For anyone who has kept up with my blogs, you know that in January of this year I spent 30 days going strictly vegetarian. I did not do a very good job. I lost muscle, gained fat, and felt pretty awful during those 30 days. But I also ate a bunch of processed fake meat stuff and junk like that. Done properly, a vegetarian diet is extrememly healthy and I condone it. But I likes me some beef and chicken sooo…
It was an experiment and one I’m glad I did because it gave me a glimpse into what my vegetarian clients go through. I can now, at least somewhat anyways, empathize with them. That may have started something because now I want to do a bunch of other stuff like that. So with that all being said, I am announcing my next experiment on myself. Drumroll…….

I’m trying to gain weight. Not a bunch of weight or anything like that, but put on some pounds. I have a reason for this, but I want to give a quick history lesson here first.

In high school, around late freshman year until late junior year I was “doughy”. I have pictures, but I’m not putting em up here. I ate too much. I played soccer, but my diet was just too many sodas, sports drinks, and cookies/pies/cakes (My mom is a fantastic baker. She even makes a homemade Twinkie cake that is unreal). So I had little muscle and plenty of padding. I didnt lift weights and only ran because we had to in soccer. Then late in my junior year I developed a severe case of mono. It lasted about 3 weeks and I literally could barely keep water down. My energy was so low that I had to take 2 breaks getting from my bedroom upstairs to the kitchen downstairs. Needless to say, I lost a lot of weight. At rock bottom I was 139 lbs. After getting healthy again, I took advantage of my situation, began eating better and exercising more. Since then and all through college, I sat right at about 160-165 lbs.  My goal is 180-185 lbs by January 15th. At that point, I am going to cut back down to 175 lbs. This is where I want to remain. So the question you may be asking yourself is, “Why?”

Well I’ll tell you, cause I’m that kind of guy. I’ve studied and worked with the concept before, but have never tried to “bulk” and “cut” before. To put on muscle, you need a caloric excess each day to provide enough energy to build new muscle tissue. Unfortunately, this also means that you’ll likely add some fat too. So you begin a hypertrophy weight program (hypertrophy is just a fancy way of saying that you are increasing the size of your muscles) and alter your macronutrient profile and amount and boom, you put on weight from both fat and muscle. Once you hit the upper range of your weight, you begin cutting calories (keeping protein high to prevent atrophy) to get to your ideal body fat percentage. If my numbers are right, I need to get to about 180-185 and about 15-16% body fat before cutting back to 175 and 9-10% body fat. I’m 3 weeks in and here are the numbers per my super cool awesome scale:

October 15:                                                      Nov 6:
Weight                  171.4 lbs                            174.4 lbs
Fat %                    12.6 %                                13.2 %
Muscle mass         142.4 lbs                            144.0 lbs

I’ll do quick blog updates every 3 weeks, but so far, I’m dead on with my 1 lb per week goal.

Of note: Gaining weight is not enjoyable as I thought it most certainly would be. I am full all of the time and not used to this, so the cutting phase might be interesting and more difficult than I thought. I guess time will tell.