Progress Check: The Curse of the Plateau

[jdl22]

Hi BB.com. I'm going to try to make this post as painfully detailed as possible in hopes of getting some quality replies. I've recently found myself hitting another plateau -- and, like usual, I turn to BB.com for continued motivation (or nasty criticism... same thing).

I'll start off with some statistics.

Age: 19
Weight: 170 (just recently started taking creatine, though... ~five lbs of this is water weight)
Height: 5'8"

Bench Max: 245lbs
Squat Max: Haven't actually attempted this in a very long time, but can hit 3x6 @ 225lbs... squat is pretty weak. Not sure what this translates into a max, because I haven't attempted in months and months.
Deadlift Max: Similar to above... I'm going to ballpark 325lbs. Also pretty weak.


I've attached a few photos to give you an idea of what I look like. I tried taking these in a few different positions, but I don't have very much experience posing (as you can all probably tell). Would also like to apologize for my paleness. :P

Unlike my brother, who competes in male physique competitions, I lift solely for recreational/personal reasons. I spent a very short amount of time dieting like him (weighing everything out... etc.) but have decided to stop. Currently my diet is pretty stable but by no means do I portion things out by weight or calories or macros anymore. I eat when I'm hungry. I make consciously healthy decisions about what I eat and when I eat it, but no longer track my calories. I'm a current full-time University student, and topped with living with my parents this summer vacation (and relying on them for groceries), I really don't have the resources to portion everything out to optimize daily macro content. So I make do.

A typical day USUALLY looks something like this:

Breakfast: 5 eggs (would like to sub some of this with egg whites, but do not always have that at my disposal), 1/2 an avocado on good seed bread, cup of coffee.

Snack/pre-workout meal: good seed bread, tablespoon of peanut butter, banana

Post-workout: 2 scoops of ON whey protein powder, 8 ounces of almond milk

Lunch: USUALLY a simple sandwich with lots of lean cut turkey, hot sauce, 1/2 avocado, bread
Alternatively, I have a spinach salad with turkey/chicken thrown in.

Usually have a smoothie of frozen berries, superfood powder, and almond milk with this. Sometimes throw in more spinach into this smoothie.

Snack (not always) bowl of cereal

Dinner: 2 skinless chicken breasts, 1 cup of vegetables.

Snack: 2 scoops of ON whey protein powder


This is a USUALLY a typical day, but it definitely changes quite a bit sometimes. This puts me somewhere around 2600 calories, 65g fat, 200g protein, 300g carbs. That's an estimate. I should probably double check to see if this is still the case, though those are the numbers I started my summer diet out on.


My goals with lifting - and to each their own - is to look good. That's really it. I'd like to add some mass but am pretty content with my current body fat (see pictures).



I guess what I'm looking for in this thread is any tidbits of diet advice you may have to optimize my gains as much as possible. Am I making any newbie mistakes? I'm a bit discouraged by this plateau and would like to see some mass but haven't been for awhile. I realize this takes incredible patience, but feedback/advice/encouragement/criticism would be greatly appreciated!

[unplugged]

It really is simple... if you want to gain more weight/mass eat more!