Newbie question, but I swear not a slim and tone up one!

[thuggie]

Not that I want to get fat and flabby


Hello

I'm new and I have done as much reading as possible of stickies etc, however if I have missed the obvious I apologise in advance.

I have been training hard for over a year, however I come from a sporting background, so I'm not new to working out.

My stats are
Age 34
Height 5'6
Weight 144 pounds (142 less the silicon in my chest
Body fat approx 17%

I started taking anavar 3 weeks ago, for the first 10 days i did 10mg, (5 and 5) then switched up to 15. I'm not sure about source, supposedly a reputable internet, and it is British Dragon.

I train every other day a full body split and I have seen strength gains, but i'm not sure at what percentage I should see this. Every time I train should I be increasing in strenght a certain %? The scale has gone up a few pounds, but I have no idea whether this is muscle or water (I do drink 1.5 Gallons a day)

My big question is diet, I understand that it must be clean and high in protien, I want to add bulk, and then lean out, can I do this in one 12 week cycle? Can I spend the first 6 weeks bulking and then the next 6 weeks leaning out? Even on steriods I can't do both at the same time can I?

And I have read that Anavar decreases your appetite, well mine has gone thro the roof, and I do the ECA stack which other than an energy boost it doesn't help surpress my appetite. I really battle to stick to 1700 calories a day, I don't eat rubbish, but I do sometimes eat too much "clean' food. Any suggestions, or its really just a matter of will power?

Any advice is greatly appreciated, thank you

 

[Sassy69]

Hi thuggie Welcome to EF!

Regardless of the var, if you want to bulk, your diet needs to reflect that. There's no guarantee or set rate that you should see a strength gain on any AAS - but again, it will be determined by your diet. You can almost literally cut or bulk on anything --- depending on your diet. If you arent' eating enough protein to build muscle & enough carb to fuel the lifting to build muscle, you won't see big gains. Probably you could see the same sort of gains w/o the aas. What var does well is help you recover so you can lift heavier & more aggressive. I might even suggest you move to a more aggressive training program because you will be able to recover better from it.

Another thing about your diet - if it is set for bulking, then you want to switch over to cutting, you will need to probably allow for a couple weeks of transition so your body can adapt to the diet switch.

As far as what your weight is - you can get bodyfat measures done every week or so to get an idea if its fat, muscle or water. If you are trying to bulk, then the couple of pounds should really be irrelevant.

If you have a hard time eating to a plan, I'd suggest you lay out a pre-planned diet designed for what you want to accomplish - e.g. if you want to bulk, you can use the approach of say 1.5 x your body weight for total # protein, then set for a 40% protein /30% fat /30 % carb macro ratio and build your diet from there, break it up into 5-6 small meals every 2-3 hrs. Then write it down. That's what you eat. There's no room for forgetting or eating other stuff. This is what you eat. And same for cutting, but drop the protein multiplier a bit to arrive at a total lower cals and start a carb cycle or something to refocus on cutting.

And then log them every day -- if you look at any of the journals on this board, you'll see this is exactly what several of us are doing - me for ex, I"m working on competitoin prep - my diet is laid out completely and that's how I eat. No questions because I have a goal that I want to achieve and if I do anything other than follow my diet or explore some minor modifications to tweak it based on my body's response, then I will simply not achieve my goal in the time I have to achieve it - so why bother?

I wouldn't say its so much "will power" as dedication and focus and no excuses. I hate the "will power" argument because I find it to be very victimizing -- it seems to mean some how you are supposed to starve yourself or whatever and if you don't do that, then you are a failure. What does that accomplish? Its just sort of a mind-fuck. Then you feel bad about yourself and then you go bury your misery in a double chocolate fudge brownie. If you tend to not eat enough, then that's also a change in the diet that you have to dedicate yourself to. Because it means you aren't going to meet your goal and again, why bother w/ the goal at all then? ITs all a decision to make a smalll change and commit to it in favor of a target result.

 

[thuggie]

Thank you so much for such an informative reply. What you say about eating with a plan and a goal really puts things into focus. I think sometimes that I get bogged down in the day to day and lose sight of what I want to achieve.
I am logging my diet daily on fitday, and will continue to do so, I need to start taking things to work instead of buying salads daily! I have to say I haven't worked for a while and all my friends are into the fitness lifestyle so eating and socialising has never been a problem, however since working, peoples reaction to diet is a small detail I need to learn to get used to again!
Thank you again for your help.

 

[Sassy69]

That first step of gettign the whole food thing - what to eat, preparing it, packing it, carrying it is sort of tedious - I'm at home right now (between jobs) so no big deal, but I normally carry my whole day's meal plan w/ me just in case I get stuck anywhere. One time I left my cooler at the gym after 5 am cardio & got to work and almost started crying when I realized I didnt' have my food w/ me. (I was a few weeks out from a competition). I took my lunch break & drove back to get it -- 1 hr round trip.

Its good your friends are into the fitness thing - that helps a lot when you start not showing up for happy hours and all because "its not on my diet". Then people start to comment on the food you eat in the same breath as shoveling down a donut but saying they want to "lose weight & tone up".