“Hey, I think I want to try bodybuilding, too.”
When my wife said that to me as I walked in from exercising, I was a little taken back. Mostly happy and excited, but still somewhat shocked.
I had told her that I went through the Precision Nutrition calculator to create a baseline meal plan for me. I am not going to focus on losing weight, which is something entirely new for me. The goal that I selected in their calculator was “body recomposition”. I am slated to drop about 10lbs of body fat, give or take. That is good with me. If I did that, I would be sitting just under the goal bodyweight I originally wanted, but with far less body fat. I ain’t mad at it.
All of this started as I shifted off of WW and took the daily nutrition into my own hands. I don’t want to have to rely on an app or a program in order to eat, especially long-term. As I did that, my core meals were usually pretty good, but I strayed when it came to snacking. Especially in the mornings after the gym. As I look back, that alone was probably doing me in. I started to feel the inches creep back on my waistline first. I was avoiding the scale, mainly because I am just sick of using it. But I could feel it. I knew that I was gaining. It did not feel like a lot, but enough for me to notice how I felt in my clothes. That told me I was gaining so I didn’t need to weigh, right?
I think overall, I still look as if I have lost weight and not like I was “gaining it all back” which was good. I could notice the biggest difference in my lifting belt, however. The belt that I have is sized for me and when I bought it, they asked me if I planned on going up or down a weight class because the size I would be getting would put me right in the middle. I told them no and got the belt knowing that it could be another tool used to help me stay on track.
I can still fit in the belt, but it is nowhere near as comfortable as it was when I first got it.
After hopping on the scale and seeing that I was 10lbs over my “walking around weight” goal, I started to take a look at what I wanted to change and what needed to change.
I have a plan that might be considered more strict than something you would want to tackle long term. I am OK with that. I am doing this as an experiment of sorts, mainly because it is something new and fresh for me. Plus, my wife is on board with it and doing the same thing, which really helps stay focused.
Today, I took progress photos and I already have measurements that I took from a couple of days ago. I want to have an accurate snapshot of where I am and what this is doing, if anything at all. Right now, I am going to take measurements every two weeks, progress photos every two weeks (most likely monthly), and weigh in once a week. I have heard all kinds of pros and cons for weighing in daily. That messes with my head too much. I want to look at the bigger picture, not just a single metric this time.
This is not really the entire post that I wanted to write. While I don’t blast the link to this blog out everywhere, it is still public. I am not yet comfortable putting all of the measurements and progress photos out for the world just yet. Maybe I will, but make the post private. I think the first step was just to collect that data in the first place.