Kanis999 Journal - Journey to surpass 2014's physique

Hi,

I'm Mike, a former forum regular. Back in 2010-2014 I took natural bodybuilding seriously and developed a physique that I wish to re-attain.

Here's what I achieved back in 2014:
[img]https://imagecdn.bodybuilding.com/progress-photo/26170873/80a681aa7f4c43fbab41e66e9e526243-610xh.jpg[/img]

It was about par for course for what you'd expect after 4 years of training. V taper was quite good, core was pretty clean and torso muscles had some size. The lats and traps could be seen from the front and chest had moderate size. Arms were a weak point, as were calves, traps, and rear delts.

Peak strength was
335x5 squat
405x5 deadlift
85x8 db incline press

I don't remember my other numbers but I was not doing flat bench or much direct arm work at the time (it shows).

At that point in time I weighed 164 lbs and the physique would have surely excited your average female, at least with shirt off. I was on the path to gain 5-10 more pounds of muscle over the next few years, but disaster struck.

I simultaneously hurt my back from squats and began to feel disillusioned with natural bodybuilding. I had developed body dysmorphia and could not appreciate the physique I had. I thought all natties looked small. I knew I would never turn to the dark side, and began losing lean body mass rapidly due to injury, so it seemed as if my ideal physique would never be possible. This made me give up entirely.

Fast forward to today. Or rather 1 month ago - I was 210 lbs with a 40"+ waist. I spent 12 hours sleeping each night, and an additional handful of hours throughout the day in bed listening to podcasts and youtube videos. It is an extremely inactive lifestyle brought about by depression and sleeping disorders, which I've yet to pin down with sleep doctors (we're working on it). I thought that if God or whatever higher power is out there decided to take my life, I would not mind at all. I was ready to meet my end. It was necessary to make changes.

My beautiful therapist has helped me get my foot in the door towards making these changes. 1 month ago I quit smoking marijuana, which I had been doing 10+ times per day. I scheduled the necessary meetings with sleep doctors to figure out why I spend over 12 hours in bed each day. Most importantly, in the past week, I've finally committed myself to return to bodybuilding, and it just might save my life.

I look back at my physique from 2014 and am very jealous. I can't believe how much better I looked, and am ashamed that I couldn't appreciate what I had at the time. I had body dysmorphia for sure. I looked at too many unnatural physiques for inspiration. Not this time around. I have a good idea of what I really want to look like - how I did in 2014 lol. Thus, [B]the purpose of this journal will be to track my progress towards 2014 status and beyond[/B].

[U]The Plan[/U]

The first thing that has to happen is I need to lose 50 lbs. My goal weight is 160, from my current 210 lbs. I am fully committed to this fat loss.

For the first time ever I am doing an intermitted fasting regiment. This is not because IF has some magical fat loss properties, but rather because I am most likely to adhere to the diet on this philosophy - it is far more painful for me to eat small meals than it is to skip meals. I HATE small meals.

Due to my 12 hour sleeps, my NEAT is extremely low and I have to cut on ~1800 calories. IF fits this current lifestyle easily because I sleep so long that it is simple to have an 8 hour feeding window. I am allowing myself to eat a big meal once per day, and that fully satiates me, unlike the puny meals I'd have to have on 3 meals per day.

It has been 1 week so far and my weight has not gone down at all. Why is this the case? Simple - I started loading creatine and resistance training at the same time I started the diet. My muscles took in a ton of water and glycogen over the course of the week and it is clearly visible. After just 1 week, there is a dramatic change in muscle fullness. The waist, meanwhile, has clearly shrunk already. I expect to see 1-2 lbs per week of fat loss going forward. If not, something is seriously wrong considering I'm already on 1800 calories.

I have completed 1 week of training. It all felt quite good with the exception of conventional deadlifts, which really taxed me. I have placed deadlifts on the last day of the week before a 2 day break, so I have extra recovery after a deadlift session.

Overall the training philosophy is a 4 day per week high intensity low-to-moderate volume approach. This is the routine that got me to where I was in 2014. Muscle memory should lead to quick gains, although I don't really expect to gain much muscle at all until my cut is over and I begin bulking finally (about a year from now). But I will still train very hard during the cut, trying to get as much muscle memory gain / recomp as possible while still losing weight.

The 4 days are - Legs, Lagging body parts isolation, Push, and Pull. LPP essentially with extra accessory work, and only hitting LPP once per week.

[U]Day 1 - legs[/U]
Squat worked up to 225x5
Leg extensions and curls
This resulted in mild soreness. I will increase volume on squats as I get closer to 300 lb working sets.

[U]Day 2 - accessory[/U]
Incline bicep curls to start with 30s
Shrugs
Calf raises no weight required lol. I'm fat.
Weighted abs
Each of these muscles got extremely sore the next day. I'm excited that biceps got very sore because I have traditionally had trouble getting MMC on them. I think incline curls might be the way to go for me.

[U]Day 3 - push[/U]
Bench 205x5 for a couple sets
Incline bench 135
Overhead tricep extension with 30s
Mid delt upright row 45 lbs - this is a wide grip upright row that I really feel in the side delts (better than lateral raises)
The chest was the most sore muscle of the entire week. Chest really got destroyed. I will definitely not be adding volume there anytime soon.

[U]Day 4 - pull[/U]
Deadlift 315x5
Pullups AMAP (2)
Wide grip pulldowns with 80lbs
Face pulls with 30lbs
Upper back and traps got quite sore, as did lats and erectors. Deadlift weight should go up quickly, but as mentioned before, they were quite taxing. I might replace them with something like good mornings eventually because I'm really just trying to hit the erectors primarily with this movement. I don't care about glutes and hamstrings much if I'm being honest.

On off days I do 10-20 minutes on the elliptical, or walk around the neighborhood.

Ultimately, life is quite the struggle right now with these mysterious sleeping disorders, but it is looking up. I will stick to this program and keep you updated regularly to keep myself accountable. Thanks, if anyone read even part of this wall of text.

Midway through week 2. Here is a collection of 'before' pictures. Shameful, but its gotta be done.

[img]https://i.ibb.co/MCdQNjk/2023-07-22-Front4.png[/img]
[img]https://i.ibb.co/mFdF5RQ/2023-07-22-Side1.png[/img]
[img]https://i.ibb.co/6RMPMkQ/2023-07-22-Front2.png[/img]
[img]https://i.ibb.co/pXVxbzV/2023-07-22-Front1.png[/img]
[img]https://i.ibb.co/DzBgKQ2/2023-07-22-Back1.png[/img]

I had written a very thorough analysis of this week's workout with lots of detail, but I hit some button on my keyboard that deleted everything I had written. Very annoyed at this.

So now I have to recap everything I had written but I'm too pissed to go into nearly as much detail as before.

Benched 205 for 5s. Increasing weight to 210 or 215 next week.
Squatted 245 for 5s. Increasing to 255 next week.
Deadlifted 335 for 5s. Increasing to 345 next week.

Progress on all other lifts. Most soreness in chest, calves, front delts, triceps. Moderate soreness in traps, rear delts, lower back, hamstrings, quads, abs. No soreness in other muscles (not that that means no progress, I just see soreness in the muscles I was soreness as proxies of how much fatigue was generated).

Diet I hadn't written about in the post that got deleted, so I can go into more detail.

Ate less than 2000 calories each day this week. 1 main meal per day, the rest of the calories during my feeding window were mostly caloric drinks. Again, this is the method I am most likely to be able to adhere to caloric deficit with, no magic pill.

Despite this I'm not losing weight, or at least I don't think I am. I got a new digital scale midway through the week. But on the old scale I was about 211 in the morning each day and on the new scale I'm around 212 each morning. It is quite disheartening to not be losing weight, but I believe I know exactly why. I creatine loaded and began lifting from scratch. This means my muscles pulled in a lot of water and glycogen, leading to a significant weight increase, which offset the fat loss. Fat loss is still visible in waist circumference (which I should have measured, but haven't yet for fear of seeing it be over 40"). I should bite the bullet and measure the waist to have another method of tracking progress than just weight on the scale.

If I don't start losing 1-2 lbs next week, however, I'm gonna start to get really puzzled. I can't use the creatine excuse anymore because I am fully loaded up at this point. I don't know what I'll do if this is the case because I'm already eating under 2000 calories per day. More like 1600-1800. I would have thought this would be enough of a deficit to lose well more than 1lb per week. Estimating maintenance at around 2500 calories. Maybe I'm way off though in my assessment, because as explained at length in the OP, I sleep 10-12 hours per night and have very very low energy throughout the day.

My therapist warned me to not just focus on losing the 50 lbs I want to lose. She encouraged me to set a mini goal along the way. So as of right now, I am mostly looking forward to being below 200 lbs. That should only take a few months. We also agreed that when I hit around 185 lbs, approximately xmas time, I will go clothes shopping to fit my new body type.

Final aspect of fitness is cardio. I'm just doing walks on non lifting days. About 30 minutes now, up from 10 minute walks. Don't plan to really increase this any further, though I may do more elliptical instead, as that gets my heart rate higher.

Thanks to anyone who stopped by.

Mostly bad news this week. The back injury that caused me to quit lifting back in 2014 seems to be happening again. Something about the way I squat is causing it. Perhaps too much volume on squat and deadlift together. The source of the pain seems to be the glute medius. This is causing a chain reaction of tightness around the hips and lower back. Today is deadlift day so I'm going to still try to do them and see how they feel. If I find that I have to quit squatting, so be it. I can still do leg curls and extensions at least.

The most aggravating thing going on is the scale is not budging. 3 weeks now I'm supposed to have been in a calorie deficit, but I don't seem to be losing weight. I'm eating about 1800-2000 calories per day, so its possible that my TDEE is just that ridiculously low that I have to eat like a female to lose weight. I'm still hoping there's perhaps some water increase in muscles due to creatine loading and starting to lift. My actual measurements seem to be changing in a positive direction. Waist is just barely below 40" now instead of above. Shoulders and arms are clearly larger. So perhaps I'm gaining a little LBM in a deficit due to water fluctuations in LBM, though I doubt it is that significant. I thought I'd be like 200-205lb range by now but I weighed in at 212 again today.

All good news this week

- The chronic fatigue and sleeping 12 hours issue is resolved, after years of suffering this condition. The root cause was a medicine called Abilify. Removal of this medicine has increased my energy and alertness drastically. It also has a side effect of potential weight gain, so its removal may aid weight loss.

- The scale is finally reflecting the fact that I'm dieting. 209-210 in the morning vs 212 when I seemed stalled last week. It seems true that all along my fat loss was masked due to the fact that I had started creatine loading at the same time as the diet start. I've probably lost more like 5lbs of fat so far and gained 3lbs of muscle.

- The lower back pain I was starting to feel last week was FIXED BY SQUATTING. It is strange that the very movement pattern I thought had caused the pain was also the solution to fixing the pain. It is almost as though the squat session realigned my spine and hips.

- All lifts are going up. Bench 215x5, Squat 245x5, Deadlift 335x5.

This past month I have seen dramatic strength increases, especially in upper body. Bench was 235x5 for 3 sets, whereas this routine started at 205x5 for not even 3 sets before dropping reps. The 235x5 felt easy.

Unfortunately, I've basically given up on weight loss. I haven't been trying to diet this month. I feel like the ~6 weeks I was dieting had almost nothing to show despite being a large effort. IDK what's up with my body anymore. It is extremely resistant to losing weight whereas a few years ago it wasn't that hard. Not sure what to do.

At least I'm probably recomping at the same weight right now. It is satisfying to see strength go up so I will keep milking out those gains. Maybe I'm just going to be a strength guy going forward, and not give a crap about bodybuilding. I mostly just want to be lean for physical attractiveness, but given my face and personality, being lean wouldn't even help that much. Strength, meanwhile, is intrinsically motivating.

Any advice? Should I go back to weight loss? It would make me likely to live longer and increase confidence.

Good luck mate

Not sure if this helps or not, just my opinion.

I too became disappointed with natty appearance (when shirt is on) and realised that I'd rather look like i can lift with my shirt on and lift heavy weight than look like a tall skinny person with abs that see the light of day now and again. Try strength training, maybe sign up for a amateur powerlifting comp in the future for motivation. If you keep your waist line under 36 inches you can look great, be strong and stay healthy.

[QUOTE=tommy4life;1690245613]Good luck mate

Not sure if this helps or not, just my opinion.

I too became disappointed with natty appearance (when shirt is on) and realised that I'd rather look like i can lift with my shirt on and lift heavy weight than look like a tall skinny person with abs that see the light of day now and again. Try strength training, maybe sign up for a amateur powerlifting comp in the future for motivation. If you keep your waist line under 36 inches you can look great, be strong and stay healthy.[/QUOTE]
Thank you for sharing your journey. It's clear that you've been through ups and downs in your fitness and mental health journey. It's inspiring to see that you're taking steps to make positive changes and return to bodybuilding. Remember, progress may take time, but the most important thing is your well-being. Stay committed, stay positive, and keep working towards your goals. You've got this!

[QUOTE=tommy4life;1690245613]Good luck mate

Not sure if this helps or not, just my opinion.

I too became disappointed with natty appearance (when shirt is on) and realised that I'd rather look like i can lift with my shirt on and lift heavy weight than look like a tall skinny person with abs that see the light of day now and again. Try strength training, maybe sign up for a amateur powerlifting comp in the future for motivation. If you keep your waist line under 36 inches you can look great, be strong and stay healthy.[/QUOTE]

Thanks, good stuff. I'd rather look like a lifter in a shirt than lean shirtless. I can't remember the last time I was shirtless in public. Never go to pools, beaches, etc. It doesn't really matter either way, bc I'm getting too old to care about looks lol.

Getting stronger is intrinsically motivating. Nobody has to know what my lifts are for me to feel good about them.

I think after strength progression reaches a plateau from staying at maintenance, I'll trim down to about 36" waist like you suggested for health, and to open the availability of a surplus to prime more strength gains.

I finally looked the scale today after not doing so for about a month. I was 222 lb, up from 210 at the start of that month. I think about 5 of those lb are having a fuller GI tract bc at 210 lbs, I had been dieting on 1 meal per day. Still, even if that were true, that's a 7 lb increase.

I haven't been trying to control my eating at all, and it surprises me a lot that I increased weight. I'm just eating what my appetite says to eat. Apparently, that is much above maintenance. Perhaps appetite is increased due to the weight lifting. Perhaps I'm just addicted to the thrill of a new meal arriving. Either way, I went from "no control" equaling approximately a maintenance level appetite to "no control" equaling rapid weight gain.

At 190 lbs, 2 years ago, my blood work was very bad. Cholesterol was considered extremely high, and blood triglycerides were very high at over 300. That was at 190, and I weighed in at 222 today. My blood work must be even worse. I am definitely starting to worry I won't even make it to 70 years old. I always assumed I'd make it to 88+, but now that's looking very unlikely, unless the technological singularity occurs and allows me to replace old blood vessels.

One intervention I will make is to see the Doc on Oct 18th. I want to see where the blood work is now, and discuss Ozempic for appetite reduction. I don't think I'm so obese that doctors would normally prescribe a weight loss drug, but considering how bad the blood work is, maybe that kind of intervention would be allowed for the sake of longevity. I fear the doc is going to just tell me to make lifestyle changes and make me take counseling from a nutritionist to tell me **** I've already known for 15 years. This isn't a matter of knowledge. I know how weight loss works. It's a matter of appetite and willpower. The equation doesn't work out in a way that willpower is greater than appetite. Especially not when all of my available willpower is being channeled into weight lifting, work, and generalized anxiety and depression. Bottom line, I really really hope the doc seriously gives me some chemical aid.

Until that happens, I don't plan to exert control over my diet. If the lifting is going to stimulate my appetite enough in order to force weight gain, I'm going to allow that to happen. Right now, all I care about is the numbers in the gym.

Having said that, I'm basically at a point now where my 1rm in bench should be 300 lbs or above. This is startling to me, because that's a number I just never associated with myself. I always was smaller than average, born with brains, not brawn. I'm not supposed to be someone who could overwhelmingly overpower an average man of my age. But I'll gladly take that status.

255x5 bench on the last workout with room to spare more reps. It is becoming my best lift, but I largely attribute that to how fat I've become. If I were 170 lbs I doubt I'd be doing 225x5. This knowledge is part what contributes to my current aversion to weight loss. I don't want to lose any strength, I want to gain strength. At almost any cost.

Bench is far beyond my former best ever. Deadlift is almost caught up to 2014's 405x5, with me doing 385x5 last workout. It absolutely kicked the **** out of me to get that up though, so much the rest of that workout I was in a daze and confused state with an almost feverish feeling. Despite that, I finished the workout with upper back movements, which are also going up in strength steadily.

Squat is abysmal compared to the other big 3 lifts. I have always been and always will remain terrified of them because of how often they've injured my lower back in the past. At 285x5 this past week, they definitely taxed the **** out of my lower back, but nowhere near "tweaking" it. Just good old fashioned weightlifting fatigue. If you're wondering, yes, glutes, hams, quads, abs, and upper back all feel taxed from the squats too, but the lower back stands out the most.

I was squatting somewhere between 315 and 335x5 in 2014 when I got the lower back injury that basically ruined the appeal of all weightlifting for me for nearly 10 years, taking me out of the gym. Naturally, I'm afraid this will happen again once I get to that weight. But I have no choice but to continue increasing weight as the progression entails. Only time will tell if my 10 years of healing and increased technique will allow me to survive this challenge. 285x5 was met this past week. So up to 295x5 we go. Please don't break me.

Taking a deload week because the 255x5 bench I did a week ago became 255x4 this week, and all 3 big lifts felt like they were extremely fatiguing this past week. Felt like I was barely holding on to consciousness last back workout. Strength stopped going up suddenly. Need a break.

I've definitely exhausted noob gains / muscle memory regains. Was fun while it lasted to add 10lbs to the big 3 each week. Now I need to start paying closer attention to things like protein intake, minimizing fatigue, and specificity.

After deload, I did 255x5 on bench, but for sets 2 and 3 I did 4 and 3 reps respectively. I think it may take many sessions to hit 5 reps for all 3 sets, unlocking more weight. I came up with the arbitrary long term goal of 300x5. Since I don't like 1 rep maxes, that's the only way to 'prove' I can bench 300.

Deadlift is 395x5 now and I will be going to 405x5 next week. It is getting extraordinarily taxing. The last set of 5 was max effort absolute pinnacle of my current abilities. I was breathing so hard my lungs actually burned for 30 minutes. This is the point where I may have to reconsider carefully what my goals are. From a pure bodybuilding respective, I've now got a bad stimulus to fatigue ratio on deadlifts because the fatigue is starting to feel like a near death experience lol. But lifting for strength is just so much more exciting. I'm really quite unsure how I want to proceed... Will probably just keep doing what I'm doing until its absolutely unsustainable.

Walking around my office at work, I'm starting to get that good ol fashioned confident feeling due to lifting. I'm not aesthetically pleasing at all, so that lowers confidence, but that is more than offset by the fact that I know how much weight I lifted in this past week. My arms and legs feel like the pistons of a powerful machine as I walk, my spine like an unbreakable titanium bar. I may still be relatively weak for a strength athlete, but I'm now miles ahead of the non-lifters, aka everyone I ever interact with irl. I'm trying to remain humble, but this knowledge is definitely boosting my rather fragile ego.

We'll see how squats go on Friday, I still haven't done them post deload and as always, they're my greatest fear in the gym. I've got a lot to think about in terms of what my strength vs bodybuilding goals are. Ultimately I know my goal is just to have fun and boost confidence at any cost, but this hasn't translated to a choice between strength and bodybuilding yet. I have to pick a path, or at least consciously choose to walk between the two paths rather than flounder about. Next week I see a general practitioner. I'm going to discuss my weight. Perhaps the doc will drill in my head the necessity to be leaner for health's sake. I hope he gives me drugs to help. This would push me away from the strength goal and towards bodybuilding.

Today's deadlift session had me meet rep requirements of 405x5 for 2 sets. I'm now caught up completely with the strongest I've ever been. It was so fatiguing, however, that I had to make a thread about it. Idk how I'm going to sustain this routine.
Details: [url]https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=184278513&p=1691848843#post1691848843[/url]

Doctor prescribed my Ozempic today. I had a shot of it today and took home some pills with it + some wellbutrin in it. I suppose that means I've got to diet. RIP strength gains.

So far I've lost 3 lbs on my Ozempic-enhanced super cut. Somehow it's super noticeable in the mirror, must have been subcutaneous water mostly. Or placebo illusion. Either way, feels like the body's appearance is moving in the right direction.

Strength has so far still gone up in this calorie deficit. Bench was at its best at 255x5/5/4 for the 3 sets. Soon I hope to hit 5/5/5 and upgrade weight, but the cut will make that potentially unlikely. Bench is definitely limited by tricep strength, I can feel them giving out first every time I fail a rep. Because of this, my triceps are pumping up with a lot of size.

Upper back is way stronger and it shows in the mirror. Front to back thickness is greatly developed. I mostly attribute this to deadlifts, but I've also seen tremendous strength increase in face pulls. Thighs are noticeably bigger, but its mostly adductors and hams. Quads just don't get that much attention with my mobility-limited squat form. Biceps don't look bigger to me in terms of peak, but their width has increased. They're much much harder to the touch than they used to be, possibly ever.

Lower back and glutes are probably my strongest muscles now, whereas middle back is and always has been my biggest weakness besides maybe quads and biceps. Middle back needs some barbell rows, which I've forsaken in lieu of my deadlift - pulldown - face pull combo I do on 'back day'. Main reason is there's no way I can support barbell rows with my core after the destruction that deadlifts do.

The doc who prescribed me Ozempic also gave me Contrave, which helps with appetite but more importantly to me, it includes additional Buproprion, an anti-depressant that acts on dopamine and norepinephrine instead of serotonin. The result is increased energy and zest for life. The 12 hour sleeps are mostly gone finally. This could also be due to Vraylar, an adjunct depression medication that stabilizes serotonin and dopamine levels.

Finally, worth pointing out that we had a kidney scare last week. My blood creatinine was pretty high at 1.75 mg/dl. I tried to explain to doc and family that this measurement was taken 18 hours after the most difficult deadlift session I'd ever done, but I don't think they understand just how much muscular damage deadlifts do. I also supplement with creatine and have higher than average muscle mass, which they also didn't really understand. So I got a urine test and a new blood test, and the urine test showed totally normal creatinine levels. Blood creatinine was lower, down to 1.65, and this time I hadn't done such a difficult workout the day before. I'm stopping creatine supplementation to help stabilize these levels (plus I fkn HATE creatine's texture). I still need final confirmation from doctor, but from what I've researched, the fact that urine levels are ok means my kidneys are probably fine.

P.S. Found a very motivating pic of 2014 me. Hard to believe I looked like that at one point. Shoulder to waist ratio is ridiculous for someone like me. If I did it before, I can do it again.
[IMG]https://i.ibb.co/znZP0LK/u1000.jpg[/IMG]

Swapping in barbell rows for deadlifts. This will help my CNS recover throughout the week. Now the only workout that's a nightmare to get through is leg day. Much more likely to sustain longer mesocycles now.

Strength isn't going up anymore now that I'm cutting, but I've lost 11lbs in 3 weeks. Will continue to rapidly lose weight on this Ozempic.

Weight loss still rapid. I've completely lost interest in lifting though. Or rather I'm just so much more interested in other things that I don't want to sacrifice time in those other things in order to weight lift. I will have to use some discipline to get through this week's workouts.

Careful mate
Rapid weight loss without lifting...you might not be happy with the results. Maybe find a 2xweek split you can do just to hold on to that muscle mass.

How have you found training been going over the last little bit?