I’m just going to branch on my own topic here:
The only way to truly understand your body composition is to do a DEXA-fit scan, and that is most accurate measurement of your body (visceral) fat/muscle ratio. [Body calipers are not accurate and most people who claim to know how to use them, do not.]
Also, you can’t bulk without putting on body fat. It’s not possible. Nobody is a genetic freak where they are on a bulk where it converts to all muscle, (Rather it be a lean/mass/dirty bulk cycle) without putting on body fat. The idea behind a bulk is to execute two things, 1.)You need the size to convert into muscle mass and 2.)You need the strength to be able to lift the weight, to power through those extra reps, to fully fatigue the muscle, break it down and then have it grow with adequate sleep. If you’re not eating enough prior to your training regiment, then you’re going to Fatigue quicker in the gym and your body will hit a plateau.
So in terms of my own body composition:
When I went off cycle last year, meaning decline of calories/not lifting as heavy, I dropped down to ~195, and I believe at that time I was ~212 pounds prior to the pandemic. Now, in the midst of that cut, I lost some muscle mass, some body fat and the muscles literally fall flat, (because they’re not necessarily getting the restoration from the carbohydrates that I was using before and my protein content had dropped significantly.)
So I’ve been in a ‘re-feed’ trying to put on size before the holidays when I started, and it didn’t take me long to regain the weight, but in the midst of that, what happens is, you’re also essentially bringing some of that muscle back to life when you re-feed the proteins/carbohydrates, so putting on the size was almost like body memory, where it remembers where it once was. What I mostly need besides reactivating the muscle, is more {tone and definition}, which I’ve also lost some, but with the right execution of lifting technique‘s through stretch and contraction, going to failure, that won’t take long to shape.
The idea behind bulking as well, is you have to teach yourself to eat more, because without the food, you can’t grow, and you need to have a pre-stage set before you start lifting. Plus, once I start training March 1, some of that fat obviously is going to burn off naturally. Learning to eat multiple times a day without thousands of calories, is like a stepping-stone process, it just takes time for your body to adapt to that, and you can’t just ‘force feed’ yourself weeks before you start training.
I had a really good conversation tonight with a friend, and he was talking about weightlifting and I told him how I was in a prep stage right now and we talked about muscle memory. And once you have the foundation laid where you put on muscle prior, and based on your genetics and healthy testosterone levels, you can retain a lot of that muscle also depending on your diet, but once you start lifting to reactivate that muscle, it’s literally like riding a bike, it comes right back. It really is a unique factor about your body, and that’s why I think the size is crucial, because it supports the muscle and your body uses all those nutrients to revive what you once had.
Lastly, one thing I think that gets overlooked a lot when you talk about weight lifting, muscle memory, bulking, sleep cycles, the list goes on. Is testosterone levels. Most males have no idea where they stand with healthy testosterone levels and what they produce. It’s a good thing to have measured, and your natural testosterone levels drop significantly after the age of 40, but one thing that helps with bodybuilding, is if you have a strong production of natural testosterone in your body, it’s a massive building block to put on muscle quicker and retain it longer. I’m 35, but once I reach over 40, I’ll definitely be going on TRT, as has so many benefits, but that’s another topic.
Oh, there was a checklist a while back that I read that was kind of anecdotal to see if you produce healthy testosterone (Of course, if you want complete-accurate results, you would need a true TRT test), and it was questions like ‘Do you have a healthy sex drive, do you naturally have a high level of stamina, do you put on muscle easy, are you sleeping regularly without interruption, are you easily fatigued, ect.)
Getting to know your body is a science on its own.
www.theepochtimes.com
