Yeah so I've kind of maxxed out what I can do at home in terms of raw muscular strength/size compared to the weights (and soon, bands) I have available.
I can bench press 3 sets with 60kg, and my dumbbells top out at 20kg each. Anything beyond 60kg above my head is really quite dangerous.
But this is perfect and part of my long term plan. I have no intention of being a muscle chad man, breaking mirrors by merely flexing in front of them. I'm almost 40 ffs.
No, the plan now is to fork out the journey to two prongs: Diet and Form.
Now, rather than hypertrophy, or struggling until you almost shit yourself by pushing as hard as you can, I can instead focus on posture, technique, balance between the two sides of my body. Refining.
This is important for me because my body is so immensely imbalanced, to the point that my tie doesn't even line up with my shirt buttons because one shoulder just doesn't agree with the other.
Despite being left handed, my life side just seems overall more developed in most areas except biceps, the right of which clearly seems larger. Total mess, and certainly a result of my terrible lifestyle of bad posture. Consequences are very noticeable with loads of headaches, body aches, and more.
I also want to increase some elements of flexibility. I will Asian squat if it kills me.
I'm really looking forward to it. But it's all for naught if people vomit every time they see me walk along the beach. So;
I've dieted plenty in the past, but I don't like to stick to things like Keto. What works best for me historically is just eating less, typically by skipping meals. I find this quite easy compared to most people. It's effective. I've lost 10kg+ in the past, but it wasn't conducive to muscle gain so I stopped and piled on the pounds again.
I'm giving the serious calorie counting a go for a couple of months using Samsung's thing, and other health stuff connected via my RingConn.
Given I'm not autistic, but nerdy enough people always accuse me of it, I find this really fascinating and really informs me of everything I'm doing wrong.
Today, currently 4:30pm, I've had 784 calories, giving me about 1,200 for dinner. But dinner is a problem because almost every meal I've ever known is like 20,000 calories.
And not only that, they tend to contain way more sugar, and oddly sodium, whatever that is, than I ever would have thought. A single meal takes me into the deep scary orange of TOO MUCH:
Here's me thinking a Japanese-style pork cutlet was moderately healthy.
I tried to make my own food more and attempted a Sun-dried chicken pasta which sounds lovely and healthy. Unfortunately I followed some American recipe and it was just ridiculous. Half & Half? Wtf is that? A carton of milk mixed with cream? You fat fucks. And why is that even in my sundried tomato pasta recipe??
Well, I went with it anyway and it was damn tasty but yeah, three bites in and I'm at 4,000 calories.
So the journey to craft my dinner is pretty tough. Cheese alone is like 1,000 calories per bite.
I'm starting with berry-protein smoothies. Given I'm going with calorie deficit, if you don't have protein, all the muscles I worked so hard for will vanish.
For me at least, the key is to just find meals I can eat repeatedly basically forever.
Every day at work:
with a thermos bowl to keep things hot: honey/peanut butter, 80g of rolled oats, a scoop of protein powder, boiling water.
A banana
a 2 litre thermos flask with two teabags, a pinch of sugar and a dash of milk, for the whole day.
Still figuring it out, but it'll involve smoothies with 'Powdered peanut butter' (fewer calories than the normal stuff) and berries. Probably make myself a choice of 3 things. One pasta, one 'cheat day' type thing. And something else.
Generally I'm sitting around a 750-800 calorie deficit which is more aggressive than I'd like, cause again, it risks losing muscle. But I just feel like progress is way too slow otherwise. Not because I'm desperate to lose weight, but more the fact that we humans always, always underestimate how many calories we consume.
When I've jotted down 1,900, it's likely more like 2,200. Too many variable in every ingredient.
God, if anyone actually read this far I'll shoot myself in the foot. Well done!
But yeah I feel really very committed now I enjoy it. Motivation isn't the key, it seems. Making things a habit is much more powerful. You do it even when you're not feeling it.
