Looking good, feeling good, time to do something stupid - HANDSTANDS ;)
I've been feeling pretty good about how I look the last few days - stomach reasonably flat, muscles reasonable defined - if I do a few press-ups and pull-ups (so my muscles are a bit more defined) and then look in a mirror, I'd say I've basically hit my goals for visual appearance. Which is a pretty awesome thing to be able to say!
That said, I weighed myself this morning, and I'm underweight again - 1.5kg below my 'ideal' weight. It's not a lot, but it's going in the wrong direction at this point - I want to be building weight by building muscle, not losing weight by losing fat. In fact, it's even worse than that, because this is the second time this has happened recently, and both times I've lost more muscle than fat in the process (about 1kg of muscle and 0.5kg of fat, this time). This makes me not happy.
So, new dietary plan - EAT ALL THE THINGS. Well, more or less. I'm going to aim to eat a LOT, anyway. Emphasis on protein still, and trying to keep refined sugars de-emphasised still, but I'm not going to worry about carbs any more - could be my body needs more energy input to build any more muscle than it's already managed.
This probably means I'm going to put on body-fat too, but if I start building muscle mass again then I can live with that overall. I can always drop back to a less carbtastic diet later in the year, if it seems worthwhile. For now, I want MOAR MUSSELS. No, wait, the other ones. You know what I mean.
Mmmm, shellfish.
ANYWAY. Where was I? Oh yes, I thought I might also take a vague stab at incorporating the GOMAD diet into my plans. This is pretty simple - you just drink a Gallon Of Milk A Day. I'm not sure my stomach is up to that, but if I only drink a litre or two at least that's something. To this end, I just bought some full-fat milk and some raspberry milkshake flavouring stuff, and I have just drunk my first glass of raspberry milk. Nom.
Along with eating all the things, I'm going to try to get more volume into my workouts again. I know the received wisdom on Fitocracy etc is low reps, high weights - the 5x5 systems - but that doesn't seem to have worked for me as well as 10-15 rep sets did last year. Maybe that was just beginners gains, but we'll see.
The other thing I want to start looking at more is gymnastic sort of stuff... now that I have this improved strength and fitness, I want to do cool stuff with it! I'm seriously considering signing up for a Circus Space course, as I'm lucky enough to live right next to the place.
Update: Just signed up to that course. Hopefully it'll be a fun way to spend the summer!
This entry was originally posted at http://denny.dreamwidth.org/735761.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
That said, I weighed myself this morning, and I'm underweight again - 1.5kg below my 'ideal' weight. It's not a lot, but it's going in the wrong direction at this point - I want to be building weight by building muscle, not losing weight by losing fat. In fact, it's even worse than that, because this is the second time this has happened recently, and both times I've lost more muscle than fat in the process (about 1kg of muscle and 0.5kg of fat, this time). This makes me not happy.
So, new dietary plan - EAT ALL THE THINGS. Well, more or less. I'm going to aim to eat a LOT, anyway. Emphasis on protein still, and trying to keep refined sugars de-emphasised still, but I'm not going to worry about carbs any more - could be my body needs more energy input to build any more muscle than it's already managed.
This probably means I'm going to put on body-fat too, but if I start building muscle mass again then I can live with that overall. I can always drop back to a less carbtastic diet later in the year, if it seems worthwhile. For now, I want MOAR MUSSELS. No, wait, the other ones. You know what I mean.
Mmmm, shellfish.
ANYWAY. Where was I? Oh yes, I thought I might also take a vague stab at incorporating the GOMAD diet into my plans. This is pretty simple - you just drink a Gallon Of Milk A Day. I'm not sure my stomach is up to that, but if I only drink a litre or two at least that's something. To this end, I just bought some full-fat milk and some raspberry milkshake flavouring stuff, and I have just drunk my first glass of raspberry milk. Nom.
Along with eating all the things, I'm going to try to get more volume into my workouts again. I know the received wisdom on Fitocracy etc is low reps, high weights - the 5x5 systems - but that doesn't seem to have worked for me as well as 10-15 rep sets did last year. Maybe that was just beginners gains, but we'll see.
The other thing I want to start looking at more is gymnastic sort of stuff... now that I have this improved strength and fitness, I want to do cool stuff with it! I'm seriously considering signing up for a Circus Space course, as I'm lucky enough to live right next to the place.
Update: Just signed up to that course. Hopefully it'll be a fun way to spend the summer!
This entry was originally posted at http://denny.dreamwidth.org/735761.html. Please comment there using OpenID.