UncleverName’s BodyBlog

I just clicked through the most recently added photos in the galleries yesterday. I used to do this more often, but realized that wasting time looking at other people’s (amazing) bodies wouldn’t give me more time to work on my own. One of the programs I work in was taking a long time to process something, so I switched over to glance at some photos, figuring it wouldn’t waste time I didn’t really have anyways.

And I got a bit discouraged! Does anyone else react like that? Looking at the average photo posted on this site makes me feel fat and small. I keep reading about how most magazine cover models are photoshopped to hell, and that most of them do steroids. While that’s believable to me for most magazine covers, I seriously doubt that most people posting here have photoshopped their pictures. I doubt that the majority of them are on steroids as well. At any rate, looking at many of the photos here makes me think that I could never look like that. The upshot? I need to stop looking at photos on this site again for awhile

Something else I’m struggling with recently is being tired all of the time. I started doing HIIT this week again. About 3 times this week, for no more than 20 minutes each time. So I’m doing that, four (intense) 1 hour work outs a week and one 1 hour indoor rock climbing session. That’s about it for now. No yoga, no 10K runs. I’m getting 8+ hours of sleep a night. And I’m eating 2200 calories a day, at least. Yet I’m still tired. I’m wondering if it’s lack of calories, or lack of sleep. When I wake up in the morning, I’m still dead tired, and it’s a struggle to get out of bed. It wasn’t like that a couple of weeks ago. Maybe that’s normal? Or maybe it’s a lack of calories? I’m trying to cram more food into my mouth, but 2200 just isn’t enough. I should be getting 2500 at least, I think. But I have actually managed to put on a pound or two in the last couple of weeks, consistently. I guess I will up my calories again, and see if that makes a difference.

I just had an awesome deadlifting session yesterday. Managed to do 3 reps at 295lbs. Not a ton of weight, but a lot for me. Almost twice my body weight. That’s exciting, for me.

I’ve decided to set some new goals for this year. I still want to have visible abs, and I still want to put on some muscle. For the moment, I’m going to put the abs on the back burner. I’m going to focus on putting on quality mass, and lifting heavier weight.

My goal for this year is to lift 900 pounds. I’m going to divide this up between deadlifting (400 lbs goal), bench press (250 lbs goal) and power cleans (250 lbs goal). Should be tough, but achievable. I can already deadlift 300 lbs (almost), bench press 200 lbs (almost). My weakest lift is the power clean. And of course, getting my lifts up to those numbers will be tough. But the power clean is the one I’m the most worried about.

To facilitate this, I’m going to continue on with my quest to eat as much good food as possible. My last 4 months of bulking was actually going ok, until christmas. I took a break from training, then got sick. I managed to lose weight after this. How, considering how much pure craptastic food (health-wise) that I ate, is beyond me. I think my body only wants to put on weight when I’m training hard, and eating harder. To make the weight gain work, I’m keeping a food log. This will force me to be honest with myself about how much food I’m actually eating.

Hopefully this will make for a great 2009