Introduction

Hello H&F! I've been doing SS and HIIT for about a month or so now, but I've been reading people's logs and it seems like a great way to track progress, ask specific questions, get motivated, and hopefully, if done correctly, to motivate OTHERS.

I'm currently at college and have access to a pretty decent gym + track, and I have a car, so there's no excuses. I'll start off the log with 5 sections: my stats, workout plan, progress, diet, and goals.

My Stats

22 years old, 5'8", 190 lbs.

Workout

I am doing the Practical Programming version of Starting Strength from the wiki site for the following reasons:
1. I had too much trouble trying to get the form for power cleans down
2. I don't play sports very often and developing power isn't as important as just being on a good lifting program to build/maintain muscle
3. I love pull-ups.

So Monday:
3x5 Squats
3x5 Bench/Overhead (alternating)
Pull-ups (to failure)

Wednesday:
3x5 Squats
3x5 Bench/Overhead (alternating)
1x5 Deadlifts

Friday:
3x5 Squats
3x5 Bench/Overhead (alternating)
Chin-ups (to failure)

Tuesday or Thursday:
On one of these 2 days I will do HIIT

Saturday:
Every Saturday will also be HIIT

HIIT:
1. 4-lap warmup (light jog)
2. 8 reps of sprint 1 lap then walk 1/2 lap (1 lap = about 1/8 mile)

Progress
Here's where I currently am:
Squat: 255
Bench: 225
Overhead: 145
Deadlift: 295
Pull-ups: 11/7/6
Chin-ups: 12/7/5

Diet

I did a lot of work on this over the weekend. I will post my plan later today, but as for now I'm off to do some HIIT with a friend.

Goals

In order of priority:
1. Lower BF%
2. Maintain/build muscle
3. Be healthy
4. Learn more about fitness

I would put concrete numbers on these goals, but I'm not sure I know enough yet to do that accurately.

I want to thank everyone here at H&F in advance. I've seen in previous posts that you guys are motivated and very knowledgeable, and I'm sure my goals will be more achievable by the day with your help.

Nice to see you start a log. Hope you get some good feedback here, good luck. I'll be reading.

Thanks man, I appreciate it.

Just did HIIT. I love that stuff, might be bumping up to 9 cycles soon.

Diet

So here's the info for my diet. I'm not totally sure what my maintenance level of calories is, I've seen various numbers in the range of 1800-2800. Since I haven't been losing weight, my calories average out to about 1700/day to be on what I hope is the low side.

There are 3 types of days: high carb, low carb, and no carb, and here's where they fit in with the context of my workout:

Monday: high carb / SS
Tuesday: no carb / HIIT*
Wednesday: low carb / SS
Thursday: no carb / HIIT*
Friday: high carb / SS
Saturday: low carb / HIIT
Sunday: no carb / ---

(the * just means either Tues or Thurs as stated in my first post)

Here is the high carb day:
Low carb = high carb minus yogurt, cream of wheat, crackers, hummus
No carb = low carb minus banana, silks, apple, sweet potato, tuna + mayo instead of tuna + salad, and fish instead of chicken

The totals come out to:
So if you have any opinions/criticisms I'd be very curious.

Also, I'm very interested in the cyclical ketogenic diet; I've heard great things about it. One day I may try it, but for now I think this could be decent.

Carb cycling is great. you cals look low to me for 190, try to drop as slowly as possible while getting results so there is more room if you stall. on your low and keto days you should jack your fats up. if 2264 is a good deficit for you then dont drop cals so much on other days. fats are better for you than you think and with no carbs you will definitly need them for energy.

also with a deficit this great you need to watch your HIIT, it can eat up muscle the same as any other cardio if your body needs the fuel.

if your lifts are still going up and fat down, ignore this for now but be aware imo.

Thanks for the advice. I'm a little afraid to bump up calories yet because I haven't been losing weight, but I'm hoping over the next week or two I'll have a better idea of the right number of calories I should be getting.

Also, here's a question that I've been thinking about...

I generally go out to dinner and drink, each 1-2x/week. Any tips for measures I can take to compensate for this? And does the deficit seem a little more reasonable with those points?

You can lose fat without losing weight.

Could you elaborate? I would think that even if this were true, it wouldn't be optimal, and I'd be able to lose fat faster?

He means decreasing your body fat % without the number on the scale changing. Usually happens when you are building muscle and losing fat at the same time.

Got to the gym early today, usually I go around 5pm.

Wednesday will be weigh day. Also I'm using the scale at the gym which is one of those manual balance thingies, so my numbers could have a bit of error. Nonetheless:
190

Squat: 3x5 @ 260 (+5)
Bench: 3x5 @ 230 (+5)
Deadlift: 1x5 @ 295 (+0)

Very happy with the lifting. I hadn't moved up in squats in a while and last time I benched I had to repeat 225. Deadlifts were the same weight, but definitely easier to do and cleaner form.

Not totally sure about the whole losing weight thing. I was under the impression that one couldn't lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, except when they were just starting out. And if I was doing this, wouldn't I be losing more in fat than what I'm gaining in muscle?

I think I remember reading that you can put on like 2lb muscle/month max, and reasonable fat loss goals are like 1lb-1.5lb/week, so my guess is the fat loss should be faster than the muscle gain and the scale should go down... I guess if you're staying at the same weight it's possible you're losing fat slowly at the same rate you're putting on muscle (like <.5lb/week?), and I'm guessing you want to lose fat faster than that?

Yea definitely want to lose fat as fast as possible. I think right now I'd rather lose more fat and maintain strength than lose less fat and increase strength.

It's all very blurry and tough to measure, but I'll stick to the current plan and we'll see what happens in the coming weeks.

nice..
your starting where most people can't even get to!

wat

Question in preparation for tomorrow's workout involving chin-ups:

Generally in SS one is advised to take long enough rests to feel back to normal, 3-5+ minutes, often times 7+ minutes.

For pull-ups and chin-ups, since you do more reps (it says to do as many as possible to failure until you can do 15 where you add weight) should the rest period be decreased? Or should the exercise still be treated as strength and take a big rest?

Oh also another question...

Long story short, I ended up eating dinner (chicken + broccoli) at around 11:30 tonight, about to go to bed now. Does the body process food less efficiently during sleep? I remember I used to hear not to eat before you went to bed and also to eat more at the beginning of the day than the end.

Any truth to any of this?

No not really.

My understanding is you're still doing pullups for strength, so I don't see why not... I think the important thing is just to do the next set when you feel ready. Or if you're concerned you can always just hedge it with a 3 min rest and be on the long side of a short rest or the short side of a normal rest.

Not sure about processing food when you're asleep, although I've heard for gastro-intestinal purposes it's not recommended to digest food while lying down (potential trigger of acid reflux/GERD type stuff, I don't have a source on this though). I think eating early as opposed to late is more of a mechanism for controlling what you eat, as in, if you have a big breakfast you're less likely to be hungry and overeat during the day.

Thanks for the responses mike & bixby. I had a feeling the late night food thing wasn't a big deal.

As for this part, the part that makes me question the rest is that I *don't* think it's still for strength? My thinking was that I'm trying to increase the number of reps, not the weight, which is endurance.

Squat: 260 (+0)
Press: 145 (+5)
Chin-ups: 13, 6, 6

Good stuff. Workout went as planned, no comments really.

HIIT:
8 reps (I think...)

Sick + hungover HIIT out in the cold is devastating.

During my workout I was thinking about the possibility of switching my Saturday HIIT day to Thursday. So still having 3 SS days, 2 HIIT days, and 2 off days, but the off days would be the full weekend instead of Thurs + Sun. Do you guys think that would be better or worse?

JAW here.

saw, please never refer to yourself in the first person or capitalize all letters of your name again.

you best not. JAW

Ooo I think you mean 3rd person. That's embarassing...

sick

Squat: 260 (+0)
Bench: 230 (+0, and only got to 14 reps)
Pull-ups: 9, 6, 5 (-2, -1, -1)

Pretty awful workout. No idea what went wrong, got normal amounts of sleep and food, but just felt mad tired. Also may have injured an elbow on bench but who knows.

Hopefully next time goes better.