Q for Alex

[Double]

hey man,

situation is the following: i'm like 16% bf now......and i currently dont look after my nutrition in any way.....because im so pissed off due to all these injuries. but i realized that even eating candies pizza nuts and apples all day doesnt make me gain any fat, only makes me ****ing hungry all day ...so i am thinking if im hungry anyway all day(because i dont have the motivation to eat 8meals because of the injuries)...then i can do some cutting. but nothing serious like i did the last time(almost only protein with heavy carb refeed days) because it left my feeling like crap. but something like eating chicken and rice instead of pizza, and eggs instead of candies. and lots of vegetables and apples to surpress hunger feeling. so will this leave me feeling good and dropping a bit bodyfat coupled with a bit cardio?

 

[Warboss Alex]

I hear you on the injuries mate.. I strained a quad recently and can't squat, I can barely jog on it. :cuss:

And yes, I've been in your situation before. Lost my motivation, can't be arsed to go through with eating all the meals, feeling ****ty in general - and like you, I often thought that since I wasn't in the mood to eat, I'd do some c*tting (back in those dark days when I believed in that sort of thing). What nearly always happened was that I felt worse.

I found that in these cases, I just needed a complete break. I was overtraining and slipping nutrition-wise because I was feeling so ****ty and run down, and wasn't listening to my body saying it just wanted a time out.

Eating clean and suppressing hunger with veg and fruit will probably help you drop some fat but how long do you intend to keep this up? You need a good month at least to even see if it's working, and then another couple of months to maybe get where you want, be that 10%, sub-10%, wherever.. that's three months gone when you could be gaining strength and size, or at least progressing in some way.

If you want to go through with it then feel free, more power to you, but I'd first recommend you took a fortnight off, in which you eat like a 'normal' person (lol), three meals a day with a protein shake in between, two half-body workouts a week in which you do a single straight set for each bodypart with something close to your maximum (but not maxing out) to keep your strength up.. or depending on how burned out you feel, don't workout at all and eat three food meals. Don't worry, you won't lose much in the break, and if you do, it'll come back very quickly.

Often you just need a break.. of course, I'm not your body so I can't say if this really is the problem, but I can't see how taking a break to get your mental and physical sanity (plus your appetite and motivation) back is going to hurt. You can always do your c*tting afterwards if you still want to.

 

[Double]

thanks mate now i can't ignore what my body says anymore and i will finally listen to it. it is true, my body is always on it's limits since i started lifting. joints hurt because of the increased weight, i have strange pain in forearms, hands and calves. then always this shoulder ****, problems with the protein diet(allergic reactions). well it is a wonder considering that i never done any real sports in the twenty years before i started lifting and ate mostly candies? i'm also totally exhausted mentally from other things.

so yeah man i will take it slower for a while.

 

[manuva]

Sounds like you need a fortnights rest, Double. With symptoms like that, I would stay away from the gym entirely for a minimum of ten days. You won't lose any muscle mass - muscles can keep adapting up to 21 days post workout - but your central nervous system will really appreciate the time off, it sounds taxed to the max.

1 weeks of full rest for every 8-10 weeks heavy lifting is standard for anyone who wants to avoid over-training, and you sound incredibly overtrained so you should consider more than 1 weeks rest.

 

[semag]

exactly what i would say.

having just come back from a week off at the gym, you'll love it! You might even come back stronger.