xenon2000’s BodyBlog

Just finished a big 2 week snow storm in Oregon. I don’t like snow and we ended up with 16 inches of snow when we sometimes get 2 inches in Jan or Feb. So it was a huge deal. Really messed with everything, including my eating and exercise. So this week was going to be the start of week 10 of cutting. But now I am counting it as week 8. Luckily I didn’t gain any weight, but I didn’t really lose any either.

So hopefully I have more to talk about by the end of this week. Oh yeah, I am also trying to recover from tennis elbow and plantar fasciitis, arch pain in my foot. Hopefully I am fully recovered in time to start bulking in Feb.  I would still like to hit 165Lbs before I start bulking.

First 2 weeks I lost 5 Lbs, but only lost 1 Lbs this last week. Likely due to eating more and missing 2 days at the gym. Getting a little easier with the low cal diet. Still hungry most of the time, but doesn’t seem so depressing now. I don’t think I will ever "enjoy" the low cal diet. But at least I am getting used to it.

When biking or rowing, I generally get my heart rate to 140-150 part of the time during warmup cooldown, and 150-160 for much of the time. Not sure if that is good or bad. I need to look into that.

Last week was Week 6, and it was a hard quick switch from 2800-3500cal bulking days straight to 1500-1800 cutting days. Halloween weekend was some high cal days including some dirty cals from Sonic’s Drive-In SuperSonic cheese burger and onion rings. But it was good. I will start labeling my Weeks better so that it makes more sense when I read them in the future. Today is the start of Week 7 and today was a great day of rowing and biking machines. Easy mindless lunchtime cardio for me. Still the hardest part of cutting is feeling like I am starving all the time. No matter how many veggies I eat. And I still do not want to rely on pills or special supplements to curb my appetite. My pain….. oh well.

Man, the switch to heavy cutting has been HAAARD! Especially with all the parties coming up, Halloween, my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New years Eve/day, etc, etc. I already miss the extra calories I had with bulking. Even if they were clean calories.

I think this is still the path I want. I want some early reward from cutting fat now and then a clean start for bulking next time around. I have been carrying the fat for so long now. I just want to see my body again. I can gain the muscle later from a fresh start.

If anyone reads this and is in the same spot with fairly high BF% and is currently cutting, I would love to see your profile progress and any threads you are updating or participating in. Please PM or comment. Thanks.
It’s so much work and I am constantly wanting more food! I really don’t want to rely on artificale means of appetite suppressants or "fat burners". It’s tempting, but I really want to try without. Though all the natural means I have tried just don’t really last long enough to help much. Being busy works the best for me.

So after 5 weeks of trying to bulk and finally feeling like I got the hang of the micromanaged nutrition and my exercises, I have decided I am just too fat and need to cut. So I am hoping to try cutting as long as I can and see if I can go from 185Lbs at 22% BF (145Lbs non-fat) down to 165Lbs and hopefully 12% or less BF so that hopefully my Muscle mass is about the same.

I don’t know if it can be done, but I want to try to get my BF% as low as I can while hopefully maintaining my muscle mass. So that I can have a fresh starting point to work on bulking. I wish I could find someone else that has already gone through all this so I could see what worked for them.

I was too busy at work to go to the gym on Friday. So that is my third missed Tricep workout in a row. Other than missing Friday’s workout, week 5 felt like a great success.

Today is day 1 of Week 6. Leg day. I knew that one day I would feel some kind of depression and lack of motivation. Today felt like that day. I only did about half of my leg workout, then did some triceps that I have been missing. And finally just finished off with 15mins of bike cardio out of lack of interest.

I am irritated with my belly fat. At 22% BF and it seems like it’s all in my belly tire. I keep telling myself that I will be better off bulking first and then cutting fat. But I think I might be more happy if I cut the fat a ton, and then bulk while staying well below 22% and keeping away from that high BF number forever!

But I finally feel like I am getting my calories and micro management in control of my diet! Feel like I finally know what to eat to bulk and how much protein to get, etc. So moving to cutting now and I feel like I might not have done my best yet. But today I don’t care. I want to loose the fat. I have been BF 22% or higher for way too long and I want to at least see what little muscles I have right now. Then do the bulking phase later. Sound good?

I am writing today on Friday because I will be missing today’s workout for my son’s birthday party. But I had a very good workout this week after being sick last week.

Cardio went especially well this week. I had the energy and no headache. While a 10min mile is nothing special, I have been having a hard time having the energy to follow through 1 whole mile with no slow downs. Today I was able to 1 full 10min mile 3 times in a row with only a 3min fast 4.5mph walk inbetween running 1 mile. So for me, cardio day was very good this week. I hope to keep it up. On top of this, I walk, jog and run the .5 mile to the gym from work and a walk/jog back afterwards. So I try to get in 4 miles on Cardio day. So on my slower days it can take me 50-60mins to get the 4 miles. But this time I got it in 40. So good for me.

Monday (legs) and Tuesday (lats and delts) went well. Thursday (Biceps) was mixed. I felt I got a great workout but I stopped a little early because my wrists were starting to hurt. So I moved from free weight dumbbell curls to a machine, but that didn’t really help. Today my wrists feel fine, so likely I avoided an injury. Hopefully this does not become a common occurance.

Nothing to say. Had a cold this week and I probably could have done my Thursday and Friday groups, but I think a runny nose in the gym is not cool and not polite to others. So I stayed out this whole week. Even though I kept my diet the same and calories high, I ended up losing weight this week. I just hope it wasn’t much muscle that was lost. BF% seems to still be at 22%, so….

Hoping to feel 100% recovered to start week 5.

A good week. No headaches and nothing got in the way of my schedule or diet. I felt good the whole week. Unfortunately I got a little sick this weekend and may miss Monday of Week 4 tomorrow. We will see.

I really need to take some pictures before I get too far. I feel like I am starting to see some small differences in my appearance through my thick body fat. So I want to take pictures to track real appearance changes.

That is all I really have to say about week 3. I got some bodybuilding.com gloves, but they are cut too short so they dig into my 2nd knuckle joint. I may have to get some normal gloves and just cut the very tips off since these are cut too low.

Still trying to tweak my diet. Looking like I can’t get away from a protein suppliment without really high cholesterol intake. I am trying to stay below 300mg cholesterol as that seems to be the recommended max per day for a healthy person. And under 200mg if you are trying to lower your LDLs. So even using Chicken breast and other lean lean meats maxes out the cholesterol when using only foods to reach 200+ grams of protein for the day.

This week was much more successful than last week. I didn’t get a headache on my resting cardio day. I narrowed down my exercises to about 3-4 per group which helped me focus more on the workout and less on walking around trying to decide what to do.

I don’t know if the DOMS I got this week matter, but my quads got really bad DOMS that lasted about 4 days which slowed me down on my cardio day which is 48hours after Leg day. I feel 100% recovered now and will be ready for Leg day tomorrow. But I don’t know if I will work out my Quads as much tomorrow to try to not get that bad of DOMS again.

I am starting to feel pretty confident on the exercises I am doing for each muscle group. Not I have other things I want to figure out.

1. The Gas! Since switching to a high calorie high protein diet, I have become so gassy. It is driving me nuts and I am sure others around me don’t like it either. At first I thought it was the Muscle Milk by CytoSport. But I have been done with that for 4 days now. I am now only using Optimum Nutrition’s 100% Whey Protein which also contains lactase to help digest the latose. Yet I still have so much gas. Just not sure what to do here.
2. Body fat % tracking. I now have calipers to measure body fat. Since this is my first time being on a high calorie, high protein diet, I want to track this to make sure I am not just getting fat. Finding that as long as I pinch the same exact spot, I get consistent measurements. But having issues making sure I am pinching the correct spot in the first place.
3. Suppliment to food ratio. Other than the multi-Vitamin and Kre-Alkalyn Creatine,  I am only using a 100% Whey Protein powder to suppliment real food. But I use it 3-4 scoops a day, throughout the day. I am trying to hit 3500 cals a day, while keeping my fat below 100g a day. Preferably 50-70g. And because of that, I tend to only get to about 80-100g of protein and about 300-400g of carbs. So I use the Whey powder to get my Protein up to 180-200g. So I am still trying to figure out my diet.

So 2 weeks into this first attempt at body building and I feel pretty good. Since I felt pretty fat to start with at 22% body fat and I am still that way while bulking up, it’s difficult to fight the feelings of wanting to reduce calories and do more cardio to cut the fat. But I really think it’s time to really mulk up the muscle mass so that when I try cutting fat again, I will be much more effective and have better final results.