Body building goals

I have been making progress. But one thing I didn't do is set a deadline.

So here it is: I want 18 inch arms and a 48 inch chest at a Body weight of 185 lbs by NOV 1. I want 6 pack abs too. The six pack is there under the 20 lbs of fat. This means I have to lose ten lbs a week over the next two weeks. Not impossible. Its been done. I could even water fast, without any exercise and accomplish this. But I plan to maintain lean muscle mass while losing fat, so maybe I will drop the muscle building goal, though.

I will do this by drinking plenty of water and only water as my beverage.

I will eat only Chicken breast, salad greens, sardines and green vegetables for my diet.

I will run and lift weights five times a week for this, so that would be 10 times, to reach my goal. 10 runs and 10 weight lifting sessions.

After I reach this goal I plan to see how I will look and feel. Try to assess my body fat %. I may adjust it some more. I want to maintain around 6%. Then all the muscle gains I make after that will be really exciting because I will actually see them.

By summer I want to have the porportions and muscular definition of a Greek statue. Heroic build. Plus I want excellent cardiovascular fitness to go with it.

Looking like Conan Goal.

I am feeling that this was not a bad goal in retrospect and that I may in fact reach a pretty close approximation of it.

I have talked about this before, but I think Frazetta painted anatomy so well, because employed proprioceptive awareness. I also think he tapped into his morphogenetic feild.

He portrays Conan, as a short muscular Italian dude.

I used similar techniques as a teen when I used to draw a lot but the Barbarians I drew appear more germanic, because I have germanic ancestors. Somewhere there is a record of my ancestors and their bodily matrixes that I can tap into.

Some of them actually were barbarians, same with Frazettas anscestors.

But anway, this painting does not look like Arnold. You can tell this is a short big boned dude. He has a short neck, thick wrists, a big torso and strong legs, with fairly wide hips. His head is large in porportion to height. Looks to be about seven heads high.

I have the genetic potential to look like this guy. I will never be 6'2 with big muscles packed onto a long limbed moderate bone structure like Arnold. But I can get pretty close to looking like this guy. This is a lot like how I will look.

This isn't what I am looking for in a girlfriend though! Laying there in blood and shit grovelling at my feet.

Another Mesendomorph link

I agree with the author that this is the strongest body type; stronger than true mesomorphs even. Strongman competitions, Powerflifting, Olympic lifting, dominated by this type. Well, at leat the SHW divisions. Lower weight clas lifters are often quite lean, but still having narrow hips is not an advantage in compound lifts.

I think what it is with the mesomorphs is that there build is not designed for maximum strength but rather maximum power and athleticism. Middle Linebackers are often true mesomorphs, wheras lineman, especially offense are mesendomorphs.

One thing this article mentions also is that Mesendomorphs distribute fat evenly around the body rather than the gut and thus tend to "carry it well." That is true for me. Most people wouldn't guess I weigh 210. Also I have a only 32-34" waist, but frustrratingly I have a layer of fat all over my body, which is a big disadvantage in body building. I can pinch a couple inches basically anywhere on my torso and back.

I think I need to get down to 6% bodyfat to get cut and it may not be feasible to permanently have it that low as, for over a month now I have cut all sugar and simple carbs from my diet and my body fat is holding steady.


Mesendomorph

5 lbs of muscle

I have been working out for a month and have put on 5 lbs of muscle. I now weigh 210 and my waist has not gotten any bigger maybe even an inch smaller. But now I am 20 lbs away from my weight loss goal of getting down to 185. I still have just as much fat to lose but I think now my ideal weight may have to be adjusted if I keep gaining muscle. Maybe I should shoot for 200 lbs with 6% bodyfat.

As you can see I have the "mesendomorph" characteristics of an "H" shaped torso. I plan to keep working on my widening my lats and shoulders and losing more fat around my waist. I might even be able to get down to a 30" waist.

my bodybuilding goals

I haven't written in this blog for a while, but this seems like the right blog for posts in this category.

I diagnosed my self with diabetes. I have a blood glucose tester and when I eat carbs or sugar my blood glucose shoots way up over 200, close to 300 actually. this explains a lot of the symptoms of feeling like crap all the time that I had been experiencing. Since this discovery, I have been following a strict low carb diet and and have taken up body building training.

If I didn't have diabetes, I probably wouldn't do it. Because really, I think bodybuilding a goofy sport. The people competing at the highest levels are just freaks. They are pumped full of steroids, and have physiqiues way out of porportion to anyone who has walked the earth previously, its unrelated to athletic skill in any other sport. Being close to 300 lbs with 2% bodyfat not looking human, with sprayed on orange tan and oil, posing in a thong...I mean its just idiotic. These are unhealthy, unbalanced people.

So taken to extremes, body building is idiotic. Even not taken to an extreme, its simply a beauty contest. So in that sense it could be construed as being shallow. Its all about aesthetics. In a boxing match or a tennis match, you beat the other person you win. Body building is more like figure skating or a beauty pageant. Its all about impressing the judges by reaching an aesthetic ideal.

But that is not to say bodybuilding can't serve a purpose, in reaching positive goals. I think improving ones phsique is a good goal, strength training is a good goal, health is a good goal, being more confident and attractive is a good goal. I think body building can be a means to an end in these goals.

Also I think I think there is a specific way body building can improve symptoms of diabetes. Because by having a high porportion of muscle in relation to bodyfat, you make your body more receptive to insulin. Type two diabetes is caused by the body becoming insulin resistent. Bodybuilding fits in beautifully with this. Because in body building that is one of the main goals, building muscle and reducing body fat. It alsmost the only thing it accomplishes. So I figued this wold be the best direct route and the subject from which I would get the best direct advice on how to accomplish this.

So anyway, I have been doing this for about a month. I joined a gym. I have been trying to define my goals. A lot of people that engage in body building don't want to look like freaks, that is not uncommon to have that opinion. The truth is though, that without taking steroids, its pretty hard, so most people are in little danger of becoming a freak, even with taking all these steroids to be a freak you need really good genetics, to start with.

But what is my goal? How would I like to look?

I wrote earlier that I would like to look like Frank Frazetta's rendition of Conan the Barbarian. Which I think is a good goal. One thing not quite tangible about it though is that, its a painting and Frazetta, though had excellent skill in rendering human anatomy, he did exagerate for effect.

I can look at these paintings and speculate, just what Conan's porportions would be, but it would be impossible to know for sure. I did however find this website about this thing called the "grecian ideal" it takes into account the porportions of Greek statues. It can be broken down to a formula. It allows you to calculate what your ideal porportions would be based on the thickness of your wrist.

I found out from this that I already have pretty close to ideal porportions. With a 7.5 inch wrist, I am fairly big boned, for exapmple I have friend who is 6'2" 275 and he has a a seven inch wrist.

According to this formula I should have a 48" chest, 18" arms, 18" neck, 18" calves, 25" thighs and a 34" waist.

The fact is I am pretty damn close to that already. My legs especially are naturally well developed, with 18" calves and 24" thighs no matter what I do. If I am a total couch potato, I will have strong legs. My calves especially are the calves of a pro-body builder just from pure genetics. This is also a bodypart nearly impossible to improve if you aren't blessed genetically.

Within a month of body building, I have already gotten my arms from 15" to 17." 15 inch arms are actually pretty big. One thing though is that the measurement with the arms is supposed to be "cold" that is not pumped up from working out. Cold my arms are 15" Wich this measurement requirement of having to be "cold" doesn't exactly make sense to me because body builders don't compete "cold" they pump their muscles up for competition.

I am 5'8" and 205, I estimate my body fat percentage to be about 14%

I found another website that calculates that based on ratio of abdomen to neck size. According to my height and weight, bone structure, neck size abdomen ratio, I have 14% bodyfat.

For general health, doctors recomend 12% bodyfat. So supposedly I am only 2 lbs short of my ideal weight. This is unacceptable to me. For a few reasons.

First of all, even with strong legs, 200 or more lbs on a 5'8" frame is heavy. I can't run regularly without risking injury. I used to run in college and I weighed anywhere from 170 to 180 lbs. This was still a pretty massive build for a long distance runner. Most runners my height weighed 130 or 140 lbs. Its a matter of physics that a runner my size and build wouldn't do as well. I was quite lean, but lean has nothing to do with it. A chubby 160 lber with narrower hips and a lighter frame would have a biomechanical advantage in an endurance race.

Since college my skeleton has continued to mature and thicken, so that my lean body mass has actually increased. I probably have about 175 lbs of lean body mass. So to add about 6% bodyfat to that frame, would give me an ideal weight of 185 lbs.

So that is my goal, weightwise.

Another rason for wanting low bodyfat is aesthetics. I have a body type that could be described as "mesendomorph" That is a combination of mesomorph and endomorph. A pure mesomorph has wide shoulders and narrow hips. Its a matter of bone structure. their torso is shaped like a 'V.' I don't have an exagerated "V" I have a combination of a V and a wide rectangle, more like an "H" but a bit wider at the top. I cannot change the bone structure of my hips. I actually have little fat concentrated around my hips. My waist is actually 32 inches, but my abdomen is "34" My hips are below my waistline and at their widest part their are the bony projections just below the skin. There is no way to make this any narrower. But because of my larger bone structure of the hips, there is more surface area for muscle attachment, So I have very powerful legs.

I am also long waisted, that that means my abdomen has a lot of surface area to store fat. Its a long "H" shaped torso. So that means that a little bit of fat deposited on there become more like an "()" shape, really quickly. Wheras a person with a naturally "V" shaped torso and a short waist could get good bit of chubbiness around the waist and it would take a long time to show up.

My shoulders are pretty wide though naturally and my chest is somewhat developed, so when I wear a large or extra large t-shirt, the shirt has the effect of laying like a tent, and making me look fatter than I am. Plus my lats are underdeveloped and insert rather high on my torso. Lats that are long and insert low, exagerate the "V" shape. To top it off, I have a barrel shaped ribcage, which makes me look fat also.

So for aesthetic reasons, because of my natural shape, in order to to look in shape and muscular, I need to have low bodyfat. I probably should wear closer fitting shirts too.

So summarizing all of this I have an idea of what my goals are and how to reach them. I have decent mass already. I need more defintiion. The definition is there under the fat, I just ned to reduce my body fat and bring it out more. My core is pretty strong, but I won't get a six pack untill I cut fat. My legs are already as large and well developed at they will ever need to be to reach my aesthetic ideal.

My weakst body parts are my chest and lats. I need to focus on them and build more mass. Developing my lats, even though they insert high, will bring out a v shape. My chest is also not as well developed as it could be.

My arms are pretty good, they will naturally improve as I work my chest and abs. My shoulders are above average already, but I should try to exagerate their development even more to bring out more of a V shape. This should be encouraging to my morale because they respond really well to training. So its good positive feedback.

Conan Revisited

I realize it might sound silly. Its probably a bit juvenile. But my goal was to look like Conan the Barbarian, through reprogramming my nervous system in such a way that my body would begin producing mesomorphic traits.

In the eight circuit model of consciousness, Wilson uses different terms, but basically, the first circuit, the bio-survival circuit is associated with the endomorph body type. The second circuit is the dominance and territoriality circuit which is associated with the mesomorph body type. The third circuit is "reason" and that, though not explicitly stated in "Prometheus Rising" I associate with the ectomorphic body type. The higher circuits of consciousness are not associated withy any type of build.

Also, in the book, the first three circuits are seen as being a bit robotic. None of them are really idolized as being ideal states. So I am thinking in some ways my take on "Prometheus Rising" my seem a bit shallow. You would think I would focus on the higher circuits, which actually I was but I was using the meta reprogramming circuit to reprogram my two lower circuits.

Basically though, what I was doing without realizing it, was reprogramming myself to be much more of an ectomorph, throwing my system out of balance. This was first of all an intellectual exercize. I am living a very secluded, private life, with large expanses of free time in which to think. It's the kind of life that ectomorphs often set up for themselves. Basically my job is to be a room mate for a guy that has a brain injury. His injury is not really that severe, so he doesn't need intensive care, just kind of needs somebody to help him out a bit. He works in the morning, so I have mornings off, also I get weekends off. So basically, my life revolves around reading books, taking walks, writing and surfing the internet. I spend most of my money on books, art supplies, aquarium supplies, and gourmet food. I can't really say at this point camping and the outdoors is a major part of my life. Last year I camped out I think five times.

Pretty quiet, safe life. Good set up for working on writing. In a way I think my body is a bit like water that shapes itself to its environment. I like to eat so I got a bit fat, besides the eating part, pretty extreme ectomorphic life. Not real social. Very mental. All I really did in my expiriment is to do some calisthenics and try to develop skill as an artist to try my hand as a fantasy illustrator.

So I never really got outside my head. I kind of looked at developing my drawing skills as a war, like I was doing battle, so I generated all this heat to basically do pretty tame things, like lay across my bed and sketch. But I worked pretty hard at it for about a month. I did some shadow boxing and calisthenics. I debated some people on the internet. I develped more assertiveness in casual interactions with mostly strangers. I cultivated my appearance more. I tried to aproach problems with more of a fight response than a flight response, or with a response of comforting myself with food.

But at the end of the day, my basic life did not change. I began developing insomnia and aggravated my long term problem I have had had with ibs. I burnt myself out. The frustrating thing is that I burnt myself out before getting to the point of accomplishing anything. I burnt myself out learning how to draw and overtraining! Its not like I got burnt out making money as an artist or running too many marathons. I didn't get anywhere! But I still over did it. I wore myself out.

I began eliminating more and more foods and obsessing over my diet and my symptoms began getting worse and worse. I continued to run and work out even as I felt worse and worse. Basically, I was ignoring the feedback from my bio-survival circuit. When I just said screw it and got a pizza, I opened myself up to that feedback again. The feedback told me to relax, first of all. Also that I need to stop obsessing over my diet and that I need more social interaction and that I should start dating. I have a need for physical affection that I am ignoring.

So basically, I need to adjust my plan. I don't think my goal was that bad. But my life is basically designed to continually reinforce my ectomorphic tendencies. I need to get out more. If I want to be muscular and assertive, I need to engage in adventurous activities and competitive sports. I need to be more social. Whats the sense of being muscular and assertive and spending all my time inside reading books or on the computer?

Also, the blend I have of endomorphic traits isn't all bad. It kind of mellows me out, gives me a sense of humor (which oddly I do have but doesn't come out in my writing) makes me more engaging socially. Endomorphs have more of a baby face, which isn't all bad. Pure mesomorphs, look like they are 35 when they are teenagers, ectmorphs are usually more or less expressionless. So really to have a bit of endomorph in there is not a bad blend. It kind of smooths over the hard sharp edges.

I think the real gains in personal transformation would be for me to work on ways to de-emphasize the more ectomorphic traits, but not declare war on them, like I was doing with my endomorphic traits but rather to bring them into balance.

I feel I am too private, to in my head, too risk averse. But its not like I want to be totally boorish and unintellectual. I need to get all these diverse parts working as a unit. Get enough sleep like endomorphs do, be social. Also like a mesomorph, be adventurous, be assertive and independant live an action packed life. Then like an ectomorph, have self discipline, be aware of the details and be able to write about it.

Putting it all together, I think a lifestyle of going on solo wilderness adventures,writing about them, philosophizing, and coming back to civilization in order to have deep conversations with interesting people, over great food, woulod be the ideal life. Putting some type of competitive sport in there would be good too, which I would also write about.( good example is the book "A Fighter's Heart") Interspersed in there would have to be some intense short term love affairs or somtning as I move from port to port, until I finally settle down with a woman I love. (The relationship thing opens up a whole other can of worms, though I tend to be a person that either gets married or doesn't date at all, perhaps I need to broaden my options a bit without being, for lack of a better word, kind of a pig)

Its a good picture that is taking shape.

Endomorphs not so bad.

Well anyway, Just to review, I read "Prometheus Rising" by Robert Anton Wilson which involves an eight circuit model of consciousness, I think originally developed by Timothy Leary. One of these circuits is the "metareprogramming circuit" in which you can reprogram all the other levels before it. I forget which it circuit it is, I'll have to check.

Wislon also talks about various "somatypes" which is a body type model, developed by This Guy Sheldon. Sheldon had it tied in with personality traits. I went over all these in earlier posts.

I am a combo of all three types Endomorph, ectomorph and mesomorph. I was trying to reprogram my nervous system, to make it self aware so I could reprogram it to de-emphasize my endomorphic traits and bring out my mesomorphic traits. Just to review ectomorphs are skinny nervous cerebral types, endomorphs are mellow, stable fat types, mesomorphs are combative, muscular adventurous types.

So what I was basically doing was being aware of how my nervous system reacts to various situations and trying to bring about a more mesomorphic, reaction. The idea being that through the body mind connection, my body would then start to create a muscular body and burn fat.

I had some initial success, lost weight, got better muscle tone, then developed insomnia and severe irritible bowel syndrome. I had the runs nearly everday for two months and never had one night where I got eight hours of sleep.

Interestingly, two things endomorphs have no problem with is getting enough sleep and digesting their food. Its the ectomorphs that have erratic sleep and eating patterns, nervous stomachs etc.

What I had actually been doing was making myself more of an ectomorph and getting out of balance. So sure, I lost twenty lbs, but had no energy and felt sick all the time. Plus, this whole thing of reprogramming my nervous system as an esoteric expiriment is a very cerebral exercise to begin with, not somthing a pure mesomorph would probably do.

I was living pretty much in my head, and on the internet, a very private secluded existence. I was obsessing over my diet, eliminationg more and more foods, so then I just said "screw it" and went out and got a pizza, some Ice cream a liter of coke and a six pack of beer. As soon as I made the decision to do this I felt better. More mellow, more go with the flow.

So guess what? Today, no IBS. I had eliminated all dairy and wheat and sugar and these foods were loaded with that stuff in an obscene way.

I think really balance is good. I was researching ibs and it turns out it could be linked to issues of under or over control. That makes sense. In the past I had overindulged with food and I over reacted and over controlled my diet. This led to more nervous problems more anxiety.

Also, Wheat, cheese, and Beer, sausage, foods like that are kind of heavy. They ground me. I am high strung enough as it is. Eating basically just vegetables and lean meat, just makes me more spacey, more hyper sensitive to my environment.

The endomorphic qualities balance me. Mellows me out. I think it actually compliments my mesomorphic qualities.