I'm Done Getting Huge, So It's Time To Get Huge!

Well, it's time. It's that time we all knew was coming sooner or later. My get huge quest couldn't've lasted forever, but it sure would be nice if I could eat forever the way I ate the past six or so months. But that just can't happen. It can't happen because it's not healthy. It can't happen because it's expensive. It can't happen because eventually I'd become the wrong kind of huge.

So my quest to get huge is officially over. But that's not a bad thing, because there's more to getting huge than simply (over)eating. No, the kind of huge I'm talking about has many facets, only one of which is now over. In not so many words, my quest to get huge is over, and my quest to get huge has just begun.

Let me explain. Getting huge (read: jacked) involves, in one stage, eating big to get big. This only works, though, if you put in some hard work in the gym. If you simply eat big and don't work out, all your effort in the dining room will leave you with little more muscle than you started with. So working out is another facet of getting huge.

Furthermore, being 5'9" and (spoiler alert) 185 pounds at (more spoilers) 14% body fat is nice, but it's not what I consider being jacked. I consider being 5'9" and 171 pounds at 7% body fat more jacked than the former. Being huge/jacked/ripped/cut/shredded includes both substantial muscle mass and relatively extreme leanness. I'm only half way through those criteria.

I went to Complete Nutrition and got my body composition analysis. I know it may not be that accurate, but I'll still use it as a tool to gauge my progress in the next few months. To make the data as useful as possible, I'll get every test at the same time of day, wearing nearly the same clothes, and having consumed nearly the same amount of food and water prior to the test.

The results of my most recent vitals test are as follows:

Total body weight:............185.9 lbs
Lean body mass:...............159.2 lbs
Skeletal muscle mass:.........91.3 lbs
Body fat mass:....................26.7 lbs
Body fat %............................14.3 %

What do these numbers mean? Well, back at the start of the year (3 months ago), these were my vitals:

Total body weight:............178.7 lbs
Lean body mass:...............150.4 lbs
Skeletal muscle mass:.........86.6 lbs
Body fat mass:....................28.4 lbs
Body fat %............................15.9 %

So, in the past 3 months, most importantly, I've gained close to 5 pounds of muscle. That's actually pretty decent. Of course, that's just what this bioelectrical impedence machine is telling me. So I will use the second, more important method of determining change: the Mirror Test.

The first picture is 3 months ago, and the second picture is current.

The most drastic change in my life that is associated with this transition from one stage of getting huge to the next is the amount of food I eat and how I eat it. In these last 6 months, 3 of which have been the subject of this blog, I have simply eaten the amount of food on any given day that I "felt" was necessary, given that day's activities. But occasionally, and some might even say often, I lived up to my prediction that I would be eating with "reckless abandon" as I consumed excessive amounts of sweets and other carbs, or even food in general. I had one very ironclad goal each day: no matter what I ate, I would never eat too little. So at the end of the day, if I could be certain I was not in a calorie deficit I was happy. I didn't precisely (or at all) track my calories or macros, so I'm sure I always went over. But when trying to gain muscle, going over is better than being under. 

But now, it's a whole different ball game. I will be tracking my calories and macronutrients with everything that I eat. This means that I will weigh my food, count specific numbers of things, measure things that probably don't need to be measured, all in the name of BroScience! 

The BroScientific method I will use to lose fat is actually quite simple. I used an online calculator to determine my basal metabolic rate (BMR) to be 1,925 kilocalories (kcal). Building on that, I accounted for my triweekly gym bro sessions and other general activities with a factor of 1.2. This gives me an average daily energy expenditure of 2,310 kcal. I'll then take 80% of this as my deficit, so I'll be eating about 1,848 kcal every day.

But here's where it gets more interesting. I can't just eat anything. If I eat 1,848 kcal of pure sugar, you better believe that I'll be losing a lot of muscle. So I'll be shooting for about 1.2 grams of brotein per pound of lean body mass, or around 191 grams of brotein every day. I don't know what everyone else eats, but 191 grams of brotein is a lot for one day. But I want to maintain my muscle mass as best as I can. This may (will) occasionally mean resorting to brotein shakes to hit that amount without going over on calories, but that's an easy sacrifice to make to get huge!

This is going to be fun.

Moving on to the food of today, it was admittedly pretty carby. But, like I said, most of my meals will be brotein heavy from here on out.

There was left over Chinese takeout from nights previous, so it was combined into a bunch of fried rice. 

I had a bowl.

Then I had a splash more.

Still feeling the effects of last night's brownie bashing, this was the first thing I had eaten today. By now, all of yesternight's sugar was pretty well absorbed and gone, so I was decently hungry. I warmed up a bowl of lentil soup to feed this hunger.

I wasn't full after this, but, you know, it was actually really nice not to be full for once in what seems like an incredibly long time. I think this cut is just going to be alright!