The Graphs: December 2009

Here are the weight and fat graphs for December 2009.

Body Weight Graph

Since I reached my goal of 125 lbs for the end of december I tried to maintain the same weight while I tried to reduce the fat. So I started eating the right number of calories that I need. As can be seen from the graph I was maintaining my weight for a while but then it started dipping for no apparent reason. I increased my calories a bit and it stared going up quickly. It is quite hard to keep track of the exact amount of food to eat.

Body Fat % Graph

While I maintained the same weight I started to see an increase in body fat. I was not sure why that would be the case. Am I losing muscle so quickly? A small increase in weight causes the fat to shoot up quickly while a stable weight still increases it slowly. The only option left to loose fat is to loose weight? I don’t like the idea at all. I am also doubting the fat monitor. It tends read the fat changes a while after the weight has changed. So if I increase my weight today it will be a few days before I see the increase in fat. Same goes when I loose weight. I think it may have something to do with the way I store water in my body. Have to investigate.

Filed under: body fat, graph, muscle, muscle loss, weight

The Numbers: December 2009

Time for some numbers now that december 2009 has come to an end. Not just the month, but the year and decade as well have come to an end. In december again I have gained a lot of fat while I gained very little weight. The reason mainly is because I reduced the amount of calories to a more “maintain weight” level.

Body weight and fat gain for the month of December, 2009

• Weight: 126.00 lbs
  
• Fat %: 15.51%
  
• Lean mass: 106.46 lbs
  
• Weight gain: 1.46 lbs
  
• Fat % gain: 1.48%
  
• Lean mass gain: -0.61 lbs

It is indeed strange that I have lost muscle. Unfortunately since I am doing slow tempo reps I am using lower weights so I cannot be sure if I really lost muscle or it is just an error in the body fat analyzer. I have a theory that my body fat analyzer has a lag in noticing the fat% change. When I gain weight I usually don’t see a quick gain in fat. It comes after a few days of the weight increase. So I am assuming I will see the fat reduction will come a little later after the weight has remained constant for a while. Only time will tell.

Ever since I started using a slower tempo I am unable to lift a lot of weight for the same number of reps that I used to do. Here are the latest numbers.

Exercises

• Squats: 150 lbs, 9 reps
• Deadlift: 185 lbs, 8 reps
• Bench Press: 100 lbs, 7 reps
• Pull-ups: 120 lbs, 9 reps
  
• Overhead Press: 70 lbs, 6 reps
  

All the weights have gone down, but I am getting a better pump. I would like to continue this on for a few more weeks and then I will switch to strength training. That is it for this post. Not a lot of improvements but I am closer to my target than when I started three months ago.

Filed under: exercise, fat, lean mass, muscle, numbers, reps, stats, weight

Calories, Food, Weight

I have been wanting to record what I eat and how much I eat for a while now and I was finally able to do it for 1 day. So this is what I ate on Friday, December 18, 2009.

Early morning snack
I had a glass of 2% milk early in the morning at around 7 am.
Calories: 122
Fat: 4.81 gms
Carb: 11.42 gms
Prot: 8.05 gms

Breakfast

For breakfast I had a bowl of cereals. The cereals is a mix of raisin bran and cheerios. I ate this around 9 am.

Calories: 175
Fat: 2.19 gms
Carb: 34.58 gms
Prot: 4.95 gms

Morning Snack
For my morning snack I had a cup of pineapple and a cup of cottage cheese. This was around 11 am.
Calories: 272
Fat: 4 gms
Carb: 26 gms
Prot: 31 gms

Lunch

Lunch consisted of chicken burger and fries at 1 pm.

Calories: 498
Fat: 20 gms
Carb: 51 gms
Prot: 27 gms

Afternoon Snack

Chicken tandoori with a glass of 2% milk at 4 pm.

Calories: 253
Fat: 11 gms
Carb: 13 gms
Prot: 23 gms

Dinner
Chicken dum biriyani at 7 pm.
Calories: 410
Fat: 11 gms
Carb: 55 gms
Prot: 20 gms

Evening Snack
Peanut butter and wheat bread sandwich
Calories: 175
Fat: 8 gms
Carbs: 22 gms
Prot: 9 gms

The total number of calories comes out to be 1905 for that day with 30% fat, 45% carbs and 25% protein. I ate 125 gms of protein which is about the correct number of grams for my weight of 125 lb. Everyday I eat more or less the same amount of calories. But as you can see I eat a lot of junk food. I should try and change this filthy habit. I will record another day when I eat healthy food. Here is the food chart from daily burn for that day.

Filed under: body fat, calories, food, weight

Time Under Tension Changes

I have made some good progress so far as my strength and weight goals are concerned. Although I did not reach any of my strength goals I am very close to achieving them. Almost a week into December and I already reached my weight goal of 125 lbs. That means I gained a whopping 6 lbs in 3 months (for an ectomorph that is a big deal believe me). However along the road I gained a huge amount of fat too. A full 3.5% to be precise.

In the past 2 months and 1 week I have only concentrated on increasing the strength. Always performed the exercises with quick bursts of energy when lifting and quickly bringing the weight down in the negatives. So the time under tension was very low. Perhaps around 2 to 3 seconds per rep. Total time under tension for a set was around 10 to 30 seconds depending on the reps. As a result I could keep adding weights more often and kept going. Now that I have reached a certain point in my strength I want to concentrate more on form and letting my central nervous system cope up with the increased stress. For this reason and also to help me burn more calories I am planning to switch over to longer time under tension and using lower weights.

That means I will not be getting any stronger, but I am prepping myself for the next bout of strength training. I am planning to do this for a month and a half. But I may go longer or shorter depending on how my body responds. For now that is the plan. The new tempo will be 3 seconds on negative contraction, 1 seconds at the lowest point, 1-2 seconds for the positive contraction and then one more second at the highest point. This will give me around 6 to 7 seconds of time under tension per rep. The total time under tension will be anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds depending on how many reps I can do.

I also believe that more time under stress means that more time for the blood to rush into various parts of the muscles and increases capillarity. Of course like almost all research in body building, no one knows for sure if the capillarity truly improves with increased time under tension, but from my experience it does work for me. I have seen more vascularity with more time under tension when I performed it before. More vascularity means more blood to muscles and more endurance.

So off to my new regiment. I perhaps will not be able to reach my strength goals because of this change, but I may be able to reduce the fat %. Who knows. Only time will tell…

Filed under: capillarity, fat, strength, time under tension, vascularity, weight

The Graphs: November 2009

Here are the weight and fat graphs for November 2009.

Body Weight Chart

For the first few days the weight gain was slow, but after a couple of weeks the weight went down. Clear indication that I was not getting enough calories. That was when I increased my calories from 1800 to 2000. See my previous post for more details about it. As soon as I increased the calories I saw a sudden and quick weight increase for a couple of weeks and then it started dipping. I am not sure of the reason, but it could be because I was over training. I rested for the first week of december so that should give enough time for my body to recover.

Body Fat % Chart

The flip side of gaining weight is the fat. I have been constantly gaining fat. Even during the time when I could not gain any weight I was still getting fat. Perhaps over training, muscle loss and calorie deficiencies could be the reason. I have to take better care of my body. We will see how december goes.

Filed under: body fat, graph, muscle, muscle loss, weight

The numbers: November 2009

It is past end of November and time for some more numbers. Over all this month went well. I did gain a lot of weight, however I far exceeded my fat % limit. I know for sure that I will reach my weight goal but at the same time I will fail miserably in my fat % goal. Anyway here are the numbers for my weight and fat % at the end of November

Body weight and fat gain in 1 month

• Weight: 124.54 lbs
• Fat %: 14.03 %
• Lean mass: 107.07 lbs
• Weight gain: 3.74 lbs
• Fat % gain: 1.83%
• Lean mass gain: 1.01 lb

I was able to put on 4 lbs of weight, but at what cost? I added 2.73 lbs of fat just to gain a mediocre 1 lb of muscle. At least my body does prove that a gain of 1 lb of muscle a month is about the right rate at which I can gain muscle. Not everything is gloomy though, I am very close to reaching my weight goal of 125 lbs by the end of December! I will have to do something about the fat % though.

My weights have also steadily increased, albeit very slowly. Here are the numbers for my lifts

Exercises

• Squats: 175 lbs, 7 reps (+5 lbs)
• Deadlifts: 190 lbs, 10 reps (+5 lbs)
• Bench Press: 115 lbs, 5 reps (+5 lbs)
• Pull ups: body weight + 27.5 lbs, 6 reps (+2.5 lbs)
• Overhead Press: 75 lbs, 9 reps (+0 lbs)

All the lifts have increased by a very slight amount. I was able to add 5 lbs to most of the exercises in 1 month. Actually I took 1 week off for recovery so it is really 3 weeks worth of progress. Not very impressive. I skipped doing pull-ups a couple of times last month because I already reached my goal, but I plan to do them again this month just to keep working those muscles. The overhead press seems to be the one with least amount of progress. All I could do was add a few reps to the same weight. The main reason is the pain in my left hand when I do overhead press. I think I recovered a bit now. We will see how it goes next week onwards.

I want to do better this month but I already lost 1 week in my business trip where I did not do any exercise. One good thing I did however, is to eat a lot of stuff, so at least my weight did not change much. Graphs in my next post.

Filed under: exercise, fat, numbers, stats, weight

Graphs for Oct 2009

For the sake of posterity, here are the weight and fat graphs from last month

Body Weight Chart

Body Fat Chart

The graphs start from my lowest weight and fat points which was on September 23, 2009. I was about 117.3 lbs at 10.2% body fat at the time. I started eating more calories from there on and now after 5 weeks I am 120.8 lbs at 12.2% body fat. After about 2 weeks of eating a lot I started seeing that my body fat % was moving faster than my weight gradient. So I decided to cut back a little bit, but then I lost weight (and fat) quickly. And then again I increased my calories.

Here are the gains I have made last month:

• Body weight gain: 3.5 lbs
• Body fat% gain: 2%
• Body fat gain: 2.8 lbs
• Muscle mass gain: 0.7 lb

I fell very short at my muscle gain, adding just 0.7 lb of muscle while putting on a lot of weight.

Filed under: body fat, graph, muscle, weight

Stats for Oct 2009

So it has been a month since I started bulking up. How am I doing so far? Here are the raw numbers

Exercises

• Squats: 170 lbs, 8 reps
• Deadlifts: 185 lbs, 10 reps
• Bench Press: 110 lbs, 4 reps
• Pull ups: Body weight + 25 lbs, 7 reps
• Overhead Press: 75 lbs, 6 reps

I am doing well in all exercises except bench press. The exercise that is already closest to my goal for end of december is my pull-ups. I can already do 7 reps with 25 lbs hanging off my waist! You can check out my previous post for the goals I have set.

Body weight and fat

• Weight: 120.8 lbs
• Fat %: 12.2%

I am able to add weight as expected. But my body fat % shot up too much. My goal for end of december was to weight 125 lbs at 12% body fat. But I am already over the limit for my body fat %. So I have to lower it and at the same time increase my weight. Very unlikely. I might have to revise my goals, but I will see how it goes and hope to make better predictions for my next bulking phase. It is not at all easy to keep the fat down while gaining weight. For my weight and fat goals check out my previous blog here.

Filed under: exercise, fat, stats, weight