Goal: gaining ten pounds of muscle weight


My goal for the upcoming year is to gain ten pounds of muscle weight. It's less than a pound a month, which doesn't sound like much, but since I failed last year I thought I'd share with you some of the hazards and obstacles that I failed to navigate.

My biggest mistake was straining my shoulder this past April, and then not giving it time to heal, being unable to do much training, but continuing to eat as if I was. I very quickly put on ten pounds of fat, which took me until the end of the year to get rid of. It's December 27th and I'm just now getting back to my serious muscle-building workouts.

I also fell into doing a "dirty bulk" even though my goal was a lean one. That is, I was stuffing my face with KFC, and just generally not really paying attention to my calories. Big mistake! Nowadays I'm back to watching them, although I won't track every meal, I just can't live that way.

I've weighed in at around 162 pounds for the past several weeks, give or take a pound of two, so my goal weight for the end of the year is to be in the low seventies. I plan on doing a lean bulk all year, but I'm realistic to know that a little bit of fat comes along with muscle gain. I just don't want to suddenly find myself struggling to get rid of a lot of it! 

So that's the plan, man. I'm older and wiser than I was last year, and I'm grateful that I will have a chance to fix my mistakes from the past. I'll let you know how it goes.

By the way, that's not really me in the pic at the top of this post - I'm the guy who rides his recumbent trike around suburban Phoenix every morning. Here ya go:

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