Skinny to Strong

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.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I had a 3 day training at work which involved me traveling to a remote location and having to depend completely on the meals and snacks provided at that location. While it is not necessarily a bad thing (because there were a good assortment of healthy snacks and meal options), the training was considerably intense and it distracted me from eating at the right time and right amount. I mostly ate fruits and nuts as snacks in between bigger meals. The meals I ate consisted of rice or tortilla, turkey or chicken or fish, and leafy vegetables. And while I tried to eat as much as possible, I think I did not eat the required amount and as a result I still lost a full 2.2 lbs in just 3 days! I was extremely worried that some of the weight loss would be due to muscle loss. I was also aware that I was not drinking as much water as I should and so I knew some of the weight loss would be just water. I did not know what to expect until yesterday when I first st...

It is already 3 weeks into the new quarter and I did not yet write my goals. I have it in my mind. it is just that I did not put it down on paper yet. So for the next 3 months my goal is to gain 3 lbs of fat while maintaining the same weight. It simply means I will have to convert 3 lbs of fat into muscle! Here are the raw numbers January 1, 2010: Baseline Weight: 125.6 lbs Fat %: 12.5% Fat: 15.7 lbs Lean Mass: 109.9 lbs Note that I am using the caliper measurement for fat. I don't think I can rely on the omron body fat monitor. I will still keep track of the fat numbers from omron fat monitor daily but I probably will not use them in any calculations. Since I cannot take the caliper measurement everyday I will use the fat % number that is closest to a particular date I am refering to. March 31, 2010: Goal Weight: 125.6 lbs Fat %: 10.11% Fat: 12.7 lbs Lean Mass: 112.9 lbs Change in 3 months Weight: 0 Fat %: 2.39 % Fat: -3 lbs Muscle: 3 lbs I will try and not l...

I was having trouble believing the fat numbers using my omron fat monitor, so I analyzed my numbers using the measurements taken with the body fat calipers. There is a world of difference. These numbers are more believable. Makes me think if I should just stop checking fat % using omoron body fat analyzer. It will be an expensive body weight scale then. I take fat caliper measurements every weekend only. As a result I cannot show the pretty graphs that I usually have in my posts because there will only be 4 data points per month. Anyway here are the numbers again but with body fat calipers. October 1, 2009 Stats Weight: 118.51 lbs Fat %: 8.74% Fat: 10.64 lbs Lean Mass: 108.15 lbs December 31, 2009 Stats Weight: 126 lbs Fat %: 11.6% Fat: 14.62 lbs Lean Mass: 111.38 lbs Change in 3 months Weight: 7.49 lbs Fat %: 2.86% Fat: 4.26 lbs Lean Mass: 3.23 lbs Those are much better numbers. When I set the goals I wanted to gain 3.75 lbs of muscle while limiting the fat gain to...

It has been a few days into the new year and looking back at 2009, I have made some really good progress. The year 2009 has been more of an experimental year where I was experimenting with various routines and nutrition and trying to find the ones that work effectively for me. A lot of things happened in 2009. First and most important achievement is starting this blog! Without the blog I would not have a good record of how I felt each day and what changes I have been making and what their effects were. Maintaining a log of just numbers is boring. Written notes puts the numbers into perspective. Looking back into my body building past, I changed my routines many times over to find the right one for me. First I started off with P90X which was not very useful for my body type. I quickly got tired and was over training. A few months of P90X and I did not make any progress at all. Then it was time for strong-lifts and that went well. I gained a lot of strength. I lifted weights ...

Here are the weight and fat graphs for December 2009. Body Weight Graph Since I reached my goal of 125 lbs for the end of december I tried to maintain the same weight while I tried to reduce the fat. So I started eating the right number of calories that I need. As can be seen from the graph I was maintaining my weight for a while but then it started dipping for no apparent reason. I increased my calories a bit and it stared going up quickly. It is quite hard to keep track of the exact amount of food to eat. Body Fat % Graph While I maintained the same weight I started to see an increase in body fat. I was not sure why that would be the case. Am I losing muscle so quickly? A small increase in weight causes the fat to shoot up quickly while a stable weight still increases it slowly. The only option left to loose fat is to loose weight? I don't like the idea at all. I am also doubting the fat monitor. It tends read the fat changes a while after the weight has changed. So if ...

I have been wanting to record what I eat and how much I eat for a while now and I was finally able to do it for 1 day. So this is what I ate on Friday, December 18, 2009. Early morning snack I had a glass of 2% milk early in the morning at around 7 am. Calories: 122 Fat: 4.81 gms Carb: 11.42 gms Prot: 8.05 gms Breakfast For breakfast I had a bowl of cereals. The cereals is a mix of raisin bran and cheerios. I ate this around 9 am. Calories: 175 Fat: 2.19 gms Carb: 34.58 gms Prot: 4.95 gms Morning Snack For my morning snack I had a cup of pineapple and a cup of cottage cheese. This was around 11 am. Calories: 272 Fat: 4 gms Carb: 26 gms Prot: 31 gms Lunch Lunch consisted of chicken burger and fries at 1 pm. Calories: 498 Fat: 20 gms Carb: 51 gms Prot: 27 gms Afternoon Snack Chicken tandoori with a glass of 2% milk at 4 pm. Calories: 253 Fat: 11 gms Carb: 13 gms Prot: 23 gms Dinner Chicken dum biriyani at 7 pm. Calories: 410 Fat: 11 gms ...

Here are the weight and fat graphs for November 2009. Body Weight Chart For the first few days the weight gain was slow, but after a couple of weeks the weight went down. Clear indication that I was not getting enough calories. That was when I increased my calories from 1800 to 2000. See my previous post for more details about it. As soon as I increased the calories I saw a sudden and quick weight increase for a couple of weeks and then it started dipping. I am not sure of the reason, but it could be because I was over training. I rested for the first week of december so that should give enough time for my body to recover. Body Fat % Chart The flip side of gaining weight is the fat. I have been constantly gaining fat. Even during the time when I could not gain any weight I was still getting fat. Perhaps over training, muscle loss and calorie deficiencies could be the reason. I have to take better care of my body. We will see how december goes.

For the sake of posterity, here are the weight and fat graphs from last month Body Weight Chart Body Fat Chart The graphs start from my lowest weight and fat points which was on September 23, 2009. I was about 117.3 lbs at 10.2% body fat at the time. I started eating more calories from there on and now after 5 weeks I am 120.8 lbs at 12.2% body fat. After about 2 weeks of eating a lot I started seeing that my body fat % was moving faster than my weight gradient. So I decided to cut back a little bit, but then I lost weight (and fat) quickly. And then again I increased my calories. Here are the gains I have made last month: Body weight gain: 3.5 lbs Body fat% gain: 2% Body fat gain: 2.8 lbs Muscle mass gain: 0.7 lb I fell very short at my muscle gain, adding just 0.7 lb of muscle while putting on a lot of weight.

Like most people who are dead serious about body building, I too believe in setting goals and trying to reach them. The goals should not be too easy neither should they be too ambitious. And the goals will always be measurable and be limited by time. So we come to the topic of numbers. I live by the numbers. In this post I will tell you what my goals are how I arrived at those numbers. Baseline and Time Taking my current weight and fat % as my starting point, I set myself a difficult yet reachable goal for a time period of 3 months. My weight on October 1, 2009 was 118 lbs at 10% body fat. Here is the data I have now: Time = 3 months Current Weight = 118 lbs Current Fat % = 10% Current Fat Mass = Current Fat % x Current Weight = 10% x 118 = 11.8 lb Current Muscle Mass = Current Weight - Current Fat Mass = 118 - 11.8 = 106.2 lb Muscle Gain Goal Now since I know the deadline which is in 3 months and taking the somewhat commonly agreed muscle growth number of 1 to 1.5 lbs/mont...

In this final post about body fat measurement I will provide you with some of my measurements and make some comparisons between the various measuring devices. First off the omron body fat scale always seems to give higher body fat percentages than the calipers. However there are some formulas in multi-site measurement using calipers that give fat percentages that are way out of the ordinary. Bioelectric impedance method With the omron bioelectric impedance method I am averaging about 11% body fat. I take measurements every day once in the morning and once in the night. I keep averaging the body fat % for the last one week and consider that my body fat % for any given day. Here is the data for the morning readings for the past 2 weeks. The right most 2 columns are my weight and body fat % as measured by the device. The second column is the average for 1 week. Notice how the absolute measurements vary wildly from day to day. But the average is more smoother. Calipers Using the ...

In part 1 I briefly described a couple of convenient methods to measuring body fat. In this post I will tell you what devices I use and how often I take measurements with each of them. I also give my recommendations on which device works best based on my personal experience. I have an accu-measure calipers which I used to use a long time ago to measure body fat. The calipers gave very consistent measurements if done right. I got used to taking the measurements consistently at the same location and accurately too. I just used the one location mentioned in the booklet and for some reason I felt that it gave be a lower fat % reading than I expected. I mean I used to see 9% body fat measurements when I could not see any ab definition. I later used the multi-site measurement methods . I generally take readings with calipers once a week, so it did not bother me much that I had to take so many measurements. Still I was not satisfied because each formula gave a different value for my bod...

I use 3 devices to monitor my body fat. One more than the others, but it is mainly a convenience thing rather than accuracy of measurement. There are very many ways to measure your body fat, but most of them are not accurate perhaps with exception of MRI scan. Even more important to note is the cost of these methods. Some of them are really expensive. This leaves us with 2 ways to measure body fat cheaply and conveniently (at home without having to dip yourself in a pool of water). The first one being the calipers method where you pinch a location on your body and measure the thickness of the pinched part. Then you refer to a chart that gives you a table of fat percentages for each range of thickness measurement. This is considered to be fairly accurate and considered to be almost as good as the gold standard (hydrodensity weighing) when done correctly. Now for the pro and cons Pros It is more or less consistent through out the day and your fat percentages will not change during th...

I found this very interesting article: http://www.biologiclabs.com/advice/details.asp?article_id=23 If you read it and take everything to heart then you will never do cardio again! I like how he debunks the claim that cardio reduces fat %. I agree with almost everything he has to say. I like his simple equation which relates food, muscle, weight and fat. Food determines your weight Strength determines your lean mass The difference is fat If you eat more, you will gain weight. Now if you increase strength proportionally then you will keep the same body fat. At the end of the day you have less body fat % yet you weight more and have more strength. Although putting this principle into practice is not easy. Because you cannot exactly measure how much to eat so that you just gain muscle and not fat (with excess calories). Similarly you cannot be eating less than what is required otherwise you will not see the best strength gains and your recovery and metabolism slows down too. Many...

Having lost a lot of enthusiasm because I took 10 weeks to lose 5% instead of the planned 5 weeks, I decided to finish phase II quickly with a lot of cardio. First I started walking about 2 to 4 miles every other day. Since monday, wednesday and friday were my workout days I decided to go walking on tuesday, thursday and saturday. Sunday being the rest day. But walking did nothing to me. I continued for 3 weeks and my fat % was still in 11% range. First week (august 22, 2009) it was 11.9% no difference at all. Next week (august 29, 2009) it was 11.6%, next week (september 5, 2009) it was 11.7%. I thought I might have reached my plateau. I tried again in one last desperate attempt to reduce fat by taking up running. I never jogged, much less run. I gave it a try on september 1, 2009. I ran as fast as I could. I ran for about 20 to 30 seconds before I was completely out of breath and thought I would die. My shins were killing me. Then it hit me, I was super unhealthy. My body is not ma...

I though the fat reduction process would be very easy for me, being the skinny guy by nature. So according to my plan I wanted to go from 17% to 6% in about 3 months. That gave me 12 weeks to get rid of 11% fat. Remember that I have never gone below 12% in my life. This will be the first time. My body generally settles around 12% BF. I guess every body has a baseline BF % to which the body tries to reach with normal food intake. I split the leaning time into 2 phases. Phase I for 5 weeks and the goal is to reduce from 17% to 12%. A 5% reduction in 5 weeks. About 1% per week. It felt like it was totally doable in the given time without adding any cardio. Just tweaking my calorie intake should take care of it. As per the plan I started eating slightly less every week. I don't know what I did wrong, but it took me 10 weeks to go down to 12% BF! Perhaps I should have cut more calories, but I was worried I will lose strength and muscle. Initially my strength was still going up as I wa...

While I was doing strong lifts, I ate a lot of food. I basically stuffed myself every 3 hours. And I think that was a bad thing. I think the body cannot take a sudden huge inflow of calories. And it has a nice way of showing that I am eating over the limit. If you look at my photo right after the strong lifts season you will notice the effect of over eating. Here it is again I have a belly now. And it is not the soft flabby fat at the lower part of the midsection. Before I explain I should first start with the types of body fat that effect the midsection. So there are 2 types of fat - subcutaneous fat and visceral fat. Subcutaneous fat is the fat that settles at the lower part of midsection. This is soft and you can measure the fat by pinching your skin and measuring the thickness. Visceral fat is the fat that surrounds the internal organs. This is hard and settles in the upper part of midsection. You cannot pinch it. Although I had some flab I noticed that the upper portion was p...

I guess I should be giving the customary before and after photos. So here we go. The left photo is before I started strong lifts and the right one is after. As I mentioned in my previous blogs, I do not maintain photos as I should be. Perhaps I never will. We will see. However I do have several photos from my various visits to friends / parties / outings / hiking trips. So I should be able to find something for almost anything :). Don't know if anyone can notice, but I have gained a few pounds in the right image. The right photo is not from my peak weight of 127 lb (think I was 125 lb at the time), but I have slightly bigger arms, shoulders, chest and belly. Here is one more. This is the photo that is taken when I was at my peak body weight. But since my hands are not visible I did not use it for the before after comparison. I look bigger than the previous 2 photos. But at 17% fat I am not sure if the size increase is a result of muscle or fat. Whatever the case may be,...

During my strong lifts phase I decided to up my calories by at least 500 calories. But how much am I eating now? To get that number I opened an account in dailyburn and started entering what I usually eat. It came out to be something like 1350 to 1500. Then I made a conscious effort to eat 1750 to 2000 calories. Also decided to eat every 3 hours for a total of 6 meals. So I have to eat about 300 calories per meal. Simple enough. I then increased the amount of food that I ate and logged everything in dailyburn. I was not easily able to eat that much food every 3 hours. I felt very full all the time. Then after reading about another skinny guy in strong lifts I decided to go with a lot of milk instead of solid food. I felt slightly better but still felt like I was over eating. During this time I tried to eat clean, but cheated several times. I weighted about 120 lb with about 12.5% body fat when I started. My goal was to gain 10 lbs while not going beyond 17% body fat. I tracked my bo...

It was sometime in early January of 2009. It suddenly hit me. While I was getting stronger doing P90X, I was also feeling that I was gaining weight. All the exercises are making me more hungry and since I was still eating junk, I basically ate more junk. I could see my gut project out ever so slightly for the first time. I did not like what I saw. That is when I decided to invest in some body fat measuring device. After a thorough search on the internet and reading about pros and cons of various devices I decided to buy 2 of them. I initially bought a body fat calipers that was recommended by many experts from body building forums. It was easy to use, but I am not sure if I am taking the readings properly or not but when I measured at the location mentioned in the booklet I always got less body fat. Something like 12%. I was sure I was not at that body fat percentage. So I went ahead and brought myself a body weight and body fat measuring scale . This was very easy to use. In addi...