Trying to Bulk

No grommr account for me; it’s not really my scene.

This is the only site I use besides tumblr: https://www.patreon.com/DarknessShadowLight

I hadn't given it much thought until a couple messages came through today saying Tumblr is being purged.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! 🦃

Staying motivated is something I still struggle with. The best advice I can give is to just start. Don’t get caught up on trying to find the perfect diet or workout. Find a good intro routine and make it a habit. If you have to skip a day, skip a day. Just get back to it when you can. Over time your comfort and confidence will grow and you’ll be ready for a new routine by then.

I have days where I skip the gym and don’t eat much either. It happens, but in the long run that’s just one day of many. The best advice with lifting is lift slowly, pause, and then go slowly back. Everyone’s different, but that seems to work the best for me. Focus on speed and form more than lifting heavy. Three times so far in life, I’ve completely reset and went back to lifting just the bar or 5 pound weights and then worked up 5 pounds at a time with each workout. I do it when I need a mental reset and want a fresh start in the gym and each time I feel like I learn something new.

Maybe too much info, but here’s a rough recap:

I guess I didn’t really ever consider myself to have ‘true’ abs, so I never valued them much. Ever since I was a kid I loved how big guys looked but was really skinny myself.

In 8th grade we had to choose our electives for freshman year of high school. I wanted to take art, (I used to draw all the time) but all my friends wanted to take weight lifting. Not wanting to go into a new school without some familiar faces in class, I took weight lifting too. It turned out I had a natural knack for it and made bigger and faster progress than my friends. Fast forward to college and I don’t know if it was intentional or the accidental freshman 15, but I broke past 200 for the the first time and didn’t hate it.

My weight continued to creep up, thanks to the buffet style dining halls, and by my senior year I was around 250. Towards the high end, it was definitely intentional and I remember the 240s going by in a blur; it was like I went from 230-ish straight to 250.

A few life changes and personal events made me shift focus and I lost the extra weight and got back down to 175. Fast forward to recently and it climbed up to 252, and again I lost it but didn’t lose nearly as much that time. It was from working 80+ hours per week in a super stressful job I hated, and I threw in the towel and resigned and basically stopped eating and lifting for months letting the weight and strength come crashing down.

But, not wanting to leave the story on a down note, it actually worked out for the best and allowed me to find a job I’m much happier with living in a new place eating and lifting and watching the weight and strength come back pound by pound.