Team Jungle Fitness

This post is long over due! I meant to post this week one of my bulking cycle, but between work, training and eating, this gym life literally takes each hour of my day.

As of now, I am more than a month in my 3 month bulking cycle in preparation for my first physique show scheduled on October 18th in Culver City/LA. With the guidance of my well accomplished NPC coach and owner of Jungle Fitness, Jon Jung, the plan is to have me to bulk from 138 pounds to 170/175 (the cut process I will discuss in a later post).

I have never been past 145 pounds and the thought of me being that big is hard for me to get mind around. I feel that my mental toughness will be the true test in this journey more over my physical strength. Clothes are not fitting anymore (I ripped 2 shirts taking them off already >_<), pants are super tight, and I have no more abs! It is honestly messing with my head on top of the fact that my social life is pretty limited due to my training and diet. No more nights of drinking with the boys, eating pizza with cookie dough oreos or afters ice cream! On the bright side, I am strong as hell!

The picture below was day 0, 5'6" 138 pounds. Today, I am 152.6 pounds and still climbing.

Becoming the Bull Follow Up

It has been a full 2 weeks and the milk thing is absolutely working! I'm up 5 pounds since last week, lost 1% body fat and have been consistently setting personal bests every max day. The gains are slow, but steady. 

It has always been hard for me to put on weight and right now I am eager to say that this milk intake is turning out to be a great, natural way to bulk up. I talked to my Herbalife health coach, Kiki about my goals in terms of putting on weight (and then cutting). We did a quick body scan and it calculated that my average daily calorie consumption is about 3500 while my base metabolic rate was 1700 (meaning doing nothing, I burn 1700 calories). She observed that I am no where near the amount of protein and calories I should be consuming. I should be eating around 200g of protein and around 5000-6000 calories. Crazy!

My goal is to gain another 10 pounds in the next 2-3 weeks, putting me around 155/160. From there, I will drastically change the tempo of my work outs, change my diet by reducing carbs and easing off the milk to try to cut down to 145 for summer time ;) 

Currently 144.7 and still going. 

Becoming the Bull

Putting on weight. In the fitness world that means gaining muscle mass while maintaining the "lean and mean" look. How do you do this? Well first, what do you eat and how much do you eat? You are what you eat after all. 

Currently, I am working out twice a day, 7 days a week, eating 4-5 meals a day which total up to around 4 thousand calories. It was so odd to me that I was STILL hungry at the end of the day and it bothered me that I was hovering sub 140 lbs consistently. I knew I was getting stronger, but I was not seeing it. Eat more? Really? I brought this issue up with a good friend from San Diego. He simply told me, "drink milk...a gallon a day." A gallon a day sounds ridiculous! He brought up the examples of baby bulls. Their weight spikes from 500/700 lbs to 2000 lbs in a matter of months not with eating grass, but from milk. Also, back in the Arnold days (Arnold Schwarzenegger), they did not have all these perfected supplements and pre work outs you could purchase from your local nutrishop. These body builders for the most part were natural minus the hand full that took anabolic steroids. I decided to up my milk in take.  

Right now, I am finishing up week one of my milk experiment. I am not drinking a gallon of (whole) milk a day, but warming up to the idea starting out with a quart. It's not as hard as I thought it would be and immediately it has solved my late night hunger issue. The down side is, buying a quart of milk daily is getting expensive (let alone a gallon) and my body feels a bit off. The best I could describe the feeling is "heavy." I assuming it's not used to the amount of milk I'm putting into it. I will eventually find a happy medium. For you lactose intolerant people out there, I recommend almond milk (not soy) and/or greek yogurt if you want to try this. 

Currently, I am 142.6 lbs. (it's working!) 

First Post

Introduction

Call me Dale. It's a lot easier than my given name. I've decided to start a fitness/health blog because a lot of my friends and random gym people have been asking the question: "What do you do?"  I know I am in a shape, but I never knew people looked up to me in that way. Because of my frame, size and ethnic genetics, I am never going to lift big or play in any televised professional sport. I worked with the hand I was dealt and over time developed a work out routine that had the underlying goal of "cutting up." Since, I knew I was never going to be big, this seemed like my only route.

When I was growing up as a child, my parents, especially my mom was very concerned for my size. I was small, alarmingly skinny. I was often teased, picked on and bullied at school for being the quiet, twig-like Asian kid. I was really self conscious about my physical appearance. Fast forward a couple years to high school, I started working out. At first it was home work outs: running around the block, push-ups, sit ups, pull-ups and curls with the rusty dumb bells my dad had in the garage. At first, I was shy about going to the gym for reasons I will discuss in another post. None the less, here I am now. 

5'8" 139.2 lbs.