Phil's Log Of Extraordinary Mediocrity

[Wilhelm]

After first morning on the PSMF, down to 278. Yay for water weight losses!

I'm sure you'll do well, @omaniphil.
I reached a similar point where i said the same "This has to stop"

If hunger is an issue, there's always keto...

I went keto before. It worked well for me, but my job at the time allowed me to make my own meals. I work a lot longer hours these days, and my wife nixed the idea of prepping different meals for me. Oh well.

Well, it's good there are other approaches. : nods :

[broseph]

After first morning on the PSMF, down to 278. Yay for water weight losses!

I'm sure you'll do well, omaniphil.
I reached a similar point where i said the same "This has to stop"

If hunger is an issue, there's always keto...

I went keto before. It worked well for me, but my job at the time allowed me to make my own meals. I work a lot longer hours these days, and my wife nixed the idea of prepping different meals for me. Oh well.

More anecdotal input for Phil:

I’ve used Intermittent Fasting during busy times for weight loss. I don’t think there’s anything magical about IF, but it can be great for compliance (pretty sure Jordan F has said the same).

Disclaimer: I’ve never used IF while trying to maintain high (for me) levels of strength/mass.

[omaniphil]

After first morning on the PSMF, down to 278. Yay for water weight losses!

I'm sure you'll do well, omaniphil.
I reached a similar point where i said the same "This has to stop"

If hunger is an issue, there's always keto...

I went keto before. It worked well for me, but my job at the time allowed me to make my own meals. I work a lot longer hours these days, and my wife nixed the idea of prepping different meals for me. Oh well.

More anecdotal input for Phil:

I’ve used Intermittent Fasting during busy times for weight loss. I don’t think there’s anything magical about IF, but it can be great for compliance (pretty sure Jordan F has said the same).

Disclaimer: I’ve never used IF while trying to maintain high (for me) levels of strength/mass.

Thanks - that's a great point. My PSMF is really kind of a functional IF plan. I plan on doing 3-4 shakes of around 150 calories worth of whey protein each until dinner, at which point I plan on eating a low fat, higher protein meal of around 800 calories or so. Plan is 250g of protein, 60g of carbs, 20g of fat.

I've done just straight protein shakes before which was successful, but hard. I'm hoping that eating one meal per day will help with compliance, and sanity, as well to maintain some flexibility with social life etc.

[omaniphil]

3/7/2019

Bench
5 sets of 3 with 225lbs

Deadlift
405x1 @8ish !!
4x4 with 315lbs

Ok. felt like crap today. Light headed most of the afternoon. Can't remember if this is just a stage before I get used to it, but I will bring some backup carbs to work tomorrow just in case. Workout sucked, and took a while for not actually accomplishing much. I may need to adjust the diet if I become completely useless in the gym. Want to keep lifting to try to bias the weight loss towards fat, but if you cut too much, that gets hard.

[omaniphil]

3/12/2019

Bench
7 sets of 6 with 185lbs

Squat
365x1 @ez
6 sets of 5 with 315lbs

Lat Pulldowns
3x15 with 90lbs

Felt pretty good today. Cut is going well, and still have energy, so thats good I guess.

[omaniphil]

3/14/2019

Bench
245lbsx4 @ 7-7.5ish PR
225x4x3

Deadlift
315x7x3

Lat Pulldowns/LTEs supersetted



Had a nice rep PR with bench. Hanley said to work up to set of 4 @7. 235 still felt light, so decided to do 245. Probably overshot a little, but this was much better than expected. Puts my e1RM around 300lbs, which is definitely the highest its ever been.

Cut is going ok. Down about 7lbs in the last week and a half, but 4-5 of those are water weight from all the lost glycogen, so I'd probably say 2-3 of actual loss. I was at 275 this morning. I'm going to continue doing the shakes during the day and one small meal at night until I get to 250, probably a couple of months away. Then hopefully I'll be conditioned enough not to splurge that I can trust myself with a little more flexibility. Think I should stay dry though, no matter what - that seems to help more than anything else.

My wife has also expressed interest in starting to strength train, which is somewhat exciting for me. She had terrible back pain after her first pregnancy, and then again after the second pregnancy. A few weeks ago, I had to go home during the middle of the day to help her get up after she fell to the floor and couldn't move due to having "thrown out her back" (in her words). Her instinct is to lay and bed and rest until she gets better, but I've been trying to encourage her to get up and move. I think she's slowly coming to the realization that strength training may help with confidence. Anyways, I'm stoked. I think she's going to sign up for a consult with Michael Ray or Derek Miles at BBM. Hopefully that goes well.

[omaniphil]

3/16/2019

Squats
5x4 with 325lbs

Bench
8x4 with 205lbs

Brocessories
Curls, DB Lateral Raises

3/19/2019
Squats
315x10, 315x10, 315x9, 315x8

Bench
8x6 with 187.5lbs

Lat Pulldowns

bw this morning 274lbs

For yesterday's workout, Hanley told me to do 4 sets @7 at 315. Presumably to try to find e1Rm. Determined to actually find it, and not sandbag it, I loaded 315 on, and planned to hit the 6-7 reps that I was expecting it would be. I took the set a little slower and took a pause at the top after each rep to evaluate. Realized I didn't have even a little bit of slow down to the 9th rep, so did 1 more, called that @7. RPE charts are probably not as useful for sets of 10, but that puts my e1rm up at around 485, which matches my all time PR. These reps last night were done beltless too, whereas my old 1RM was done belted. So, improvement I guess? All of this on a cut. I'll take it!

[cole]

good work man

[cgeorg]

That's awesome about the 4@7

[omaniphil]

3/21/2019

274lbs

Deadlift
365x1, 385x1, 405x1, 425x1, 435x1 @7, 365x5x3

Bench
225x3x5

Skipped Bro Work

Hanley told me to find a deadlift single around @7. Made it up to 435, which is better than I thought, for a e1RM of around 485. My squat and bench e1rm are back up to historic 1RM levels, but the deadlift is lagging quite a bit behind - probably because I'm only doing this 1 day a week and without the same volume as I'm hitting the squat and bench with. I may ask Hanley if I can decrease the squat volume a little bit to hammer the deadlift. I really really want a 600lb deadlift. Cut is going well enough. I'm not doing as drastic a cut as I had anticipated. Mostly because it was interfering with my work, causing me to get lightheaded and spacey in the afternoons. I decided I need to do something that I can be compliant with for a long period of time.

My routine now looks like this:

6:30am - 1.5cups of greek yogurt with some blueberries (P 35gr, C 30gr, F 0gr)
10am - whey protein shake 40gr protein
1pm - whey protein shake 40gr protein
3pm - whey protein shake 40gr protein

6:30pm solid meal. Wife cooks, and she abhors single ingredient foods, so its kind of hard to judge nutrition here. Probably 800 calories biased towards carbs and protein. I definitely try to take it easy, and don't go back for seconds, so trying to limit intake that way. Mostly I cut out alcohol though, and that is probably huge. It was not uncommon to go through a couple of bottles of whiskey a week, or a bottle of whiskey and a box of wine (highbrow tastes for sure...).

Anyways, booting those junk calories out, and moderately reducing intake is probably providing most of the calorie deficit, and less alcohol probably helps with increasing anabolism, so hopefully won't lose too much LBM on this cut.

[broseph]

If that meal plan is what you call "not drastic," I'd hate to see drastic.

You are brave and disciplined and strong and handsome. Good luck brother!

[omaniphil]

If that meal plan is what you call "not drastic," I'd hate to see drastic.

You are brave and disciplined and strong and handsome. Good luck brother!

Ha! Last time I did this, I did protein shakes all the way through the day, no bfast or dinner, and only one meal a week. That was awful, though did lose 25lbs that month and while I definitely lost strength, it wasn't as bad as you might think.

Doing this, I'll probably hit about 10lbs a month, which should be a lot easier to maintain.

[Allentown]

It was not uncommon to go through a couple of bottles of whiskey a week

That's, what, 2x4oz drinks a night, every night of the week? Actually not quite as much as I thought, but still seems like quite a lot.

[omaniphil]

It was not uncommon to go through a couple of bottles of whiskey a week

That's, what, 2x4oz drinks a night, every night of the week?

Ummm.... work hard play hard?

[Allentown]

I guess that's around the upper end of how many oz of beer I have on a typical week (three pint cans, one a day on leg/conditioning days). I was thinking there was more than 25oz in a typical bottle of liquor at first, and that two bottles would come out to >20 drinks a week.

[omaniphil]

3/23/2019
bw 275.5 (lots of carbs last night, think this is a lot of bloat)

Squats
330lbsx4x5

Bench
205x5x8

2" deficit DLs
315x4x5

Took my 2.5 year old out for breakfast today to Perkins for a daddy-daughter date. About half the people there at 7:45am this morning were other dads and kids. I guess letting Mom sleep in on a Saturday morning is a popular thing to do. I told her a few days ago that she was going to go out for breakfast with me today, and she was excited -frequently asking if she could get pancakes with blue berries. It was pretty cute. Not much of a conversationalist though, but it was fun. I think we spent more time talking about the bird poop on the window than anything else. Anyways, highly recommended. Daughters are the best.

[omaniphil]

3/26/2019

bw 276lbs

Bench
265x1 @7.5ish
235lbs for 7x2

Deadlift
335lbs for 7x4

Tricep Pushdowns
4x10 with 70lbs

Fell off the wagon a little this weekend on the diet, and regained a lot of water weight, which I'm still losing. Its been 3 weeks now for the cut, and while my weightloss seems to have stalled, everything started feeling looser this week, and am wearing my pants belt 1 hole tighter than I have been, so I guess that is going in the right direction. 5 more holes to go. I haven't tried my weightlifting belt in a while, but it might fit, at least nominally, again which would be nice. Although, I've gotten used to not wearing a belt lifting, and it seems to be working out fine, so maybe I won't. We'll see.

[omaniphil]

3/29/2019

bw 275

Squat
345lbs for 5x4 last set probably ended up around 7-7.5

Bench
215lbs for 7x4 last set probably ended up around @7

Lawyer Block (apparently Hanley thinks lawyers can't be bros)
Supersetted Lat Pulldowns and Tricep pushdowns, 5x15 of each.

Bench was pretty creaky. Still moved fast, but joints felt a little achy. I think I hadn't fully recovered from the heavy doubles and the heavy single I did a couple of days before.

[Cellist]

Nice work, Bro!

[omaniphil]

3/30/2019

Bench
8x5 with 195lbs

Deadlift
405lbs for 10 singles

OHP
135lbsx1
105x35 in a 6 minute density block.

I miss pressing overhead. I can't stand while pressing in my basement, so have been doing seated OHP. I have trouble bracing while doing these, and certainly can't do any thing near the weight that I used to be able to do.