briansbigproject

The Neverending Story/My Salt Lake Tribune Update

Sorry for interruption in service, I’ve had a down and up few weeks.

Like I said before, I get butterflies in my stomach right before I weigh myself. Three weeks ago, I had lost a pound on the previous week.

The week before last, we had an active recovery week, meaning I had to skip the gym but still eat for Ireland. I managed to keep up my appetite, but I still lost 2lbs that week.

So a week ago, I was down to 15lbs net gain, after having hit a high of 18lbs weeks earlier.

This week I was back in the saddle again, and today I found out I put those 3lbs back to bring me to 153lbs. So what made the difference? For one, I’ve had much better sleeps and some trippy dreams this past week. In one, I was related to Prince Harry, believe it or not. He’s appeared a lot in the news lately, and my job is to keep up with same.

I digress. Another reason, I believe, is that for the first time in around 5 years I’m doing Back Squats again. We had them earlier in the program, but my pointman here, John Connor of the Irish Strength Institute, wouldn’t let me do them because I wasn’t flexible enough.

But he watched me do them last week and gave me the all-clear. They’re the surest way to develop ways, which is the body part I want to “bring up” most cos I have chicken legs.

And I ended up putting 0.25 inches on my thighs, week on week. Not a lot, of course, but still progress.

This week also saw my  latest update for my former colleagues at The Salt Lake Tribune. .

In it I explain that Scrawny to Brawny has taught me that body transformations only work if you accept that you’re on this path for life. It’s a neverending commitment.

Luke, the Force Is Strong With You

Early on in the S2B process we were told to make a scrapbook of clippings from Men’s Fitness and similar magazines of the kind of physiques we were aiming towards. That’s because visualisation plays a hugely  important part in becoming the brawnier version of yourself that you want to be. Seeing is believing in yourself and your capacity to change.

While it may sound a bit weird, it’s a tried and trusted method used by fitness models and bodybuilders since Arnold Schwarzenegger first made a name for himself.

So I decided to take this a little further and add posts from fitness competitors etc to my Facebook feed. Some are better than others in terms of the usefulness of their updates. A lot of them, understandably, use FB as a way to drum up business and it’s hard to judge their credentials.

Having said that, I just use their feeds as a reminder of the path I’m on. It helps me keep the focus on my goal. I don’t buy fitness pr0grams off of any of these guys because I’m already in what I consider to be one of the best programs on the planet and something that is tailored specifically for skinny guys like me.

Besides, one of the top reasons people fail in their fitness goals, whether that’s packing on muscle or dropping pounds of fat, is that they don’t stick with one program. They find that the results don’t come as quickly as they want them to and end up hopscotching all over the shop.

Plus, there would be no point in taking on any other program when I’ve already paid for this one as well as spending a lot of time and a huge amount of effort on it. You either believe in your coaches or you don’t, and mine have all taken the same Scrawny to Brawny journey that I’m on.

However, I have found that some feeds are helpful because they reinforce what my S2B coaches are already saying. So they’re a reminder that helps me keep my eyes on the prize of a transformed body and life.

I’ve come across three useful feeds in that regard. First off is Luke Thornton, whose FB page I found through Natural Bodybuilding Recognition (a FB page that promotes natural…. i.e. steroid-free…. athleltes). Thornton always gives good advice on his posts which echo what my own coaches on S2B are saying, sometimes at the same time as they’re saying it too.

For instance, he posted the following: ”There is no royal road to anything, one thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows fast, withers as rapidly. That which grows slowly, endures” (Source: J G Holland)

“This is why quick fixes never last….do what you are doing now and look to improve one thing at a time for success in changing your physique and fitness levels.”

That’s exactly the same philosophy behind S2B with its building-block approach when it c0mes to adopting habits meant to transform your body. Here’s Luke’s Facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/LukeThorntonFit. Just like my coach Paul Valiulis, Thornton put on 70lbs of muscle going from 140lbs to 210lbs and he’s 6’2″ to give you context. The more fellow ectomorphs (skinny guys) I hear about succeeding in this way, the more it seems doable to me and the more it emboldens me to push myself even further.

The two others I’d like to mention are Scott Baptie of http://www.foodforfitness.co.uk. I came across his Facebook feed through an interview he did with the motivational site cutandjacked.com. He gives lots of useful advice on diet and exercise as well as motivational quotes. He offers a no nonsense, no BS approach. And he’s a fellow Celt, so he’s gotta be a good guy!

Finally, Brandan Fokken posts daily inspirational quotes on his Facebook feed and they’re always a great reminder of what I’m trying to do here. He seems to be a great fitness role model. Here’s his link. https://www.facebook.com/bb.combrandan

I came across all three of these guys independently and they don’t know I’m name-checking them… so no protein powder or free supplements has exchanged hands here. Lol.

WEIGHT UPDATE: Weighed myself yesterday and I’m no 153.2lbs (69.5kg) which is a gain of 18lbs (8.3kg). Still aiming for that 30lbs in time for the S2B photoshoot in a few months for the AFTER pictures.

Here’s an example of something from Luke’s site.

My Christmas ‘Miracle’

I weighed myself today and I’ve lost a half-pound on last week. Not a huge amount and probably not unexpected given the Trinity gym was closed 4 days this week, meaning I had to do a bodyweight workout this week one of those days. It just felt wrong doing it at home on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so I passed on a second home workout.

I told one of my friends in the gym today about my latest weigh-in and he said: “You must be the only person who LOST weight over Christmas.” I thought that was quite amusing especially give how Chrismas/New Year’s is practically a weeklong festivity in Ireland, making my situation unheard of.

So I’m still up 16lbs overall and aiming for that 30lbs to bring me to 165lbs (75kg).

We have to get our pictures taken by a professional photographer by the end of March (the “after” pictures, even though my S2B yearlong tranche officially ends in mid-May) so I’m really hoping I can reach that goal by then. My gym friend asked me if I thought I could do it. I’m well aware of the mantra “If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you can’t.” So yes, I think I can do it. But there’s so many variables that I wouldn’t be the house on it. But I’m aiming to give it all I’ve got in these last few months.

It’s all down to randomness. Some weeks you feel like you’ve lost weight and you’ve actually put on 2lbs (happened a few weeks ago to me) while this week I felt more of a boss than ever before, but the scales didn’t register that feeling.

The good news is that I will eventually get to 165lbs and possibly beyond. I know this because my cousin Deirdre MacIntyre, who’s a psychologist, told me that any habit that is practised for 40 days tends to stick. I’ve been doing S2B, where we learn different habits every two weeks, since May, so my body (and more importantly my mind) is primed to life a bigger, brawnier life that will allow me reach my potential in whatever I set my sights towards… once I put in the work, of course, just like in S2B.

As I said before, this is a total mind meld but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger… physically AND mentally.

What I Learned From Argo

Apologies for the long delay in posting any updates. I’ve had an up and down month including a family bereavement. But things are back on track now.

A few weeks ago I had a minor setback when I was running to catch the train and my FLIP camera fell out of a pocket in my backpack. I only realised when I got on the train and later discovered that the zip was broken.

The FLIP had all the “how to” exercise videos with my trainer here John Connor of the Irish Strength Institute. I’m following the Scrawny to Brawny exercise phases but because I have a separated shoulder I get John to go through them as an insurance policy to ensure I do proper form and I look at them on the way into Trinity gym.

I even had a video of Irish rugby captain Brian O’Driscoll signing a Leinster set of kids pyjamas for a friend of mine in Salt Lake. But that’s all gone now. I still kinda feel like my privacy has been violated but there’s little I can do about it despite searching the area where I think I lost it and even putting flyers in a few mailboxes.

I needed to get a new phone anyway so I bought an iPhone5 and am using it to record the exercises with John. But I had an umbelievable amount of hassle trying to sign that contract. It would have been easier to get into the Vatican.

So I was a little out of sorts for a week or two and my weight just stalled during that time.

But the good news is that last week I got to catch up on a movie I really wanted to see. Ben Aflleck’s Argo is about one CIA operative’s attempt to “exfltrate” six US embassy staff in Iran who were hiding out in the Canadian ambassador’s residence, at great personal risk to the latter.

This is NOT a spoiler, but there’s one scene where the ambassador is talking to Affleck’s lead character Tony Mendez and says “But you came closer than any0ne else (to getting the hostages out).”

I immediately thought, I don’t want to come closer than anyone else. I want to meet my goal of 30 extra pounds.

So I actually found the movie inspiring for that line alone. And it’s undoubtedly gonna be nominated for best film at the Oscars.

But back at the gym, when I weighed myself last Saturday, after two weeks of hovering around the 148lbs mark, I hit 150.8lbs. So I’m officially a buck fifty which means I’m halfway towards my goal given I started at 135lbs.

The food is still the hardest part. Preparing and cooking it is quite time consuming and it still takes me an hour or two to finish lunch and dinner.

But at least I’m still going upwards.

And one other thing about Argo. There was a fantastic array of moustaches in the movie given it was set at the end of the Seventies. Which leads me to an update on my Movember quest. Our team in work (Movember Rain) ended up raising over E1,500, which is around $2,000.

First off, here’s a fun interview with Ben Affleck during the press junket for Argo.

And here’s what I ended up with after 30 days of growth during Movember. It’s all gone now.

Back in Black

In a break from regular programming I’ve just completed a week of strength tests.

Three times a year, at the beginning, middle and end, the S2B coaches like us to measure our strength and check how it’s changing.  Instead of regular workouts, we pick one “push” exercise (e.g. Dumbbell bench press) for upper body on Monday, one “push” for lower on Tuesday (e.g. leg press) , one “pull” exercise for upper body on Thursday (e.g. Lat Pulldown with V Bar) and one “pull” for lower body (e.g. Leg Curl) on Friday.

You do one set a minute for 30 mins but you must keep it the same weight/load the whole time. And you can do as many or as few reps each minute as you want. You can even skip a set if you want.

For the record, and just to give you an idea cos these figures are far from stellar, but I did 125 reps of 15kg dumbbells on chest press, 125 reps of 50kg on free weight leg press, 178 reps on lat pulldown at 35kg  and 173 reps on leg curl at 27kg.

It’s very hard to judge the right weight… and you have to pace yourself at the beginning… but I went with roughly 70pc to 80pc of my max.

Even though the whole workout is only 30 mins, you’re very fatigued after it cos you’ve been working the same muscles almost non-stop and they’re in shock afterwards… which helps them grow.

In fact, I actually “found” the 3lbs I had lost while on holiday the previous week. And 1.5lbs to boot. So I put on roughly 4.5lbs in a week (although I’m not sure how accurate my 3lbs loss was in previous week as I mentioned in the last post).

That brings me to an overall 148.5lbs (13.5lbs weight gain since I started)… so I”m a half pound shy of an extra stone and almost halfway towards my goal of an extra 30lbs.

On the downside I found it hard to finish all my meals this week cos of not being able to eat properly the week before in Prague. But my shipment of Peanut Butter finally arrived so I’ve been slamming PB protein shakes this week (one a day) which I think may have helped with the big gain.

So to celebrate, here’s a pretty cool rendition of that AC/DC classic that I just found on YouTube.

What Would Jason Do?

Sorry for the lag time between updates. I was away in Prague last week for a few days holiday which threw my plans out a bit.

I hadn’t been away since January when I went on my annual pilgrimage to see my friends in Salt Lake City and catch a few movies at the Sundance Film Festival. One of my dreams is to someday write a movie that is lucky enough to get chosen for Sundance and invite all my Salt Lake peeps to the screening. Good times!

Anyhoo, I needed to get out of Austerityville for a few days cos when you work in newspapers you can’t avoid the daily diet of economic gloom in Ireland these days. It’s affected our pay packets in a big way too cos we’re A students among the basket case EU countries when it comes to trying to fix our finances. It’s been really hard.

Enough of that. So I booked a B&B in Prague at the suggestion of a school friend who’s a professor there now. It’s called the House at the Big Boot and is a great, ultra safe, ultra central location to base yourself on a visit there. How safe? Well, to get to the B&B you had to go by the US embassy. And there was a 24-hour checkpoint on that street where they searched cars with mirrors (for under the chassis) and checked under the hood. Oh yeah, and the German embassy was right opposite my accommodation.

On the first night, after a few libations amid catching up with my school friend, I noticed that the area I was in looked like the set of The Bourne Identity, which was partly set in Zurich. The next day I found out that the movie was actually filmed partly in Prague as were a shedload of other films. In fact, top of my list was a tour that would take in movie locations.

I had two full days in Prague and the first was spent getting my bearings. On the second, I went to Prague Castle and that evening I took the only movie location tour going… on a Segway. A guide shows you around for 2 to 3 hours and has a portable DVD player to show you the clips as you’re at the exact location where they were filmed.

So there was Mission Impossible, The League of Extraordinary Gentleman (total turkey), Triple X (XXX), and Bourne Identity, among others. You feel like an idiot on the Segway, but apparently it’s in the Top 5 things to do in Prague. And you can get around the place pretty quickly… besides I didn’t want to unnecessarily burn any calories by walking for hours when I’m trying to bulk up.

I was hoping to see the outside of the US consulate where Jason Bourne jumps to safety in the snow after being pursued by the authorities.

But I saw something else instead. In fact, it’s a far more iconic scene. I saw the park bench where he was woken up by two policemen who tried to evict him from the park. He instinctively beats the shit out of them in a fight or flight scenario. It”s the first moment in the movie when he realises he’s not who he thinks he is.

I should say that I didn’t see the actual bench cos it was damaged in a huge flood about ten years ago. But I could see the markers in the grass and a statue in the background (that also appears on screen).

I lived in Utah at the time that film came out and I remember there were a lot of film critics wondering aloud would Matt Damon be accepted as an action hero. All three films have since grossed $946m. So, how d’ya like them apples?!!

The only problem with my time off was that it was hard to eat the quality and quantity of my regular diet for S2B. And I was probably going to lose weight while travelling anyway, my coach warned me.

I have to admit I was eager to get back to my routine cos I didn’t want to lose too many pounds after working so hard to put them on in the first place. In the end. I couldn’t use my regular scales (in Trinity College gym) for logistical reasons, so I had to use a “needle indicator” scales. I estimate that I ended up losing 3lbs but I had a feeling I could get them back just as quickly.

Interestingly, the trip made one thing absolutely clear to me:  I’m so glad I’m on this brawny path and I want it to be for life.

The Turf ‘n’ Turf

I was watching Parks and Recreation the other day and came across this gem. It’s quite appropriate in the week of the US election. And it works for S2B considering a ‘clean’ diet (i.e. meals made from scratch) is a huge part of the programme. The plotline for this episode was about how a fictional candy maker wanted to sell their products at park concessions.

Initially it was seen as a great budget boost for Pawnee, Indiana’s parks. But then the story pivoted to how letting Sweetums into the park system would be an official endorsement of junk food.

Anyway, enough preamble. The scene in the clip below involves the Parks and Rec boss eating out as a guest of Sweetums (think Thank You for Smoking…. which is a must-see film, btw).

Given I’m eating a pound of protein in each of two meals per day, I laughed my ass off when I saw it. (For some reason the embedded coding wouldn’t “take” so it’s an old-fashioned link.) In fact, it reminds me of a documentary I saw on Steve Martin when I lived in the States. Apparently he turned to comedy after studying philosophy… the reason being that it partly dealt with the nature of the absurd, which of course is what a lot of comedy is based on and which this clip clearly illustrates.

In weekly weigh-in news, I stepped on the scales yesterday and have put on 0.7lb since last week. That brings me to 12.3lbs gain overall and 147.3lbs. Remember folks, for hardgainers it”s a marathon, NOT a sprint.

Mo Money, Less Problems

I’m doing Movember again this year. For the uninitiated, a bunch of guys were having a discussion in a pub nine years ago (legend has it they were Aussies) and hit up0n the idea of raising money for men’s cancer charities by growing moustaches for a month… that month being November. (See www.movember.com for more).

It has since grown wildly in popoularity and raised millions upon millions for these charities. I’ve done it the past two years so I thought I’d throw my hat in the ring again cos it’s the brawniest thing a guy can do with facial hair, hence it fits in well with the Scrawny to Brawny program. I actually checked to see if any of the other 199 guys on the program (from all over the world) were in, and two actually said they would. In fact, one, Don Vanco, already had his donations pages set up.

I’ve posted a pic of my effort last year. This year. I’m gonna go a little wilder with it, see where my facial hair-growth patterns take me. I like to think of it as the Wyatt Earp… but I’ve been told it’s more YMCA. Or Ben Stiller from Dodgeball. I know… they’re just jealous they’re not as much of a hairy bastard as I am.

Here’s the link to my page if anyone feels like donating. http://mobro.co/bmacintyre. I’m part of a work team calling ourselves RE&D Movember Rain.

If you’re reading this from the States, where more than half of the visitors to this blog come from, and would prefer your money go to men’s health charities in your own country, here’s Vanco’s team page (he’s the guy in the middle)… http://us.movember.com/team/694421.

And if you’re in the UK (which ranks third in my blog visitors, after Ireland) and would like your monies to go directly to charities there, check out Ambassador of Quan and natural bodybuilder Lex Griffin’s page. http://uk.movember.com/team/616169. He has a dedicated following on Facebook so I think he’ll do quite well.

And fellow Scrawny to Brawny participant Simon Dannapfel has a fundraising page at http://fi.movember.com/mospace/1451662 for any Finnish readers of this blog.

You may notice that my tache below is a different colour to my hair.  But I promise, like all the guys on S2B — and Lex — I keep it natural. I’l post this year’s mo in about 10 days cos official Movember rules state you must shave on November 1 and then abandon the razor for a month.

In other news, I just did my weekly weigh in and I’m up 0.6lbs on last week. I had problems sleeping on two out of my three workout days this week so that may have affected my weight gain. On the upside, it’s still on an upward trajectory and, at 11.6lbs gain to date, I’m knocking on the door of a stone extra body weight (14lbs).

A Few Good Mentions

Nate Green (S2B program director) just blogged about the latest S2B winners the other day and I have to say I think they’re the best group so far in terms of the contrast between before and after pictures.

As I said before, this is an independent blog and in no way sponsored by S2B, but when I saw these results I got excited about the gains our group will show come next April/May.

Hats off to Ethan (pictured at bottom of this post). He had a very impressive transformation. Not to take away from any past winners, but it’s nice to see someone sub-140lbs getting the recognition. I say that as a guy who started out at 135lbs, just seven pounds more than Ethan’s starting point. It gives me hope. He put on 30lbs to get to 158lbs, and I have the exact same gain goal.

Nick (the first picture below) also did really well, coming in second after going from 178lbs to 205lbs (27lb gain).

The next cohort of guys start on November 7 if anyone else is interested in signing up. But I have to tell you, like I said in an earlier post, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done… and I’m less than halfway through.

http://www.scrawnytobrawny.com/nov-11-winners

The Numbers All Go to Eleven

My weekly weigh-in shows me at 146lbs now, up 11lbs since the start. That’s a gain of roughly a pound in the last two weeks and 8lbs in two months (versus 3lbs before that in three months). So obviously the new food plan is working. At times, in the first three months, it felt like I was literally pissing that protein powder away. Real protein from source seems to be the answer.

I think I’d have done better in the past week but for sleep issues. I was helping the folks out a few days this week and had to sleep over in their house, which led to some restless nights given I was sleeping in a different bed almost every other day.

But my friend Mark McGauran, a staff member at Trinity College Sports Centre, suggested Valerian Root as a sleep aid. I tried it last night and worked pretty well… and that was after I had seen the latest episode of Homeland with its killer ending, so my brain was pretty wired already!

This week I also bought a Jamie Oliver cookbook at the suggestion of another friend. It’s called The Ministry of Food and basically for people who cannot cook. It has easy-to-follow instructions and I even rustled up a Salmon Stir Fry the morning I got the book. Actually tasted pretty good. The next day I made a Chicken Chow Mein but I overcooked it and it was little dry. With the 1lb of protein I have to eat for lunch AND dinner, I tend to favour recipes with lots of sauce.

The cooking has been a struggle. I was just lobbing a bunch of meat into a slow cooker and putting a store-bought sauce on it and then taking it with brown rice/white potatoes and some veggies. But it wasn’t very flavourful. I’m definitely out of my comfort zone in the kitchen but that’s kind of the point of the S2B program, or so we’re constantly reminded. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

I’ve also upped my calorie intake with Coach Paul’s approval, who OK’d me adding back a daily Super Shake into the mix. It’s a good way to get healthy fats (almond milk) and greens (spinach) into the mix.

And I’ve started taking XL eggs for breakfast after one of the motivational/trainer FB feeds I’m subscribed to (in this case Simon George) said it was how he grew big.

For breakfast, you’ve got to show no mercy…