Bonus flexing pic: https://imgur.com/a/05Qh741
Age: from 18 to 20
Sex: Male
Height: 5’11 but 6’ on Tinder
Starting Weight: 131 lb
Ending Weight: 156 lb
Starting Stats: 45 lb bench, 65 lb squat, 85 lb deadlift
Ending Stats( 1 RM): 165 lb bench, 260 lb squat, 300 lb deadlift
Diet: When I first started lifting in 2018, i suffered from serious fuckarounditis both in the gym and out of it. As a skinny fat person with body dysmorphia, I would feel fat and bloated when bulking and skinny and frail when cutting. As a result, I would just switch back and forth between the two and essentially spun my wheels for the first 8 months.
When I started attending university, the meal plan made it easy to, you know, meal plan. I started at around 3000 calories a day and 140 grams of protein; that didn’t give me the results I wanted so I added a full gallon of 2% milk every day on top of that. As can be expected, this got me fat. I ballooned up to about 175 pounds, and while my lifts went up, they were nowhere near where they should have been as a thicc 175 pounder.
Luckily, I got my wisdom teeth out at this point and stopped eating anything other than chocolate pudding. I lost a dramatic amount of weight and went down to 155 in about 3 weeks. Very unhealthy and I don’t recommend this, but I could suddenly see muscle and felt somewhat lean and confident. At this point, it was March of 2019 and I weighed 155 with a 5x5 bench of 115; I don’t remember my other lifts but they were similarly not great.
Over quarantine, I didn’t work out or eat intentionally at the beginning and accidentally climbed up to 163 lbs. After gasping at the new number on the scale, my love handles and I decided to go on another cut. This cut was 1600 calories and 160 grams of protein. I made it to 155 again and am now bulking pretty hard at university on a diet of 3500 calories and 175 grams of protein. I don’t really watch my other macros, I just make sure to eat 3 servings of veggies every day.
Routine: When I first started lifting, I went every other day and basically just did my favorite exercises: bench press, lat pull downs, seated low rows, bicep curls, and lateral raises. Legs were a long-forgotten dream. I followed this stellar, well-designed routine for 8 months, then transitioned to the Reddit PPL routine that I’ve been following since. The only difference is that I’ve also become an avid rock climber, so I’ll occasionally swap a pull day (or leg day...I know) out for hard climbing or give myself an extra rest day after a weekend climbing trip.
In terms of progression, I followed the basic idea of the Reddit PPL. For my main lifts, I started each day with a 5x5; for example, a 5x5 of bench press on push day. If I can do 5 clean sets of 5 reps each, I move up 5 pounds for the next workout and shoot for 5 sets of 3 reps minimum. I moved up 10 pounds at a time for squat and deadlift and 5 for bench. For my accessory work, I did the same but with a rep scheme of minimum 8 and moving up if I could complete 12.
I know this isn’t as inspiring or incredible as many of the posts on this sub, but I find that a lot of people I know have followed similar plans and have spent an equal amount of time fucking around and taking a while to actually start taking the gym and fitness seriously. I hope this post can provide some insight to some people, but if not, that’s okay too! I finally am starting to feel confident in my body and with my shirt off, and I am proud of the progress I have made. Have a wonderful day!
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* This article was originally published here
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