Arkk's Weight Lifting / Fitness Thread

Genjiro said:

Dexa and everything else are all wildly innacurate. Definitely below 13.7, you can see some bodybuilders who post their dexa scans showing 5% who are closer to 10 and some who are lean as fuck and prolly 5-6% showing close to 10.

Conor McGregor had a dexa scan done showing him at 7% while Alberto Nunez (below) had one doneonly showing him at 6.8%. McGregor is lean, but in this realm hes not even on the same planet as Nunez who ffs has ass striations.

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Though I've respected the dedication and focus of it, I've always found dudes who looked like this to be a little gross. But recently I've really appreciated the workout vids done by people who have this kind of look, because it really helps to understand what the muscles being engaged look like (or would look like if I wasn't so small)

This video is a good example of that:

Araysar how is that body recomposition going?

Tuco said:

Araysar how is that body recomposition going?

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bro its only been a day
i biked like 10 miles yesterday evening though
im easing into it

Araysar said:

bro its only been a day
i biked like 10 miles yesterday evening though
im easing into it

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Ossoi Wurst and I showed off our before pics, don't hold out on us.

no homo

So I'm about a week into switching from a 3 month long, 1600kcal, <20g carb, 170g protein diet to a 3200kcal, 200g protein, 120g fat diet. I also started taking creatine when I started eating carbs again. In the first 4 days I gained around 7lbs, but it's stayed there for a few days.

7lbs of initial gain of water weight from glycogen + creatine is a little less than I expected to gain. I lost about 10lbs in the first week of doing keto and assumed I'd gain it all back when I started eating carbs again.

Anyway, I figure I've stabilized and can start tuning my caloric intake a little more based on my weight gain over time. There's a pretty wide variance in outputs of the different caloric expenditure calculators based on your exercise regimen. On one side you've got bros like Ossoi talking about 10-12kcal per lbs (2000 to 2400 kcal for me), on the other side you've got Calories Needed for a 31 year old, 203 lb Male talking about 2900 calories for someone doing "moderate" exercise. Add 500kcal to that for what some people recommend for gaining and you're at 3400 which is more than I'm doing now.

I had a very consistent diet on keto, but I think it'll be harder now because A: I'm eating so much more quantity, B: It's harder to eat 3200kcal of the same food every day than it is to eat 1600cal of the same food. But I've been pretty reliably hitting 3200 according to myfitnesspal.

My notional goal is to gain 0.5lbs to 1lbs a week, so I'll track my weight over the next week and adjust intake over time. My weight variance on keto was pretty small (standard deviation within a single pound in the last few weeks of it), but we'll see how it goes with this diet.

Oh and I got this scale last night:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FHELB56

It pegged me at 24% body fat which feels about right. I don't really care if it's accurate in an absolute sense, but I'm hoping it's at least accurate in a relative sense. Ex: if I start to get visibly fatter on my diet "eat everything in sight" diet ( Araysar ), that figure should go up.

Ossoi said:

There is no variance - if you look at the numbers, 2400 to cut, +500 to 2900 for maintenance and +500 to 3400 to gain. The numbers are spot on.

I maintain that your plan of gaining weight is flawed and all you're doing is increasing how far you'll have to cut. If you want to get stronger then you should gradually increase calories and do so every time your lifts/progression stall, but whatever, Faster, Softer, Slower, Stronger

I read something last night to the effect of, the easiest way to look 10lbs bigger is to lose 10lbs of fat

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Yeah you might be right.

However, don't you think that escalating your caloric intake whenever your lifts/progression stall will ultimately result in a significantly slower lifting progression than overestimating caloric intake and reducing when one gains too much fat?

Ossoi said:

So the question is if increasing calorie take by 500 calories a day = quicker strength gains than by 100. I don't think so.

Let's assume someone is on a standard beginners 5x5 strength program like stronglifts, the target progression is to increase the weight by 2.5kg next session when 5x5 is reached on each exercise. I don't think +500 is going to mean quicker progression.

As I keep saying, a beginner is primed to get stronger, burn fat and build muscle even when eating at a deficit. A lot of the strength gains have nothing to do with calories but are due to neural adaptation.

I also don't think that your +500 and increased carb intake is warranted by your DB set up. Carb intake is directly correlated to intensity/volume of activity and the reality is that DB only exercises aren't going to be as intensive as barbell squats, barbell deadlifts etc

It really depends what your priority is - body composition aka looking good (ripped, leaner, abs etc), putting on mass and getting bigger, or focusing on strength.

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Thanks. I dropped to 3000 calories and will see how the next week goes.