I was reading quickups thread and it touches on a few questions I hope some of you may help me with.
Regarding calories/protein consumption... As an endo/meso, I tend to keep a nice soft BF of around 24% at best. At present I'm 5'7" and 160lbs. I just spent the past year losing 30lbs of fat gained the previous year from symbiax (don't ever take that stuff!)And the weight loss was from eating [less] and working out. Lifting produced very good muscle gains, although right now I'm close to stalled (since starting hst). Actually, I've made better gains in muscle size and strength at 48yrs old than my best numbers when I was religiously (over)training hard in my twenties. Go figure? But one delimma is this. If I eat more, especially calories, I'm sure it's gonna add up on my belly. It takes all I can do to get that spare tire down to an acceptable level as it is. And that's not really acceptable at 24%bf. Of course I know plenty guys with more ecto body types that can eat like a horse, gain muscle and not gain bf, (I may need to have them eliminated). But I don't want to risk putting fat back on my belly after working so hard to get it down to this point(and lower). So I feel like it's a fine line where I'm eating to gain muscle or fat. Any ideas?
Next, I'm new to HST and I've gone through the first round of 15's, 10's and 2 wks of 5's. I lost some muscle tone and size in the 15's. The first weeks of 10's and 15's poundages felt very light, although I understand it's more
for conditioning and joint health than gaining size, and it definetly helped my low back and shoulder injuries (thank you). But the workouts felt too easy, no pumps, and left me wondering if I was wasting my time. Also, I only get light pumps at best at the heavy end of the 2 week cycles. Is this normal with HST? I'm thinking of using smaller weight increments in the 15 and 10rm, instead of 5 and 10 pounds. At the second week of 5's I've almost gained back the size and tone I lost, and maybe 2 more weeks of 5's may produce a little gain in size. But then, after a week of SD, and back to 15's, I'm wondering if I'm going to lose size again and have to spend 4 weeks just to get back to baseline. Again, I'm 48yrs old, 5'7", 160lbs, 25%bf and a pudgy belly ...although a lot better than it was. I'd like to be 175/180 with 18's and 30's and 15%bf, is this realistic? Any help from you guys would be appreciated.
Regarding calories/protein consumption... As an endo/meso, I tend to keep a nice soft BF of around 24% at best. At present I'm 5'7" and 160lbs. I just spent the past year losing 30lbs of fat gained the previous year from symbiax (don't ever take that stuff!)And the weight loss was from eating [less] and working out. Lifting produced very good muscle gains, although right now I'm close to stalled (since starting hst). Actually, I've made better gains in muscle size and strength at 48yrs old than my best numbers when I was religiously (over)training hard in my twenties. Go figure? But one delimma is this. If I eat more, especially calories, I'm sure it's gonna add up on my belly. It takes all I can do to get that spare tire down to an acceptable level as it is. And that's not really acceptable at 24%bf. Of course I know plenty guys with more ecto body types that can eat like a horse, gain muscle and not gain bf, (I may need to have them eliminated). But I don't want to risk putting fat back on my belly after working so hard to get it down to this point(and lower). So I feel like it's a fine line where I'm eating to gain muscle or fat. Any ideas?
Next, I'm new to HST and I've gone through the first round of 15's, 10's and 2 wks of 5's. I lost some muscle tone and size in the 15's. The first weeks of 10's and 15's poundages felt very light, although I understand it's more
for conditioning and joint health than gaining size, and it definetly helped my low back and shoulder injuries (thank you). But the workouts felt too easy, no pumps, and left me wondering if I was wasting my time. Also, I only get light pumps at best at the heavy end of the 2 week cycles. Is this normal with HST? I'm thinking of using smaller weight increments in the 15 and 10rm, instead of 5 and 10 pounds. At the second week of 5's I've almost gained back the size and tone I lost, and maybe 2 more weeks of 5's may produce a little gain in size. But then, after a week of SD, and back to 15's, I'm wondering if I'm going to lose size again and have to spend 4 weeks just to get back to baseline. Again, I'm 48yrs old, 5'7", 160lbs, 25%bf and a pudgy belly ...although a lot better than it was. I'd like to be 175/180 with 18's and 30's and 15%bf, is this realistic? Any help from you guys would be appreciated.
. Don't dispair though. 17.5" guns would look fantastic at low body fat.