Eating 6 to 8 meals a day. Yet the gains are slow.

It has been a while since my last post. I got pretty busy at work fitting into a new role. But truth be told, I am just lazy :). Reality aside, I have been very strict with both my diet and exercise. Never missed a meal or workout in the last couple of months. Eating clean and often has become second nature to me. I have almost no craving for bad food. In the past month, I only had dessert just once. Given the amount of tasty free food we have at work (I routinely pass by 6 to 8 yummy desserts in a day), that is quite an achievement.

I am still eating white rice several times a week, lots of fruits and a ton of milk everyday. Which may not be ideal for most people, but for ectomorphs like myself, it is not a problem at all. Yet I barely gain 0.5 lbs a week. I shake my head in disappointment. There were times when I ate as many as 10 meals, but routinely it is more like 6 to 8 meals. Other than eating some junk food, I am not sure how I can eat any more calories than that.

Weight increments on my lifts have also slowed down. I think I may be reaching a point where I will not be able to lift more unless I gain weight which simply means I have to eat more. I will try even harder...

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Stats for Oct 2009

So it has been a month since I started bulking up. How am I doing so far? Here are the raw numbers Exercises Squats: 170 lbs, 8 reps Deadlifts: 185 lbs, 10 reps Bench Press: 110 lbs, 4 reps Pull ups: Body weight + 25 lbs, 7 reps Overhead Press: 75 lbs, 6 reps I am doing well in all exercises except bench press. The exercise that is already closest to my goal for end of december is my pull-ups. I can already do 7 reps with 25 lbs hanging off my waist! You can check out my previous post for the goals I have set. Body weight and fat Weight: 120.8 lbs Fat %: 12.2% I am able to add weight as expected. But my body fat % shot up too much. My goal for end of december was to weight 125 lbs at 12% body fat. But I am already over the limit for my body fat %. So I have to lower it and at the same time increase my weight. Very unlikely. I might have to revise my goals, but I will see how it goes and hope to make better predictions for my next bulking phase. It is not at all easy to ke...

The Skinny Guy Diet

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The Big Switch: Strength Training to Muscle Mass Training

I have so far been training for strength without giving any though to the muscle mass. My aim was to do 3x5 benchpress, rows with 1x my body weight, squat with 1.5x and deadlift with 2x. I have reached all my goals except for deadlift goal. So now that I have enough strength I want to switch my training to build muscle mass. Another reason is because I am getting bored with the strength training and my central nervous system seems to be getting taxed heavily for too long. Switching to muscle mass training means nothing more than reducing the weights to 80% instead of 90 to 95% and then doing 8 to 10 reps instead of 3 to 6 reps. I am not going to completely switch to muscle mass training. I plan to do strength training one week and muscle mass training the next week. Here is my plan Week 1: 3 x 8 with 80% 1RM Week 2: 6 x 4 with 90% 1RM Week 3: 3 x 9 with 80% 1RM Week 4: 7 x 4 with 90% 1RM Week 5: 3 x 10 with 80% 1RM Week 6: 8 x 4 with 90% 1RM At the end of the 6 weeks and ass...

Skinny to Strong

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