Former super-obese turned flabbo turning mad monster

[BarbEricScotaku]

Merry liftmas to all, and to all a good night! Speaking of night, it's close to my bedtime and my mind and fingers are weary from typing out my first challenge, so I'll just copy-and-paste from My Bodyspace:

 

How I Started

In about 2011 (I think) I got fed up with spending all those post-high-school years as a >400 lbs hamplanet, so I followed the link through the /fit/ sticky (Harsh's Worksheet at the time) and cleaned up my diet considerably. Due to life circumstances I couldn't go to a gym, so I just did the food part. Lost 100 lbs in six months, lost another 80 in about a year afterwards. I felt a lot better, had much more energy, was no longer suicidally depressed, etc. etc., but I still looked flabby and useless, and shockingly enough, spending months eating 1200 kcal/day stripped me of my muscle as well. Who da thunk it?
 
 Well, circumstances changed, and early Jan 2014 I joined a gym. Wasn't really sure what I was doing but I had read both Starting Strength and Strongest Shall Survive front to back, along with dozens of Internet articles and videos about barbell training so I had an idea -- didn't follow either since my head was overloaded with knowledge (information overload!) so I said screw it, plus there's no way I can self-teach power cleans (especially with my freakishly long arms and pitiful shoulder flexibility), neither proper Olympic ones nor Rippetoe Jump-N-Shrugs. I still used machines after my 3x/week squats and bench pressing, though.
 
 But after 3-4 months of that, I hurt myself (4 sets of 8 reps of 155 lb squats suck for a beginner, hehe), backed off from 3-4 hour workouts with like 12 things on my daily agenda. I had also backed off trying to cram more knowledge into my brain during this time so when I discovered StrongLifts, its straightforwardness was easily digestible. So from the 9th of April ('14), I've been doing that program. No power cleans here, boss! I'd still like to do them or some other explosive exercise (Olympic snatch? Might be easier on me thanks to my aforementioned monkey arms that go half-way down my thighs even with my absurdly long torso combined with comparatively short, stubby legs) but not until I can afford to hire a professional trainer.
 
 My starting stats for StrongLifts were as follows (each 5x5, except for deadlift which is 1x5): Squat 85, Bench 65, Press 45, Row 65, Dead 100.
 
 As of the 16th of May (middle of Week 6) they were: Squat 175, Bench 105, Press 87.5, Row 105, Dead 205.
 
 (I probably won't bother updating my lifts here, I have a spreadsheet and a cheap, dirty notepad already, and I just don't have the free time to spend additional time on sites that aren't facebook.)
 
 Yeah, I've modified the progressions a bit (faster squat and dead, slower overhead press -- those damn things have been giving the most trouble, so I chose to raise those in only 2.5 increments after reading a comment by Mark Rippetoe about how the arms can't readily adapt to +5 lbs each time due to having smaller muscles, or something along those lines, which basically confirmed what I've been going through for a few weeks).
 
 I've yet to fail a rep (as of 5-16), but with my accelerated squats and deads I expect to, and soon. I became impatient and greedy, especially around the beginning of May being able to do a single deadlift of 315 with no chalk, belt, or straps, and with a double-overhand grip, then with no second-day soreness afterwards -- though succeeding at a single 405 lb rack pull shortly thereafter left my traps (but not my back, oddly enough) in dire agony for four days straight!
 
 In short, my apparent ease with deadlifts and finally breaking through my before-injury squat PR of 155 has left me confident (at least enough to feel I can stand +20 lb jumps about every 4-5 days, and for squats +30 lbs over the course of a week). Hopefully not over-confident. But I'll know if it has soon enough!
 
 
 I plan to keep doing StrongLifts 5x5 until my body can no longer handle daily incremental increases, then switch to some intermediate program like Wendler's 5/3/1, the Texas Method, Madcow 5x5, or whatever. Then when my body cannot handle weekly incremental increases, instead of switching to an advanced strength training program that can only give monthly incremental increases, I'll just say screw it and switch to training for aesthetics (I do believe they call this "bodybuilding") as, at that point, unless one plans to break world records in the Olympics why bother fighting so hard anymore when your diminishing returns are that miniscule? Surely by then (5-10 years from now?) I'll have succeeded at achieving the goal mentioned under Why I Love Etc.

 

Why I Love it

Even though I still have a gut and man tits, even though I still have a bit of a double-chin when I look downwards, even though I have a bit of water-wings hanging off my arms coupled with thunder-thighs, just my short time in the gym you can see some serious beef trying to push through that last bit of stubborn flab that just does not want to leave me after I've been obese since 1993. Starving myself... err, I mean, calorie-counting for 2-3 years couldn't get rid of it, so my new tac is to pack on the muscle in the hopes that Mehdi is right when he says, "Anyway, the key to losing weight is to increase how many calories you burn with StrongLifts 5×5. How? Increase the weight on the bar. Lifting heavy is easier if you weigh more. So aim for that 140kg/300lb Squat. When you’re Squatting that for 5×5, you’ve become a fat burning machine."

But anyway, I love working out since I feel mighty (even with my current weak lifts, hehe). I've always been a strongman even during my years of carrying over 200 lbs of blubber, but now I finally feel I'm no longer wasting my genetic potential as not only a dude about six-and-a-half feet tall, but also being large in the shoulders, etc. too. I'm not lanky at all; I could never weigh under 200 lbs without turning into a hungry skeleton. So I love picking up heavy things and then putting them down in the hopes of one day transforming myself from my current state (mid-'14) of highly-marbled beefcake, to having the body of a man who fights bears on a mountain (though maybe a little less blubbery [i'd probably be satisfied with <=15% BF]... as aesthetics STILL is a concern of mine, albeit tertiary to functional strength, which is itself secondary to health -- though as stated in the last paragraph under How I Got Started Etc. once I can't get any stronger without doing seriously crazy crap like the Bulgarian Method, I'll shift my goals from health/strength/aesthetics to health/aesthetics/strength).

 

 

Few other things about little ol' me:

• Metalhead

• Weeaboo

• Horror fan

• Technophile

• Wannabe artist of some sort

 

I might publicly navel-gaze for you all at a later date, when I have a handful of hours of me-time again, i.e, when I'm not working, working out, or hanging out with friends or family. (Which may be tomorrow, which may be two weeks from now. )