21 year old male, 5’6"-5’7", 135-140 lbs. I believe I qualify as skinny fat, even though I work a construction job 40 hours a week, it just so happens that doing physical labor every day does not guarantee you will be ripped. My goal isn’t to necessarily be ripped though as it is to be healthy.
As you can see i’m not hairy either, sort of wondering if there’s any way I could increase T and DHT naturally short of supplementation. I don’t think I’m as healthy as a I could be.
Advice needed, should I gain weight? Lose weight? Watch what I eat or eat everything in sight? Thanks
I’m 145 lbs at 5’8" and I’m healthy, but I think “being healthy” is a bit of a vague goal. If you’re reasonably active (and in your job you would be) and don’t have any serious medical conditions then you’re healthy. So if just “being healthy” is your goal, then keep doing what you’re doing. For anything else you will have to be more specific. There is no “one size fits all” ideal build for you, it all depends on what you want to do. It’s stupid to give you the generic advice of eat more and start deadlifting if you secretly want to do gymnastics/endurance running/climbing/martial arts/free running, etc.
If I were 21 again, the best gift I could give to myself is learning how to cook.
Go get a slow cooker. They’re like $20. When you wake up in the morning, throw in some sort of tough/fatty meat, a bunch of veggies, some sort of soup mix/spices and soak the whole thing in water. Let it cook all day while you work, come home to a hot meal and enjoy. Eat the leftovers for lunch the next day.
I wasted so much of my youth eating garbage because I could get away with it.
EDIT: Oh yeah, and along with a slow cooker, I’d get a Foreman grill. They’re cheap, easy to clean, and cook meat just fine. Can do batches of stuff on the weekends with them.
Have you gotten bloodwork done that indicates you have low T? A picture of your body is not sufficient evidence of this. All this shows is that you don’t workout.
@T3hPwnisher
Solid advice, and I agree. The only fly in the ointment is when the company goes for lunch and buys me shit 5 days a week. Apart from that though, I can pretty much cook healthyish on the weekends.
@flipcollar
Testosterone was tested once, and in the morning. It was 400. Make of that what you will. As far as not working out, yeah so I’m not ripped. I can however run 13 miles, am strong enough to do my job and am more flexible and fatigue a lot less than some of the fat fucks I work with. But I guess I probably have pretty high body fat % then, huh?
Thankfully, getting married young taught me the secret to eating a brown bagged lunch when all of your other co-workers go out. It’s tough, but it’s worth it.
no idea what your bodyfat is. probably 15-20 percent, something in that range. That’s about as close I can reasonably guess.
I guess I just don’t really understand your goals. I assumed that you have physique-related goals, because you produced a picture of your physique to start the thread. Your physique will be improved if you add muscle mass, which is accomplished through resistance training, ie lifting weights.
If your goal is simply to do your job and be able to run a lot, then I guess you’re fine?
As far as the only real question in your original post, the answer is more or less no, aside from having a good diet. If you want to improve your physique, we’ll need an idea of what your goal physique looks like/can do in order to point you in the right direction
[quote]flipcollar wrote:
Your physique will be improved if you add muscle mass, which is accomplished through resistance training, ie lifting weights.
If your goal is simply to do your job and be able to run a lot, then I guess you’re fine?
[/quote]
This. Your looks say very little about your ‘health’, which is a very vague term. You need to get more precise goals before you can make a plan. You are probably healthy right now. If you want to LOOK (!) better, that’s a different discussion.
I’d like an overall more muscled physique basically. Thicker forearms, broader shoulders, et cetera. Kind of graduate from the skinny adolescent phase I’ve had for too long now.
I’m 5’6"-5’7"…maybe around 160 lbs cut would be good?
Genetically speaking - I think I have some potential, my dad is 5’7", 192 lbs but he isn’t as soft as you would expect. He has a belly, but has quite a bit of muscle he has built over the years from farm work and construction.
[quote]dave670 wrote:
I’d like an overall more muscled physique basically. Thicker forearms, broader shoulders, et cetera. Kind of graduate from the skinny adolescent phase I’ve had for too long now.
I’m 5’6"-5’7"…maybe around 160 lbs cut would be good?
Genetically speaking - I think I have some potential, my dad is 5’7", 192 lbs but he isn’t as soft as you would expect. He has a belly, but has quite a bit of muscle he has built over the years from farm work and construction. [/quote]
Then start lifting weights and eating well. It’s pretty simple, actually.
[quote]flipcollar wrote:
Your physique will be improved if you add muscle mass, which is accomplished through resistance training, ie lifting weights.
If your goal is simply to do your job and be able to run a lot, then I guess you’re fine?
[/quote]
This. Your looks say very little about your ‘health’, which is a very vague term. You need to get more precise goals before you can make a plan. You are probably healthy right now. If you want to LOOK (!) better, that’s a different discussion.[/quote]
Also worth noting “looking better” is also a very vague goal. It begs the question “looking better for who?”. I know we all think we have the same ideal physique, but talk to 10 different people and you’ll get 10 different answers.
[quote]dave670 wrote:
I’d like an overall more muscled physique basically. Thicker forearms, broader shoulders, et cetera. Kind of graduate from the skinny adolescent phase I’ve had for too long now.
I’m 5’6"-5’7"…maybe around 160 lbs cut would be good?
Genetically speaking - I think I have some potential, my dad is 5’7", 192 lbs but he isn’t as soft as you would expect. He has a belly, but has quite a bit of muscle he has built over the years from farm work and construction. [/quote]
This is not a particularly lofty goal. Almost any workout template can get you to this point over the course of a year or 2. The key will be consistency. Consistency in terms of showing up for every workout, and consistency in terms of how hard you work in the gym. I suggest a very basic template with few exercises involved, at least to start. Don’t do a complicated bodybuilder-type routine that involves dozens of exercises. Keep it simple, and work from there.
Re: Still skinny fat despite working in construction:
[quote]dave670 wrote:
Genetically speaking - I think I have some potential, my dad is 5’7", 192 lbs but he isn’t as soft as you would expect. He has a belly, but has quite a bit of muscle he has built over the years from farm work and construction. [/quote]
YEARS, NOT 2 MONTHS!
[quote]dave670 wrote:
Thanks. How much weight should I add and how slowly should I put it on? [/quote]
You said you weigh 135 to 140 right now, and you want to weigh 160. So you need to add 20-25 lbs to meet your goal…
As for how fast this should happen, I would say that it should be accomplished over the course of about a year. Over subsequent years you could add more weight if you decided 160 is not your end goal, or you could continue to add muscle mass/decrease fat while staying at the approximately the same weight.
[quote]dave670 wrote:
Well as I mentioned increasing DHT and natural test levels would be nice. I care more about that than gaining mass [/quote]
Out of curiosity, why?
T is just a number, measured at a single point in time, that tells us a limited amount of info about a bigger biochemical picture.
If you are interested in getting bigger/stronger, we can help you with that.
If you are genuinely concerned about symptoms that you are experiencing, that is an issue that is better addressed by your doctor than some strangers on the internet who may or may not sound like they know what they are talking about.
