Am I Eating Enough?

[Regin Smidur]

I get about 240g of protein a day. I'm trying to factor in my shortness, but nevermind. It just seems like most people on this board or that lift in general are taller (close to 6') so people's experience may be relevant to that height but not so much to my height, but also it could make no difference... I don't fucking know, that's why I'm here asking questions

The bodyweight thing kind of makes sense until you consider that the biggest squatters are the super heavyweights. More bodyweight almost always = more strength/strength potential.

Maybe your stalling on lighter than usual weight because as a shorter person, you won't gain as much muscular bodyweight as fast (although you'll look more jacked with less). A beginner your size should probably be in the 165's max, and you can't shortcut the time a normal person would have to spend at those lighter weight classes, slowly developing his physique (slowly being the key word for a natural), by instead eating a ton and getting fat. Developing into your ideal weight class is a long process that could take 5 years. And your ideal weight class is probably the one your in now. Take a look at this guy:

http://imagecdn.bodybuilding.com/img...169942orig.jpg

He's 5'5, 173 pounds at what looks like 13% bodyfat. Do you really think you would look similar to him if you dropped 30 pounds? Anyway, sorry that I accused you of being a lazy glutton. I'm just butt hurt about dieting right now.

Maybe consider changing programs. If SS isn't giving you the results you want, why continue to bang your head against the wall of linear progression when there's tons of other programs out there that might work better for you.

[veryhrm]

Alright, I'll drop my calories and see what happens. My lifts as of today are 205 squat, 180 bench, 115 press, and 220 deadlift. I'll keep increasing the weight by 5 lbs every workout. And as far as me being a fatty who just wants to stuff his face, I don't even fucking like eating like this, it makes me feel sick. Keep a couple things in mind. I'm 5'6", so that means I'm 66 inches tall. 71 inches (5'11") is 108% of that. Also, if 15% bf is ideal, I'm carrying about 30lbs of extra fat. So, add that 30 lbs to my squat and deadlift (presses don't really account for bodyweight, and I acknowledge that bodyweight only partially affects deadlifts) and that's a 235 lbs squat and 255 lb deadlift. Taking both these into consideration, I'm estimating that my lifts are roughly equivalent to a 5'11" guy at 15% bf squatting 255 lbs, deadlifting 275, and pressing/benching 115/180. Would you be saying the same shit if I came and said that I was 5'11 with 15% bf? I don't know if any of what I just said means anything, but you're right, something's gotta be wrong. And I'm not holding back in the gym, that's for fucking sure.

Take it easy man. Some people progress faster than others, the important thing is to keep going to the gym consistently and keep doing the program. Your gains aren't bad for a couple of months with a break in the middle. You also haven't actually said that you've been properly stalling. Just that the you feel beaten up, which, like i said, is not abnormal. ( For your press and even your bench you could go to 2.5lbs advances if you have issues. )

Relationships between height and body weight are probably best calculated with a BMI type calculation (mass varies as square of height. so the difference would be 1.08 ^2 or 117% ). It's not perfect but better than linear or cube... so with your BMI of 33.1 you're about as big as a 5'11" guy weighing 237lbs.

Shorter people actually tend to lift more as a multiple of bodyweight than tall lifters since they don't have to move the bar as far so the difference isn't linear. Standard normalization is done just by body weight via the Wilks formula http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilks_Coefficient which takes it out to an x^5 term.

Edit:
i hadn't seen a plot of the wilks coefficient and google didn't yield one. So here's what the men's in kg looks like (typed in from the wiki page )
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+500+%2F+%28-216.0475144+%2B+16.2606339+*x+%2B+%28-0.002388645+*+x+^2%29+%2B+%28-0.00113732+*+x^3%29+%2B+%287.01863e-06+*+x^4%29+%2B+%28-1.291e-8+*x^5%29%29+from+x%3D60+to+140

Interestingly ... this only seems to work up to about 210 kg bodyweight. After that it shoots up:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+500+%2F+%28-216.0475144+%2B+16.2606339+*x+%2B+%28-0.002388645+*+x+^2%29+%2B+%28-0.00113732+*+x^3%29+%2B+%287.01863e-06+*+x^4%29+%2B+%28-1.291e-8+*x^5%29%29+from+x%3D60+to+300

A 611lbs powerlifter would have a wilks coefficient of ... ~3.0 he'd clean up. esp since his bench would probably consist of just unracking the bar since it would be touching his chest at full arm extension ...
Hmm... a 7'6" guy @ 611lbs would be ~ same BMI as a 6'0" guy at 400 lbs ... probably too much... i think we're safe.

[LeapingLeibniz]

The Wilks thing was interesting... I was just reading some of the SS logs and I realized that my upper body lifts are actually pretty close to what some of the lifters that are coming to the end of LP are lifting, it's just that my squat and deadlifts are very low...and the truth is I've only been having real problems advancing on my upper body lifts. I'm thinking of just keeping the upper body lifts constant and just progressing on squat/deadlift for a while.

Also I am definitely going to lower the calories. I've thought about it and yeah, it's just no way to live to feel overweight and know that I'm getting heavier. Should I keep upping the squat and deadlift while lowering calories, or should I just keep all my lifts constant and drop calories until I'm like 175 lbs?

Also is it possible that my being a Fatty McPorker is doing something with estrogen or tesosterone or whatever and making it harder to recover? Also I drink two cups of coffee a day. And I don't eat any vegetables.

[veryhrm]

The Wilks thing was interesting... I was just reading some of the SS logs and I realized that my upper body lifts are actually pretty close to what some of the lifters that are coming to the end of LP are lifting, it's just that my squat and deadlifts are very low...and the truth is I've only been having real problems advancing on my upper body lifts. I'm thinking of just keeping the upper body lifts constant and just progressing on squat/deadlift for a while.

Also I am definitely going to lower the calories. I've thought about it and yeah, it's just no way to live to feel overweight and know that I'm getting heavier. Should I keep upping the squat and deadlift while lowering calories, or should I just keep all my lifts constant and drop calories until I'm like 175 lbs?

Also is it possible that my being a Fatty McPorker is doing something with estrogen or tesosterone or whatever and making it harder to recover? Also I drink two cups of coffee a day. And I don't eat any vegetables.

...
... soo... in other words... you're describing the same experience as 75+% of the people who do this damn program except that you forgot to actually describe it accurately 20 posts ago. Nearly EVERYONE stalls on the upper body lifts first. And no, you shouldn't just stop your progress and cut right now. Just cut the cals to like 3000 cals and see where it takes you. This isn't that difficult...

Just keep doing the program.

A stall is missing reps at the same weight 3 times in a row and it is on a per lift basis. If that didn't happen, then you didn't stall. When it happens take a reset on that lift of 10-15% and work back up as normal. With the upper body lifts where you are now you want to be doing jumps in 2.5lbs increments and after a stall you might even go to 1.5 or even 1lbs.
With the Deadlifts you could possibly still be doing 10lbs jumps (if you're doing them every other time). (also you haven't mentioned if you're doing PCs. if you're not. then why not ?)

When your squats stall for the 2nd time or so..

...
If you're always really beat up, then start thinking about doing "advanced novice" program w/ the light squats on Wednesday, but considering i don't think you've even stalled and reset it's prob too early for that. Get a copy of Practical Programming it will be useful in figuring out how to think about your next steps.

And after even the advanced novice isn't working that's probably a good time to look into doing an actual cut to shed whatever more fat you want to shed while keeping your strength up via high intensity lower volume work. But that's beyond the scope of this thread.

[Doug W]

... And I don't eat any vegetables.

Ever thought that this might be a problem? Do you supplement to make up for the missing nutrients?

Vegetables being good for you is not just a meme...

[LeapingLeibniz]

Ever thought that this might be a problem? Do you supplement to make up for the missing nutrients?

Vegetables being good for you is not just a meme...

I do supplement with vitamins and minerals (4 packets of Emergen-C daily) but I've heard that's not good enough.

Update: I've been on 3500 calories for 2 days, today's workout went fine. I am, however, NDTP and keeping the weight constant (except for deadlift which I will continue to increase in 5lb increments) as I have started doing a good amount of cardio and have become absolutely desperate to shed fat. Also I cleaned up my form.

[skipbeat]

Seems like you just pulled a 180. Increase the weights whenever you can dude, learn to base it off your last warmup. You could probably progress while shedding a little bit of fat, or stay at maintenance. I would squat less frequently, advanced novice style. I'm thinking of only squatting 1x a week myself actually.

[LeapingLeibniz]

Seems like you just pulled a 180. Increase the weights whenever you can dude, learn to base it off your last warmup. You could probably progress while shedding a little bit of fat, or stay at maintenance. I would squat less frequently, advanced novice style. I'm thinking of only squatting 1x a week myself actually.

After this thread, I went and took some measurements of waist, weight, etc. and it was fucked up dude, basically everyone here was right and eating as much as I was just made me fucking fat. Also some clothes aren't fitting right. I'm not even enjoying lifting anymore cause of this, I know that if I can just get the extra fat off I'll be able to feel more focused when it's time to work on strength again. I know I can potentially lose some fat while making gains, but I'll know that I could be dropping fat faster, and it will mess with my head. I'm gonna keep progressing on my DLs though because I feel like the weak link in my squat (more weak than the rest, I'm one giant weak link) is my back, so we'll see how this goes.

[veryhrm]

Where's TBone? someone needs to deliver a [n Ultra] beatdown.

[skipbeat]

It's not like you got fat over night dude. And you won't get un-fat overnight either. Chill the hell out! It's easier to drop weight that was recently gained than if you've been sitting at a weight for a long time, too. Don't waste the opportunity by dropping all the weight and getting weak again, play it smart and slow. Consistent small increases on both the bar and the BF% is the ideal choice right now. It's definitely possible because I'm doing it and I'm 186lbs, 5'10, have higher lifts and less bodyfat, and I (usually) have more than enough gas in the can to plow through a long workout and some prowler after it. Don't jump from one extreme to the other like that. New clothes are to be expected, I've given away 70% of my old clothes already.