Muke's growing journey

I’m afraid my weight’s down a bit — was feelin’ ill last week and not up to eating much. Always gotta be somethin’, right?

Trying to think about what I want to post here. A bit starved for ideas… I went around and looked through some old posts from various blogs I’d saved up once for a similar purpose and broke down what was pretty common — the results were mostly not very encouraging:

1. “I’ve been getting a lot bigger lately…” Talk about how your face is changing, how your clothes are tight and how you’ve been needing to buy new ones.
2. “I haven’t been able to gain lately because…” Cite family, work, unemployment, and general lack of motivation.
3. “I’m not sure if I want to gain…” Submission to various types of fear or oppression.
4. “I’ve been having to deal with…” Coping with various unwanted effects of gaining.
5. “I’m still alive. Sorry about not posting.”

Most of these aren’t exactly the kind of idea you want to see more of! The exception is the first, and one doesn’t always have growth to report. So what’s a better idea? Well, it’s that time of year again… time for the holiday tub of popcorn. Let’s go!

Still goin’…

This week’s meal plan:

• Breakfast: croissant sandwich (~350 cal)
• Lunch: potato soup (~550 cal)
• Work snack: chex, dark chocolate, popcorn (~750 cal)
• Home snack: roasted bell peppers, Italian bread w/ olive oil dip (~1050 cal)
• Dinner: frozen pizza (~650 cal)
• Drink: milkshake, ginger ale, water (~1125 cal)

So almost 4500 overall. Feelin’ pretty round as evening comes on. Love you guys.

Yes, my weight is slightly lower than it was last I posted it, but it is higher than last week, and last week was higher than the week before, so I’m taking what I can get.

I’m still a bit short on words and such, but luckily the camera was kind tonight and I’ve got a bit to share with y’all.

Hey guys.  Still alive; sorry for the lack of an update last week.  Been trying to work through some discouragement issues on this.  Feels a little frustrating I guess that after so many years tryin’ to get bigger I’m still basically goin’ it alone.  I don’t let it bother me in general, like it used to, but feelin’ like this doesn’t particularly push me to work at gaining.  So, like I said, I took a week or so off of worrying about it, and I think I’m ready to keep tryin’.

We’ll see what happens.  You guys that leave comments, it’s much appreciated.

3000 calories a day, met all my calorie goals, didn’t end up any heavier. It’s hard sometimes, but that’s no reason to give up, so we keep trying.

But sometimes you get tired of planning, of eating; it doesn’t grab you in itself, and it’s not giving you much to look forward to either. This week I’m not going to think about pushing myself, just for a little break. We’ll see how that turns out. Meanwhile:

I’ve been going through this slump for the past week or so, where I just haven’t felt like eating.

I don’t really know how to push past this, but I wish I could. Those of you who’ve been watching me a while know I put on about fifteen pounds last year from the time I started posting on this blog, but since then haven’t made any substantial progress.

I’ve discovered I have pretty strong mental blocks in place. I tried a session with a hypnotist a couple of weeks ago. The trance state worked, but the suggestions didn’t: I look over the transcript and in response to instructions to increase desire to gain I have answers like I don’t know how to want it… I try not to want, just work… and But I want to get rid of [it]… distracting, selfish and Hungry doesn’t make me want to eat (you all already know that last one).

And I guess that’s basically my difficulty. I will be big. But it’s not something I “want” to do—it’s something I plan to do, something I intend to do, something I’m trying to do, but it’s not something I have the urges to do I had when I was younger. In a way, I don’t have a problem with this: desire leads to suffering, as they say, and I’m a lot happier not being miserable about my body like I used to be. But not having that urge behind my generally weak willpower isn’t conducive to pushing me to gain.

I suppose this is what an encourager would be for, but I still have yet to meet an encourager who has any idea what he’s doing.

I’m backsliding! Onoz! Hehe.

This week, really, I guess I wasn’t paying too close attention to gaining. At least, that’s what it felt like. I think I was sticking pretty well to my calorie budget this week, because I hit 208 again before the weekend hit me. Calorie estimate was 2690 for the week, 3275 if you only count weekdays. Unfortunately my body doesn’t stop for weekends like the rest of me seems to.

I didn’t get any questions from IRC this week, but you guys can feel free to ask me anything you like here—just leave a comment.

I’m liking how the scale numbers have been going up. 204 was my empty weight yesterday, in the slump I usually hit on weekends; late in the week, running full, I managed to catch myself at 208. Good stuff.

Went for the same menu plan as 5/10–5/16; estimate on actual intake was 3454 calories a day. Skipped a lot, partly due to the food not coming out too well, partly due to the usual skipping of stuff my low appetite causes.

Anyway, so in #gainerfurs some people were asking about protein, and I decided a Q that I A’d would be a good thing to post:

— Is it better to gain off a high-protein diet?
Couldn’t say, but it’d certainly be harder. The thermic effect of food, one of the major components of metabolism, depends largely on what you eat. You can generally expect that the thermic effect on average of 10%. If your intake is chiefly protein though, that number’ll be much higher; the thermic effect is about 30% on protein, compared to 4% for fat and 6% for carbohydrates.

Mind you, a lot of the documentation I’ve run across on the thermic effect is somewhat conflicting.  Some sources say that the thermic effect raises the metabolism by the stated percentage, for example that a basal metabolic rate of 75 calories/hour would increase 10% to 82.5 Cal/hr; others say the thermic effect is a percentage of caloric intake, such that an intake of 75 calories with a 10% thermic effect would lose 7.5 calories, and you’d only get 67.5 Cal out of it. Either way, while protein may be 4 calories a gram just like carbs, when all is said and done you get to ‘keep’ a lot less of that.

I keep posting these updates later and later; I don’t know why—it’s not like I do anything with my Sundays.

This week I kept an eye on my gaining progress weighing in daily instead of just at week’s end. I peaked around mid-week at 205, then started going down from there as usual over the weekend.

Meal plan for week of 5/10–5/16, result +4 lbs:

Weekday (~4500 calories)

• Breakfast: Vegetarian sausage and bacon.  Grape juice.
• Lunch: Potato casserole. Clementines.  Soda.
• Snack: Triscuits and cheese.
• Dinner: Lasagna with vegemeat. Garlic mashed potatoes. Garlic bread. Cucumbers with olive oil. Soda.

Not sure how I made the progress I did, but not going to complain.  I did take a different tack with leftovers—instead of saving them for the weekend, I just took them with me every day to lunch, which may have helped some.