Skinny to Strong

A few friends and neighbours have been asking me for advice on diet. Unfortunately I am not in a position to propose a diet that works for everyone. I have experimented with myself with a variety of diets during bulking and cutting phases. Some worked some failed. But in the end I am more knowledgeable than when I started, but I don't think I have the silver bullet. But more importantly I have information about diets that works for me. And may be more generally it may work for other skinny folks. So in today's post I just want to layout my eating habits in the hope that it might help other skinny guys out there. To start off, I have most recently switched away from my 6 meals a day hogging to a more reasonable 3 meals a day with an optional snack. Gone are the days when I tried to stuff myself with food whether I was hungry or not. Those medium size meals every 3-4 hours were just not doing it for me. I always felt full and bloated. Was becoming more lethargic and was gainin...

For the longest time I have been looking forward to the day when I will be able to squat 1.5 times my body weight for 8 reps. And that dream has been realized last week :). I am not really sure where I read this, but to be called an advanced body builder one should be able to Squat 1.5 times body weight x 8 reps Deadlift 2.0 times body weight x 8 reps Bench press 1.2 times body weight x 8 reps Shoulder press 0.9 times body weight x 8 reps So I set those as my goals. Finally I am able to squat 1.5 times my body weight. However I still have a long way to go for the rest of the exercises. I am unable to find out where I read about those proportions, but a quick Google search provides me with this alternate proportions that I will use in the future. My weight is 118 lbs (about 53.5 kgs) and I did a 80 kgs squat (20 kg + 10 kg plates on either side + 20 kg bar). so that comes out to be 1.5 times my weight. Here is a video of me doing the squats taken with my phone. ...

It is now 2 months into 2013 and wanted to give a little update on the fat %. Just like the weight gain phase that ended with me unable to add any more weight after touching 138 lbs, the fat cutting phase is similarly causing problems. I was able to lose a bit more fat since the end of 2012, but not by much. The 3 site Jackson/Pollock method puts me at 7.02% about 0.5% less than my previous best at the end of 2012. Even so, I feel like I am somewhere between 9-10% by looking myself in the mirror. And here are some pictures to prove it (sorry about the grainy pictures, they were taken in low light). Since I was stuck at 7.02% for a while now, I decided to start the bulking phase again. This time with a twist. I will try and keep my body fat to less than 10% and see how much weight I can gain and how long it is going to take. More updates towards the end of the year :).

If you have missed my previous post , you might want to read that first . As promised here are the graphs for 2012. My weight stubbornly stayed at about 138 lbs for the longest time. No matter how much I tried to eat, I could not gain any more weight. Around June I decided to go for cutting phase and that worked fine except I lost a lot of lean mass too. But I was at least closing the gap between weight and lean mass, indicating a reduction of fat. The gap after end of June is when I could not go to gym or check my weight. Now for the fat % graph. The fat came down really quickly as is normally the case with my body type. By the end of the year I was at 7.5% body fat and weighed in at 119 lbs. Although it seems like I am at 7.5% body fat using the 3 site Jackson/Pollock method, looking myself in the mirror, I would say I am at around 9-10%. What next? I am not really sure. At the end of the year in 2012, I was thinking I should continue to cut down the fat until I am real...

If you missed my previous post , you might want to read that first . Like I mentioned in my previous post, the goal for the year 2012 suddenly took a U-turn. Instead of continuing on with weight gain phase to reach 154 lbs, I decided to start a fat cutting phase, just for the simple reason that I am unable to gain any more weight no matter how much I eat. It is now June 2012 and I have decided to lose fat. I cut down on my forceful over feeding and went back to good old 3 square meals a day with a snack in the evening. All the meals were regular sized ones, i.e. when I felt full, I stopped. Unlike before when I had to force feed. I felt way better with the normal diet. No more feeling of full all the time. My stomach was also feeling great. No more ahem, flatulence. I was gradually losing weight and fat. As is always the case with cutting down phase for me, I was losing a healthy dose of muscle as well. Come July, I had to do another US trip for 4 weeks this time. And again I to...

It seems like I am only finding enough time to post updates every year now :). So what happened over the last 1 year since my previous update.Well lets see, last year when I wrote my earlier post, I was at 138.6 lbs and I voiced my intents on gaining more weight until I reach 154 lbs. How did that go? Not so well actually and I ended up losing 20 lbs instead. Whoa! Yeah I know. What happened was, I was a bit busy (moved to a new house) most of January, 2012 and then in February I had to travel to the US for a couple of weeks and then the jet lag and everything put together, I could not workout for the first 2 months in 2012. The good news is, I did not lose any of my weight. I still weighed in at about 138 lbs through out that period. How did I do it? Just ate a lot of food although I was not working out. I was happy to see how I could keep my weight. The hope was that I am keeping all my muscle during that time. Little did I know, how wrong I was. I started working out again in Ma...

It has been more than a year since I updated this blog. But the good news is, I am not as irregular with my gym though. Having moved to India early last year, I had a lot of catching up to do, not to mention all the re-learning that I had to do since it has been almost 9 years in the US. Anyway back to the topic of weight training, I have switched to a new program and this time it is called the Scrawny to Brawny program. Another program for the skinny folks and another attempt to become huge in no time. Meh, it does not work that way. Boring stuff aside, I did really like the organization of the book and the exercise program as well. Basically you start off with a form and body posture correction in Phase I, then move on to some heavy lifting to build up some of those primary muscles in Phase II, and concentrate on lifting very heavy with high intensity low reps in Phase III and finally in Phase IV an attempt to get rid of the huge amount of fat you might have gained in the previ...

Image via Wikipedia It has been a long time since I gave any updates on my progress. Actually it is almost 3 months! There have been a lot of developments on my personal front which was the main cause of this much delayed update. My progress has slowed down considerably too. I was hoping to be at 140 lbs by the end of this year with 7% body fat. That seems like a dream that will not be fulfilled this year. I will not even be able to meet the 140 lb goal let alone the body fat %. So what happened to me over the last 3 months? I have been in the US for more than 8 years now! I loved every moment that I was here, starting from the early struggling days of my MS to my current stable job state of today. However even before coming to US, I promised to myself that I will be back in India after gaining 5 years of work experience in US. Now that the goal has been realized, it is time to move back to India. So in the last 3 months I have been working towards the goal of moving back to India. M...

I have not been updating my blog for some time now, mostly because I had nothing to update. I am still doing the same exercises and still trying to gain weight irrespective of my fat %. The good news is that I have finally reached a weight of 130 lbs. This has been my dream ever since I started working out some 2 years ago. The journey has not been easy at all. For some time I was stuck at 125 lbs (which was my previous high before I decided that I had to lose fat before I start gaining again). My body seems to have some kind of resistance at my previous weight set point of 125. I could not break it no matter what I did. But before going into more details, take a look at my graphs first. Weight Chart Fat % Chart Lean Mass Chart As you can see, I was trying to break 125 since early June. But no matter how much I tried, I could not break it. I was about 125 for a full 2 months. I got really frustrated. I was eating the same kind of food and about the same amount every day. I did n...

Image via Wikipedia Last few weeks have not been very fruitful. Even as I was working out as hard as I used to, I kept losing weight. Adding insult to injury was my fat gain. In any case I decided to change my workouts yet again to "fix" the weight loss program that I got myself into. I intend to do only 2 whole body workouts per week. Each one consisting of 4 to 5 exercises depending on my motivation. I also decided to go with 3x8 for all exercises like I usually do every other 3 months. Here is my new routine Monday (back and biceps affinity) Incline Bench Press Squats Rows Bicep Curls Calf Raise Thursday (chest, shoulder and tricep affinity) Bench Press Deadlifts Shoulder Press Tricep Press Leg Raise I have been doing a lot of lower chest exercises in the last few months including decline bench press and dips. I have a feeling that my upper chest is holding me back. So I removed dips and decline bench press and added incline bench press. That should...

In my previous post I set some strength goals. But a few weeks after writing that, I switched to a more balanced muscle mass and strength training. So it is harder to reach those goals. Anyhow here are the numbers. Exercise / Start (March) / Goal (June) / Peak Squat / 175 lbs / 195 lbs / 185 lbs Bench Press / 125 lbs / 145 lbs / 135 lbs Row / 95 lbs / 110 lbs / 100 lbs Shoulder Press / 65 lbs / 80 lbs / 80 lbs Deadlift / 200 lbs / 240 lbs / 215 lbs I 10 lbs away from reaching my goals for Squat, Bench Press and Row. I would not have been able to reach those goals even if I did not do the big switch . Unless I gain some quality weight I cannot expect to lift a lot more. Still need to work on that. I was however able to reach my shoulder press goal. Sweet! Deadlift is lagging behind. My legs and back are probably strong enough to lift 240 lbs, but my fingers are losing grip. Which is the main problem. I am planning more changes to my exercises and diet. I will follow up on ...

In my previous post I wrote about my progress in the last 3 weeks of June. Not very good right. Instead of gaining a pound a week like most other weeks before, I only gained 0.2 lbs per week during those 3 weeks. But there is more bad news to come. Look at these graphs. Weight Chart Body Fat% Chart Lean Mass Chart What happened here? I lost a whole lot of weight, but even worse I lost a lot of muscle and my fat % increased. How did it happen? Well I was out vacationing on the July 4th weekend. In the 4 days I visited Grand Canyon, Tucson, Disney Land and Universal Studios. While I tried to eat as much as I can and as often as I could, I did not eat enough times and most meal was more than I should have eaten. The calories just piled up in sudden bursts and then there was too much gap between meals. Add to it, all the walking I had to do through out the day and then add the stress that is associated with such a tightly packed vacation, the planning, the driving etc. I was burning ...

Ever since I switched from strength training to muscle mass gain, I have had trouble gaining weight. Unfortunately I cannot blame the new program. There are a variety of reasons that are responsible. First let me start off by showing the chart that shows my weight gain progress in the last 3 months. Observe how the curve looks like when I am healthy and gaining weight. This is represented by the slopes from 4/10/2010 to 5/8/2010 and from 5/15/2010 to 6/5/2010. Right around 6/5/2010 I switched to mass gain program. And then I lost weight the first week, then started to gain very little if any after that. Now for the breakdown by week. 6/5 to 6/12 During this week I probably lost weight because I was over-training. When I switched out of strength training I miscalculated that I would not require as many days to recover while on mass gain program. I was probably wrong. I went from 2 workouts per week to 4 workouts. With the new schedule, I saw a dip in my weight while I maintained e...

In my previous post I gave some body weight and fat numbers for the 3 month period starting from April 2010 to Jun 2010. It is now time for some graphs. Here are my weight, fat and lean mass graphs for the same period. Weight Chart Fat% Chart Lean Mass Chart As you can see I pretty much kept my fat% constant. There were a few jumps here and there, but in the end, I am still under 10% body fat and can still see my abs definition slightly as is expected at around 10% BF. Now for some observations. Right before I got sick my weight jumped a lot. That was around May 8th. The gain was probably just water weight. My body was perhaps retaining water as I was about to get sick. Interestingly, my caliper measurements have also gone awry and showed higher fat percentage. Right after I got sick and as I started recovering, I lost a lot of weight. This was around May 15th. There is a sharp drop in the weight and fat % dropped to the normal value. But I did lose some muscle as a result of fa...

After a long time, I am writing about my body stats. Since I follow a 3 months cycle, I will compare my weight and fat% with my March numbers. March 27, 2010 Weight: 122.2 lbs Fat %: 9.77% Fat: 11.94 lbs Lean Mass: 110.26 lbs June 26, 2010 Weight: 125.4 lbs Fat %: 9.46% Fat: 11.86 lbs Lean Mass: 113.54 lbs The difference Weight: 3.2 lbs Fat: -0.8 lbs Lean Mass: 3.28 lbs For the first time ever (in any given 3 month cycle), I gained weight while keep my fat about the same. Of course there could be some measurement errors too. But all in all I gained at least 3 lbs of muscle. Still keeping in line with my 1 lb per month gain. This is good enough for me. Trying to gain too much, too quickly is causing my fat to shoot up really quickly. I did not achieve this gain constantly over the period of 3 months. Sometimes I gained a lot and at other times I lost a few pounds. Here is the weight graph to show just that More graphs and correlation between them in my next post.

In my last post , I mentioned about the big switch from strength training to a more balanced muscle mass training and strength training. In this new program, I attempt to keep my weights in 80 to 90% 1RM instead of the heavy 90 to 95% 1RM, I used before for strength training. I used to do 2 workout per week during my strength training regimen. Usually it was on Mondays and Thursdays. Occasionally I would do another workout on Saturdays, time and motivation permitting. On Mondays and Thursdays I used to do 4 exercises. One for each body part Chest and triceps (bench press or dips) Back and biceps (rows or pull-ups) Quads and Hamstrings (deadlifts or squats) Calves or Abs They are mostly concentrated towards bigger muscle groups. On the occasional Saturdays I used to do these exercises Shoulder press Barbell Bicep curls Close grip bench press After switching to the new program and doing a couple of sessions with the lighter weights, I felt like I was not doing enough per w...

In my previous post I mentioned that I switched from strength training to a more balanced strength and muscle mass training. Why the switch? There are several reasons. First and foremost, it so happened that I have plateaued in most of my exercises. Especially bench, rows and pull-ups. I wanted to have some change in the routine to keep me moving without tiring myself to loss of motivation. I wanted to go back to my 8 reps exercises as I have done before I switched to 3x5 back in February 2010 so I can keep moving. Second, it is a well known fact that low rep (4-6) high weight (90-100% 1RM) exercises are useful in developing strength and high rep (8-10) and low weight (70-80% 1RM) exercises help in developing muscle mass. There are literally thousands (if not millions) of articles on this very subject. I will not elaborate especially because I do not know the mechanics or the biology behind the theory. So it is natural that I decided to go with some muscle mass trying to break the...

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...

So I went to the gym with a co-worker who has not been doing workouts for a long time. We both used to workout together about 8 months ago. And then he stopped coming. I continued working out. After all this while he came to the gym and was pleasantly surprised with how much progress I made. He said "you really bulked up well and became very strong from the last time I remembered". He was the same guy who used to say I lift the "ladies weights". It is a great feeling coming from him. I still cannot compete with him in many exercises especially bench press and rows. Because I don't weigh as much as him and more weight - fat = more muscle and even after factoring out my relatively low body fat, I cannot match his muscle mass. I am equal to his strength when it comes to body weight exercises like pull-ups and dips. I still have to gain a ton of weight before I can make any big claims and gaining weight is the toughest thing for me. But for now, I am glad people...

As I mentioned in my last post, I got sick last weekend. I have allergies which means from time to time the runny nose and sneezing can take a toll on the immune system. The scenario gets even worse if an antihistamine is taken right after a heavy bout of exercise during a season of flu. The antihistamines suppress the immune system further, allowing viruses to attack the human body. This is the sequence of events that took place last week and is usually the sequence that leads to me getting sick often during flu seasons. Anyway long story short, I contracted this flu from a co-worker when I was at my weakest on Thursday evening last week. I did not feel too bad on Friday morning, but come nightfall I was totally exhausted and running a slight fever. Matters got even worse on Saturday. I was only fully recovered by Wednesday. However the damage is already done. I worked hard forcing myself to overeat a couple of weeks ago which gave me an impressive 1.4 lbs gain (body weight is 124.6...