Need guidance after 80/100 days of lifting weights

[Nemtaro]

Hi everyone.
I'm a 27 year old, 6 ft tall man from Seattle, WA. I've been hitting the gym inconsistently for the past 7-8 years, but about 4 months ago I decided to challenge myself and get more serious about my healthy and fitness.

Over the course of the past 100 days, I've consistently hit the gym and lifted weights for 80 days. My breaks have been mostly due to vacations, and a few days of rest every 5-6 weeks.

My initial goal was to lose weight, and have more energy to accomplish other non-fitness related goals which I had set for myself.
After some lifestyle, and diet tweaks, I've lost about 30-35 lbs, brought my body fat percentage down from about %15.5 to about %11 while maintaining roughly %41 of body muscle mass. I realize that my measurements have some degree of error, but the error has been roughly consistent, and I've taken measurements on most days:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ai_6nIxR5oFAdDF4SjQ1dkJMcmtNQlJQcEEyb2RvVkE#gid=10

The google doc linked above has my daily measurements, lift routine, cardio, exercises and meals.

My lifestyle changes include
- waking up early and eating breakfast as opposed to skipping it or having tea/coffee and going to work. Now I'm trying to eat a more substantial breakfast and include protein in it as well.
- hitting the gym at lunch time to lift consistently, as opposed to going late in the evening sometimes, or at other disparate times of the days.
- eating less, and eating healthier foods.
- eating 6 regular meals/servings a day to keep my metabolism steady rather than 3 big meals a day.

I'm skinnier, and I feel healthy. I have more energy than I remember ever having had before. My pant waist size has gone from 36 to 34 and now to 32. My belly has _almost_ all disappeared.

I'd like to challenge myself to the next level, and set a goal of continuing to lower my body fat and making my ab muscles visible.

I'm not sure what I need to do next to optimize my efforts and make sure that I'm working towards my new goal though. Some thoughts I have are:
- Changing up the exercises a bit
- Being more careful about not eating unhealthy foods or large quantities of food at dinner (yellow boxes marked in my log)
- Switching out all processed foods for wholegrain and natural foods and monitoring the body fat percentage until it comes down to %8-9
- Doing more challenging ab exercises.

So I need your help and advice

- First, would you say what I'm doing is healthy, or that I should adjust/refocus my efforts?
- Second, what would you recommend I change, or keep in my nutrition, or training?
- Third, any other comments, suggestions or questions would be appreciated!

Cheers,
Sep

 

[Ken M]

Seems to me you're doing a lot of things right. You have been working out on a regular basis, and eating a pretty good diet. You're getting good results so stick with whats working. I didn't see any specifics in how you train, but i will say that you need to change up your workout every few weeks. Use different exercises, change to heavier weights and fewer reps. Change will shock your muscles into adapting to a new form of stress by growing.

 

[Nemtaro]

Thans for the response Ken!

I have honestly been so amazed about how the pounds kept coming off that I hadn't yet kept track of my weights/reps. I agree that I should do that and will set up a spreadsheet or something to take to the gym with me.

I have unfortunately been doing mostly the same exercises and although I've pushed the weight higher on some (like bench and biceps), I've been stagnating on others (like squats and deadlifts)

Based on what I've learned before doing a lower number of reps with a higher weight is recommended to people who are bulking up correct?

I've been doing sets of 10-12 of most exercises, but I think I've been on a cutting cycle for too long... and should change it up.

This week, I'll try what you suggested and next week I'll do some pyramiding variation.

 

[TRIAFFECT]

Nemtaro,

I thinks it awesome you are getting serious about your health!! I hope this advice helps.

I would suggest you start taking detailed notes of what you are doing in the gym and add intensity unless you aren't seeing results. Try and stick with your workouts for a while like 6 months. This can mean adding more weight and/or lowering your rest time and/or adding in some supersets or negatives. There are several more things that could be looked at as well.

What is your alcohol consumption? This can greatly affect your waistline, the amount and type of cardio you are performing can be a factor as well. In response to the amount of weight and reps intensity is the key. There are studies that support the theory of higher weight lower reps as well as lower weight higher reps. So this decision is really up to how you like to train in my opinion.

[removed]

Good Luck