The Best Shape of My Life!

It seems like after a long while of not gaining or losing, I’m finally making some gains. I’m increasing my weight and size of the measurements that I want to increase. My abdomen is also increasing slightly, but I can monitor that. I’m happy with my weight increase to about 195, and for once, I’ve been able to hold it pretty steady there. My chest and shoulders have increased quite a bit, which make me feel really good about what I’ve been doing lately.

My waist and abdomen haven’t increased so much as to give me a horrible bodyfat percentage or a waist/hip ratio. All my health indicators are still good. My goal is to be 200 lbs with 12% bodyfat or less. My desired chest size would be about 45 inches, and I’d like to have my waist at 34" or smaller. But as long as I can continue to fit into 34" jeans/pants, I’m a happy man. I do want to be FORCED to wear large sized t-shirts. Even at 43.5 inches for my chest, I don’t have the complete shoulder width yet to get rid of some of my mediums. But I’m working on it!

Tomorrow morning, my goal is to complete the strength test and see how I’ve done since last summer. I’ve been wanting to do it for a while, but just haven’t. So hopefully, if everything goes well, I’ll have some new numbers for squat, bench press, rows, deadlift, and shoulder press. I don’t do the bicep curl strength test since there isn’t an equivalent on here for the triceps (bummer actually, as the triceps are the more powerful and bigger muscles). Hopefully, I’ve made some gains. I know I can feel myself gaining in overall strength. Let’s see if the 1RM numbers support my feelings.

I finally broke the barrier! Over Easter weekend, I gained about 6 pounds! Granted, it was probably half/half muscle and fat (if not a bit more fat), but I can always work with that later. I’ve been wanting to get above 190 for a while, and would eventually like to be 200. But only if I can keep my bodyfat under control.

Using the caloriecount.com website for logging food and weight daily (or about daily), I’m looking at the calorie content I’m eating, the breakdown into percentages of fats, proteins, and carbs, as well as the overall quality of the food I take in. On most accounts, I’m eating fairly healthy, but I’m still working to improve. The biggest issue I have is with the fats percentage, and the amount of saturated fats I eat. For some reason, that seems to be the biggest issue for me. And fat free foods just taste nasty, so that’s not an option. 

Right now I’m at 192 and holding. I’ve been hitting the gym consistently for a while, so I’m hoping to turn some of this new weight into muscle….which then might also help me "gain" weight. We’ll see.

Another hard thing for me to grasp is that this will not happen overnight. It will take a lot of time, energy, and probably money. But I’m determined to change something about me, and since I’ve tried to lose the weight and that didn’t work, I’m going to try once again to push myself upwards and see what I can do. As long as I can fit into 34" waist jeans/pants, I’m happy with it.

Later!

Sometimes it takes something big to make the impact. Something we should have known, and do know, but don’t really understand, or follow, hits us like a bolt of lightning. And then, everything becomes clear, and we say, "OH YEAH!"

That happened to me last night with my diet. Sure, I have logged calories (and the breakdown thereof) before, and I have seen my overall diet, and yes, I know that the biggest hinderance to my gains in muscle is my diet. So why haven’t I taken care of all that before? Well, I think it is because I didn’t have anything "big" to put all the pieces to the puzzle together. And for me, the puzzle became very clear last night.

All the science in the world can tell a person to eat so many calories, take in so much protein/fat/carbs, make sure you get enough fiber, and workout as often as possible, etc., etc. But what does it all mean if it doesn’t completely make sense? To make sense of it all, I began looking for a journal to keep track of my diet. And I found it with www.calorie-count.com. The best part: IT’S FREE!

My wife and I have been faithfully logging our calories this week. She is finally in the mood to do it, and so I have much more motivation to do it. Before when I’ve done it, she’s always questioneed why I needed to worry about how many calories I consumed and expended (hello science!). But this week we both kept a log in a notebook, and I think we did a pretty accurate job.

Last night, I registered my free account to calorie-count, and put in all the foods that I ate. The eye opener came with the total calorie count, which I knew was going to be astronomical. A total of 3891 Calories consumed! Even for someone with a high metabolism (or fairly high), that’s still an outrageous number of calories. But the bigger eye opener came when I did the breakdown into macronutrients. About 36.5% fat for the day! And, to be honest, a very large portion of saturated fat!!!! YIKES!

NO WONDER I HAVEN’T BEEN MAKING THE MUSCLE AND FAT LOSS GAINS THAT I HAVE BEEN WANTING! MY DIET IS TOTALLY OUT OF WHACK!!

So this week, I’m trying to make a conscious effort to control my diet. The calculations that calorie-count produced suggest for me about 2600 calories per day, presuming that I expend (doing little to no activity) about 3000 just to live. That creates a deficiency, which is what I’ll need in order to drop some of this fat. I figure that if I go from 188 lbs to about 175-180, I can start rebuilding some muscle with a leaner frame. I don’t mind being small, but I hate being fat.

So what did I learn?

Diet is one thing…..
BUT……

An ACCURATE and APPROPRIATE diet is quite another. Mine was not appropriate.

Good thing I waited till I was 27 to figure that out, huh?   GGGGGRRRRRRR