Anyone else in their 20s?

teagirlmedium wrote: »

ana3067 wrote: »

teagirlmedium wrote: »

ana3067 wrote: »

teagirlmedium wrote: »

Hello, my name is Jessica. I will be 24 until the end of the month. I am visiting a friend right now on the other side of the country and have decided to take a break from this whole thing. I will be back to what I usually do after my birthday. I am going for the bulky muscle. So everything I do is going to be about protein and lifting. However, I am cheap so all my stuff will be on a budget.

If you're about "bulky muscle" then I'm assuming you will be on a calorie surplus, in which case it's not just about protein and lifting. Although if you are looking to drop body fat to expose your existing muscle, then a calorie deficit is important, again not just lifting nad protein. Considering how bare your log is, you may have issues successfully accomplishing a slow bulk or cut without adding too much fat/losing too much muscle, unless you have learned how to eat at a small enough surplus and deficit for your goals without physically tracking.

I am not about showing existing muscles yet. Later I may be, but for now I just want to look big. I realize there are more things that go into this. However, because I will just be starting this I am just going to focus on consuming more protein and lifting. Later I will change what I do and add more stuff to reach whatever my goal is in the future. I wont focus on the other stuff for at least a couple of months. I started logging in planners, one is for food and one is for exercises. I like the planners better because I can carry them with me, my phone tends to give me issues with this website when I try to log. I have been traveling since the 8th of this month. So my internet has been limited.

If you want to look big then you'll have to eat at a surplus, otherwise you will basically spin your wheels. Eating at maintenance while learning your lifts is a fine idea though, but if you're not totally new to lifting then you might as well try bulking if you aren't set on definition yet (although having definition does make you look more muscular/bigger). To be honest, I don't think there's much use in logging your food if you're not garnering caloric and macro info from the log itself, since it doesn't really tell you much about how much you are eating. Unless you weigh it all and just track it, then will enter it in much later so you can see on average how much you ate and correlate that with your weight management results?

All I track in the planner for food is the food/protein per meal. It is set up as a monthly calendar with lines on it so that I can see what I am averaging intake wise in protein. This way I can look at what I ate, how much protein was in it and easily decided how to add more later. For now I am not worrying about the calories. I am just trying to get myself used to eating lots of protein again. In the past (few years ago) when I was focusing on protein levels I was drinking protein shakes. I do not want to do that anymore I just want my protein from food, so now I am focusing on which foods have protein in them and if I like them or not. Later I will focus on the calories in the food.

Are you tracking the protein by weighing it or by figuring out how many grams you are consuming? So like, if you need 100g then you are tracking the weight of the protein source you are eating and then marking down how many grams that gives you? That is really the best way to ensure you're eating enough protein. Totally fine to focus on that for now if you aren't actively trying to change your weight right now, or that's not your main concern. But as far as protein powder/shakes go, those are totally fine to include in your diet! I do, although I rarely drink them as-is now. I actually almost always use them in baking now. So protein pancakes, protein baked oatmeal, protein banana bread.. it's a great way to increase your protein intake while still enjoying very carb-heavy foods so that you can still meet your goals.