Todd’s BodyBlog

I did it!  I broke the 200 lb barrier.  Not that I was aiming for a specific weight because anyone knows that if you really want to just "weigh" a number all you need to do is eat pizza and dessert and candy for weeks on end and you’ll get there   No, I wanted to follow a 12-week strength routine and add mass along the way, all the while keeping my bodyfat down as much as possible.  Based on my trending I saw that the 200 pound mark was possible so was excited to see that with 1 week left in my training plan I achieved that.

Staring March 1 I will be cutting back calories while continuing to hit the weights and adding lots of cardio.  Let’s see if I can achieve success in the other direction, getting down to 8% bodyfat.  As usual, diet will be the difficult part.  As hard as it has been to eat as much as I have it will be a different challenge to maintain a caloric deficit.  But I am up for it!

I can’t tell you all how happy and excited I am to be nearing the end of a 3-month workout that really, really WORKED!  In the last 2.5 months I have gained more size and strength that I ever thought possible.  Thanks to heavy lifting (5 reps) and heavy eating (3400 calories/day) none of my clothes fit right and friends ask if I am dabbling in steroids.  I had been working out for 20 years and though I have shown steady progress I have not experienced these types of gains (in my fourties, no less!) ever.

At the beginning of March I will re-test my strength and see i I did, indeed, increase my major lifts by 25%.  But if anyone is curious on how I did it, check out my workout logs for the program.  As for diet, just focussed on getting my 1g-1.5g per pound of bodyweight per day.  The carbs and fat took care of themselves as I could eat almost anything I wanted to make up for the rest of the calories.  Supplements were: creatine, Tribulus Terrestris (crap, but I paid for it so I took it), BCAAs, whey protein, beta-alanine, mulitivitamin, fish oil capsules (more for health than mass gains).