I’ve just completed week one on my new muscle building plan, and I’ve found the new routine a lot more intense than I thought I would and the shorter rest periods in between sets is going to take some getting used to. Food wise I started off OK, but the batteries on my kitchen scales run out and due to the snow outside I didn’t feel like going out to get some more. So for most of the week I was guessing my food portions, which isn’t really the way to go if I’m too succeed and gain plenty of lean muscle mass. My plan is to get my body weight up to 220 pounds then start cutting weight back down to 200 pounds.
My starting weight last week was 200.8 pounds with a body fat percentage of 21.5% this equated to 157.5 pounds in lean body mass and 43.1 pounds of fat. At this weeks weigh in I managed to gain 3 pounds in body weight but my body fat percentage went up slightly to 22.3%. This equates to 158.4 pounds in lean body mass and 45.4 pounds of fat. This means that in the three pounds that I gained 0.9 pounds was lean body mass and 2.1 pounds was fat.
This is now good news so far, my goal was to gain around 15 pounds of lean muscle mass and only 5 pounds of fat. But I’ve already put on 2.1 pounds of fat so far, which is not good. I need to knuckle down and follow my new muscle building plan exactly as its written. The weather outside has got a little better and all the snow has nearly gone now, which I’m happy about.
I’ve just completed my first workout for this week and it went really well, I’m getting use to the shorter rest periods a little better than I did last week. Didn’t do any cardio last week, so looking at the first weeks results it way be a good idea to throw some cardio in the mix. I want to get bigger, but I definitely don’t want to get fatter. Over the coming weeks I plan on telling you every thing I’m doing on my new muscle building plan.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Thanks for sharing your progress. It’s nice to see someone else’s experience with this. My body composition has been stuck at approximately 201 lbs and 21% BF for several years, and I was exercising regularly.
I just started doing my cardio as sprints (10 x 50m swim, 10 x stair running, 10 x beach running). I’ve also been weight training (high weight, low-rep) three times a week, doing multi-joint exercises like squat/bench press/pull-up. I also started eating only a handful of food whenever I got hungry, instead of eating “meals” in order to feel full. I’ve lost 4% body fat in the last month and it really hasn’t been that hard. I’m at 17% and am going for single digits.
FWIW, I think the sprints have been helping the most. I’ve never seen these kinds of results in such a short span of time, maybe sprints would be useful to you as well.
Best of luck!