freeflowme
Level 4 Valued Member
Hey all,
I started doing PTTP in February of this year in hopes of strengthening my way out of chronic back pain, having fun with getting a bit stronger, and improving my body composition. At the time, I was ~190lbs at 6'0, and carried a lot more fat on the front of my torso than I would've preferred. For the first few months of training, my weight stayed about the same, occasionally spiking up to ~194, but I didn't worry too much about it. But by June I was more like 200lbs, and in September I've been up to 208.
I know that it's difficult to gain strength (particularly with barbell training) without gaining some weight, and I suppose if I were looking lean and mean at this weight, I wouldn't care. But the reason that this is really disconcerting is that in the pictures that I've been taking every 2 months or so, my musculature looks about the same (with the exception of my upper back, especially after I added pullups to PTTP over the summer), but I very clearly have a bigger belly, more love handles, and more fat on my chest and perhaps even arms. Basically, I feel like I'm headed completely in the wrong direction.
This is particularly frustrating because my diet before starting training was pretty poor. I would often eat little to nothing besides RXBARs or something of the like during the day, and then go to the store and get a quart of ice cream when I finished work at ~9pm and eat the whole thing. If ever I deserved to look fat, it was then. Since starting training, I've really cut out everything that you'd call "junk" food, and eat very little that's processed. I think the problem since I've started training is that I got obsessed with the idea of making sure that I was getting enough protein, which probably led to just ingesting more total calories. This really reached it's worst point with my idea of having whey protein shakes 2-3x/day. My thought was that I could get the protein in with less total calories, but in actuality I think the liquid calories don't make me full at all so I may have kept my solid food caloric intake the same while just adding 500-700 calories of protein shakes on top of that, which is where a lot of this weight gain may have come from.
One day or another, I got really uncomfortable with my situation, and having read The Warrior Diet about a decade ago, decided to give that a go. Embarrassingly, I made it until about 2pm drinking all the water I could stand and having more nuts and apples and bananas than I feel like would be approved, before breaking down and eating an entire package of Oreos (we wouldn't normally have something like that around the house, but it was leftover from a student event the week before). My wife was going about her day, eating normally, and I was just feeling miserable, and all it took was 6-8 hours for me to question whether feeling hungry is worth it or whether I'd rather be a sad sack and give in, and I just gave in.
Searching for another solution, I decided to track my calories one day this past week, which I found to be an incredibly tedious task (see attached, if you're interested). I found that my 3 meals were each ~500-700 calories, at the end of which I felt incredibly full, but 2 hours after each, like clockwork, I was so hungry again that I felt I had to have a snack, which I tried to make healthy and filling. My total caloric intake for the day was ~2,700, but that was while trying to be really good about things and feeling hungry a lot more often than I would normally like to.
I don't know. I'm sort of at a loss. I'd like to feel more comfortable in my own skin, not have weird protuberances of fat under my clothes, etc. But we were at a neighborhood get-together last night, and everyone was our age with 2-3 kids (we have 2), and I just looked around and realized that everyone there was pretty anesthetic. I feel like I'm fighting against the reality of being super busy with work, having 2 young kids, not always thinking far enough ahead to have a good food option ready, etc. Sometimes I wonder why bother. Most people don't. No one in my wife or my wife's family exercises or watches what they eat, and they've all lived into their 90s for the most part.
Anyways. I guess at the end of the day I'd like to figure out what I can do that doesn't feel like a completely miserable or unsustainable way to live and still shed some pounds. One idea I had was just looking at the foods that are the most satiating and trying to mostly eat those along with high quality protein sources. But I'm open to whatever thoughts / suggestions you might have.
I started doing PTTP in February of this year in hopes of strengthening my way out of chronic back pain, having fun with getting a bit stronger, and improving my body composition. At the time, I was ~190lbs at 6'0, and carried a lot more fat on the front of my torso than I would've preferred. For the first few months of training, my weight stayed about the same, occasionally spiking up to ~194, but I didn't worry too much about it. But by June I was more like 200lbs, and in September I've been up to 208.
I know that it's difficult to gain strength (particularly with barbell training) without gaining some weight, and I suppose if I were looking lean and mean at this weight, I wouldn't care. But the reason that this is really disconcerting is that in the pictures that I've been taking every 2 months or so, my musculature looks about the same (with the exception of my upper back, especially after I added pullups to PTTP over the summer), but I very clearly have a bigger belly, more love handles, and more fat on my chest and perhaps even arms. Basically, I feel like I'm headed completely in the wrong direction.
This is particularly frustrating because my diet before starting training was pretty poor. I would often eat little to nothing besides RXBARs or something of the like during the day, and then go to the store and get a quart of ice cream when I finished work at ~9pm and eat the whole thing. If ever I deserved to look fat, it was then. Since starting training, I've really cut out everything that you'd call "junk" food, and eat very little that's processed. I think the problem since I've started training is that I got obsessed with the idea of making sure that I was getting enough protein, which probably led to just ingesting more total calories. This really reached it's worst point with my idea of having whey protein shakes 2-3x/day. My thought was that I could get the protein in with less total calories, but in actuality I think the liquid calories don't make me full at all so I may have kept my solid food caloric intake the same while just adding 500-700 calories of protein shakes on top of that, which is where a lot of this weight gain may have come from.
One day or another, I got really uncomfortable with my situation, and having read The Warrior Diet about a decade ago, decided to give that a go. Embarrassingly, I made it until about 2pm drinking all the water I could stand and having more nuts and apples and bananas than I feel like would be approved, before breaking down and eating an entire package of Oreos (we wouldn't normally have something like that around the house, but it was leftover from a student event the week before). My wife was going about her day, eating normally, and I was just feeling miserable, and all it took was 6-8 hours for me to question whether feeling hungry is worth it or whether I'd rather be a sad sack and give in, and I just gave in.
Searching for another solution, I decided to track my calories one day this past week, which I found to be an incredibly tedious task (see attached, if you're interested). I found that my 3 meals were each ~500-700 calories, at the end of which I felt incredibly full, but 2 hours after each, like clockwork, I was so hungry again that I felt I had to have a snack, which I tried to make healthy and filling. My total caloric intake for the day was ~2,700, but that was while trying to be really good about things and feeling hungry a lot more often than I would normally like to.
I don't know. I'm sort of at a loss. I'd like to feel more comfortable in my own skin, not have weird protuberances of fat under my clothes, etc. But we were at a neighborhood get-together last night, and everyone was our age with 2-3 kids (we have 2), and I just looked around and realized that everyone there was pretty anesthetic. I feel like I'm fighting against the reality of being super busy with work, having 2 young kids, not always thinking far enough ahead to have a good food option ready, etc. Sometimes I wonder why bother. Most people don't. No one in my wife or my wife's family exercises or watches what they eat, and they've all lived into their 90s for the most part.
Anyways. I guess at the end of the day I'd like to figure out what I can do that doesn't feel like a completely miserable or unsustainable way to live and still shed some pounds. One idea I had was just looking at the foods that are the most satiating and trying to mostly eat those along with high quality protein sources. But I'm open to whatever thoughts / suggestions you might have.