You read other people's stories and you are supposed to get excited. Sometimes I do.
This lady, Nicole Weeks, lost 16 pounds of fat and gained 11 pounds of muscle in her first 12 week challenge with Body-for-Life. In two challenges she went from a size 14 to a size 4. WOWWEE. I am so thrilled for her. She looks good! Go check out her site. You'll see what I mean.
Sometimes when I hear/read success stories like this, it's a downer. I'm on my fourth challenge. How come I am not in a size 4? (What's a size 4 look like? That's amazing. Well, I've seen 0s on my sister-in-law, but I thought they just jumped from 0 to 8 or something.)
I should not be depressed. I look so much better than I did in the first place. I've gone from a size 18 to a size 9. That's freaking wonderful.
Plus, I started at a lot worse place, physically, than she did. (If you read her essays, you find out she started the challenge right after walking out of a physically abusive relationship. I was in a lot better place than that psychologically when I started.)
I've looked at her stuff and, according to her statistics, she started out weighing 144. I weighed 50 pounds more than that. I'm getting closer to where she started!
I think what is really frustrating to me is that she gained so much muscle. Several trainers have told me that my body will go to muscle a lot better than most people's. But I'm sitting here, 40 weeks into this, with maybe a gain of 4 pounds of muscle. The most my scale ever said was 8. Now it's showing a 3 pound gain, over the whole 40 weeks. I am so frustrated.
I looked at the weights I've been lifting. My lower body exercise weights have increased dramatically since I started. (Well, actually, they've gone from 5 pounds at the heaviest to 70 at the heaviest.) My lower body exercise weights are up, too, from 10 to 40. What's wrong with that? Why am I not gaining?
I don't have muscle you can see like that. And I haven't gained muscle like she did. I would love to. She looks good. She's right, skinny ought to be out compared to having muscles you can see.
pardon me for not searching your past entries if you've written on this already, but are you taking in enough protein? and working your muscles enough to make them grow?
i know the protein intake is hard for people who aren't carnivores like me. but you probably already thought of that huh…..
mark [www.marktioxon.com]
Yeah, not getting enough protein was very hard when I was a vegetarian. Having given that up, though, it’s not anywhere near as hard.
I get a minimum of 110 g. protein a day. so I don’t think that’s the problem.
Working muscles: I do a 12, 10, 8, 6 (getting heavier each set) and then dropping down to the weight I did 8 at and doing 12 and then 12 more of another exercise. I do squats, lunges, back, and abs for lower. Chest press, lying extensions, bicep curls, and Arnold’s for upper body.