Back to the Basics

[the doc]

It's the end of an era. Mass and Strength, my old journal, has been retired. My goals in mass and strength were met in some respects, and not in others. I certainly increased mass over time, and strength as well. I increased my legs to over 27 inches, and definitely increased back, chest and arm size. Strength gains were not to bad, but then again that was not the primary goal (hence mass and strength and not strength and mass )

I spent a fair amount of money on supps - multi vits, other vits and min, protein powder, creatine, 1test to mention a few (including some grey area products which i got to use once...lol... but that is a story for another day). A confluence of events has caused me to totally rethink why i exercise and lift. Sometimes we, i mean lifters in general, get so caught up in the quest for size and strength that we lose sight of our original reason for starting to exercise. Well that certainly happened to me. I have been addicted to strength gains, but not so much so that i was beyond the line of no return.

It is time to move on, and set new goals.

One of the most sobering things that happened to me recently was that i went though my closet, sorting what dress clothes i could wear. I had a variety of pants in the 32-35 waist range. Virtually none of these pants fit me in the legs and less than half fit in the waist. I dont have a whole lot of money, and buying a new wardrobe, when I have a bunch of pants in the 34 waist size that would easily fit if i would lose a little of the waistline.

Thus my new goals are purely on the fat loss side of things. An old fashioned cut. No supps, no drugs, nothing but the basics: eat, sleep, lift, cardio.

I am going to really lower volume of workouts, following a scheme I devised with the help of mason some time ago.

Diet will not be very specific except to meet a couple of requirments. I need at least 200 g protein/day and no more than 150 g carbs on none lifting days. Something must be eaten every 4 hours. Cals will be between 2500-3500 depending on activity level and hunger pains. total daily caloric needs are somewhere between 4000-4500 (fitday). Aiming to lose 1-2 lbs per week.
I am tracking daily food intake on fitday.com

[WillKuenzel]

Good luck with it! Where do you think you are going to want to go from here?

[the doc]

howdy HY, thanks for the honorary

I edited above, maybe that'll help

[McBain]

hows the truck?

how often will you be doing cardio?

what does this scheme look liek?>

[the doc]

workout will be centered around the idea of maintaining as much strength as i currently have. Mass will obviously decrease, but as long as i can keep strength up I would be happy

Low volume with plenty of rest. chest, arms, and shoulders, 2 set per body part. 3 sets for back. First set is 2-3 reps and is to develop and maintain strength. Second set will be in the 8-10 rep range to keep as much mass as possible. Legs are the exception, performing 1 set of 20 rep breathing squats

day 1

Chest/shoulders/back

incline DB or BB press (20 degree)
OH press machine
cable row
lat pulldown

day 2 and 3
20-30 min cardio both days; rest

day 4

arms and abs

EZ curls
BB skulls
ab work (4 sets -variable)

day 5 and 6
cardio on day 5; rest

day 7

legs

1 set trap bar deads
1 set deep, narrow squats (20 rep breathing)

day 8 and 9
rest, cardio day 9

[the doc]

25 min HIIT cardio tonight

[Franjipani]

Originally posted by the doc
Thus my new goals are purely on the fat loss side of things. An old fashioned cut. No supps, no drugs, nothing but the basics: eat, sleep, lift, cardio.

Ahhh back to basics.....the ole tried and tested method eh??.

Good luck with your goals doc....ohh and just for you.....

[ElPietro]

hehe, I feel like fattening up again for the same reasons Mark.

[the doc]

workout arms and abs

EZ curls 110x3 + 1 FR, 90 x8 + 2 FR
superset with
BB skulls 100x 2 + 1 FR, 80x8 + 2 FR

Ab work, a varitey of ab exercises performed until i could not consider another crunch...lol

weight is coming down already. I love it


diet stats
cals fat carb protein
2662 109 210 207


saturated fat is just to high right now... that needs to come down real quick

also, anyone that want to try, I recommend fitday.com to tranck your diet and activity

very useful

[Frozenmoses]

Grats on the weightloss! Do you have a specific number you're shooting for on weight, or just going until you feel satisfied?

[the doc]

Mcbain, i forgot to mention to check out the workout scheme and i will post diet stats (but not individual foods) for each day

Franji... yes girl, time to get back to my roots. Lift to be strong and healthy. Being healthy requires me to concentrate a little less on the mass part, and more on keeping a lower bf% and maintaining cardiovascular health... oh and


LP... lmao!

[the doc]

Ok the diet basic are this. Currently my diet is basicly isocaloric, sometimes a bit more on the fat.

I am eating whole foods, but i need to cut out the red meat a little more to bring down the amount of satd fat

I am tracking my diet on fitday.

I will continue to experiment on the diet compostion, but right now i am striving to stay below 100 g of carbs on non workout days and below 200 on workout days. Trying to eat them around lifting or cardio sessions.

Also I will have 1 cheat day per week

Any deviations from this formula will be noted by editing this post

[the doc]

Originally posted by Frozenmoses
Grats on the weightloss! Do you have a specific number you're shooting for on weight, or just going until you feel satisfied?

thanks moses

my goal is simple. I need to start fitting in my size 34 pants, since i cant afford to buy a new wardrobe...lol

This will require losing some muscle mass, but it will be worth while for my long term health as well

[the doc]

damn had a slight diet fuk up today, ate 3 pizza slices (cheese) for lunch. Must be moderate in food intake for the rest of the day. Also I have cardio planned for this evening


diet totals for the day were not so bad
cals fat carb pro
2175 67 231 166

carbs were way to high for a non workout day, but overall cals were low. Protein was a bit low, but not to bad.

[the doc]

no cardio last evening but threw in 25 min of HIIT elliptical this morning

[PowerManDL]

hahaha bro great work bro, seriously bro.

[the doc]

thanks powermanDLbro, you're the coolest bro man bro




went to visit my parents on fri and sat
still have a free pass to the new gym so i helped my mom learn some new free weight techniques and also helped her on form and tempo on the cybex circuit

I myself have been working on squat form today. In between helping my mom exercise, i tried out some different stances and foot placements and was able to get some nice deep squats. the deepest i have ever done. I was only working with 115 doing sets of 5 so i'll be going back to my home gym and working on some more technique

[the doc]

since my gf wanted to go to the gym, and I wanted to exercise in general (I was going to do some HIIT anyway)

instead i made a HIIT workout out of some power cleans (short rest period)
did 3 sets of 5 at 115 and 2 sets of 5 at 135
finished up with some calf raises

damn good day. no fit day today, but i believe i'm right around 2800

[rookiebldr]

hey, I found your new journal ... well, I should say you shot it up to the top so I could see it.

Good luck with the goals but I'm with lp, adding mass is fun. grey market stuff ...cool. Thought we wouldn't notice?

[the doc]

Originally posted by rookiebldr
hey, I found your new journal ... well, I should say you shot it up to the top so I could see it.

Good luck with the goals but I'm with lp, adding mass is fun. grey market stuff ...cool. Thought we wouldn't notice?

heh heh

[Relentless]

a little present for your new journal

[the doc]

thanks cal, but *whew* somebody open a window around here!

i just wanted to note for the record that those powercleans i performed a few days ago have my WHOLE body sore as bloody hell!!

man i may have to find a way to sneak them in on a regular basis for some good anerobic HIIT type work

[Delphi]

Good luck on the cut. Looks like Cal's already cut one for you.

FitDay's great. I started using it this weekend. I haven't tried calculating my expenditures yet.

Cutting fat below 30% is kind of tough if you're going to keep protein up to the levels you're looking at. I had a grilled salmon today and it's still 42% cals from fat. The only way I can see to get fat down near 20% of cals is to eat a bunch of pinto beans and take whey powder. Got any other suggestions?





Oh, and

[the doc]

well larry i am fronkly more concerned with total calories currently. I am from the more carb sensitive population (as evidenced by my grandpa's type II diabetis) and tend to gain weight and bloat rather rapidly on higher carb diets. I also experience more intense hunger cravings on higher carb diets.

As far as fat goes, I just try to keep the saturated fats low, and eliminate all sources of trans fats (which also helps to ensure clean eating). One thing i would suggest, as you mentioned is to incorperate more protein drinks. These are very low fat. Limit eating to things like chicken breast, and tuna (which have very low fat content). Stay away from ground meat, since even the "lean" still contains a lot of fat per gram of protein. Very lean cuts of steak however, are lower in fat (although a high % comes from satd fat) but most people do not like them since they are usually the tougher cuts.

[ElPietro]

Hey PAB, you coming up for august 1st weekend?