What Chuck Does

Course Correction

I feel fat.

I know it’s only a day later that I stated that I feel stronger and bigger.

Well, I feel fat today and for sure I’ve gained fat.

Body dysmorphic disease aside, I know this because when I grab the lard around my waist, there’s more to grab.

I’m making a couple changes as a result of this discovery:
1. I will decrease my caloric intake to less than 2,000 calories on days I don’t do a cardio session.
2. I have downgraded weightlifting from 3.4 calories/minute to 3.1 calories/minute to reflect the lack of intensity.
3. I will do 3 cardio sessions a week.

This is entirely necessary. I need to make a push. I must meet The Final Four!

Muscle Math and Fat Figures

I feel bigger. I look bigger. I am definitely stronger. But based on my spreadsheet I have neither gained (nor lost) any weight. Last week I took in a calculated 921 calories less than I burned. That’s good for about 1/4 pound of fat. But based on my spreadsheet, there has been no change in my body composition. My fat content if normalized for hydration and weight, have been the same for the past 2-3 weeks.

I’m confused.

I’m not sure how I should feel and what I should push for. On one hand, I haven’t reached my 10% fat goal. On the other hand I am hesitant to dip any lower in weight for fear that I lose more muscle. I like having my muscles and I’m afraid of what I might look like if I get any leaner. Larry measured me at 7.7% bodyfat 1 week ago with his fat caliper. I’m guessing my true bodyfat percentage is somewhere between in the 9-13% range (with the calipers results on the low end and the scale on the high end). Then again the reality is that it’s very hard to count calories and measure fat with any degree of accuracy. Too often, I’m guesstimating on the calories in my food and combined with the estimates of the physical activity (caloric expenditures), it’s just too hard to accurately pinpoint a 1/4 lb gain or loss.

But I don’t feel fatter. I just feel stronger and bigger.

Part of this is due to the NitroTech. It’s weird but I’m convinced it’s a low level steroid. Click here for full thread. As an addendum to that post, I have found that I lift a LOT harder when I’m on NitroTech than when I’m not.

How much leaner should I go? If I include 2-3 cardio sessions in this week and hold my caloric intake constant from last week, I’ll definitely drop a half pound. For me, an hour of running yields a dramatic and almost immediate effect on my abs, so much so that I immediately feel thinner and leaner.

With all of this said, I MUST stay the course and will continue to make my final push into the 10% range. It’s only 5 weeks until the wedding so I can’t let up now. There will be plenty of time to build muscle after the wedding when I start bulking up. Don’t fear change.

Abs Gone Wild!

This is mainly a post about abs, but I already know that it’s going to encompass several topics so bear with me.

I am not officially doing Larry’s “6-pack Challenge”. To my knowledge only Dai and Larry are doing the challenge. I have however adopted a variation of the challenge where I want to drop below 10% (according to my Tanita scale) and basically be “ripped”.

This is what I’m working with so far:

Basically, under perfect conditions my abs look pretty good. Perfect conditions consist of good lighting, flexing, getting the right angles etc. But under “real-world” conditions, my abs aren’t going to look half as good. This is why I’m still trying to make gains in shedding fat, and working out. I’m also eager to find out if I can ever get the 5th and 6th pack to make a cameo appearance. My goal is to have my abs look so good that at any given time, I should be able to take off my shirt and show off my 6-pack.

In the process of trying to take pictures of my abs, I learned a few things. It’s really hard to take good pictures of abs by yourself. In order to control lighting you basically have to shoot indoors. But since there isn’t much light indoors, you have the added challenge of proper exposure without using a flash (flash washes out the abdominal definition). So I push the ISO to 1250 or 1600 which has the side-effect of increased noise. Then since I have to see how I’m posing, I have to shoot into the reflection in the mirror. This makes every shot basically 2x as far as I’d like. I could use a zoom lens, but that exaggerates small movements and vibrations thereby making it harder to shoot handheld. Then there’s the challenge of staying still for the exposure, while flexing as hard as possible. To make matters worse, I have to keep my hands and the camera out of the way so it doesn’t screw up the lighting.

But the results from my little photoshoot are pretty good. While there’s still work to be done, I will use these pictures as inspiration to stay the course and push for more gains.

Body Weight, Fat %, Hydration %

This is the Tanita BF-681W. This is how I acquire my body weight, fat % and hydration readings. The following is an account on how I believe it works and recommendations for consistent readings.. Disclaimer: This may or may not be entirely factual.

The Tanita scale like most other scales shoots a small current of electricity through your body and depending on the level of resistance, measures a voltage that is then “translated” into a fat% and hydration level. This works because of the basic equation V=IR where V=voltage, I=current, and R=resistance. The current is constant and the resistance is your body, thus providing a variable voltage.

Some people swear by these scales while others think they are horribly inaccurate. Of the people who hate these scales, more than half of them are in denial. When I first stepped on my Tanita I said, “WTF?” when I saw my results.

Source: Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis “weighs” each of the different kinds of tissue in your body. It measures the amount of muscle and other lean tissue, like your organs, and the amount of fat and water in your body. Bioelectrical impedance analysis is based on the conductive and non-conductive properties that exist in biological tissues. Most of the body’s fat-free mass is composed of conductive tissues such as muscle, while fat is part of the non-conductive tissue mass. The volume of these tissues can be estimated from the measurement of the resistance to an applied electric current flowing through the body.

BIA measures the impedance or resistance to the signal as it travels through the water that is found in muscle and fat. The more muscle a person has, the more water their body can hold. The greater the amount of water in a person’s body, the easier it is for the current to pass through it.

Back to the subject at hand. All of the actual measurements and facts above are scientific. It’s all true. The subject of controversy surrounds the algorithms programmed into the scale by Tanita engineers. They take minimal variables then combined with the voltage output, compute a fat percentage and hydration level. What about body type? Mesomorph, ectomorph, endomorph. What about bone structure? Small, medium, and large frames. In addition my friends and I have experienced that the algorithmic outputs are susceptible to variations in hydration levels and pre/post meal weighings. I’ve even read that skin temperature can affect the outputs. I’ve also read that these scales are less accurate for athletes than non-athletes.

Essentially while we applaud the Tanita engineers in attempting to derive true fat readings from these variables, we must also acknowledge the fact that the algorithms are limited in their ability to produce accurate results. That said, the Tanita scale can also be a powerful tool for providing baseline readings and tracking change over time. In order to obtain consistent readings, here’s the best way to weigh yourself:

1. Maximize your hydration levels. I do this by drinking water throughout the day intentionally maximizing water absorption. Don’t forget that sodium is critical for water absorption otherwise you’ll just pee out all your water. By maximizing your hydration levels you essentially make one of the variables constant. Therefore your weight and your fat percentage are no longer “dependent” on your hydration levels.

2. Before dinner. Since you’ll need time to hydrate yourself throughout the day, you’re most likely to be fully hydrated by the evening. Weigh yourself before dinner so the weight of your meal doesn’t throw off your results. Dinner can vary greatly in volume and weight.

3. Before exercising. Exercise makes you dehydrated. Weighing after exercise will skew your results.

4. Wear nothing. You’re just adding weight to the results and clothes usually don’t conduct electricity thus increasing the fat percentage results and lowering your hydration percentage results.

5. Keep a log of results. One snapshot in time offers little in consistency. The output of the scale is all relative, so log your results over time to know what the numbers mean for you.

Thus far I’ve been doing everything except for #2 and #3. I can change #2 but I usually exercise before I get home. Eating dinner is the reason behind the fluctuations in the weight output. Coming home dehydrated from exercise is the reason behind the fluctuations in hydration levels. Both affect the fat output. Eating dinner gives me a small chance of rehydrating, but there usually isn’t much time between getting home and going to bed. So the maximum amount of time difference between two weighings is usually about 3 hours.

All of these considerations make it that much more important to keep track of your results so you have an average and a baseline from which to base your results.

The Final Four

When I thought about creating this post, I was thinking more along the lines of “The Final Five (Cylons)” from Battlestar Galactica. When I typed it out, I realized that the NCAA playoffs are also called The Final Four. However, my “Final Four” refers to the bottom 4-pack of my 8-pack of abdominal muscles aka Number 5, 6, 7 and 8.

You see, if you look at my Google Docs spreadsheet, my goal is to drop to 10% of fat and be “ripped” which includes developing my “6-pack”. The thing is, I’ve never had more than a 4-pack… not even when I was in grade school, and sub-10% body fat.

Part of this is because the top 4-packs of my abs are well-defined. The striation between each “pack” from 1-4 is a deep groove. When I feel for my bottom 4 abdominal muscles, I can barely feel their separation… if there even is a striation. Visibly, at 13% body fat, there is no evidence that 5-8 will ever be revealed.

But maybe like in BSG, where we learn the identities of The Final Five (Cylons), we might slowly see 5-8 surface? Although in all fairness we waited 3 seasons to learn the identities of 4 of the 5 Cylons. The last Cylon has yet to be revealed.

Personally I don’t think I’m asking for much. I don’t care if I never see “The Final Two”, but I feel that after all my diligence, I deserve to meet Number 5 and Number 6!

This is where I track my physical activity (workouts) as well as my caloric intake/expenditure.