When getting bigger may be a problem

[ADRIANO FLORES CANO]

Ok, it is my first thread on this forum, here we go.

 

I'm getting bigger at times! 

 

http://i48.tinypic.com/20sy4k8.jpg

 

I always had 70-75kgs before start to lift weights. When I started to lift weights and during a year I put 5kg and I stayed at 80kg. Then I stopped with weights and bodybuilding (boooooooring) and I started with bodyweight/gymnastics stuff 2 years ago (calisthenics at the very beggining, gymnastics when I discovered this  great forum) with steady and lean 80kg. 

 

Few months ago I started for the first time to take protein powder, glutamine/glycine, BCAA, etc... nothing fancy, basic stuff, mainly for recuperation and DOMS not to get bigger, and they work perfectly. At this moment I only take protein powder and BCAA, sometimes creatine PWO. 

 

Indoor rock climbing, F1 work, ring work, capoeira, wing tsun, mobility/flexibility stuff, HS every day, squatting, and working in a gym teaching Pilates, Body Balance, PNF and so on. 3/4 hours a day of physical activity at least.

 

So, obviously, I have hungry all the time, but I'm control eating 5-6 times a day and I feel great; I don't count calories intake and bleh; I have hungry, I eat but not to max. Mainly paleo: meat, veggies, eggs, seafish food, fruits, nuts, etc. Cero bread, pasta, etc, I feel like a globefish when I eat a ton of carbs. I sleep great too, +8 quality rest

 

But... I'm getting bigger!  84,4kgs to my bodyweight/martial arts pourposes is too much and I feel heavy, and I don't want.

 

Possible causes:

 

- Eating too much

- Protein intake

- Supplements

- Ring work

- I don't know!

 

So, my question is how should I managed all of this.

 

It would be as easy as eating less? But I have hungry.

 

It would be as easy as stop take supplements? But I recover much better with them and I feel it!

 

It would be as easy as stop doing ring work? But I love it!

 

Some help would be nice.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Guest]

You are probably eating too much. Something that works for me is eating a can of green beans when I am hungry. They help fill me up with <100 calories. Just a suggestion.

[ADRIANO FLORES CANO]

Because of I train 2 times a day, I'm eating 2 PWO shake: 350ml of whipping cream (replacing milk), 40gr protein powder, 250gr of strawberry (its season fruit right now in spain). 

 

It's a caloric bomb and it's like a 1 meal. When I say (5/6) meals, 2 of them are PWO shake. Maybe PWO shake is what sky-rocket calorie intake. 

 

Yeah I think the same, too much "food".  Thank for the tip ;D

[Tyler Gibson]

You could try to cut excessive calories out of your diet. For instance instead of whipping cream in your PWO shake use water or skim milk. Milk and cream are great weight gainers as they are a simple way to up your caloric intake without having to eat like a bodybuilder. If there are other parts of your diet that include unnecessary calories you could cut down there. 

[Daniel Burnham]

if you are getting too much muscle then lower protein.  If it is fat then lower calories.

[Klaudius Petrulis]

I wish I had your problem haha! Lower your intake of food/calories. Of course this would mean you'd probably have to lower your physical output/work in order not to feel horrible.

 

Do you eat a lot of fat/dairy? If so then we have a pretty good idea of what's going on.

[David Birchall]

I am just under 95kg at 5"11 with the same problem.    The high reps in F1 have made it even worse.  I have stayed the same weight but shoulders have gone even bigger.

 

I have decided to stop squatting completely to see if I can get rid of some leg mass at least.  I don't care about my squat anymore (after years of hard work!!!).

 

I am currently eating only protein, veggies and EFAs on non workout days (~1200 kcal with around 100g carbs) and around 3000kcal on workout days mostly around my workout.  I am losing fat and still getting stronger.  I'll report on results in a couple of months.

 

Some of us just have good genetics for bodybuilding I guess.  But this only applies to me eating carbs.  For me no carbs and high fat = less bulk.  But my training is so much better with carbs.  Catch 22.

[Joshua Naterman]

When you are getting protein very regularly, you're going to grow. When you support reasonable (~30g) pulses of protein with adequate calories, you will grow more.

 

The best thing to do, if for whatever reason you don't WANT to grow more muscle, is to cut out some of the protein feedings and also some of the carbs.

 

You will notice that this does impact your performance, especially the reduced carb intake (NOT nothing, but keep it to what you need to support basal metabolism and replace some of what you burn in the workout). That's an unavoidable tradeoff.

 

I'm plenty huge on ~180g of protein per day, which is around 8 pulses of ~20g and whatever else comes from veggies and rice, and it's easy to grow bigger by bumping up to 30g per feeding and getting ALL the carbs I need, and all the fat.

 

If I were to want to control my size, I'd start by reducing my protein down to something like 130-140g per day, and not changing much of anything else (except perhaps cutting off 10% of my current calories across the board). I'd be a lean, mean 210-215 in no time. Instead, I'm a lean, mean 225-230, but not AS lean.

 

At some point, everyone is going to start to realize that performance and aesthetics are not always complimentary.

 

 

Also, for gymnastics you WANT big shoulders. If they are growing, that's a good sign that you're doing your Foundation work the right way!

[Joshua Slocum]

Josh, every system has a steady state. Even if you're getting regular 30g protein feeding a, you'll eventually stop growing as you near your peak mass. I haven't gained weight in about a year, and wouldn't really want to at this point.

[ADRIANO FLORES CANO]

I know that I eat too much but is because of I'm hungry all the times; I'm moving all the times too. I have to said that because I have hungry all times doesn't mean that I eat BS... nuts, dark chocolate (85-90%) are my healthy snacks, rests of times I eat pretty good. 

 

Maybe the PWO shake are the "issue", due to are sky-rocket calories, for whipping cream above all... and, 2 times a day, caloric explosion. 

 

And when I say I'm getting bigger, it's exactly like that; bigger, not fatty, bigger. 

 

But just like Joshua says, and it is an impressive quote:

 

"At some point, everyone is going to start to realize that performance and aesthetics are not always complimentary."

 

Its time to reduce protein intake I guess.  I want to performance better.

 

But... Could I try to "cutting" instead of reducing protein? Is that the term? (I don't like the bodybuilding terms and I'm not a believer of "bulking" and "cutting" but body recomposition). Reducing bf would make me lighter too, and I'm already below 10% for sure, but... maybe 6%, 5%?  What I want is same muscle, less weight, and I still have fat to "cut", so... It is possible? 

 

Thanks to everyone.

[Joshua Slocum]

Definitely switch to low-fat or skim milk. Not only will it decrease the amount of calories and saturated fat in your diet, but having less fat in your PWO shake will make the protein digest faster. 

[Aaro Helander]

Another long-time spectator joining the conversation!

Josh, every system has a steady state. Even if you're getting regular 30g protein feeding a, you'll eventually stop growing as you near your peak mass. I haven't gained weight in about a year, and wouldn't really want to at this point.

 

Adriano, you could also consider a following mindset for this matter:

 

• Increases in muscle mass don't happen randomly; With your type of training and very high levels of overall physical activity, it might be that  your body has simply "decided" that the best thing to lessen it's stress (getting results for you!) is by building some mass. This will probably not last forever.
• Since you are apparently having good workouts and overall wellbeing, you could possibly be compromising this by cutting your food amounts and protein.
• Since you are remaining very lean, you probably are not getting too much calories or protein anyways.
• Unless the mass you're getting is in your hip/glute/legs -section, you will most definitely see only improvements in your strength and even agility with the inreased mass.

 

Two years ago I was 25lbs lighter than I'm now. What have been the changes since?

• Increased flexibility
• Increased stamina
• Increased explosiveness
• Increased joint health
• Increased overall strength (kind of no-brainer!)
• Increased agility
• Increased skills (Examples: Tumbling a lot better now, handstands impoved dramatically)

 

An interesting thing to note has been the rapid increase in my shoulder/upper back mass after I started doing almost exclusively static handstand work in it's various forms - somewhere around christmas.

 

To me this indicates that the increased mass was a non-negotiable term my body desided to have for me to get my handstands improve

[Joshua Naterman]

Josh, every system has a steady state. Even if you're getting regular 30g protein feeding a, you'll eventually stop growing as you near your peak mass. I haven't gained weight in about a year, and wouldn't really want to at this point.

You'll reach your peak mass at a given body composition, but you can always get bigger. It just takes more food, and an understanding that if one is 5'6" and 170 they can be 7-8% body fat, but if they go up to 200 lbs they cannot stay at 7-8% without drugs Everyone will reach their steady state, as you put it, on any given amount of calories, but when you add more food you start growing again (if it's enough food).

 

And, of course, as you have said, sometimes there's just no need to get bigger.

[FREDERIC DUPONT]

You'll reach your peak mass at a given body composition, but you can always get bigger. It just takes more food, and an understanding that if one is 5'6" and 170 they can be 7-8% body fat, but if they go up to 200 lbs they cannot stay at 7-8% without drugs Everyone will reach their steady state, as you put it, on any given amount of calories, but when you add more food you start growing again (if it's enough food).

 

What a novel & interesting concept to me!

I would really like to learn more about that; could you please point me in that direction Joshua?

Are there ways to predict peak mass?

Is peak mass at a given BF% coincidental with peak performance? If not, can we predict where the two planes intersect?

[Stefan Hinote]

What a novel & interesting concept to me!

I would really like to learn more about that; could you please point me in that direction Joshua?

Are there ways to predict peak mass?

Is peak mass at a given BF% coincidental with peak performance? If not, can we predict where the two planes intersect?

I'm not speaking for Josh, nor am I saying this is 100% accurate, but Martin Berkhan at Leangains wrote an article about maximum muscle potential for drug-free athletes, and he came up with: (Height in centimeters - 100) = Body weight in kilo ("shredded", i.e. 5-6% body fat).

Supposedly it's inline with some of his clients, and data of athletes he's been able to come up with. Since he's using super low BF 5-6%  one can expect higher body-weight numbers than what his equation comes up with.

 

I suspect reaching peak mass is increasingly more difficult as one get's closer and closer.

[FREDERIC DUPONT]

Interesting article Stefanhinote, thank you.

It is funny that this formula is the same as what I learned in primary school (40+ years ago) about what the "ideal weight" should be...

Of course, it was not related to BF, etc..., but I find the coincidence extraordinary!

[Chris Hobbs]

Fred, here are some online calculators that are fun to play around with: Body Potential Calculators

 

- Chris

[Michaël Van den Berg]

If I put my height into Berkhan's equation I get a whopping 80 kg bodyweight at 5.5% BF. That would be impressive I'm currently closer to 70kg @ 15% BF I think, so there's much to gain (if I wish to go down that road). That's an increase of approx. 16 kg lean mass if I'm not mistaken.

[Joshua Naterman]

You want to use the FFMI calculator on Scooby's website.

 

http://scoobysworkshop.com/body-fat-calculator/

 

You can mess around with skinfold numbers to get the body fat you want to see yourself at, and you can find out about how lean you can get at any given body weight for your height.

 

This does not take individual genetics into account, nor does it take bone structure or relative limb lengths (or any anthropometric other than height) into account, but for all that it is still a very, very good baseline guess.

 

Edit: For me, Martin's method underestimates by 11kg, or around 24 lbs, compared to FFMI @ 6%, 186 CM. YMMV. For me, FFMI says I can achieve 213-215 lbs, or 96.7-97.7 kg, as opposed to 86kg. I think Martin's clients may simply be experiencing the inherent limitations of Leangains, in terms of being able to support a specific body composition at a given weight (mostly supporting lean mass) due to the inherently sub-optimal energy balance that Leangains employs.

 

I hope we all realize that this kind of discussion is mostly for fun No one cares about my body fat percentage, outside of a very very small and borderline OCD population. What is important is what we can do, and how healthy we are. If we do our GST work and eat decently, we'll be plenty lean I was told yesterday that half the people in our gym would pay $1000 to know what I'm doing lol!

[Arto Ratilainen]

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[Joshua Naterman]

All you need is 75 bucks. F1 is in the site store.

[Arto Ratilainen]

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[Joshua Naterman]

AH. Well, I follow thermodynamic principles, and I match macronutrient ratios to my activity at any given time, and I get protein quite regularly.

 

Reasonably high veggie intake, etc.

[Josh Binding]

AH. Well, I follow thermodynamic principles, and I match macronutrient ratios to my activity at any given time, and I get protein quite regularly.

 

Reasonably high veggie intake, etc.

Im guessing for the simple minded such as my self , you mean eat less when your activity is low (for me the morning and mid-day) eat more after working out.

Personally I just follow your pre-post workout guidelines, my weight is around 225ibs @ 6,2, still carrying more fat than I would like but it will go with time.

I have also gone about employing 7-8 regular sittings of protein in my day. I'm eating more but I am starting to look leaner.

All of this is because of what I have read from your posts Joshua, It has helped my progress in terms of GST immensely as well as Judo and my day to day life, thanks allot.

[Joshua Naterman]

You are welcome! Hopefully by the end of the year we'll have something available that will allow everyone to accomplish the same thing