Going Into 2010 on my Own

Training Logs
1

Righty,

So a little bit about me…Last year i had a long term journal over of FA which was great the support was super but things seem to have gone alittle quiet over there of late and i figure guy help was as useful as gal help so here i am going into 2010.

I’m a competative poledancer so i’ve been exercising for years but i’ve only really been weight training for the last 2. As a whole im pretty damn pleased with my progress i’ve made some significant changes in my body going from the skinny fat girl to finally someone who looks like they know what a deadlift is.

This is all well and good but over the past two years i’ve had one major sticking point … muscle or lack there of … i seem to fall into the hard gainer catagory and although i’ve had many personal trainers online and offline none of them have really managed to really guide me in the right direction to pack on some serious pounds.

This year i’ve decided to go it alone, i figure no-one knows my body as well as i do and spending endless £££ on advice is all well and good but it really hasn’t given me the results i want and i figure that cash would be better served paying for protien shake.

Right now at my best guess i think my main problem boils down to lack of calories … i don’t know but it seems to me that female trainers are somewhat scared of actually getting a girl to EAT!! Maybe they think i’ll freak out if i get alittle soft???

Sure they’ve upped the calories when i bulk but never to the point where im consistantly gaining which has lead to me gaining and losing the same few pounds up and down repeatedly over the last few years which honestly is far more depressing than gaining little fat could ever be.

TBH i seem to get up to 121lb pretty quickly at the start of a bulk 4lbs of which is usually water from extra carbs then i come to a crashing halt and i just stop gaining and they never seem to think i need to perhaps up the cals.

Don’t get me wrong i’ve re-compositioned well but i just haven’t gained the 1b’s of muscle i need to prevent me looking somewhat like a crack whore the minute i drop below 15% body fat.

Anyhoo this year i figure that i know what to eat and i know how to train so it’s time to get off my ass and take responsibilty for my own progress starting with bulking!

normally i set my timescales for a bulk or cut in term’s or weeks, this year im not … this year im bulking till i get it god damn done!! i AM going to hit 130lbs this year i am going to eat and eat till it god damn well happens. When i hit 130lb’s then i’ll reassesss but im not cutting till at least i hit 130lb which i might add will be the heaviest i’ve ever been in my life… but i IS going to happen this year.

right now i have no-clue what i weigh, i was 112lb at the start of december but i spend 3 weeks in florida on holiday with my kids and i know i’ve gained some unwanted weight, my jeans tel me so but on returning i’ve found my scales are broken… doh …

oh well i’ll go the gym today and i’ll weigh there and see what the score is. At an estimation i’d guess im around 120lb’s ish which incidently most of my friends and family seem to think i look better at this weight than i do when i’m lower… personally i agree that arms, and upper torso wise i do look better but i hate what it’s done to my tummy and thigh’s … all in all i just need to gain some damn muscle so i don’t look too skinny at the lower body fat.

Onward and upward … anyway i’ve got to go i start a new job today so better get my ass in gear i’ll post my workout and food later once i’ve weighed and seen what the score is.

2

Ok so yesterday did not go according to plan, the first day at the new job was far more complicated than i’d expected it to be. A day full of meetings and greatings and i didn’t end up having enough time to get my ass into the gym which im feeling quite pissy about. I did go and check out the new gym (as my old one was close to my old job) as i’ve joined a new one of thoese as part of the process and it seems good has everything i need.

Also my food sucked not a good start really, nar it’s not true it didn’t totally suck it wasn’t that bad … it was cleaner than it’s been in the last month but because of the new job i had to grab things on the fly from a local shop and then i forgot my travel scales … sigh… Oh well it was mostly good food in a moderate amount (i don’t see the point really pumping up the food till i get my ass in the gym) tbh if anything yesterday i didn’t eat enough.

Anyhoo heres a run down of what i did eat.

m1: oatmeal, milk and mixed berrys + 1 scoop whay
m2 greek yogurt
m3 : cottage cheese + almonds
m4 : Lean 100% beef burger, green beans, broccolli and sweet potato
m5 : bagel with olive spread and scoop of whay

You’ll notice i don’t actually eat 100% clean thats because honestly i do see to do better wih some slightly bad things thrown into the mix, don’t get me wrong i don’t shove real crap like chocolate and cakes down my throat.

at one point i used to be in a very unhealthy head space and i didn’t eat anything even slightly un-clean and i live that way for well over a year, i didn’t even have cheat meals. Overall i just found it to be a very unhealthy head space… with me anyway i started obbessing about it and it effected my life in very negative ways simple things like going out with friends to eat became a real chore and something which would freak me out and make the day stressful to all involved.

These days i’ve realised that having thoese days to un-wind and get support off my friends at what is a fairly difficult time of my life is far more important than the negative progress that one or two un-clean foods has on my progress. Besides just having no food on the banned list just seems to me to be a mentally healthier way to live, i choose what i eat based on what i fancy at the time, i remain aware of which foods are better than others but mentally having nothing on that banned list just seems to be the way forward and it doens’t seem to have negativly impacted on my progress infact i seem to have made more progress in the strenght/size area since i started eating this way.

Okie moving on to today,

Well i’m kinda pee’d because the new job is sending me to one of the other offices today which means im going to be no-where near the gym which means it’s yet another no-gym day sigh so the best i can do is knuckle down eat sensibly and re-start training tommorrow, on the positive side at least i’ve had a few days of eating better so when i do get near the scales hopefully some water will have shifted and i’ll have a better idea of the real none water logged situation.

3

Ok i have been wieghed and measured! i have finally managed to get to the gym after 2 days’s of awful snow that has bought the entire country to a stand still and but all of my plots and plans on hold.

Anyhoo here we are as of yesterday i am

Height : 5ft 3
Wieght : 119lb

Calf - 12.5"
Thigh - 20.5"
Hip at widest point - 31"
Waist at navel - 27.5"
Under bust - 30"
Over bust - 35.5"
Around body at the shoulders - 39"
Bicep - 11"

Yesterday food didn’t go so well snow ment i didn’t get home the night before and ended up staying at a hotel, i nipped to a local shop but there food was very limited and all in all with the day yesterday and how it went i was lucky to find time to eat.

Heres the macro’s … normally i aim to add my exact food to the log but right now i need to get going to work, snow is hampering everyones travel and i need to leave early.

Cals 1,600
Fat 53.2
Carbs 128.6
Protien 144.2

I did this in conjunction with a full body workout (minus arms) today i hope to get my arms done in the gym AND HOPEFULLY MY CAL’S WILL BE AT LEAST UP IN THE 2000 range today.

All in all im not worrying about things too much this week the snow is making life hell and there are bound to be disruptions to everything, right now my aims are simply to re-start tracking my food and build up the amnout im eating focusing on how much protien im getting and getting to the gym, i’ll get a better plan set out over the weekend.

4

First week and between the snow and the lack of plan i feel abit lost. i’m been shooting for 2000 cals just to get my bady back into the swing of the extra protien and in the gym i’ve mostly just been making it up as i go along with isn’t ideal.

Thursday…

I worked Arms - tri’s and bi’s

Cals 2,044
Fats 75.3
Carbs 198.2
Protien 138.5

Friday

I worked out shoulders

Cals 1,979
Fats 76.7
Carbs 173.8
Protien 146.2

You wouldn’t belive how good it feels to be back in the gym and starting to eat better after basically 4 weeks of no workouts and eating what can only be discribed as shit in vast vast quantity’s, but hey it was a holiday i’d been saving for for 5 years so im not going to beat myself up over it, it’s not going to happen again any time soon.

My weight seems to have stabalised around the 119lb mark which isn’t to back concidering what i was eating while i was away with a net gain of about 2-3lbs. Anyway im taking thats as my starting point and i’ve finally got a plan.

A very nice lady i know who is frankly ripped to hell suggested that maybe if i haven’t been sucessful at trying to bring up my wole body at once i might benifit from block/specialisation training. this seems like a good option to me, i’m a hardgainer i accept that and i think it’s possible coupled with the fact that i’ve never really pushed my calories high enough i simply have been asking my body to do too much at once.

Essentially the plan is as follows 5 weeks (8 blocks) each block is 4 days, in each block i train my specialised area twice, have 1 full body workout for maintinance and one solid rest day. I do this for 5 weeks then i take 1 weeks as a de-load weeks where i signiciantly reduce my training.

My first block is going to focus on my Delts and Quads as i think building up my delts which reduce how boney my shoulders tend to look when i cut and will hopefully significantly help with my v-taper or lack there of atm. My lower body choice was a hard one because honestly my lower half is where i horde my fat so the “building” up of one of these locations is not my focus however i chose quads because im hoping if i can give them some shape they will generally look less like fat sausages :slight_smile:

I’ve never trained in this way before but it seems to me to be a good option, i’ve tried full body training, ive tried body part splits and i’ve never had super results, in the two years i’ve been training i’ve made significant changes in the appearance of my body but honestly most of that was done because i lost about 20lb of fat rather than because i gained alot of muscle.

Ok the plan for the weekend is to simply stay at home, it really isn’t safe to be on the roads in britain atm all the snow has turned to ice and all the exit’s from my litte estate are currently polished to a high sheen. So for the weekend i’m going to continue eating my 2000cals and sit tight where it’s safe and warm, i;ll start my new plan monday when i go back to work. Then monday i’ll start the first part of my split and bump up my cal’s to 2200 and see how we go from there.

5

Ok step one … erm ok maybe i’m a few more steps along than that, but hey.

Now that i have a training plan and i’m really going to start focusing i think i should really start recording my food intake here for accountability if nothing else.

So here we go.

M1 : Steel Cut oats, Milk, full fat greek yogurt and 1 scoop of whey.
M2 : Pasta Bolognase (homemade clean) cheese
M3 : Wholegrain toast + 2 eggs

Macro’s

Cals : 1,808
Fat : 100.5
Carbs : 128.7
Protien : 86.7

this highlights my biggest problem, weekends … my diet always seems to fall apart at the weekend bettween sorting the kids out and sorting out the house my day isn’t structured which always means i forget to eat.

Must get this in check i would say it’s my number 1 downfall.