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It’s still Monday in Guam or somewhere, right? Good enough.

You may or may not (probably not) be curious about what’s been going on with my fitness program. Well, here’s the low diggity down. Since mid-November I’ve been what’s called “bulking,” which means deliberately putting on weight to add muscle. You’re probably thinking, “Dude, uh, you weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 pounds, I’m not sure that ADDING weight is what you want to be doing. Why don’t you diet and just turn that fat into muscle?”

I laugh at you. Har! Hardy har!

A common misconception, popularized by almost every fitness or health magazine in every single issue, is that turning yourself into Chris Evans is merely a matter of craploads of cardio and occasional weight-lifting. I believe we’ve talked about this previously, but in case you missed it: it don’t work that way. The human body has three modes: gaining fat and muscle, losing fat and muscle, or staying pretty much exactly the same, depending entirely on caloric intake. If you eat less than you burn, you lose fat and muscle, and if you eat more, you gain it. The proportion of muscle to fat lost or gained depends on whether or not you stress your existing musculature with weight training, signalling it to divert calories to muscle gain in an effort to adapt to that stress.

Short version: if you want to add muscle, you have to gain weight. If you want to lose fat, you have to lose weight. Those two processes cannot happen simultaneously.

So, I decided that over the winter I would do a “bulk,” which means eating more than I burn, and lifting weights in sufficient volume to stress my muscles and signal them to grow. The decision was based solely on the fact that I’d been “cutting” (losing weight and fat) for 3 months and my lifts were not progressing in weight, for the simple reason that in order to get strong past a certain point your muscles have to get bigger, and mine couldn’t get bigger because I wasn’t eating enough for them to do so. And it was pissing me off to be bench pressing 180-190 for 5 reps over and over with no gains.

So in mid-November, my stats looked like this:

Weight: 242 pounds

Bodyfat Percentage: 20% (estimated)

Squat: 280x3x5 (280 pounds, three sets, five reps per set)

Bench press: 190x3x5 (and badly stalled)

Deadlift: 370x1x5

After 3 months of hardcore bulking (eating like a pig, and lifting like a beast):

Weight: 271 pounds

Bodyfat: 24%

Squat: 345x3x5

Bench press: 217.5x3x5

Deadlift: 395x1x5

Now, you’ll probably say, “Man, your deadlift didn’t go up, are you a wuss?” The problem there was that I actually ran out of weights, and was stuck DLing 390 for about 4 straight weeks before I got a bunch more 45 pound plates and rocked 395×5 yesterday like Paul Bunyan. You may also say “271 pounds? Holy crap you’re fat!” Here’s the thing, though: my BF% (estimated, but measured using the same function each time, so accurate relative to itself) only went up 4%. If you do the math, my “lean body mass” went from 194 pounds to 206; LBM includes bone, muscle, and most importantly water, so don’t think for a second I actually gained 12 pounds of actual muscle in 12 weeks. Still: if even HALF of that LBM gain is muscle (and I bet it’s more), that’s 6 pounds of muscle. That doesn’t seem like much, but believe me, pro bodybuilders would sell a kidney to gain 6 pounds of lean muscle in 3 months.

It’s also worth noting that the squat and bench press lifts went up 23% and 14% in 3 months, which are significant gains.

So, what now? Well, I won’t lie, I have a pretty significant gut going on. Oddly enough, though, I’m still fitting in most of my regular 38×34 pants, although I have in issue in that my thighs have gotten so large that I’m in constant danger of hulking through them if I bend over, twist awkwardly, try to walk, etc. I could continue bulking, really get my lifts up to the “advanced” level, but frankly I’m in this to look rad, and being able to lift heavy crap is a secondary goal, so I think it’s time to lean out a bit and see if I can get myself reasonably svelte for summer so the ladies be all “wooooo” and the dudes be mad jelly. With that in mind, I’m going to start a low-carb diet, as well as switch routines from “Starting Strength” to “Madcow 5×5.”

Why low-carb? Well, one of the problems of cutting fat is that, as mentioned above, you tend to lose muscle as you lose weight. You combat this by making sure you have a LOT of protein in your system (your body is less likely to start tearing down muscles to get protein if you have plenty of it available via food), and continuing to lift heavy so your muscles are signalled to maintain as much size as possible. Well, there is no more protein-heavy diet than one that consists mostly of meat. Yesterday, my first day on the diet, I managed to get 365 grams of protein, a pretty staggering amount. I believe the RDA recommendation for someone my size is 80 grams. And today’s lunch consisted of an entire rotisserie chicken. So from a protein perspective, I should be A-OK. Some folks also say that the reduction of insulin production from eating so few carbohydrates also contributes to the body losing fat, although I think it’s more that after a while you just naturally start eating less because the protein and fat sit in your belly and make you feel full. The downside of this diet is that until my body gets used to burning fat for energy, my workouts will suuuuuuu-uuuuuck, and I will likely be missing a lot of reps.

I combat this by switching to a routine that incorporates a 4 week “deload” period, namely Bill Starr’s Madcow 5×5 program. This gives me time to rest my body (which has been taking a beating over the last 5-6 months, and I can feel it) and also give it time to learn how to burn fat instead of carbohydrates so that when I got back to setting PRs in a month my body’s all “Yeah word.” It’s also a slightly lower volume program than Starting Strength, but still features plenty of intensity and aggressive weekly progression, and includes 2 weeks of “deload” out of every 6 to keep me from burning out. So instead of squatting heavy 3 times a week and hitting a new PR each time, I get a “rest” day on Wednesday with fewer, and lighter, sets. It also includes curls on Fridays so I can get crazy big arms, so don’t you worry, ladies.

My lifts will undoubtedly stall as the cut goes on, so I’ll just try and stay about where I am strength-wise until the end of the summer, at which time hopefully I’ll be down to a slim 235 with a 15% body fat and I’ll just be wearing a speedo everywhere including work and church.

Look forward to that.