A New Beginning (some progress pics too)

Wow what a few weeks! A short update for you:

I have to start by apologising for lack of updates. On Saturday 26th October at precisely 7:25am Lynn gave birth to our second child, Mason William Spencer. Both mother and baby are well although Masons appetite seems to take after mine and he is quite insatiable at times!

Despite everything that has been going on I have had 3 bloody fantastic weeks results wise in terms of fat loss and weight loss. I've lost 2lb, 3.5lb and 0.6lb respectively.

As I had achieved a weight loss as of this morning I decided to skipload a day earlier this week just to throw my body off the scent of my 7 day reload cycle. Frustratingly this will result in an 8 day period before my next load, but it should again add to confuse my body and ensure it does not adapt. I should also add that my skiploads have gone from 6 to 10 hours. For me 12-14 hours would be an all day load so keep an eye on that one folks as it gets interesting at that point, but thats a post for another day.

I am now sitting at 10% bodyfat and 214.4lb (about 97.5kg) and the fat has literally been melting off over the last few weeks.... It's like nothing I have ever experienced before. This is now the lowest bodyfat percentage I have ever been. The real key for me here is that 18 months ago when I got just above this at 12.5% I weighed 20lb less. That is concrete evidence that eating well and training hard in the interim period has provided muscle gains. An amazing fete considering that I almost gave up on lifting weights off the back of my DVT when I lost almost all my muscle size and strength through atrophy. What this also shows is that as a bodybuilder, or somebody that simply wants to add lean muscle and improve their lean muscle mass year on year is that you have to forgo that all year round lean look and allow yourself to eat and train in a manner conducive to growing new lean tissue. If that means you have to sit at 15-18% bodyfat for a period of time then so be it, but if you keep your growing/bulking/off-season (whatever the hell you want to call it) phase relatively in check and keep training hard and with purpose the results will be there for you and everybody else to see when you strip off that extra padding in the future.

I've continued to train at 5AM, mainly for a couple of reasons:

1) I like training fasted - I feel I get a much better mental focus and intensity this way
2) The gym is relatively quiet at this time (go figure!) so I can use what I want, and for the most part people in the gym tend to stay out of my way
3) When I go back to work next week, which will be an adjustment in itself this will not be an additional thing to adjust back to - an element of business as usual so to speak.

I've not really tweaked much in terms of diet the last few weeks. The only things I've really done with no negative impact on weight loss is to start using a whey concentrate/isolate blend for post work out instead of just whey concentrate (isolate is quicker acting than concentrate) add to also add 30-50g of coco pops to my post work out shake.... Yes you are reading that correctly - coco pops as part of my post work out shake. I am finding my training sessions are getting much more intense and taking much more out of me. Taking in the extra carbs certainly provides me better recovery and leaves me feeling less drained towards the end of the week as gylocgen gets really depeleted leading up to my skipload. So what I do at the end of my training session, much to the confusion of some people at the gym is make up my post work out shake (still 30g protein 30g vitargo, 3g BCAA, 8g Creapure) and then pour half of it into a little tub of coco pops. I then neck the shake and eat the coco pops before heading home. The amount of coco pops I have varies on the session and muscle group trained (ie high volume legs work which is a complete bastard gets a full 50g of coco pops whilst a standard chest workout gets just 30g etc).

I think people think the coco pops thing is weird and I have definitely had a few raised eyebrows, but I ask you this: if your on a diet do you want to drink your calories or eat them? Obviously you want to eat as much as you can as this makes dieting feel less laborious. Coco pops (and any kids cereal) are a great post work out carb source as they are roughly 50/50 starch to sugary carbs with the added benefits of cereal companies adding a variety of vitamins and minerals. Hell there is nothing to say you couldn't sit and eat a bag of jelly babies or wine gums instead. Personally I like having a mix of liquid and solid carbs but I don't think it would make a difference either way.

Another thing I've done is to eat a few pineapple chunks with breakfast. Lynn was eating this to bring on labour and I made the mistake of trying pineapple, having never really liked it.... wooops shouldn't have done that - its awesomely refreshing!

The last 2 days I have also started drinking lemon water first thing in the morning. There are a whole host of health benefits behind this (just google them) but the main thing for me is to reduce body acidity due to a very high (350-400g a day) protein diet, and it actually tastes pretty damn good too.

Some progress pics below as haven't put any up in a while. Not the best quality as there is a complete lack of places in our new house to take pictures (the glass in the back door is actually a pretty good mirror!).

Top 2 are from end of last week - hopefully you can see that bottom V (also known as the sex V!) in my lower abs coming out. 

Bottom 2 are from this week and give an idea of the added vascularity I am getting now my bodyfat is down at 10%. Particularly pleased with the vein down my biceps (how vein!) because no matter what I do I never seem to get that nice big vein you see on all the guys in magazines and at shows - proof its there, but has just been covered up! Probably just need a good dark fake tan now to really show up the veiny/grainy appearance to its full.