Getting Buff...

Here's some thoughts I've been pondering over a the past few days.

I've been faithfully going to the gym on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, doing a full circuit on the upper- and lower-body machines along with my walks on the treadmill. I haven't been recording it here because It's kind of a waste of space; just reposting the same type of information over and over. I'd rather just post about issues and thoughts on doing the workouts than my statistics since I doubt anyone would be interested in those numbers.

But what am I getting from the workouts?

I'm obviously not "buff" and muscular. It's too much to think that would happen overnight. Or over a month, I suppose.

In working out you're supposed to have a goal. It could be to tone your muscles, to define your body shape (with all this excess skin I could be toned out the wazoo and you'd never see it anyway). It could be to help your cardiovascular system. It could be to just burn some calories.

I was thinking that muscle mass is supposed to burn fat and in the process boost your metabolism. Okay, it doesn't burn a lot of calories, but it's still better than fat. So I'm thinking I should try focusing on building some muscle mass.

That's where the problem comes in.

See, every site I look at for building muscle with weight training states that to do it, you need to take in more calories so there's more material from which to rebuild muscles. My understanding is that basically when you're building muscle, it's done by creating micro-tears in your existing muscle and then waiting 24 to 48 hours for those muscles to rebuild and repair the tears and in the process experience the effect of increasing muscle and becoming stronger.

I found information at
Muscle Building Tips
How To Get Bigger Muscles And Six-Pack Abs
The 10 Commandments of Muscle Building Nutrition

There are many other sites, but I wanted to just cite a few of the sites I read over; but the pattern of information gleaned from my Google search seemed to corroborate each other (or they all get information from the same sources).

But after weight loss surgery, the focus is on reducing the number of calories you take in. As a very very rough guess I'm thinking I have 300 to 400 calories a meal three times a day for a total of probably 1200 calories, all said and done. It's a rough average because I probably have about a cup of nuts (mostly peanuts) over the course of the day with my meals; I found that if I didn't have these I started to feel kind of wonky around my exercise time (usually I'm riding the stationary bike for an hour or so if it's a bike day or I'm at the gym for an hour doing weight training with Nautilus machines).

I don't eat until I feel stuffed or full; I figure that if I habitually do that, I'm going to stretch the stomach and just keep going after awhile. I have some nuts during the day but my meals I weigh with a kitchen scale to keep at less than 6 ounces each (although I aim for 5.5 ounces).

My surgeon will beat me if he sees this...

I know I'm eating far less than I used to. I forego a lot of the things I used to enjoy. But this has been what I'm working with now. I eat less and have been pretty good about getting in my exercise.

Before I go any further off the point I'll bring up my worries. The sites state that building muscle means consuming extra calories and increasing the weight you lift until you can only do four to eight reps before ending the set.

Basically you push your body to find the limits to your strength before experiencing failure. Oddly enough, building strength through finding your failure point is apparently controversial. Another reason I hate exercise...to be any good at it, you basically end up having to live exercise, making it one of those things that pushes the hobby limit to a career interest, and I have no interest in making the gym my career.

Which basically makes figuring this stuff out just that much harder.

Caloric intake is also an issue. Some articles are saying that weight training involves people building muscle by consuming three thousand to five thousand calories a day over the course of six meals! No way I could do that now; it would ruin my surgical alterations. Some of it is specifically banned from me like weight lifting diets that involve sky-high amounts of particular fats or protein powders and additives (my surgeon told me not to take protein supplements after I went off my soft diet).

For now I'm going to stick with my program as I have it laid out and then start making adjustments to "toughen it up" as I grow comfortable with the weight levels. I'm thinking I might have to increase the weight and do fewer reps and see how that works out.

Keep in mind that I've pre-queued this entry; it's actually mid-July. So by the time you're reading this I've adjusted my routine and I'm either injured or I had a successful transition to increase my strength level.

Anyone want to take bets on how this had turned out?