u/Forbidden-Ravenlore

Long story short, and take this as a lesson...

Ive come a long way for quite a few months. Staying consistent in the gym, eating clean, ect. Well for the past month my schedule has gone crazy and ive only been able to eek out light workouts at home.

Yesterday was the first day fully back in the gym.

And I heard the warnings before, but now im giving them.

I always thought after taking off for a while my lifint would suffer. But anecdotaly, ive heard it is quite the opposite.

I use progressive overload and all session I was putting up 2-3 MORE sets per exercise then when I left off. I thought that was great until about 3/4 of the way through the session when I realized I was walking head long into the trap.

Though the strength may have been there, that was an unwise idea.

Today I am more sore then I have been in MONTHS. O dodnt respect the fact that I was pretty out of practice and prob should have not gone 110% even if i felt good.

Cause now Im paying for my exuberance.

So just a tip. After a lay off, even if you feel good, ease yourself back in. Especially if your taking your sets to failure.

So been at body recomp for a while. Had pretty good results so far. I track my macros, lift heavy things 3/4 days, usually, and try to get proper sleep. So not really looking for shortcuts, just a little something additive.

After a few months (4 ish) looking to make a final decision.

If you had to pick between Triz or Reta, which one would your pick?

Maybe even paired with MoTc, not quite sure yet.

If anyone needs more info for a better opinion, happy to give more details

Thanks in advance.

So Just to do a short introduction, my name's Jason. I run a Ravenloft YouTube channel, hence the screen name.

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But lately ive been branching out into fitness subs cause I'm in the middle of a pretty ambitious recompositon journey.

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Im 49 and plan to be 113% body fat by my 50th bday. I started last Nov but finally got close to dialing in in march.

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Since then ive started tracking my Macros and strength training using progressive overload.

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I do 1 warm up set at between 50-70% set weight then

2 sets to failure increasing the rep weight each time. I spent some time figuring out what the optimal weight was so I could hit failure between set 7 and 10. It carries depending on muscle groups.

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Once I got comfortable with where that was I began to track my work.

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Ill post pictures of some of the pages. The exercise is listed at the top of the page. Then the warm up, 1 set, 2 set numbers are below them. The weight followed by the "Failure" rep.

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But so far so good. Ive seen and increase of strength and mass since I started to lock in.

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So if anybody is wondering if it works, for me it is so far.

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I think its worth the effort.

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Hey, my name's Jason. I'm a 49 year old Jack of Many Trades. The most relevant to the digital space bieng a DnD youtuber who specializes in the Gothic horror setting of Ravenloft. Im not gonna post a link cause to be honest, not super relevant. But the links around if you wanna ever put a face to the OP. I am, for better or worse, completely public. So its taken me a bit to branch out into other communities on Reddit.

But im old and can barley manage one profile let alone one for each neich, so sacrifices must be made, blah blah blah.

If it wasn't obvious. Yes I'm an old nerd. And as such I was gifted with the 80's nerd starter pack of morbid obesity coupled with glasses, braces, childhood trauma topped of with questionable gender due to failing the pencil test 10 too many times. IYKYK.

But man do I have an EXTRAORDINARY sense of humor.

Ill skip the therapy session, so sufocit to say I have been HAPPILY fat...most...of my life.

There was one stretch when I was acting and I had a Metric but-ton of stunt work and I lost a bunch of weight and became a "ninja" But that was an outlier.

Oh I should mention, this is literally a real time situation, and I am most def drunk...so pardon if I ramble.

But I digress.

Oh yeah, happily fat.

I've always drank whatever I wanted, ate whatever I wanted juat verry little restraint. Early on it was cause I ate my feelings, later on its because I became one HELL of a good cook. Gotta go with what works for ya.

But a couple months before I hit 49 I started to really feel like I should finally commit to doing what I have never had the patience or will to do, and that was to get down to 13% bodyfat and finally not have to worry about carrying around all that unnecessary weight.

So I gave myself till last Thanksgiving.

Right after the holiday,* I act as Santa clause on the Polar Express train in Western MD, Man that's a great job. ) i decided to go back to Intermittent Fasting and NSNG.

That and, full disclosure.

i went to my DR for the first time on over 2 decades and got all my bloodwork done. Except for some high blood pressure everything was great except for the Lil ol T. So at the same time I figured it would just work to start TRT.

So TECHNICALLY I'm not natural.

Or whatever, I'm not a professional athlete. And frankly ANYBODY who has the ability should. I mean if your over 40. The difference in my ability to stay awake at night and just get through the day is so much better at 49 then it was at 39.

BUT I DIGRESS AGAIN!

I almost immediately started to drop weight. But I could tell from my decreased amount of strength that the weight i was losing was at least a not insignificant ammount of muscle. I was also about 2 months in on 3000 MG Carnatine. I felt liked that worked but I had to much going on at once to really isolate it for effectiveness.

I got an encouraging ammount of complements from the people on the train that I work with. And it made me feel like dressing better, so I started wearing dress pants and shirts and vests. Thoes sorts of things. And the effect kinda started to snowball. I feel better so I look better, look better then I would feel better.

Nice dopamine feedback loop, If I do say so myself.

But ultimately I think the weight loss was propped up by an unhealthy chloric deficit and an excessive amount of steps.

Santa is TRUCKING, bet.

Of course once the holiday was over and normalcy was restored, everything stalled out.

But for once, for some reason, I didnt gain it back either.

So I started picking the brain of my good friend and acting partner Alfred who was my stunt corridonator in the movies we worked on together.

His son introduced me into the world of counting Macros.

Or as I like to call it, edible algebra....

And I started thinking I have drank everything there is to drink. Eaten anyting ive ever wanted. Just indulged with, reckless food therapy, def not approved by the FDA

But I have never seen my abs.

On my birthday in March I gave myself the present of health.

Dont scoff, i mean it. I want to LOOK good sure, but really the health is the priority.

Sides I been sexy...Just not with abs..

Dont get it twisted...

Thats what...3 tangents...bless your heart if your still herre.

I have promised that for once I'm actually going to

do what I need to do to get to that 13% body fat number while bulking up.

The mythical bodyrecomposition!!!

So of course I had to quit drinking. What's the point in counting my Macros and managing my input if im just gonna blow it all and 3 days of binge drinking.

And im what they call a...I dont know...functional alcoholic I guess? Maybe? To be fair I have been way slowing down natural as ive gotten older anyway. So if im being fair, although at one time me and booze were like Insepersble, the act of shutting it down completely was way less painless then I thought it would be.

I think that was my first hint It was really going to work.

Fast forward a bit. Little by little I dialed my macros in, managed to start meal prepping, got the WHOLE HOUSE hooked on plain Greek yogurt, strawberries and granola. So that's win right there. Slowly got to the 4-5 workouts a week, focusing on progressive over load, absorbing all the info i can and doing my best to figure out what's legit.

And so far the results have been largely positive.

Which brings me to tonight and the pont of all this.

It was a mad rough night. Went to a function, if course I didn't drink. Wife was good to go with the rest of the family.

For reasons that im not getting into specifics on, the night kinda went sideways toward the end.

Lots big feelings, ya know.

Well we get back home and mr old habits comes to he party and back to the liquor store I go.

And I broke one of my few non negotiables.

Good thing is I still have a high tolerance. Bad news is that I can drink more.

A pint of vodka and 8 seltzer later, feeling must better on one hand and an absolute train wreck on another.

And I had been managing to track all the food I had at the cookout. And I KNOW the amount of empty calories I just absorbed was astronomical.

And I thought, the only way I can try to not do this again in a high stress situation is to track ever single bit of what I just put down.

So after everyone jist went to bed. I pulled every single can and bottle out of recycling and scanned the balcony.

Its funny though, cause I thought that would make me feel worse. But ima get up and juat get back to it tomorrow. And the next time I try to drink my feelings I can come back to this day.

Then ill decide if its worth it.

We do learn more from our successes then we do our failures. And man have I had some great learning experiences. In years past a night like this may have may have me fold in the towel. But this time its just feels like a bump in the road.

Thanks for reading yall. If your out there trying to better yourself I applaude you. The times gonna pass. Its up to you how you spend it.

Jason

This Sunday at 7pm est, Dr Bowers ,from the Youtube channel PHD&D, and I will do a complete showcase and exploration of the new book...

Ravenloft:The Horrors Within!

During the stream we will be taking calls on the Discord line and Zoom, audio only if ye be shy...

Time to get lost in the mist...

Jason