Official 2018 T-ransformation Announcement Thread

Fuck, can’t argue with that.

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I need to note that my beard is totally natty. I know most of you losers are “volumizing” with enhancement oils and crap.

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That’s pure Viking - nicely done

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you know what’s funny? ‘special supplements’ have improved my beard tremendously over the past 4 years. Not kidding. I went from basically just having a goatee with a few hairs on my cheeks to what it is now, post-30 years old.

I just like it. Most people tell me I look better with a beard. Shaved head as well. I don’t think my jaw line sucks or anything, but my face looks way different clean shaven. I’ll try to find a picture from early December.

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Guilty!

Have been known to use a touch of beard synthoil now and again☺️

First of the month check in

Very excited that I have now finished my cut and can begin my reverse diet back up to maintenance and start on a more strength / hypertrophy focused training period. Increasing my diet from 1700 to 3200 calories is going to feel amazing.

Still got work to do on my right shoulder rehab but the improvement (aesthetically and functionally) is night and day from even six months ago.

How is everyone else doing?

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Down 13 lbs as of this morning. Only 3 weeks left before serious cut ends and reverse diet kicks in. Will be in a deficit for some time yet… But will be getting more food every week.

@steigs How are you going to reverse diet? I was thinking of adding an additional 5g carbs/day every week. It seems too slow but if I think about it after a year I’ll have increased carb intake by 260g and calories by 1,040.

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That is a really good effort!

The reverse diet is currently going to look like this:

I was on:

P200 F25 C100

As of Sunday, I’ll be on:

P200 F35 C177.5

At the end of next week, I’ll assess how it is going and look to step it up once more.

I reckon my maintenance calories are around 3,200 so I’ll slowly return to that level and hold that for 4-6 weeks.

As I say, I’m happy for this to be a slow process if it means I can put good habits in place for the long term.

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So I think I’m officially declaring I wont be going “all in” on this years contest. I still have some good progress going on and I dont want to kick the chair out from under my legs by cutting calories heavily.

What I will be doing is continuing to de-shitify my diet and slowly ramping up conditioning style work leading into June 1st. From Jan 1 to now I did a yeomans job of removing the “easy shit” from my diet and now I will continue the effort to remove the “harder shit” (basically finishing my wife and kids yummy food, a girl scout cookie here and there, that kind of stuff). That, and I’m trying to steer away from eating as much animal product as I was before, so my usual go to diet is out of the question for now.

So while I wont be coming up super shredded I’m hoping to set the stage for next years contest

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How long was your cut? Did you drop directly down to 1700/day or did you drop incrementally? Thanks for the info; looking great!

The cut was around 7 weeks in the end. I extended it by a week because I really wanted to get it down to 6.something% (ended up coming in at 7.1% so pretty gutted by that). But I had been on a less drastic deficit for a while (probably 3 months before that). What was interesting is that all my readings show that I managed to put on LBM in that time.

Now it is a case of reverse dieting and beginning the strength/hypertrophy phase of training.

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@kleinhound should have plenty of input to get that side of things sorted out if you’re going more meat-less.

Fair enough. Thinking long-term is sort of an underlying idea with this whole thing anyhow.

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Yep, we’re all just about 12 weeks out. Safe to say that it’s getting down to brass tacks.

I’ve been putting off dropping calories, but it’s time to start pushing things on that end. Been sticking with some daily bike work (easyish, at “just break a sweat”-level) but weight hasn’t changed significantly in a little bit. So, yeah, time to start increasing the suckitude.

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I’ve upped the cardio from 10 minutes to 20 and am now tracking my macros. I think the low hanging fruit is gone and time to start going through the dreadful hunger. We’ll see what happens after 1 month of intense hunger and cardio. Aiming for 2,500 calories or ~11 calories/lb of BW.

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Weight hasn’t budged - should probably track calories at some point in my life. My conditioning is up, which hasn’t done the weight gain any favors, but I feel a lot better for it. I think I’m a wee bit leaner overall, at the same body weight, so despite no big changes I’m fairly happy.

My current 531 plan has me scheduled to May 11th. I think I’m going to go straight bro-split those last 3 weeks and see if I can “peak” for the 6/1 photos.

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I’m still on the DL and not doing much with my legs. I should get to start lifting like normal again next week…if Doc says otherwise then I might lose my mind.

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I’ll probably take some shots today to mark my progress to this point. I’m as strong as I’ve ever been on pretty much all my lifts, aside from bench press. Definitely the best I’ve ever been in the strength department across the board. Squatting 500 easily and deadlifted 600 a week ago. Hoping to hit a 300 log press soon. And my bodyweight is still very low, sitting around 193-195.

Obviously lifting numbers are not a true indicator of the quality of my physique, but a lot of strength and a low bodyweight generally translates well to aesthetics for me.

Also, I will be starting a supplement routine tonight, going through the next 4 months. The last month won’t be useful for this comp, but I’m planning it around my next strongman show, not T Nation. Sorry guys :wink:

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Full disclosure: I’m focusing on performance and just not getting fat and that’s likely to continue until at least October. I’m a bunch bigger and not massively fatter than in January (legs and back especially) which is really all I care about right now.

If everything continues going to plan I’ll be around 220 lbs come early June, if not a bit over.

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Always happy to help out with any suggestions or questions @Lonnie123

I’m still going along with this and updating fairly regularly in my log. My current plan is to keep trying to get bigger and stronger for the next 3 weeks then cut down a bit until the end of this. I’ll hopefully take some pictures before I start cutting down. I seem to have gotten bigger so far- my arms definitely have.