an emergency and there's no way to know a patient's blood type, they use O-. As a result there is a lot of demand for it.

So I've got a pretty good weekend ahead of me. Only an hour and a half and I get to get started!
 
Do you ever donate whole blood or platelets? I've been doing that, and it helps them even more. Ask them about it.
 
Hey Fish! Wanted to stop in and see how you've been doing... I haven't been here in a while... looks like you're doing AWESOME! And kuddos to the wife too for her weight loss! :hurray:
 
Thanks for popping in Paula! It's going alright. More ups than downs so I can't complain. :D

Trops, I donate whole blood. Well, I try to. I went today and turns out... nope. Can't donate until March of '09 because we went to Playa del Carmen in February. It's not on their 'acceptable destinations' list and I was AGAIN turned away. Ah, well. They have their reasons. Though I am disappointed.

Went to the gym this morning. It went well. I'm getting into a groove and I'm feeling good about my form on my lifts. I do need to improve my flexibility, however. Very much so. So I'm going to have to start putting extra effort in on that front.

Haven't had much time to re-work my diet so I've been pretty much back to my 20f/50c/30p so far. Maybe tomorrow there will be time to sort that out.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend.
 
Very cool on the whole blood thing. Many people are afraid of that. Platelet donations are a little worse, since the needles go one in each arm. You can't move your arms at all for an hour and a half. That part sucks, especially if you have an itch. Hey, it's all for a good cause, though.
 
I haven't donated blood in awhile... I'm sure I will start to when I'm in my Nursing Program and am around those that do more often.... Way to go on all that gym work and the diet ratios sound pretty good to me... When I track my nutrients, I used to track it all but now I only track my cals and protein... I try to stay at 30% or more for my protein but it doesn't always work out....

-Sam
 
Heya, Paula. All's well. Always nice to see you pop in! :D

Sam, as for my macros, they're changing. I've been trying to eat about 1g protein/lb of lean mass.

So when I started, I calculated my lean mass around 142 lbs if memory serves me well. When I started my diet was around the 2400 calorie/day mark which puts my protein at least 24% (usually it closer to 30%, but not on purpose). However, I've been doing fairly well at maintaining most of the lean mass I started with.

My best estimate now is ~139 lbs. So only a couple pounds lost. Now I'm about 20 lbs lighter and have to adjust my consumption accordingly. I'm about to start shooting for between 1700-1900 calories/day. That's for 2 lbs/week. If I don't do well hitting it, that's okay since it's a considerable deficit. Regardless, taking 1800 as my goal, to get 1g protein/lean lb my protein is now 30%.

I'm having trouble with this. It was easy to get 30% from protein when I could eat 2400-2500 calories per day. But getting it in 1800 calories while still getting proper carbs and fat is proving to be more difficult. Especially on workout days when I have to work around my post-workout drink of protein/dextrose. That alone is ~350 calories total. As my weight gets lower that takes a bigger and bigger chunk out of my daily allowed.

I'm actually a bit scared right now. I can't imagine eating much less than what I am right now. I mean I'm hungry when it comes time to eat my next meal. I'm not going to enjoy the growling stomach that will accompany this next drop in cals.

This next drop is a couple weeks away. I'd like to get a couple/few weeks of my new workout routine with dog walking, etc. in so I can calculate my maintenance and adjust accordingly.

Wow, that was rambly.

Yesterday's workout was good and I'm looking forward to tomorrow. It's a pretty intense program. It's an alternating 2-day routine... Day 2 is my favourite: Squats, overhead press and deadlift.

Diet for the past two weeks is as follows: 2128 calories, 29f/38c/30p/3a (alcohol). The numbers are decent. I'm averaging sufficient protein, getting good fiber (30g) and a good mix of fats. 2100 calories is about a 500 calorie deficit which should give me a 1lb loss per week. We'll see how that works out with the gym now in the mix.

Sorry for blabbering about.
 
YOU are DOING INSANE progress!!! WOW....I ammmm IMPRESSED!!! :sifone:

HOW come YOU don't join the VEGAS challenge.....????? hmmmmm?????:iagree:
 
Brad, how is you neck doing? Any continuing problems? What is you final goal you are going for? We are soooooo close now, its sweet! 25 to 30 more pounds and Im there. What I find odd and a little troubling is the fact that I still have a biggish belly still. Im not sure it that is mainly skin or if it has to do with the fact that not having a leg means I have that much more body fat. Do you still have a gut?
 
bmac, thanks man!

Alta, I would love to. I really would. I want to play me some poker!!! But we're foregoing anymore trips this year and putting that money into fixing our place up some we can sell it and get a house. So I'm out. But if there's a Vegas 2009... I don't know if I could pass on it twice. :D

Coffeebro said:
Brad, how is you neck doing? Any continuing problems? What is you final goal you are going for? We are soooooo close now, its sweet! 25 to 30 more pounds and Im there. What I find odd and a little troubling is the fact that I still have a biggish belly still. Im not sure it that is mainly skin or if it has to do with the fact that not having a leg means I have that much more body fat. Do you still have a gut?
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My neck is much better. If I move funny I can still feel it's not 100% but it's 98% and it rarely causes me any grief. I don't have to favour it or anything anymore.

I'm close to my 170 goal but there's going to be a phase II. I feel like I've made no progress on my belly! I know I have, but not nearly enough. It's still so there. I believe I'm going to be working on that sucker for a while. I'm going to have to seriously kick my ass to wear that down by the looks of it. Plan B is just doing a shit tonne of bench press, grow some pecs so my stomach looks normal by comparison. :D

But seriously, at my current weight-loss pace I should be hitting 170 in the first half of August and I'll be (at current pace) around 20% bodyfat at that time. That's where it's all trending to. But 20% is still pretty high. My goal is going to be 15%. Once there we'll see how I look and figure out what Phase III will be.

Have you thought about post-170 much?
 
thedarwinfish said:
bmac, thanks man!

Alta, I would love to. I really would. I want to play me some poker!!! But we're foregoing anymore trips this year and putting that money into fixing our place up some we can sell it and get a house. So I'm out. But if there's a Vegas 2009... I don't know if I could pass on it twice. :D



My neck is much better. If I move funny I can still feel it's not 100% but it's 98% and it rarely causes me any grief. I don't have to favour it or anything anymore.

I'm close to my 170 goal but there's going to be a phase II. I feel like I've made no progress on my belly! I know I have, but not nearly enough. It's still so there. I believe I'm going to be working on that sucker for a while. I'm going to have to seriously kick my ass to wear that down by the looks of it. Plan B is just doing a shit tonne of bench press, grow some pecs so my stomach looks normal by comparison. :D

But seriously, at my current weight-loss pace I should be hitting 170 in the first half of August and I'll be (at current pace) around 20% bodyfat at that time. That's where it's all trending to. But 20% is still pretty high. My goal is going to be 15%. Once there we'll see how I look and figure out what Phase III will be.

Have you thought about post-170 much?
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Awwww...NEXT TIME....I GUESS....hopefully NEXT time WILL be a MAINTENANCE meeting THOUGH!!! :) I"D loveeee THAT!!! :) I"M there!!!

SOUNDS like GREAT plans THOUGH....and I'm GLAD your neck is doing SOMEWHAT better...I hate how I am YOUNG and GET the WORST knots EVERYDAY....and SOMETIMES I CAN"T sleep cause OF IT!!! :(........I'm only 25.....WTF!!!? LOL
 
Yeah, I am shooting for 160. I should be about the same body fat percentage as you at 170. I want to hit my 160 goal then really kick into the toning phase. Phase III for me. I know what you mean about making the pecks bigger to make the stomach look smaller.
 
I'm having trouble with this. It was easy to get 30% from protein when I could eat 2400-2500 calories per day. But getting it in 1800 calories while still getting proper carbs and fat is proving to be more difficult. Especially on workout days when I have to work around my post-workout drink of protein/dextrose. That alone is ~350 calories total. As my weight gets lower that takes a bigger and bigger chunk out of my daily allowed.

I'm actually a bit scared right now. I can't imagine eating much less than what I am right now. I mean I'm hungry when it comes time to eat my next meal. I'm not going to enjoy the growling stomach that will accompany this next drop in cals.
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It may not be as hard as you think to get the right amount of protein. I can still manage to get around 130-140g even at 1500calories on low days. Just glanced at my last low day and had 24f/38c/37p with 132g protein and 1443cal. Granted, I eat a pretty planned out diet on those days, but there are certain staples that help me out a lot: tuna, low carb wraps instead of bread, cheese, 1% milk, granola snacks that are higher in protein, and high protein cereal. How many grams of protein does your shake have? My shake when mixed with milk comes out to be 28g protein at 210 calories.

It seems like I remember reading you do this as well, but eating frequently helps a lot. I try to eat every few hours, even if its only 150 calories at a time or so. A whole bottle of water with a snack or meal helps with the hunger for me also. Even if it's shitty for a while, the body always adapts and it will be manageable. Maybe consider having high days and low days? There's a 0% chance I could eat 1500cal every day; it has to be balanced out with higher days. My body never knows how many calories to expect each day.

My best estimate now is ~139 lbs. So only a couple pounds lost.
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God, I don't even want to think about the lean mass I've lost. I was right where you were at 143 lean mass and 171.5lbs when I was officially tested and I almost don't want to know what the damage is. Hopefully all this weight lifting and protein eating has paid off.
 
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