Chadd's First Bodybuilding Competition Log

[Mike]

Wow that’s intense.

• Agreed on garlic and fish oil! See if the wife will start adding more garlic to stuff… or just man up and down a clove a couple times a day.

• Tracking magnesium? Too little (which is way easy to do) not only adds to anxiety and worse sleep, but worse blood pressure. NOW Potassium Citrate pills are horse pills but they get 'er done before bed.

• CoQ10 may also help a tad. Great for the heart and blood vessels in general either way.

What do you consider “low carb”? 285g carb is about 5x higher than what I personally consider “low”

I have potassium citrate. It sucks and throws off most things I add it to, so I don’t add enough anymore. I have some LoSalt on the way – I’m thinking potassium chloride will be easier to use. I get plenty of sodium so I can sacrifice some by replacing it.

Epic thread already. Maybe we’ll sponsor you. You can already grab whatever free stuff you need at the gym (that CJ’s willing to sacrifice at least!)

Maybe a GDA with those carbs would be something worth trying too!

[Jeremy]

@Mike

LoSalt

I’ve used this before. It’s basically 2/3 potassium chloride, 1/3 sodium chloride (as I recall). It has a pretty similar taste to salt, but you can definitely tell a difference. That said, don’t cut sodium too low! It is a necessary nutrient!

[TheChadd]

@Mike

Tracking magnesium? Too little (which is way easy to do) not only adds to anxiety and worse sleep, but worse blood pressure.

Not tracking really, but I take one of these every night. Probably not enough to do anything though. Don’t you take like 4 g or something at night?
.

@Mike

What do you consider “low carb”? 285g carb is about 5x higher than what I personally consider “low”

Yeah, I never hit my carb target. I am rarely above 200 g carbs. For example, yesterday, I hit my macros with 176 g carbs, 160 g fat, and 203 g protein. Alex is upset with that. lol!

@Mike

I have potassium citrate. It sucks and throws off most things I add it to, so I don’t add enough anymore. I have some LoSalt on the way – I’m thinking potassium chloride will be easier to use. I get plenty of sodium so I can sacrifice some by replacing it.

I have the Bulksupplements bulk powder. I mix 2.5 g (~ 1 g potassium yield) into 1 liter of water. I can taste it, but it’s not offensive. I stopped taking it religiously after I saw BP didn’t change. Now I just include it in my water when I workout until I finish off the stash.

@Mike

Epic thread already. Maybe we’ll sponsor you. You can already grab whatever free stuff you need at the gym (that CJ’s willing to sacrifice at least!)

Let’s see how it goes! As for CJ stash, I don’t do supps with more than 200 mg caffeine; so I don’t touch his most coveted pre’s

@Mike

Maybe a GDA with those carbs would be something worth trying too!

GDA?

[Christianmelon]

@TheChadd

I appreciate the info. I have now decided to do blood panels over the next 6 months, and post them here. I’m going to do the usual Lipid and CMP, which will cover all my numbers above, example here, which is only $45. Do you recommend I test anything else? Thanks again!

I would say that should be fine, the main thing is cholesterol if you can get it low and keep it low then I think your blood pressure will improve.
O while I am giving advice, dark berries, great source of antioxidants.
Good luck!

@Mike

Epic thread already. Maybe we’ll sponsor you. You can already grab whatever free stuff you need at the gym (that CJ’s willing to sacrifice at least!)

Lucky bastard

@TheChadd

GDA?

Glucose disposal agent, increases insulin sensitivity and helps carbs/nutrients get into the muscle instead of fat storage.

[Jeremy]

@TheChadd

Now I just include it in my water when I workout until I finish off the stash.

2 things. I wouldn’t take so much at once, especially not without food, and not so much during my workout either. The reason is more or less the same for both. Most people know you need to balance sodium and potassium intake, but it doesn’t seem like many people know why. Your body has a gradient of intracellular potassium vs. extracellular sodium. By consuming potassium, you’ll transiently bump up extracellular potassium which will throw off the electrical gradient. Taking large amounts of potassium can actually reduce contractility of muscles, and taking too much could even stop your heart. I doubt you’re in heart stopping territory, but personally, I’d keep potassium postworkout and later, and avoid large amounts pre and Intra workout. Also, taking with food should slow it down some vs. only having it in water which should lower the chance of negative effects.

[Mike]

@TheChadd

Not tracking really, but I take one of these every night. Probably not enough to do anything though. Don’t you take like 4 g or something at night?

Oh, that’s awesome. Good choice too. Probably a bit of food monitoring to see if you’re getting enough magnesium through the rest of your diet – I assume you’re fine.

Magnesium pills are horse pills because you get so little magnesium in these molecules. For instance, magnesium citrate has a 214.41 g/mol molar mass, but the M is only like 24.305g/mol of that. So, like 11% of the tablet I take is actual magnesium :<

[Mike]

@Christianmelon

@TheChadd

GDA?

Glucose disposal agent, increases insulin sensitivity and helps carbs/nutrients get into the muscle instead of fat storage.

Yes this. I’m not sure what CJ has but they did have some Pump Dirt that is very strong and must be taken with carbs. An ingredient worth looking into is Berberine, or Na-R-ALA.

The issue I’d have with your diet is that my blood sugar would constantly be way too high unless I was doing two-a-days. I’d need to take something with all those carbs to keep the glucose down

[Christianmelon]

On that note I would suggest he pick which diet he wants to do, high fat high carb doesn’t really seem to work too well, I would lower either the fat or carbs.
I personally would suggest lowering the fat raising the carbs but that’s up to him.
If you do go the keto route TheChadd do a cholesterol test and send me the results I’ve wanted to see the effects for a while now.

[TheChadd]

I will be doing IIFYM. Eat whatever is reasonable to hit my macro targets. We’ll adjust the fat/carb ratio and total calories based on how my body responds. I suspect we’ll be dropping carbs and increasing fast, but we’ll see.

[TheChadd]

Yes, all very good points. I was definitely in the safe zone (yes, I did some homework, in case anyone thinks I was just crazily adding this ). The RDA for postassium is 4.7 g/day, and I was only adding 3 g from supplementation. Plus it would take 1.5-2 hours to drink the water fortified with 1 g K, and definitely not on an empty stomach. An avocado, for example, has ~700 mg K, and one consumes that in a few minutes (they are a staple here in TX, lol).

Nonetheless, at 3 g/day yield, potassium supplementation had zero impact on my BP; so I am done with it.

[Mike]

@Jeremy

personally, I’d keep potassium postworkout and later, and avoid large amounts pre and Intra workout

I loved your post above, but some of this seems a bit bro-sciency. How much are we talking when mentioning “large amounts”?

Are you saying you’d never take any potassium solo pre/intra, but would take some mixed with sodium?

Would love to see some sources. I’m thinking you’re talking about like 5g potassium chloride ~~ yield 2.5g potassium at once, which is crazy overkill… but say 1g ~~ 500mg at once isn’t?

[TheChadd]

First update: Nutrition

Status

Current weight: 202.2. Today is my 4th day on 3k calories plus new workout regimen. Last night was the first night I actually felt hungry when I went to bed. The reduced calories and increased work capacity and cardio will definitely start to make me feel more hungry
With all the discussion on nutrition, I’ll start with a quick post on food. As I said before, I really don’t crave carbs, therefore favoring getting those calories from fat instead. I chatted with Alex about how it was tough for me to hit the daily carb target (285 g), he adjusted my numbers. My new numbers are:
Calories: 3010

Macro	Percent	Grams
Protein	24.58%	185g
Carbs	30.56%	230g
Fat	44.85%	150g

With this, I was proud that I finally hit my target yesterday:

I eat this [almost] every damn day for breakfast

I’m a creature of habit. Plus I want something fast, easy, and predicable to eat when I’m getting ready for work. And yeah, I eat this every damn day for breakfast, and most weekends too.

Let’s start with the “smoothie”:

• 56 g whey protein isolate, Unflavored (50 g protein yield) (I actually only put half of it in the smoothie, and drink the other half with water a couple hours later)
• 1 cup of mixed frozen berries
• 50 g raw kale
• 12 oz water (exciting, huh)
• Half my daily dose of my dailies:
  • 2.5 g Creatine malate
  • 1.6 g Beta alanine
  • 1.25 g Betaine
• Half my daily dose of Blood pressure / mood supps (Note that I have concluded that none of the following supps have helped my mood or blood pressure significantly or at all. I am only taking them now to finish off the batch. I have new supps for mood that I’m taking that aren’t listed here; that will be a post for another day)
  • 2 g Beet root extract
  • 1 g Acetyl L-Carnitine
  • 1 g Taurine
  • 200 mg L-Theanine

With the smoothie, I have:

• 2 fried eggs (cooked with only cooking oil spray)
• 1 piece of toast
• 1 tbsp “spreadable” butter (butter with canola oil)
• 3.6 oz whole milk (spread out over 2 cups of coffee throughout the day)

All this gives me the following macros to get my day going

Yeah, the smoothie isn’t the most palatable, but I’m used to it. Plus I strongly believe it has improved my immune system health. Since I started taking it, I only got sick once over the past 2 years.
(however, I did get food poisoning from a bad batch of kale once, too. So there’s that, lol)

[Jeremy]

@Mike

How much are we talking when mentioning “large amounts”?

I’m actually not really sure. I would assume there are dozens of variables that would come into play, body weight and being fed or fasted being two big ones.

@Mike

potassium solo

Yes, Adel Moussa (hope I spelled that right) who writes suppversity suggested a 3:1 or higher ratio of sodium to potassium before or during a workout. Doubtful a couple hundred milligrams would be detrimental, but like you said, I’d avoid gram doses and it would be best taken with some sodium. Or just look for food sources outside of the workout window!

[Mike]

@Jeremy

Adel Moussa (hope I spelled that right) who writes suppversity suggested a 3:1 or higher ratio of sodium to potassium before or during a workout

Ahh good clue, I think you’re referring to this:

The Latest on Sodium Bicarbonate: Serial Loading Almost as Effective as Acute...

So he’s talking about bicarbonates, but it still computes here. I’m assuming he means 3:1 sodium bicarbonate:potassium bicarbonate since subjects lose more sodium than potassium in these studies, but that’s not exactly specified.

LoSalt is 430mg potassium to 170mg sodium - the opposite of what’s needed. So maybe LiteSalt, which is around 50:50 would be better.

[Jeremy]

To be honest, I haven’t done a whole bunch of research on this. He had posted something about sodium bicarbonate on his Facebook page, and I had asked how it compares to potassium bicarbonate, which is when he suggested the 3:1 ratio, if one were to use potassium around a workout. Interestingly, as I recall, the study his Facebook post talked about compared a placebo to sodium bicarbonate as well as to sodium citrate (I’m assuming to help single out the benefits of the bicarbonate itself) and the sodium citrate performed over half as well as the sodium bicarbonate. That itself, coupled with his comment about electrolytes and the gradients is what I’m basing a lot of this on. It certainly is fascinating and I really should do my research in that area.

[Jeremy]

@Mike

I think you’re referring to this:

Funny enough, I hadn’t actually read that until just now. But his sidebar note says more or less what I said earlier, glad to know I’m not too far off base! Anyway, thanks for posting that! Good read.

[TheChadd]

Planning to post a big update this weekend. Shredding progress, the flu, and new blood work! Stay tuned!

[TheChadd]

Update 2018-01-13 - New Blood Work, the Flu, and what…no Booze?!

My wife came down with the flu on New Years Eve, and 5 days later I started have symptoms. I picked up a prescription for Tamiflu the next day, and was able to coast through the flu in about 5 days. While I was sick, I was able to work (from home), and walk ~4 miles per day to keep from feeling like a slug.

With her being sick, followed by me being sick, something cool came out of this…
I have not had any booze since New Years Eve
So what, big deal? I typically avoid social libations Monday through Thursday anyway, saving them for the weekend evenings. I wasn’t planning a “sober January” or whatever, but It’s now 13 days in, and my blood work and blood pressure have improved. Of course, it’s too soon to tell if the lack of booze is the direct cause of the improvement in my numbers, but hell…why not see where it goes? I’m sure my liver will thank me anyway . Check out the blood work and BP numbers below…

Blood Work

I had my blood drawn on 1/9 for a Lipid and Comprehensive Metabolic Panel (no CBC). My previous panel was done in May of last year. A major change since May was going in to bulking phase and actually monitoring my calories and macros. We also pretty much eliminated cardio. My numbers still, for the most part, improved. My diet did improve as the result of watching macros; so that could have been a factor. But I suspect 10 days of no booze made a difference, too.
Most notable improvements were total Cholesterol, LDL, non-HDL, and Glucose Fasting. On the other hand, HDL dropped. Since I didn’t do CBC, I didn’t get MONO% and MPV.
You can view the full blood work here, but here’s the notable ones. (values in red are outside “normal” range)

As a side note, importing the blood work into an analytic format was a bitch. The reports are too different between the labs to write a script to automatically extract the data. So I gave up and did it manually.

Blood Pressure

The new year has brought a local downward trend in my BP, mostly on the systolic numbers. I am cautiously optimistic that reducing calories and elimination of booze are the reasons for the improvement. I have seen improvements like this before; so we shall see how it goes.
Full chart is available here. Here’s the daily averages since the New Year…

Weight

You can see that once I got up to around 205, I had trouble gaining much more weight, plateauing around 207. Fortunately, I was out of time for bulking anyway, lol . And as soon as I stopped bulking, the weight seemed to just drop off. I know it will progressively get more difficult as my weight and body fat reduces. But damn, I love this chart!

Starting Weight	Current Weight	Delta
207	198.6	8.4

Nutrition

This is the first time I’ve ever tried to track macros. Even during the bulking phase, my focus was on minimum protein and maximum calories. Now, I have to watch everything. But I’m getting better at it every day. I’ve been finding it best to undershoot my macros with my meals and snacks during the day, then topping off with whatever I need after dinner.

Daily targets (no change)

Calories: 3010

Macro	Percent	Grams
Protein	24.58%	185g
Carbs	30.56%	230g
Fat	44.85%	150g

[Double-s]

Great luck. Is the show weight or height classes?

What does Cardio look like, apologies if I overlooked it

[TheChadd]

Thanks! Heh, you haven’t missed me talking about the workouts. I actually haven’t discussed my workout regimen just yet . Here’s the a high level view:

Workout Regimen

We kicked off the New Year with a 6-week mesocycle that contains two 3-week microcycles, each containing 4 workouts per week. Focus is on hypertrophy.
For cardio: three of the four sessions per week contain ~10 minutes of work capacity at the end of the session. In addition, I am doing 2x150 calorie cardio sessions per week.

EDIT…oops I forgot to mention the classes:
Masters Bodybuilding

• No weight/height. Just age 40+.

Open BodyBuilding - I’ll probably be Middle weight

• Light up to 165
• Middle 165.25 to 176
• Light Heavy 176.25 to 190
• Heavy over 190