Hi all,

Let me start by introducing myself;

My name is Jordy 26 years and coming to you from the Netherlands, and a complete novice to weightlifting.

Sorry for if I abuse some words haha

Some back story would be best I think so you the reader have a better understand about my goals.

After reaching my all time heigh in body weight of 98kg (215.6 lbs) and an estimated body fat of 34% according to my scale, I had finally broke and wanted to take action to change this ugly fat body and turn it into a god-like physique. I'm not kidding here, I was very depressed over the way I looked and didn't want to go to public places just for the fear of what other people would think of me.

I want that feeling when you're proud of yourself when you take your shirt of at the beach and people watching you, because you worked so damn hard for that body.

Lets continue...

At the start of 2018 I weighted myself (when I was 98 kg) and turned my diet upside down just from one day to next a 180 degree turn. With a great deal of motivation, determination and discipline I managed to lose over 25kg (55 lbs) at the end of my fat loss phase which took me 6 months and a lot of calorie cuttin, I ended on my lowest weight every in like 10 years which is 72.8kg (160.1 lbs). At that point I was only consuming 1100 kcal/day which I know is un healthy.

To get to a normal healthy kcal/day level I needed to eat more, but was terified to regain all my wait. After doing research and watching a ton of youtube videos I came to the conclusion that one solution to this challenge is reverse dieting. I started to apply this reverse diet approach to get myself to a healthy level. With this reverse diet I would ad about 100 to 250 kcal per day. Now almost 4 weeks into my reverse diet I consume about 1600 kcal/day and so far I did gain any significant amount of body fat, howe ever my weight went up by 2kg (4.4 lbs). I should note that at the time I started my reverse diet I also started my weight lifting program. As for the reverse diet I'm planning to keep adding calories until I notice a significant amount of body fat gain.

As a complete beginner in weight lifting/training i also did research on which exercises are best to do for beginners. and I came up with a workout plan which I currently do 4 times per week with 3 rest days. During the week I do these workout crazy early before work, because well that would be the best time for me to do them which is around 4:30 AM. Then in the weekend I do my workout at a more reasonable time which is around 8:30 AM.

A divided my workout in 3 seperate routines A, B and C. I alternate A and B with each week, workout C is planned on sunday. My workout week would look like this:

Week 1:

• Monday A
• Tuesday Rest
• Wednesday B
• Thursday Rest
• Friday A
• Saterday Rest
• Sunday C

Week 2:

• Monday B
• Tuesday Rest
• Wednesday A
• Thursday Rest
• Friday B
• Saterday Rest
• Sunday C

and so on...

My workout routines look like:

After completing every routine I usely end with 15 minutes of medium (8-12 kph) on the treadmill or standing bicycle.

As for my nutrition, I aiming for 1gram of protein per pound of lean body mass 0.40 grams of fat and the rest would be carbs. I approch my daily macros via if it fits my macros, but I would focus my choices on healthy whole foods. With ones a month (when I have my movie night togheter with my sister) I do not pay much attention to what I eat, just have a good time and eat that damn pizza with a bucket of ben and jerry's.

So that would be it, I hope you know a little bit more about me and I would love to hear youre opinion about my approach. If you think I need to adjust something please feel free to share.

Best regards Jordy 

Hey Jordy.

Congrats on the weight loss man, over 50lbs is an amazing effort! Like you admitted yourself, going down to 1100 calories daily probably wasn't the best way to go about it, but doing a reverse diet to get your weight back is good.

If you started training while doing your reverse diet, it's possible you're starting to gain more muscle then, and retaining more water as you get back to a surplus, which would be why you saw that 2kg increase. You will see some fat gain by going into a surplus, but you can keep the gains lean by keeping the surplus small and manipulating your macros a bit.

For your routine.. it looks a little all over the place to be honest. I can see that both the A & B workouts are kind of upper body days, with just one leg movement in each workout. Probably isn't enough volume for your legs. Especially with only 3 sets per exercise. If you're going to have those two main workouts, I would make it an Upper and Lower split, and if you still wanted the C workout as an arm day, that would be fine too.

But right now I think it could just do with a little more structure, a more focused workout for your legs, and probably more volume overall - you have 6 sets for your back and only 3 sets for your chest across all 3 workouts which, in my opinion, isn't really enough.

If you wanted to change it completely, you could also consider a PPL split - have you checked out the PPL program here on the site?

Hi Scott,

Thanks for your extended reply.

I agree with you that my current program is a little bit of this and that...

Push Pull Legs would be an option, but that would mean that I need to go to the gym 6 times per week (if im not mistaking).

With my current work schedule this would not be prectical and I feel that I really do need 3 recovery days at the moment, maybe this will improve over the weeks.

So I have found a Upper Lower body split workout program that seems a lot of fun to do, with exercises I already do and some new ones.

This program requiers to have 4 training days and 3 rest days so this would fit perfectly in my schedule.

So it would look like:

Monday - Upper

Tuesday - Lower

Wednesday - Rest

Thursday - Upper

Friday - Lower

Sat/Sunday - Rest

Maybe you could take a look and give your opinion:

https://www.muscleandstrength.com/workouts/upper-lower-4-day-gym-bodybuilding-workout

Im walking like a criple for the past 2 days because I did calf raises last sunday. Damn it really hurts haha.

I give Day 4 of this new workout plan a try, I'm already excited.

Thanks again,

Regards Jordy

With the PPL program, you could just stick to doing each workout once per week - that's how the first month of the program is structured, and you could just repeat that while cycling through the different A, B and C workouts over the course of 3 months.

If you wanted to have a 4 day split, then after doing PPL on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you could use the Sunday as either a light full body refresher, an arm day, or a day for weak point training.

But an Upper/Lower split is also a good option. If you are finding that program works for you and brings you good results, there's no need to change it!

Hi scott or anyone else reading this 😀 

I have a question regarding my reverse diet.

Im following a upper/lower style workout program, its going really well. Im progressing slow but steady, really enjoying the journey so far.

How ever I curious about my reverse diet approach. I started with increasing my calories by 200 every week, because coming from 1100 kcals I really wanted to eat normal again.

So currently Im 8 weeks into my reverse diet:

Week 1: 73.9kg - 1100 kcal/day

Week 2: 73.2kg - 1300 kcal/day

Week 3: 73.4kg - 1500 kcal/day

Week 4: 74.0kg - 1600 kcal/day

Week 5: 74.2kg - 1600 kcal/day

Week 6: 75.1kg - 1800 kcal/day

Week 7: 75.1kg - 2000 kcal/day

Week 8: 75.7kg - 2200 kcal/day

All things considered I have gained a total of 1.8 kg over a period of 8 weeks. Which on average would be roughly 0.2 kg/pw.

Would this be a good rate to continue?

If I would continue at this rate I would be at a proper "lean bulk" level of 3000 kcal/day in approximately 4 weeks.

My current macro ratio's are:

• 248 gr / Carbs (45%)
• 193 gr / Protein (35%
• 49 gr / Fats (20%)

I'm really curious about you're opinion.

Thanks in advance,

Jordy

Hey again Jordy.

You're doing great so far man, I think you're right on track! Gaining 0.2kg per week is roughly 0.5lbs per week. That would be 0.8kg or almost 2lbs per month. Add that up over a year and you're looking at nearly 10kg or 20-22lbs gained. That's amazing progress over the course of a year. I'd say what you're doing right now has you in that lean bulk status.

It's probably a good idea to keep increasing the calories slightly over the next few weeks, but keep an eye on how much difference there is on the scale. If you start jumping up to 0.5kg - 1kg gained per week, that's probably a bit too fast and might be a bit too much fat gain. So if you can gain 0.2kg-0.5kg consistently with, say 2600 or 2800 calories, stick with that number for a few weeks until your gains start to plateau, and then keep increasing the calories to keep moving forward.

Hope that makes sense! The last thing would be to try increasing your fats a little bit - the look a little low right now. Try taking them close to 70g, so make fats the main macronutrient you increase over the next few weeks.