Old Guy Doing 5/3/1

Never have tracked thanksgiving. To be honest the two worst days of the year for me would be Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We have all sorts of food traditions on those days. Christmas Eve is fondue. Swiss, cheddar, Gouda cheese fondue with sourdough, and French bread and apples… then meat and oil fondue with, chicken, shrimp, filet mignion, and stuffed mushrooms. There’s plenty of wine and usually chocolate martinis and whatever baked goods are around.

Cinnamon rolls first thing Christmas morning. After presents I make my favorite meal. I call it a Southern Benedict. Buttermilk biscuits topped with cheesy scrambled eggs, spicy pork sausage and sausage gravy. It’s so good.

I usually make enough where we can snack on sausage and biscuits through lunch and then we have a beef stew with more sourdough and French bread for dinner. I can gain 8-10 lbs in a 24 hour window lol.

If you can’t tell I’m enjoying thinking about food!

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That sounds like some damn fine holiday traditions, sir!

2/17/19 food for today

Breakfast: Shake = 1 cup whole milk, 1 large egg, 1 scoop quick oats, 1 1/2 scoop protein powder.

Lunch: Schlotzky’s small turkey guacamole sandwich with double meat.

Snack: Granny smith apple. 15 grams of mixed nuts.

Dinner: Large chicken breast stuffed with goat cheese. Large garden salad = spring mix, heirloom cherry tomatoes, bell pepper, dried cranberries, onion, cucumber, mushroom, almond slivers with balsamic vinegar and 1 tbsp olive oil.

Bedtime: 1 scoop protein powder with creatine.

Notes on food. First, the goat cheese chicken breast was amazing! We got home just before 6 pm, and the wife just threw it together, but damn, I’m more of a leg and thigh person than a breast person, and I loved it. It helped that I was very hungry.

I ended the day with 1884 calories, 174g protein, 145g carbs and 77g fat. I don’t think getting under 50g carbs is in the cards for me without us changing the way we cook, less red meat and more chicken breast, and I’m not ready to commit that heavily yet. I’m getting the calories down and keeping the protein up, so I’ll stick with that for a while and see where it gets me. I like red meat too much, and I like my salads with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Like I said, I’ll see where this gets me, and make further adjustments if necessary.

Oh, and I bought a food scale, so I’ll be able to be more precise with my measurements.

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Sounds like a good plan. The food scale will help with protein portion sizes.

Red meat… yum! Agreed don’t give it up. Be selective when you rotate it in.

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2/18/19 morning weigh-in 192.4# Another new low, which I attribute partially to waking up feeling really dehydrated, and partially to being back on my home scale, but even so, I’ll take it. I wake up feeling dehydrated often enough that it’s not that abnormal, and if it’s due to the scale, that’s weight I was dropping while I was gone that I wasn’t capturing, so my weigh-in is just catching up.

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2/18/19 5/3/1 full body giant sets cycle 1 day 12 Deadlift primary/Bench secondary

Warmup: Barbell complex x3 with chinups 1/1/1

Main giant set:

Deadlift:
5x45# +2 power cleans
5x95# + 2 power cleans
5x135# + 2 power cleans
5x185#
5x225#
Work sets:
5x275#
Switched to mixed grip
3x315#
5x355#

Bench:
10x45#
5x65#
5x95#
5x115#
5X135#
Work sets:
5x165#
3x185#
3x195#
1x205#

Chinups: 2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9

Accessory giant set:

Front squat: 5x135#, 5x155#, 5x185#

25# weighted Dips: 10/10/10

Barbell rows 155#: 10/10/10

Conditioning: 20 minutes elliptical, aerobic program at lvl 10, 228 calories burned, and max heart rate of 172 during the high speed parts of the program.

Good to be back to the gym. I think 5 days with only 1 run during that time counts as a pretty good deload, but I wasn’t feeling overtrained at all anyway. 5x355# on the deadlift was harder than 5x275# was on squat, but still had a couple in the tank. This finishes the first cycle of my 5/3/1 whole body giant set experiment, and I think it went really well. I also thought it would be interesting to follow @losthog 's lead and calculate the tonnage that I moved during the workout. Counting warmup, I came up with 37K lbs moved in 50 minutes. I’ll have to keep trying to improve on that as a measure of conditioning. Of course, Bench/Deadlift days will be heavier than Press/Squat days, and the lower body primary days will be heavier than the uppers, but it still gives me a way to track work done/time.

Cycle 2 starts on Wednesday, with the following training maxxes:
Press: 165#
Squat: 290#
Bench: 220#
Deadlift: 380#

2/18/19 food for today:

Breakfast: Shake = 1 cup whole milk, 1 large egg, 1 scoop quick oats, 1 1/2 scoop protein powder. 1/2 of a very large apple.

Lunch: Large salad = broccoli, cucumber, mushrooms, carrots, radishes, onion, olives, 1 tbsp of olive oil, 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar. 1 can of chicken with Frank’s Red Hot.

Snack pre-workout: Other 1/2 of very large apple. 1 can of low salt kippered herring.

Dinner: 3/4 of steak/chicken/chorizo fajita plate from La Hacienda, meat with peppers, onions and tomatoes, guacamole, pico de gallo and sour cream on 3 corn tortillas.

Bedtime: 1 scoop protein powder with creatine.

Totals for today: 2224 calories, 176g protein, 167g carbs, 97g fat. Just over my 1 lb/week baseline target of 2190 calories, but then the tracker deducted 919 calories for todays workout, which puts me at 885 calories under. The 250 calorie protien/carb snack an hour before training seems about perfect, and I’m going to continue to shoot for eating close to the same on training and non-training days, plus a small pre- or post-workout snack to fuel the workout.

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I’m keeping my tonnage in a notebook so I can cycle it in a pendulum wave like Louie suggest.

I would suggest keeping the upper and lower tonnages separate. Think muscle group tonnages rather than just workout tonnages. It could be totally off base, but it’s where my thinking is leading currently. I will say this…with conjugate training I’m less beat up week to week and getting more and more work done.

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2/19/19 morning weigh-in 191.4# Another full pound lower than yesterday. This was surprising because I was lower than I expected yesterday, and figured I’d have a little bounce-back today. I guess maybe I’m experiencing the ‘weight not moving for a while, then jumps down all of the sudden’ phenomenon?

It might be a pain to do that, with the fact that I’m doing upper and lower every training day, but I guess I can split it out. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this information other than track it, though.

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For me it’s a tool to determine if I’m getting stronger. If I can move more tonnage in the same time I’m getting stronger. I have a time cap on my workouts. When I hit that cap I’m done. Some/most days I’m done before the time cap hits.

I’m only training 3 days a week, so I’m not going to time cap my training, but I am trying to increase my training density, so maybe that’s a good way to look at it. For example, 37.2K lb in 50 minutes would be 744 lb/minute moved on average, so that’s something I can definitely look to improve upon.

2/19/19 food for today:

Breakfast: Shake = 1 cup whole milk, 1 large egg, 1 scoop quick oats, 1 1/2 scoop protein powder. 1/2 of a very large apple.

Lunch: Large salad = spinach,bell pepper, snap peas, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, cucumber, mushrooms, carrots, radishes, onion, olives, 1 tbsp of olive oil, 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar. 1large tin of sardines in olive oil. Other 1/2 of very large apple.

Dinner: Leftover 1/4 of steak/chicken/chorizo fajita plate from La Hacienda, meat with peppers, onions and tomatoes, guacamole, pico de gallo and sour cream on 1 corn tortilla. Brussels sprouts. Fish sticks with tartar sauce.

Bedtime: 1 scoop protein powder with creatine.

Totals for today: 2012 calories, 150g protein, 165g carbs, 88g fat. 178 calories short of baseline, and I’m not feeling hungry at all. I was pretty hungry at work for a lot of the day, though.

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2/20/19 morning weigh-in 191.2#
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Damn dude! Almost 15 lbs for you. That’s fantastic

How’s the food scale treating you? Mine is always humbling when I haven’t used it for awhile.

Thanks, man! I’m happy with my numbers so far, but I’m getting into my own head a little bit, appearance-wise. My wife says I look a lot leaner, but when I look in the mirror I just think I look smaller. A little bit of body dysmorphia I think.

The main things I’ve done with it so far is measure the amount of nuts I’ve been eating when I grab a ‘handful of mixed nuts’, and to see that the scoop of oatmeal in my breakfast shake is exactly 1.0 oz. Oh, and I measured the stuffed chicken breast the wife fixed on Sunday. I’ve had restaurant food or food with nutrition labels for dinner the last 2 days, and I can just plug those straight into myfitnesspal. I’m sure next time I do a steak it’ll be eye-opening.

:joy::joy::joy:

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Use measurements and calipers. It will give you solid data. Seeing a skin fold that was 10mm at 6 or 7 is pretty awesome. Measure one inch to the right of your belly button with a vertical pinch, 9 inches up on your quad with a vertical pinch and pec with a diagonal pinch. You don’t have to calculate body fat. Just track thickness. This paired with measuring legs, arms, chest, shoulders, and waist will tell you without a doubt how your progress is going. If you google search images for 5 lbs of fat you’ll be amazed. And you’ve dropped almost triple that. Solid progress for sure man!

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Great progress Steve. 15lb down is awesome at this stage

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Hey, it’s important to track how many nuts I’ve swallowed… for science… or something… smartass!

I think this is the one that’s bugging me the most. Just because of my age and the way fat has deposited, the belly fat is going to be the last to go. And yeah, I know what a 5 lb tube of ground beef looks like, and I’ve basically lost 3 of those. Not sure if it’s all been fat, but my strength hasn’t felt like it’s suffering so far, so that’s good news. It’s a little bit of a wake-up call as to how much extra fat I’ve actually been carrying, though.

I can see my upper abs, and a little more if I squint just right, but there’s a long way to go. My external obliques are really showing through, and they’ve gotten pretty thick because of all the strongman core work I’ve done, so I’m never going to get the super lean waist look. Plus, my hips are fairly wide, but that’s just the genetic cards I was dealt.

Thanks, Riz. Long way to go still, but forward progress is definitely happening.

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You’re doing fine Steve. Awesome actually 15 lbs is damn good.
If you keep at it you’ll be lean. I’m going to try to keep my weight for 182 - 183 when I get down there, there’s not long way to go.
Then I’ll go for another 5 - 6 lbs.
At some point I think you have to go too low on calories if we just keeps dialing calories back. So take a period where you keep the weight, and upping the calories just a bit more.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m psyched that I’ve managed to drop 15 lb so fast, I’m actually well ahead of my schedule. I’ll see how I feel and look when I hit 180, and I may decide to go further. What really hurts after losing that much weight is realizing I’ve been lying to myself about how much excess fat I was carrying. I mean, I had muscle, and I looked strong, but I was in denial about what a fat bastard I’d allowed myself to become.

One thing I’ve decided since I started tracking calories is that I don’t want to go much below 2000 calories/day. I don’t want to cut so deep that I start losing muscle, and with as much time as I have, there’s no reason for that to happen except me not doing it right. According to the app, which admittedly is only a guideline, the 2190 calories/day it has me aiming for is enough under maintenance for me to lose 1 lb/week, and that’s without taking calories burned in training into account. Also, the articles here at T-nation that talk about calorie targets for weight loss seem to agree that you don’t want to go less than 10xbodyweight in lb for daily calories, which would be a little over 1900 for me right now.

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2/20/19 5/3/1 full body giant sets cycle 2 day 1 press primary/squat secondary

Warmup: barbell complex x3 with chin-ups 1/1/1

Giant set 1:
Press:
5x45#
5x65#
5x85#
working sets:
5x105#
5x125#
8x145#

Chin-ups 2/3/4/5/6/7

Squat:
5x45#
5x95#
5x135#
5x195#
5x225#
5x245#

Accessory giant set:

1 arm DB press:
10x65#
10x65#
10x65#

Krok rows:
10x75#
10x75#
10x75#

Zercher squats:
5x135#
5x185#
5x205#

Conditioning: 20 minutes elliptical, 235 calories burned.

AMRAP press set was supposed to be at 140#, but someone has absconded with the 2.5# plates at the gym at work, so I went up another 5#. I had another in the tank but it was getting to be a struggle. I think 10 reps would have been good at 140#.

2/20/19 food for today:

Breakfast: Shake = 1 cup whole milk, 1 large egg, 1 scoop quick oats, 1 1/2 scoop protein powder. 1 navel orange.

Lunch: Large salad = spinach,bell pepper, snap peas, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, cucumber, mushrooms, carrots, radishes, onion, olives, 2 tbsp of olive oil, 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar. 1 can of tuna with Frank’s Red Hot. Went heavy on the olive oil on today’s salad.

Snack: 1 small tin of sardines with Franks Red Hot. 1/2 of the last of the gigantic apples.

Dinner: Homemade chicken fajita bowl = chicken breast, bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, guacamole, sour cream, salsa, black beans, corn, cheese. 1 12 oz glass of whole milk.

Bedtime: 1 scoop protein powder with creatine.

Totals for today 2278 calories, 201g protein, 169g carbs, 90g fat. 88 calories over baseline. Calories burned in training leaves me 838 calories under baseline, but I feel well-fed after the fajita bowl and a large glass of milk.

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