Two months ago, I wrote about my goals and plans for June 1st: hoping to gain 12 lbs in 8 weeks.
Yesterday, I stepped on the scale over at my gym and weighed in at 184, one pound short of my target weight. Yeah, it sucks to come up one pound short. But you know what, I still managed to put on 11 freaking pounds (mostly muscle) in only 2 months, and I now weigh more than I ever have in the past. All of you people out there trying to lose weight are probably pissed off at me right now for talking about how tough it is to gain weight; please realize that it’s probably as hard for you to lose weight as it is for me to gain weight. I didn’t eat junk food, I didn’t eat whatever and whenever; I eat probably the same way a person does who’s trying to lose weight, I just have to buy twice as much of it and spend twice as much time eating it.
How did I manage to put on 11 healthy pounds in 8 weeks? I followed this full-body routine 3 days a week in the gym, got some exercise on the two other weekdays, and I ate between 3700 and 4000 calories a day. LOTS of grilled chicken, pasta, lean ground beef, peanut butter sandwiches on whole wheat bread, protein shakes and meal replacement shakes in between actual meals, brown rice, asparagus, apples, orange juice, salads, etc. Sure, I’d treat myself to the occasional meatball sub from Subway (terrible for me, I know, but LOADED with protein and carbs, two things I desperately needed), but for the most part for the past 8 weeks I ate healthy, I ate a lot of food, and I ate often.
So what do I do now? Well, for starters, I need to keep eating and exercising. If I slack off on either end, then my body will quickly revert to my old weight and all the hard work and dedication will have been for nothing. Why will it go back so quickly? It’s because your body, skeleton, organs, etc. all take approximately 6 months to get used to your new weight. Read more about this here.
Also, I’m going to set new goals. My new goals are to get up to 187 lbs (3lb. increase) and to drop my body fat % by 2 points by August 1st (2 months). By gaining 3 lbs, and losing 2 % of my body fat, I’ll have actually put on 6 total lbs. of muscle. Because this goal is less about gaining pounds and more about gaining muscle, I’m going to be adding in extra cardio sessions to my routine. Now, I hate cardio, I hate running long distances, so I’ll be working on finding the most effective cardio in the least amount of time: Sprints, jumping rope at a high speed, kicking my ass on the rowing, and eventually taking some capoeira classes will help me build only lean muscle and give me more energy. You’d be amazed how much you can sweat in only 20 minutes if you really push yourself.
There. Now that this blog is written, I have to be accountable for my actions. We’ll see how I do on August 1st!
-Steve
And now for something completely different: E3 is this week (the most famous video game exposition of the year), and yesterday Star Wars: The Old Republic was announced. It’s a massively-mulitplayer online role playing game by the guys who made Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Jade Empire. Let’s hope the game is bad-ass, because the trailer is incredible:
