Skinny to Strong

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...

I am feeling sick today. Perhaps some virus that I caught at work yesterday. I have runny nose and itchy, dry sore throat slight fever and headache. Have been making good progress so far. This is an unfortunate time to get sick. I know what happened when I got sick last time. I went down from 121.4 lbs to 117.8 lbs in just 5 days. Almost lost 4 lbs. This time I just hope I can at least keep my current weight. When I am healthy I have to force myself to eat a ton of food just to maintain my weight. But when I am sick it is hard to eat so much, so many times. Moreover digesting protein even in the form of milk, eggs or chicken is very hard on the stomach. And I know my body will ravage the muscle if I don't eat enough protein everyday. I will try to drink as much milk and eat eggs during this time. But I am not positive that I will be able to maintain my muscle and weight. Will do another post after I get well again along with the muscle and weight loss stats :(.

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 in...

A while ago I decided to switch to eating clean because I was unable to lose any more fat while maintaining muscle with my junk food diet. However a few days later I discovered that I lost a considerable amount of muscle as a result of my work related travel and my tendency to eat less as I was trying to lean. As a result I decided to go back to mass building phase and increased my food intake. But the sad news is that after all my efforts to eat clean and eat a lot, I am still losing weight (and fat too, which is good). For an ectomorph eating clean means it is even harder to put on weight. In the last 3 weeks (about the time when I first started to bulk up), my fat % went down from 9.92% to 9.46% and my weight from 122 lbs to 120.8 lbs. This eating clean thing is killing me. It is very hard to stuff oneself with clean food. Which is why I fear I may not be able to put on any weight if I continue doing this. I have to find some way to increase the number of calories. Although I am...

For the last few months my goals have always been around weight, fat and muscle. But this time I want to try something different. I am finding it really hard to make sense of the varying weight and fat numbers. So this time I want to have strength goals (which always should go up). Again these can vary a bit too, but I want to give it a try and see how I do with strength goals. At the end of March 2010, the numbers for some compound exercises are as follows (able to do 3 x 5): Squats: 175 lbs Bench Press: 125 lbs Rows: 95 lbs Shoulder Press: 65 lbs Deadlift: 200 lbs Looking at the past trend for most of my compound exercises, I see a 5 lbs increase per month in the weight that I can lift. Extrapolating that for 3 months I should be able to lift about 15 lbs more than I lifted at the end of March. Just to make it a bit more challenging I throw in an extra 5 lbs to the goals. So the final goal for each of the compound exercises should be a 20 lbs increase in the lifts. But...

I was thinking about what all these bulking and leaning phases have done to me. Am I improving physically? I am sure I am getting stronger just by looking at the weights that I have been lifting. But what about size? Did I grow at all? The body weight is not very accurate because it depends a lot on water retention and the muscle and fat numbers vary a bit depending on your state when you took your readings and measurements. So to answer the question about physical size improvements I refer to my body measurement logs. I take body measurements every month which allows me to look back at my gains. I typically measure chest, waist, hips, right and left biceps and right thigh. I improved in every measurement that I took. They are not huge improvements like they show on TV or internet, but they are good enough to keep me motivated. Here are the raw numbers at the end of last 2 leaning phases: September 2009 Chest: 32.5 in. Waist 27.25 in. Right Bicep: 12.125 in. Right thigh: 19.0 i...