I started "getting in shape" around March of 2010. I'm about 5'6", and I started out weighing about 165 with barely any muscle. I've never really been "fat," but I wasn't anything close to skinny. At this time I changed my diet to strict primal/paleo and started working out. After a few months of dicking around in the gym, I gained some shitty strength and lost some weight, down to around 145. This was now summer of 2010, and I realized that I weighed only 145 fucking pounds. Yeah cool, I had some nifty abs but I knew girls that weighed more than me. They were probably stronger too.
By the end of summer, I finally realized that I needed to be bigger and stronger. Through some research and some help/motivation from a good friend, I got into squatting, deadlifting, and concentrated more on bigger lifts like shoulder press and bench press. Next, I did what any reasonable human being would do. I started eating bigger. Way bigger. I started eating breakfasts of like 6-7 eggs with meat, cheese, avocados, and greek yogurt. Lunch and dinner were feasts that left me feeling like I was going to die. And then I'd drink 2 glasses of milk after that. Ugh. I still wasn't eating a ton of carbs, but the sheer volume of food was working. I was gaining weight. By October I was something like 160, and my lifts were increasing. By December I was 170, and I was hitting PR's like crazy on bench, deadlifts, squats. I felt like the man. And then by January, I peaked at around 175lbs, and I was starting to turn into a bit of a fatty bobalatty. Nothing crazy, but I was definitely sporting the beginnings of a gut.
Once February hit, I made the decision that I wanted to try and maintain my strength, but lean out a little bit. I read about lean gains, a diet constructed by Martin Berkhan where you fast for about 16 hours and then eat your face off during an 8 hour feeding window. Every day. Fucking crazy, right? I'm oversimplifying the shit out of it, but basically you fast for most of the morning, and then work out mostly fasted in the afternoon. Afterwards you eat (real food) like a monster. And by real food, I don't mean the processed shit you get at the supermarket.
I loosely followed this program for a long time. The fasting wasn't the problem, it was eating enough after my workout. Because I was still eating fairly strict paleo (mistake 1), I was eating a lot of fat and protein, which fills you up like a motherfucker. Because of this, overall everyday I just wasn't getting enough protein, and not nearly enough carbohydrate. And finally, I just wasn't sticking to the program. I wasn't squatting, deadlifting enough (mistake 2), and was eating too much before workouts (mistake 3). The program works fine, I just wasn't following it correctly.
Despite all that, I lost weight in time for the summer. Of course I did, I wasn't eating enough! Guess what else I lost? Muscle. A lot of it. All of a sudden, I'm struggling to deadlift 255lbs, and my squat was atrocious. Bench and shoulder press were laughable. At least this time my weight didn't drop below 150.
This was just a couple of months ago. I'm about 155 right now, and I'm beginning to put back on some weight. I still fast for 16hrs a few times a week, and I always eat some kind of carbohydrate immediately after my workouts. Usually some kind of potato, sometimes rice too. I've upped my protein intake a whole lot, although I don't measure it (mistake 1, heh). I've read all over you should be getting anywhere from 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight. My estimate is that I need over 230 grams a day. To quote 70's big:
Has your progress slowed? The first thing to look at is your daily protein intake. What is it? Oh, you don’t even know? Well have fun shoveling shit in the regular infantry, because Special Forces are not in your future.
Touche. It's high time I start measuring how much I get.
BTW, here are the links to my sources on primal eating, the lean gains program, and protein requirements for all that are interested.
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-primal-blueprint/
http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains-guide.html
http://www.70sbig.com/blog/2011/10/protein/
That about sums it up. I'll leave you with a comic about Mike Fatcessa and Darelle Revis.
Take it deep.
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