Yes, it's still alive

A lot has happened since the last blog update, and I have a spreadsheet to make up for it! Around February 2009, I became much more consistent with the gym because I wasn't making a whole lot of progress going to the gym once or twice a week. While I was working out three times a week early in the morning, my weight as well as my strength seemed to be hitting a wall. I wasn't losing anything, and I wasn't able to increase how much weight I was lifting, so I started looking into possible changes I could make and I decided to give supplements a try.

Now before you think I hooked a steroidal IV into my veins, I crunched some nutritional numbers and found I wasn't eating nearly enough protein to keep up with the muscle growth I was trying to achieve. In order to correct this, I ordered some protein powder in the form of All The Whey Protein. I started drinking two shakes a day, which was giving me an extra 44g of protein. On top of that, I ordered a good multivitamin so I covered my basics, as well as 5g of creatine monohydrate.

Now before you freak out about creatine, this is something your body produces naturally, and 5g a day is about a small spoonfull, so its basic use is more recovery rather than a banned substance a la MLB. In fact, this question came up during the big steroid scandal a few years ago and here's what they said, "'Creatine is a simple amino complex, not a hormone, prehormone, prohormone, ‘wanna-be’ hormone or whatever people call such products to skirt around the edge of what they really are,' Conrad said. 'It has never been demonstrated to have performance-enhancing effects,' said Rob Manfred Jr., executive vice president of Labor relations and human resource for MLB. 'It is not regulated by the federal government as a steroid or pro hormone; and therefore, is not covered by our agreement. It is a nutritional supplement more akin to a food.'"

I started taking these three things on April 10th, 2009 and within a week, a light went off in my body and I finally got past that wall I seemed to have been blocked by. My weight continues to hover around 195 lbs., but I am losing inches around my belly again, and am increasing my strength.

I keep track of my workouts via my palm pilot and a spread sheet. Here's the results from February 2009 to May 2009:



Not bad! It's nice to see how far I've progressed over the last three months and it's inspiration to keep going. I'll have to post up my measurements later on as those have improved as well. I'm still ~195 lbs., but this is still progress in my book.