Join the Dull Club if you are an interesting person and feel like nobody agrees!
As I just typed on a snap seconds ago:
Had my unhealthiest food day yesterday. 3 meals. 3,300 calories - pure junk food. Morning: Tim's cafe wrap & coffee. Afternoon: Subway wrap & chicken bits. Evening: Burger King meal, a big one.
Mental.
But I've struggled with sustaining healthy meals for a long time. I'm perfectly fine straight up going without food for extended periods, but given my latest spree of trying to avoid dying from various health diseases I figured it's not good enough.
I'm currently at my heaviest weight I've ever been - 98kg. It wasn't too long ago I was writing on here that I had gotten down to the mid-80's. But as I got more and more into strength training I realised calorie deficits just weren't going to cut it so to speak.
Instead I decided to just eat whatever I felt like and focus on muscles. Now if my calculations are correct I've probably gained a good 5kg of solid muscle so I'm hoping a lot of that record weight is all that. It's not like I've been totally pigging out or something.
But now I'm kind of at my limit when it comes to bench presses at home, as safety becomes a serious issue at this point and I just don't want to start going to a gym, I figure it's time to switch to maintenance mode and just work on improving form, flexibility, smaller muscle groups, posture.
Meanwhile, with little emphasis on growth, I can go into a nice calorie deficit which might even be easier now my extra muscles are burning about 100 calories more per day (I guess).
I can't say I feel GREAT as a result of this journey so far. Usually my muscles are recovering from the workout the day before so at least half the time I actually feel weaker lol. BUT, there's certainly visual changes starting to peak through all the fat, and my health ring has shown very real internal benefits. I've logged the last 3 months of heart rate data and charted it out:
Doesn't look like much but it shows about 0.005bpm reduction in my resting heart rate per day, on average. Meaning my heart is getting healthier, stronger. That's pretty exciting! (Ignore the red bit - I don't wanna talk about it...)
I am also subtly noticing a variety of things; easier getting out of cars, easier moving chairs and picking up mugs, fewer headaches, that kinda thing. It makes me onder how I'd feel if my brain was immediately teleported back to the version of me 6 months ago, would I notice it being particularly horrid and uncomfortable?
The New Diet Plan
I innovated my work food plan again. I rarely have time or energy to prepare things at home so I've become overdependent on the takeout and I hate the school provided food. No good.
I've gotten myself this portion-sized thermos bowl I never knew existed which will, without power, keep things hot all day.
With that, I'll just pour some hot water and oats w/ flaxseed in, a spoon of honey (or peanut butter), a spoon of protein powder and maybe a Greek yoghurt on the side.
I've had similar before but I always got sick of cold lumpy oats. This takes seconds to prepare in the morning, and will partner well with my 2 litre thermos flask of Yorkshire Gold tea.
Then as always I'll eat nothing 'til I get home where I also plan to eat the same basic meal with small variations for the next month: Homemade Pesto & sundried tomatoes Chicken Pasta. I might shake it up with less carb-heavy things, but for me the most important thing is to stop thinking about it and trying to enjoy it. Just overcome low energy and hunger shakes and I'm good to go.
I've lost weight successfully numerous times without much of a struggle but never in a way that was visually noticeable. Now I have muscle, I hope this time will be somewhat different. I might even have a beach body by Summer.
Before waking up from said happy dreamland and chuckling to myself about the absurdity of it. I'm middle aged - get over it XD
It's not really about aesthetics
To be honest, the preventative nature of what I'm doing is far more motivating. Just the other day my wife's grandmother collapsed and broke her hip. She will likely be in a wheelchair now for the rest of her presumably short life; broken hips in the elderly is a fairly reliable marker of when things start to rapidly decline.
This is generally a result of losing bone density as a result of never putting any strain on them to renew and regrow. This is what strength training is really all about. These three cross-sections of people's legs are very illuminating:
The 70-year-old athlete's leg is indistinguishable from the middle-aged athlete's. The idea that we decline as we age is some kind of subversive propaganda making us settle for the Sedentary life because that's just how it is. But notice how much smaller the bones are in the sedentary individual's legs.
I'm too ashamed to show it but I had an MRI once when I did my back in and that fatty leg cross-section looks a lot like my entire body did. Mortifying.
Muscles decay rapidly about 1% a year after 30 - unless you keep 'em alive and working hard. Starting in your 30's will make the difference between jogging up the stairs aged 70, and requiring help to get up every step.
We're never really taught to think that far ahead in life and I think that's a frickin' shame. I'm going in late but not too late.
So yeah, I think I've finally found a mindset in my life where I will likely keep up strength training for a very very long time, indefinitely, so I can age with confidence instead of fear and anxiety.
On the side, time to improve the aesthetics with food. All the muscle in the world won't make a blind bit of difference if it's layered in gooey, squidgy fat.
Well, hope someone gets inspired by this! Mostly just wrote it for myself.
If you aren't going to a gym, I recommend getting some decent resistance bands, wrapping them around a sturdy pole and pulling them in different ways. You will work out moves for it. Some light ones at floor level to do leg raise-y kick-y type moves. Super effective. I have been doing it almost exclusively (at the gym) for a few months and it has been fantastic.
Massive shame. Our entire lives from childhood should be built upon good physicality at the core, and then move on to mind and emotion from there.
I actually bought a resistance band and used it a little but it's got like 45kg resistance or something, really heavy duty. It sounded normal at the time of buying lol.
I'm likely gonna get a set of 3 soon cause, as you say, the leg things are really absent from my routine. My legs have a lot of muscle from daily cycling but the... side-to-side movement is fairly pathetic.
Totally on board with this concept! And yeah just getting the habits in so a kid isn't afraid of team sports or getting their hands dirty. I've seen way too many students here who can't seem to walk normally as a result of an absolute sedentary upbringing. My adulthood has been fairly sedentary but at least my childhood was super active and laid the groundwork
Damn, those photos of the legs!
It tells me to get off my butt and start sports as well!
Love your enthusiasm; Now I have to get this as well
That's the spirit! As weird as it sounds I do find myself squeezing my legs quite often nowadays because I'm still not used to the fact that muscles can actually be that rock solid. Spent too long being jelly instead of rock.
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