A few weeks ago I decided to start reverse dieting. It wasn't done with the intention to gain weight, but I did need to work on getting more protein into my body. This is not an easy task when you've had bariatric surgery, even if it's been nearly three years later. I've been eating an insane amount of protein shakes and cottage cheese to get it done.
But after a week of that, I decided that after gaining weight for months, it's time to lose some body fat. I had my wife take a set of calipers to my chest, stomach, and thigh, and found that my body fat percentage is currently a little over 28%.
I want to get that down to less than 18%, and if my knowledge of basic math is sound, that means I need to lose about 30 pounds of body fat. Losing fat is easy. Doing it without losing muscle is hard.
Last week I created a calorie reduction meal plan with an emphasis on keeping my protein levels high, but I had to quit that because there's still some foods that my body can't tolerate. So now I'm just cutting out carbs.
Or rather, I planned on just cutting out carbs, but Halloween.
After raiding my kid's stash from a trunk or treat outing we had on Friday, that plan got shot to shit. So I'm restarting that plan today.
I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes back in 2008, and was only functionally cured of it after the surgery, so I've been pretty averse to eating sugary and starchy stuff for years. Low carb diets tend to be easier for me to follow (when we're not around holidays that are excuses to give free candy to children) as a result.
I'm also going to have to make damn well sure I get some cardio into my workout routines. I need to do that anyway. While I may be the stronger now than I've ever been in my life, I sacrificed a lot of endurance and speed to get that way.
I just completed week five of Candito's Six Week Strength Program this afternoon. Week six is a deload week, so I think it's safe to review the program now.
My review is this: It's awesome. It's just fucking awesome.
When I started the program, my five rep max on my squats was 205 pounds. It's now 230 pounds. My one rep max on the bench press was 205 pounds. I can now do at least four reps at that weight. My calculated 1 rep max on the deadlift is now 320 pounds, and I did four reps at 290 pounds today.
I'll be doing another review of the program in six weeks to see if I hit another plateau. The program is meant to prevent plateaus, but we'll see.
If you're beginning in weight training, I still recommend either the Stronglifts 5x5 method or the Starting Strength 3x5 method. Once you reach the limits of what those programs can provide for you, go on the Candito program. My previous plateaus are busted. In the case of my squats, what was once my limit on my weight is my warm-up weight now.
Today, I had to reluctantly drag my ass to the gym. I woke up tired, and stayed that way through most of the day. I knew I wasn't going to skip the gym because my workout was simple - one set of deadlifts - but I really wasn't in the mood.
When I got to the gym, I did my warmup sets, and nervously racked the barbell for my final set. I had never deadlifted 290 pounds before, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to do it. Still, I put myself into position, grabbed the barbell with an iron-tight grip, and lifted.
First rep up. "Well, that was easy enough."
Second rep up. My grip strength was barely enough to hold the barbell, but I completed it.
Third rep up. At this point, the lifting part itself is easy, but my grip was so loose that I was barely holding the barbell by the tips of my fingers.
Fourth rep up. Holy shit, I fucking did it.
After dropping the barbell, I had finished the week performing a new personal record on all of my major lifts. I went into the gym tired and reluctant, but after finishing that set, I was full of energy and had a shit-eating grin on my face.
I don't show strong emotion often. In public, I'm fairly stoic, holding a poker face and not letting too much of my thoughts show. But at that moment I had a smile a mile wide and I had to remind myself not to completely lose my shit and run around wild cheering in the gym. If I had no ability for self-restraint, I would have started doing a victory lap around the gym, my arms flailing in the air, screaming, "WHOOOOOOOOO! FUCK YEAH! I FUCKING DID IT!", ending my victory lap at my barbell and doing shadow boxing in my moment of celebration, while every person in the gym looked at me like I had lost my goddamn mind.
I talked about this a while back in my post called, "The Best Part About Exercise", but I'll repeat it now. I love fitness because it's the great equalizer. I don't believe in the positive thinking garbage about money or your economic situation. There's very, very few people that are living in poverty or struggling because they aren't working hard enough. If anything, most of us are working harder and working longer hours than generations before us. I'll even go so far as to say it's insulting to claim such things, as I have to beg my bosses for overtime just so I'll have enough money to pay my bills. I earned a college degree and an EMT license under the GI Bill and I'm still looking for a job where I can work an average 40 hour work week and not have to worry about getting my bills paid on time. The idea that you can change your economic situation through sheer force of will is a lie. If that could happen, I would have done it by now.
But in the gym, I am in control of my destiny. I have the ability to achieve greatness. I can choose to be the best person I can be. Fitness is the one thing that I can choose for myself without a greedy boss, a corrupt bank, or what is the myth of the "free market" holding me back. I may be broke, I may be struggling, but in the gym, I am a fucking god, standing by lesser beings that have just begun their path to fitness (and many that will quit within a few months), and greater gods that have spent their lives lifting more than I can; those greater gods, that I watch lift and know with confidence that one day, I will be stronger than them because I choose to drive on and not quit, but still look at with admiration. It's the time that I can live the lyrics from Spose (a singer which you may have noticed by now, I take a lot of inspiration from) and say confidently:
But I was supposed to curl up, I was supposed to back down
I was supposed to fade, evaporate into the background
I was supposed to never be nothing but made it to something
I knew I could do it, I will make it through it
I'll prove it, I was just another human who was supposed to be...
Nobody
That truly is the greatest thing about fitness. Control over our own bodies is the only real freedom that we have. It's with that, that the gym gives me real freedom.
"Once scared of the banalities and annoyances that they believed defined adulthood,Everything Sucksis the Descendents realizing that their worst fears had come true. Growing old, they found, sucks. Judging by the songs, in fact, it’s safe to say that it’s even worse than they might have thought." - A.V. Club
“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.” - Douglas Adams
"Don't trust anyone over 30." - Jack Weinberg
The other day a friend of mine on Facebook said that her teenage daughter had just turned old enough to get her own Facebook account. She didn't want it because it's for old people.
For a while I had known that at my thirty-five years of age, I was slipping away from youth culture. New music comes out and I don't get it. I listen to teenagers talk and I have to resist laughing at them as they try to sound like adults but completely lack the life experience to do so. They try to sound profound but just sound self-absorbed. I knew I was getting old.
But knowing that teenagers don't even want to be on Facebook nowadays was the realization that I'm not getting old. I am old.
Ugh.
I never wanted to get this old. When I was 14 I told my history teacher that my main goal in life was to make sure I died before I reached 30. He asked what I was going to do if I made it to one day before my 30th birthday. In my dark sense of humor, I told him, "Suicide by cop."
Bruce Lee was 32 when he died. Shortly before his death he expressed fears of getting older. Getting older meant that he'd be getting weaker. It would be harder for him to fight other men in their 20s that were up and coming in the martial arts world. I wish that were the half of it.
The physical part of getting old sucks. There is no doubt about that. My first day home after Initial Entry Training in the Army (when I was 22) had me hanging out with friends until four in the morning, getting four hours of sleep, and running two miles before doing it all over again the next day. I got less than 12 hours of sleep the first three days I was home and did a workout routine that would kill weaker men on a full night of sleep. I miss having that kind of crazy energy. Now, if I don't drink enough protein shakes and take vitamins, I'm a dead man walking. I didn't have calcium deposits in my shoulder back then, because shit like that doesn't happen when you're 22.
The physical part is only one part of it, though. The hardest part is the uncertainty that comes with knowing that the world is changing all around you and you aren't able to keep up with it. So kids don't want to do Facebook anymore. That's fine, but could someone PLEASE TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK SNAPCHAT IS?! I have no idea what it is, nor do I know why I would need to use it. While I'm still up to date on most forms of technology, any bit of social media that isn't called Facebook is a complete mystery to me. The only other social media account I have is Twitter, and I don't even use it.
Then there's the financial aspect of it all. The odds of finding financial security get worse and worse every year. Am I going to spend the rest of my life in debt and working overtime to pay the bills, missing my daughters growing up in the process? Why can't I just get a 40 hour a week job with the weekends off that will take care of my financial needs? I'm not even asking to be rich, just middle class, and it seems like every year that's getting harder and harder to obtain and keep. It's beyond frustrating.
When you're a kid, other adults train you for adulthood (even if you don't listen to them). They tell you to go to college, get a good paying job, get a 401(k), and to save your money. What they never prepare you for is what comes after that. How do you deal with a world that's changing all around you too fast? How do you deal with having responsibility and loss of freedom that comes with having to take care of other people? What happens when your friends all get married and start having kids? What happens when you watch them getting divorced? What about when they start dying?
If I had to guess, the adults didn't have the answers to those questions because they were just starting to experience all that for themselves.
I was born in 1981. I'm the very last remnant of what's known as "Generation X". I lived most of my life well. I didn't become a teenage parent. I served my country when the nation ended up suffering the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. I have a college degree, although I got it much later than most. Yet here I am, getting older and constantly asking myself, "Where do we go from here?"
I honestly don't know. The only thing that's left now is uncertainty.
After I started the Candito program, I realized that I also need to eat more food. A lot more. Way more than I'm accustomed to or comfortable eating. This is especially true of protein.
So, last week I started trying to fit every piece of solid hunk of meat and dairy product into my mouth, but I got full very quickly. It's been nearly three years since I've had bariatric surgery, so I can eat an average size meal in one sitting, but eating all of this food was getting to be too much, so I had to start getting creative.
My previous nutrition goal was to eat at least 250 grams of protein a day. Now, I'm eating 300. I also have to consume some carbohydrates on days that I workout so I'm not sluggish when I hit the gym. This is what I eat to make sure that I get the calories I need to get stronger:
1. Protein shakes
2. Protein shakes
3. More protein shakes
4. Cottage cheese
5. Greek yogurt (the big containers of the plain stuff, not the sugar-stuffed bullshit that comes in one-cup portions)
Basically, if it's a liquid or a food with a paste-like consistency that contains protein, I'm eating it.
Carbs are easier to consume than proteins, but if I'm working out, I drink a couple bottles of Powerade throughout the day so I'll have the energy to lift.
I used to eat every three hours so I could fit in my macros. Those days are over. Now, I'm eating every time I can fit food into my tiny, tiny stomach.
Here's a video of Alan Thrall doing some extreme bulk dieting. You'll be both enthralled and disgusted at the same time:
Last week, I said that I was beginning a new workout program. Jonnie Candito's 6 Week Strength Program. And after one week, I can safely sum up how I'm feeling in this YouTube video:
While most workout routines go up in difficulty, this program is a bit different because the first two weeks deal with muscular hypertrophy. That means that the first two weeks have you lifting with lower weights and higher reps until your body is completely broken down. This is done to gain muscle mass, which as I mentioned in the last post, is needed to lift more weight.
You don't reach hypertrophy on a 5x5 program.
My leg muscles finally cracked under the pressure and I got a really painful muscle sprain in my inner thigh that kept me bedridden for most of yesterday. It was hurting so bad that I couldn't walk or bend my knees. I'm feeling better now that I spent a day icing the injury, dumping Ibuprofens down my throat, and making sure to keep my knee above my waist. I'm feeling much better today; however, today is also another leg day. If I don't feel at 100% by the time I get to the gym, I'll just work the upper body today and put off leg day until tomorrow.
Week two is supposed to be more brutal, at least as far as the legs go. If my legs are up for it, I'm supposed to squat 190 pounds 10 times, followed by 5x3 sets of 195 today.
With the upper body, ever since I started just going parallel with my arms on the bench press to avoid flaring up the calcium deposit in my shoulder, I'm getting much stronger very fast. I've also set a personal record on the dumbbell overhead press, finally breaking triple digits after lifting weights for years. So, I have that going for me.
If I manage to survive week two, it gets much easier. The last few weeks are high weights with low reps. So long as I warm up first, I won't walk away limping.
There's been a few other things that went on this week that I plan on writing about in separate posts, including changes in my diet and a post on aging.
