Episode 2: Baseline stats or… How I Measure Up

So, how do I measure up? How fat am I? How much of me is blood and bone!

WHAT I’M TRACKING

 

BASELINE STATS

Start Date: 5th September 2020

Body Composition

1
kg
Weight
1
%
Body Fat
1
kg
Fat Mass
1
kg
Lean Mass

Fit3d assessment
Fit3D

Fit3D results
Fit3D

Calories

Maintenance

2716 calories

Surplus

10%


Carbon Diet App
Carbon Diet Coach

Daily Target

2987 calories

Weight gain

0.3 kg/ week

Strength (or lack thereof)

Squat 70 kg (154 pounds)
Deadlift 60 kg (132 pounds)
Bench 60 kg (132 pounds)
Overhead Press 30 kg (66 pounds)
Barbell Row 40 kg (88 pounds)
Pull up 10 (with black assistance band)

Numbers are based on 5 reps @ an RPE of 8  (or 2 RIR – reps in reserve).

Level: BEGINNER (in case the numbers left any doubt)

Note: It’s probably worth mentioning here that the squat and the deadlift are particularly low because of a back injury. Hoping to remedy this situation and bring those numbers up.

Time in the gym

1
Hour per session
1
Sessions per week
1
Hours per week

Discussion

WHY TRACK ANYTHING?

Why not simply rely on my own intuition? Hit the gym, work hard, eat a bit more, go.

I tried it. It makes things easy. No writing anything down, no measuring. And the best part is, it worked pretty well. That is, it worked well for the first month or 2. If you’re like me, at the start you’ll have a couple of months (maybe more) of good progress. Your program is fresh, you’re motivated, you’re bumping up the weights and occupying more space in the mirror. Then, your ascent up progress mountain will slow and you’ll come to a great plain, a plateau if you will. Where you will stay. For the rest of time. If you find yourself on that plateau, tracking will help you figure out why you’re there.

I’ve been studying and thinking about nutrition for a while now and can stare at a piece of salmon and gauge pretty well how much protein is on my plate. And yet, when it comes to nutrition, overall my intuition is terrible. The same goes for my training. For example, it’s a lot more difficult to implement a progressive overload protocol (upping the weights) if you’re not tracking each session in the gym.

“But it takes so much effort to track anything!”. Ok, here is how I look at it. 

I recently bought bunk beds for my 2 boys. Flat-packed, assembly required, no problem. I laid out the 97 pieces and got to work. Instruction manual? No time for that. Everything was coming together nicely, and 2 hours later, I’d completely fucked it up and had to start again. This time with the instructions.

You are the bunk bed. Tracking what you’re doing is to use the instruction manual and minimise the mistakes (and wasted time). All of the effort you put into tracking, you get back in the end. If you don’t track you are building bunks blind.

BODY COMPOSITION

To track changes in body composition, I’ll be doing the following:

 

BodPod vs the Fit3D

Massey University (where I studied Nutrition) has both a BodPod and a Fit3D. I did both, which is unnecessary, but I thought it would be interesting to compare results.

BodPod

The BodPod is considered a gold standard in body composition technology, and measures your body fat and lean mass with a high degree of accuracy. It’s like underwater weighing but using air displacement. It looks like a spaceship escape pod from a 1980s sci-fi flick. The BodPod assessed my fat % significantly lower than the Fit3D (15%). Although tempting to use this number, I will mostly use the Fit3D data for this journey as it seems like more of challenge. 20% fat… get the fuck outta here!

 The Fit3D 

The new kid on the block for body composition measurement, the Fit3D provides a lot more data than the old Pod. The Fit3D gives you a whole ‘wellness report’ that includes data on body composition, posture, location specific measurements (like bicep circumference), waist to hip ratio, and things like a Body Shape Rating (based on population data). The jury is out on whether it’s as accurate as the BodPod, but as I’ve mentioned before, determining exactly how fat I am is less important than assessing changes in body composition. I also like the Fit3D because all of your data is collected within an easy to use database. Data from subsequent scans is collected here and you can easily compare body composition changes. 

CALORIES

In some corners of the nutrition world, counting calories is like declaring yourself a member of a strange cult. 

I want to eat at a 10% surplus to maximise muscle protein synthesis, so I’ll track my calories to make sure that happens. You don’t have to track calories, but if you’re trying to lose weight, gain muscle, or maintain a new body composition, doing so at least once in your life is a worthwhile, and often eye-opening exercise. I know my intuition sucks, and I know I won’t eat enough if I don’t track.

Enter the Carbon Diet Coach App. 

Carbon Diet Coach

There are a number of apps available for tracking, but I like the look of Carbon Diet Coach. It was developed by Dr Layne Norton, Holly Baxter Norton, and Keith Kraker (3 very reliable sources of information on nutrition and training). It’s pretty slick and easy to use. I’ll break it down in more detail in a later post.

Using some sweet science, The Carbon Diet Coach app has estimated how many calories I need per day to maximise muscle protein synthesis (and minimise fat gain). This should see my weight increase by 0.3 kg/ week (50/50 muscle:fat). This number is based on a few assumptions and estimations, so I’ll need to monitor my weight gain and tweak if I’m not gaining enough, or gaining too much.

The beauty of the Carbon Diet Coach app is that they don’t push you towards any specific diet, or macronutrient breakdown. In other words, if you want to go low carb – cool. Keto – cool. ‘Balanced’ – great. I eat a balanced diet, so that’s what I’m going with to start. It looks like this:

 

STRENGTH

Getting stronger is high on my to do list. So, I need to track my progress.

It can be tricky tracking strength gains for major lifts if you’re jumping around different training programs with different protocols, reps, levels of intensity etc… Given that I train alone in a garage, doing 1RM (1 rep max) lifts to track strength progress isn’t a great idea (see gym fails on YouTube for examples of what happens).

So, I have a not ideal solution:

  1. I’ll track 5 reps @ an RPE of 8 (Rate of Perceived Exertion). An RPE of 8 estimates I could do 2 more reps before the barbell crushes me under it.
  2.  I’ll then head over to StrengthLevel.com and punch in the numbers at 7 reps (estimated number of reps at which I would reach failure 5 + 2).
  3. The Strength Level site will produce an estimation of my max weight at 7 reps. This is the number I will use to track progress.

 

The Strength Level website also shows you how your numbers stack up against other lifters in your age/ weight category. Not super important, but interesting. Based on my initial numbers, I’m definitely a beginner for all 6 movements.

TIME IN THE GYM

In Ep.1 (here) I talked briefly about how much time I want to spend in the gym. Once again (broken record over here), if I’m focused on efficiency, and bang-for-buck, then a crucial piece of data is time spent in the gym. 

Having dabbled over the years, I’ve found that working out 3 times per week, 1 hour per session (roughly) seems to be the sweet spot for me. I’m curious to see how much I can get done with a low to moderate training frequency when doing the fundamentals really well. I’m not talking about hacking the Tim Ferris 4-hour body. It’s about finding a training frequency that I enjoy, that gets results, and is sustainable. Training 3 times per week also means I have plenty of recovery time – also a priority for old Dom. 

A lot of people will scoff at that amount of time, cool. If you’re looking to get absolutely jacked, as fast as possible, you’ll need to train more. Get after it. You do you.

There it is, we’re ready to actually start this thing. Stay tuned for Ep.3.

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