smallguyjoe’s BodyBlog

http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1268956

^^^READ IT!!!!!

I wish so bad I had read this back in the Fall of 2006 when I started out on my bulking phases that ended up with me at 180 lbs ~20% bf in January 2008. I would have never made such an awful mistake as that. I probably would have reached my goal of being lean like 2 years ago instead of finally right now just getting there.

It took some nutrition classes, anatomy, and huge errors over the span of 3 yrs, LOL, for me to realize everything he discusses in this article. It would have been so much easier just to read it though ~2 yrs ago!

Geez, I’ve got my work cut out for me now!

I started my cut at ~166-168 lbs… was fully carbed up from my gaining phase. Anyway, I remember starting and thinking that I would be ready for a show at ~150 lbs. LOL! Try ~10 lbs lighter… yeah, how about at the heaviest 140 lbs. That’s more like the weight I need to cut to in order to be shredded for June 13th. A natural pro on bb.com, who seriously knows his stuff, informed me that I will likely need to get under 140 lbs. I’m gonna take his word for it, but I don’t know if I can manage that. I feel confident w/ hard work I can get down to 140 lbs though in 9 weeks.

I re-worked up my macros today, and w/ the combo of a greater Caloric deficit and additional cardio I should be in a deficit of 700-800 Cals/day except for my re-feed day every 5th day. So, I should lose ~1.5 lbs per week, which is slightly under what my natty pro friend recommended. I plan on doing 1.5 lbs/week for 3 weeks and then at 6 weeks out adding more cardio once my classes are finished.

These next 9 weeks are going to be brutal, but I think it will be worth it when I am in the best shape of my life on June 13th .

The forums are messed up for me for some reason, and I don’t wanna forget my workout, so here it is…

incline
bar x 10
135 x 10
155 x 10
175 x 6

db shrugs
70’s x 20
75’s x 20
75’s x 15

incline 175 x 6

flat
185 x 10
205 x 5
225 x 2

db shrugs
70’s x 20
75’s x 15
75’s x 15

hack squat calves
280 x 15
280 x 15
280 x 15
280 x 15
280 x 15

20 leg lowers / 20 crunches / 15 incline reverse crunches

incline machine
150 x 10
150 x 8

*I was feelin really crappy, so I couldn’t do much, and I only had 45 min

Yep, I think I may give it a go .

I’ve had a tough couple of months w/ my herniated disk, and a strained calf too. I’m gettin older and fallen apart, LOL. Anyway, I’ve worked hard at trying to maintain LBM while injured and I’ve been somewhat successful, but certain areas have just suffered from lack of stimulations (erectors, glutes, calves, quads/hams - to some degree, lower lats, and traps for sure). Basically anything that involves spinal compression I can not do yet, and haven’t done for 2-3 months now. My calves I should be training for real again starting next week. Anyway…

June 2009 there is an OCB (tested) show in my area, and my training partner (who’s a freakin beast) and I are going to do it, or at least we are planning on it.

I am going to start now to get myself ready. I was trying to slowly cut for the past month or so, but after getting some advice from FatherFlex I have decided to take his advice as he’s the natural bodybuilding pro. He suggested a 20 week prep. So, from mid-Jan to June 1st I’ll be cutting. That means why would be cutting right now??? Well, I shouldn’t be. I think the 20 weeks will suffice.

Ok, so, let’s say realistically speaking I’m 12-13% bf right now at 160 lbs. If I try to gain muscle from 11/24 - 1/15 I should be able to put on 1-2 lbs of muscle, if I work hard. So, say I end up being 164 lbs @ 14.5% bf by 1/15 that would mean after 17 weeks of losing 1 lb per week I’d be 147 lbs @ 4% bf. Then I’d have at least 3 weeks left to perfect and whatever. I don’t have the exact date of the show yet. It’s in June 2009 though.

So, my back is feeling much much better, and I start physical therapy on Monday. I think from here on out my training is just gonna get better and better from my back getting better. This will help with my prep . Also, I am going to try HMB, Cellmass, NO Explode, and CLA over the next few weeks that I try to gain. All of these supplements should help with "lean"gains as they are either involved in nutrient partitioning, repair, the creatine-phosphate system (ATP stores), or anti-catabolism.

Basically, I’m just trying to say, IT IS ON!!!

LOL, no seriously though, I am cutting again and so far so good. This time around I am in no rush, b/c I am not starting from a condition where I look all sloppy. I actually started from around 11-13% and after 2.5 weeks I think I’m around 10-12% now. I’ve lost around 2 lbs of straight fat… not water weight. I am not eating a low carb diet, so my glycogen stores are pretty full… basically my fluid balance isn’t fluctuating much at all. Mostly from not having high carb days and low carb days. For the 1st time in, well, as long as I can remember at this point, I’ve actually had my weight hold for as long as 6 days with no fluctuation… 6 mornings straight I was 162.0 lbs the 1st week I started.

Anyway, another really cool thing is last time I was at 162 lbs and cutting (in the summer) I was eating ~1900 kcals to lose ~1 lb/week. Now I’ve been eating ~2400 kcals to lose ~1 lb/week! That’s a heck of a difference! Also, I’ve been doing either less or the same amount of cardio, and training less w/ weights too! (Only 5 weight training sessions/week as opposed to 6!)

My point is my metabolic rate was in the gutter last time. Reason being, well, I had been eating too great of a deficit to lose weight for too long, so my metabolism had slowed a good amount. It was so bad that by the end of my cut I was eating around 1500-1600 kcals/day and losing ~1 lb/day. I was also doing HIIT post weights and low intensity cardio at night for 20-40 min!

What I’ve learned from this is to not get too high in body fat, b/c to strip it off will take either so long that you screw your metabolism or if you do it too fast you screw your metabolism and lose muscle. Either way you screw your metabolism up!

My current goals are to get myself looking how I did in the summer at ~155-156 lbs @ ~9-10% bf. I think in another 2-3 weeks I should be there at around ~157-158 lbs. I’m just estimating. Even then I still think I should be walking around leaner, so I plan on keeping with my slow cutting plan up until Jan. 1, 2009. I’m hoping to reach ~7-8% bf by then. At that point I will spend a month or two working at maintaining that condition. Then depending on how I feel I will either try to get leaner still, or slowly work on adding LBM, and I  MEAN SLOWLY. I plan on spending as long as it takes to add LBM w/ pretty much no fat. I at least want to try for several months, b/c I believe it can be done, and to me it’s worth it. I no longer feel "small". I don’t feel big, but I never had "getting big" as my goal. So, I’m fine with my size. I still want to improve, but I’m in this for life, and I have no need to rush it. Not to mention I believe rushing gains = gaining too much unnecessary fat. I mean, if you gain too much fat you spend more time cutting it off. I have not proved this yet, but I am theorizing that the same exact LBM gains can be made in say 12 months, but without having to cut. So, person A spend 6 months bulking / 6 months cutting and gains 6 lbs of muscle. Person B spends 12 months gaining slowly and gains 6 lbs of muscle and doesn’t have to cut. It may not work exactly like that, but the point is I think the relatively the same gains will be made. Even if person A can gain slightly more than person B in a yr, I still personally feel that the amount of greater gains will be so minimal that it’s just not worth the hassle or bulking and cutting to only gain 1-2 more lbs of muscle (and that’s if that method would even produce that kind of progress… in my experience it hasn’t).

Take my experience of 2007-2008. I "bulked" from Aug 2007 to Jan 2008 and gained ~25 lbs, 5 of which ended up being muscle; the rest was fat and water. I spent the next 6 months cutting and finished at a hydrated weight of 155.8 lbs @ 9.3% bf by Aug 2008. Last Aug 2007 I was 152.4 lbs @ 10.5% bf. So, 5 months of eating and gaining and then 6 months of kicking my @$$ to get lean and I was only ~5 lbs of muscle bigger! I seriously think that I could gain 5 lbs of muscle in 10-12 months without gaining so much fat, if any at all!

My previous attempt of gaining was somewhat successful, but not as successful as I would’ve liked. I gained ~2.5 lbs of muscle in 2-3 months, but I also gained ~2.5 lbs of fat. I may find that this is how it is to be done. Even this way is by far better than the way I did it last year. Last year I was just an idiot and didn’t know much about nutrition. I thought the more "good/healthy" food I eat the more muscle I’ll gain. It doesn’t work that way . Even healthy food gets stored as fat when the surplus is too great for the body.

Anyway, I enjoy testing out my theories . I’m also excited to look lean. I came really close this summer, and I think if I hadn’t been cutting for so long I would have been able to get leaner. This time my metabolism is up to speed, and I think I’m gonna do it .

We shall see, eh?

;)

I’ve posted it in 2 threads of mine, and on my bodyspace, but I’m gonna post it here too…

I reached 8-10% body fat after cutting for 6 months. I started at 177.0 lbs 19-20% body fat Feb. 1st and finished today Aug. 2nd at 155.8 lbs.

The measurement method puts me at 9.3% bf; 3 site calipers put me at 8.1% bf; and my scale (which has a bad track record) has me at 10.4% bf.

I’m going with the 9% estimate. I think that seems right. 

Unfortunately I lost LBM. At 177 my LBM was 142.6 lbs and it’s now 141.2 lbs (lost 1.4 lbs). Oh well. I shouldn’t be surprised since I had had my body in a Caloric defecit for 6 months with only a 1 week break from dieting.

I feel much better about my physique now; I feel like I look as if I train hard, which I do! Hahahaha… I didn’t like how at 177 lbs I was big, and people said I was big/muscular, but I looked soft and not like I eat healthy. I had been eating healthy… it was just TOO MUCH healthy food, and I got fat. I know now how to estimate my maintenance, and I’m going to try to gain muscle slowly with a diet that is only slightly over my maintenance. I hope to not gain fat over the next several months so when I cut again I’ll be starting my cut at 9-10% body fat. If gaining fat is absolutely necessary to put on muscle then so be it, but once the Measurement Method estimates me at 11% body fat I will cut for a month or so to get back down to 9%. I want to maintain the look that I’m happy with while I add muscle. Then come this time next year (July/August) I plan on being more muscular than I am now for one, and two 4-5% body fat less!  

-Be ~152 lbs @ ~7% bf Aug. 4-5, 2008

-Be ~150 lbs @ ~6% bf Aug. 25, 2008

The 1st goal I feel very confident I will meet. I am 153.2 lbs today (Aug. 29) @ 7.8% bf, and from last Tues to this Tues I lost 1.4 lbs and .8% bf. So, I plan on losing at least 1.4 lbs from today until next Tues, which should also mean that I lose at least .8% bf again… bringing me to 151.8 lbs @ 7.0% bf.

The 2nd goal I think is possible, but I may not meet it in full. I don’t plan on gaining any weight on my vacation… I’ve never gained weight during this vacation b/c I’m so active the whole time - jogging, walking, surfing, swimming. I mean yeah, I’ll be up 2-3 lbs fom water weight, but I shouldn’t gain any fat/lean tissue while gone. So, I’m figuring to get to 150 lbs I will just need to drop 2 lbs in the 2 weeks before I start classes. Not a big deal, but I am planning on living life a little bit for the last few weeks of my summer vacation. So, while I will have a good base diet plan (the one I’m eating this week - 1660 calories)… I will be deviating from it 3-4x per week. What that will equal out too as far as fat loss/Caloric defecit and all… I dunno, and I’m not gonna worry about it. I’m just gonna do my thing for 2 weeks and see what happens. If I meet the goal of 150 lbs @ 6% bf… awesome! If not… no big deal… I will at least be 7% bf still or slightly leaner. Either way I will finish my 6.5 - 7 month long cut off nicely, in my opinion .

My son, Isaac Xavier, was born 3/25/2008. All seems well so far. Praise God

I should have a picture of him up somewhere soon  

Well, it’s on now

I officially started cutting yesterday (Feb. 1st). Unfortunately it looks like I’ll be cutting until June 21st in order to reach my goal of 4% bf. Oh well.

Even though my bulk ended w/ my bf% bein too high (14-15%) it’s cool. I enjoyed myself with eating crappy foods a little more than I should have, but life was good those 6 months! Basically I ate too much the 1st half of my bulk. It actually wasn’t that much crappy stuff then - it was too much of the good stuff. It’s cool; I know for next time how to calculate what my body needs, and for SLOWER gains. After this cut I will NEVER, as long as I can help it, let my bf% get over 10%. The bulk was successful in that I did gain 2 lbs of muscle per month - that was the goal! So, I’m 12 lbs up (in muscle) from Aug. 1st Too bad I’m up like 12 lbs of fat HAHAHAHAHA…

I think the past, almost, 2 years I have built up a decent base, so now I am going to concentrate on slower muscle gains so that my bf% stays in check between 6 to no more than 10%. I don’t mind if my muscle gains are only .5 lb a month now; I’ll take that over 2 lbs plus FAT, hahaha. If I learn or figure out a way to gain 1-2 lbs without fat - AWESOME! If not, bring on the slow gains for the next several years. I actually don’t wanna get too much bigger anyway - not sayin I’m big, but my ideal look is more of the fitness model, so a little more size and bein lean is my goal, nah mean?