How to gauge progress

Fitness
1

alternative title: “how to stop lying to yourself”

99% of men and women look at various metrics, note which one is “improving”, and from that moment on proceed to only track that one metric … until the improvement stops … then they find another metric that is “improving” and start tracking that one.

this is why guys bulk and cut - because when you’re “bulking” it is an “improvement” to see the weight go up and when you’re “cutting” it is an “improvement” to see the weight go down.

nothing is actually improving of course - quite the opposite - you’re getting fatter when you bulk and you’re losing muscle when you cut.

PRO bodybuilders don’t actually bulk and cut - they have “off season” and they have “contest prep” … during off season they eat more or less normally and they make sure not to put on too much weight - Ben Pakulski for example said that off season your waist should be about 2 inches bigger than in-season. 2 inches is not a lot at all.

then during contest prep the Pros will switch from mass gain drugs like Insulin to cutting drugs like HGH, Clenbuterol and DNP

DNP is lethal, but also the most effective weight loss substance you can take. when you’re on DNP it’s like you’re doing cardio 24/7. you would be sweating in your sleep like you were jogging, because on a mitochondrial level you WOULD in fact be jogging in your sleep.

of course in addition to all this the pros will also do 2 hours of cardio per day as part of contest prep ON TOP of the DNP.

the goal of all this is to drop ALL the fat in a few short weeks - to do it so fast the body has no time to lose the muscle, and metabolic rate which would normally collapse during starvation is kept up by drugs.

this is very different from normal dieting which is done slowly to maintain metabolic rate and muscle mass.

so the pros have about 11 months when they build muscle and 1 month when they burn fat

the gym bros alternate periods of getting fat and losing muscle

the difference ? bros don’t track their waist when they “bulk” and don’t do cardio when they cut.

all cutting and bulking really is - is convincing yourself that you’re always improving when the opposite is true.

best case scenario “bulking” simply means “enjoying food in winter” and “cutting” means “actually going to the gym and doing steroids to get ready for summer”

( continued below )

2

so how do you really gauge progress ?

first you have to accept what i accepted 20 years ago - that you can’t make progress forever.

in fact you can only make progress for about 10 years. after 10 years you hit a wall and you need to try something new.

so if you were training consistently for 10 years and the last couple years you actually knew what you were doing the only way you will improve further is drugs.

and drugs will also hit a plateau, which in my case comes much sooner than 10 years - more like 2 years.

the reason most guys can keep making gains with drugs for a long time is because they start with low doses and increase doses slowly. but this is a waste of time. i went to maximum dose almost right away and was benching 400 lbs within 2 years.

the reason i did this was not greed or being in a rush - it’s because anytime you take steroids your nuts are shrinking - this happens regardless of dose - i wasn’t about to spend 10 years shrinking my testicles to get to the same point to which i got in 2 years.

the point is - for any given drug there will be a corresponding plateau. if you take lower doses at first you will simply waste time and take a few extra years to get to the same plateau. of course there is also no point in taking higher dose than what is needed to see explosive gains - but the gains should be explosive - at least at first. if they’re not - your dose is too low. my 1st cycle i was gaining a pound of muscle PER DAY ( while also consuming 400 grams of protein per day ). of course in retrospect i should have been consuming my protein from red meat, not from whey protein - as a muscle is more than just protein. if you’re going to build a pound of muscle per day you should be eating at least a pound of meat per day ( plus some whey protein ).

but anyway when you hit the plateau with steroids you will then have to take something more expensive like HGH to make further gains and so on. i didn’t have money for HGH so when i hit 400 lbs bench ( and the drug i was using was pulled from the market ) i said this is the perfect time to quit.

moral of the story: before you set out to measure progress understand that it may be impossible to make progress in the first place - unless you’re willing to start taking a new class of drugs that you haven’t used before. so like HGH is a different class of drugs from Steroids so if you never took HGH you may make gains again by starting it … but you won’t make gains by doing what you have already been doing for the past 10 years.

secondly to avoid running in circles chasing your own tail try as much as possible to maintain the same shape all year. this is the only way you will know if you’re improving or getting worse. you can of course put in a little extra effort before summer ( if you plan on spending time at the beach ) and take it a bit more easy after summer ends for a few months but you should never “bulk” - instead in the “off season” you simply back off cardio - that’s about it. and by “back off” i mean cut the cardio in half - i don’t mean eliminate it.

finally remember that your health is determined by your total visceral fat mass. NOT by your bodyfat percentage let alone by how visible your abs are. in other words building muscle does NOT make you healthier UNLESS as a side effect it results in you losing visceral fat mass - but usually the opposite is true.

in other words most people judge how fat they are based on how good they look. when you build muscle you look better so you tell yourself you’re less fat now - but in reality often your visceral fat mass actually INCREASED. it’s just that you don’t have a beer belly anymore - you are now just “big” overall. what changed is that you now look “powerful” instead of “fat” but your actual amount of visceral fat didn’t go do down …

reality is there isn’t that much muscle in your waist. if your waist is getting bigger it primarily due to fat, unless you’re on HGH in which case your internal organs are getting bigger.

understand that with age, and from steroid use, fat moves from subcutaneous ( under the skin ) to visceral ( inside your abdomen and between the organs ). that means that if you train hard and take steroids you may get visible abs but you haven’t lost any of the fat that actually counts when it comes to your health.

your focus should always be on your waist size. it doesn’t matter how much muscle you build - a large waist will always mean early death. as Ben Pakulski said - 2 inches max - not more than 2 inches above your peak shape at any time in the off season.

come up to a young ripped guy with really flat stomach in the gym, tell him you admire his abs and want to have a stomach like him then ask him what his waist size is. assuming he doesn’t run away thinking you’re trying to have sex with him and tells you the size of his waist - try to get within 2 inches of his waist size.

chances are he will say his waist is like 32 inches and yours is like 40 inches. your goal should be then to get to that 34 inches and everything else is fluff.

if you don’t get a handle on your waist size you are not fit and you’re going to die.

your squat doesn’t matter, your bench doesn’t matter, your bicep size doesn’t matter. all of those can be increased with drugs but will only make you die sooner.

only your waist size matters.

everybody tries to ignore their waist size because getting it down requires real dedication.

but you’re only cheating yourself.

you’re not cheating death.

3

I doubt very many pros do DNP. Knowing bodybuilders and their love for abusing everything, they would abuse DNP and we would hear a lot more about pro bodybuilders dying from it. We hear about them dying from diuretics and insulin and even heart attacks from steroids, but I can’t think of any bodybuilder who has died from DNP.

People have died from DNP, but they were just regular people trying to lose weight quickly.

Clenbuterol and T3 seem to be the most commonly used cutting agents.

“Cutting” steroids like Winstrol don’t actually cause fat loss, but they don’t convert to estrogen and lead to water retention so they are good for drying out and looking leaner.

Cutting for bodybuilders is for the most part is about eating as little as you need to eat to get leaner and blasting enough gear to prevent muscle loss. A lot of cardio too.

It’s a brutal process. I don’t use any drugs, but I am cutting right now and I hate it.

4

i should note there is something called HCG

which more than reverses testicle shrinkage and i did in fact use it and it works like magic - but the point remains - that it is not a good idea to spend more time on drugs than you need to get the results you’re after.

technically the process is called “receptor mapping” which basically means you use trial and error to determine the minimum dose that gets maximum results.

but most beginner users don’t understand anything and are scared and so they start with low doses of weak drugs and don’t get the full benefit - which is what allows them to later continue to make gains as they switch to harder drugs and higher doses.

but in my case i did the research, understood the science and had everything like HCG and Nolvadex and just went straight for a more advanced type cycle so i got much better results but also i hit plateau much faster as well.

5

agree with your point that dying from DNP is more common among idiots looking to get something for nothing than pros who have iron discipline and aren’t looking for shortcuts.

pros use drugs out of necessity. regular folks out of laziness.

if you’re willing to spend your entire day doing cardio you will have better results than you would by taking DNP since you will have energy to work out and also be able to sleep normally …

but most people don’t want to do that much cardio … or any cardio actually …

6

never tried Clenbuterol

did T3 but didn’t notice any results

7

it’s not really about eating very little - because that would just kill your metabolism.

it’s more about forcing your body to burn calories - whether by drugs or cardio.

obviously nothing will work if you eat like a pig, but cutting is not about being anorexic. rather you trim off the junk from your diet, without compromising on protein or any other essential nutrients - and then as your metabolism tries to adjust down to lower calorie intake you look for ways to force it back up …

8

In my case, I find that the fat simply doesn’t come off unless my diet is really strict. I can do hours of cardio every day, but if I eat carbs while doing that my weight stays the same. I don’t eat like a pig. Basically if I am not feeling starving and miserable all the time, I am not losing fat.

9

well it’s calories in vs out but the point most people miss is that calories out is basal metabolic rate plus calories burned by exercise and basal metabolic rate can collapse completely on a long diet …

that is to say if all you do is limit calories in then eventually your BMR will catch up with your new lower intake and your progress will stall and you will have two options - either lower calories even further, at which point it will have to come from protein as you already eliminated everything else … or increase expenditure through cardio etc.

so the first step in cutting is to eliminate all foods that are empty calories and leave only nutrient dense foods.

the second step is to increase cardio.

you need BOTH.

if you EITHER keep eating junk OR don’t do cardio you will fail.

10

it’s like this not only for weight loss but everything else.

if you feel too good you won’t accomplish anything.

the reason junkies are always in a ditch is because we can only be motivated by pleasure and pain but when you’re on Fentanyl you can neither feel pain nor can you feel any greater pleasure thus you cannot be motivated to do anything at all - not even to crawl out of the actual physical ditch you’re in.

likewise your body will not give up fat if it is comfortable as it is.

or as motivation fags say “get comfortable with being uncomfortable”

comfort = stagnation

and stagnation leads to a downward death spiral in only a matter of time.

11

i want to somewhat correct what i said earlier about there being no reason to pussy foot around and start with low doses …

there are actually two reasons i can think of for staring off slower …

1 - not frying your receptors for nothing

2 - if you max out your receptors and it’s your first time your body will try to build muscle faster than that it has resources for - that is, you won’t have enough protein and other nutrients to build muscle at the rate the body will try to do - and this would effectively make you malnourished even if you were eating well …

so perhaps the strategy for the first cycle should be to build muscle at a maximum rate that your body can comfortably sustain without depleting nutrient stores.

OR ! you can do very short cycles at first so that if any nutrient stores are depleted they can be replenished off cycle.

once you are nearing plateau and are only adding muscle at a slow rate you could use higher doses and longer cycles without running out of nutrients.

i suppose on your first cycle your bottleneck will be nutrition so frying your receptors with high doses will be a waste since it won’t make you gain any faster as you won’t physically be able to assimilate protein at a higher rate.

so i want to rephrase what i said earlier - the gains on 1st cycle shouldn’t be “explosive” ( although they were for me ) but rather they should be “rapid” …

if they aren’t rapid you aren’t taking enough or you’re getting fake shit … though i never heard of anybody taking real shit and not getting fast results on 1st cycle regardless of dose …

so basically when you start drugs first you’re limited by your diet - you can’t put on more muscle than you consume building materials as food. then you start to approach plateau for a given dose so you increase the dose until you get to a point where increasing the dose does nothing because your receptors are saturated, and you need to go after different receptors with a different type of drug.

12

the reasons i gave though aren’t the reasons people usually start off with low doses.

usually the assumption is the person has no idea what they’re doing on their 1st cycle and going with lower doses will be safer.

generally that is a good advice as the average person is dumber than box of rocks and will usually do nothing to control estrogen for example or may flip out and kill somebody etc.

if you are intelligent and did the research you would probably be better off starting with higher dose so as not to waste time but also as mentioned above you don’t want to build muscle so fast that it breaks your body.

like you probably don’t want your body pulling nutrients from vital organs to build muscle.

so you would want to both maximize nutrient intake, control the rate of muscle growth ( dose ) and limit the duration of the cycle.

13

Or better yet don’t take steroids at all and just be healthy and have a physique that people actually admire

14

steroids are like alcohol.

you get to have more fun but you’re playing with fire.

some people can manage the risk - others can’t.

as Henry Ford said - " whether you think you can or can’t - you’re right "

rich guys like Jeff Bezos do it under supervision of doctors. they don’t have to waste their brain cycles on figuring out if they are doing it right or not. for regular guys it’s an effort and an expense so you must really want the benefits otherwise it’s not worth it.

and there is only one benefit - feeling good about yourself.

if you can feel good about yourself without drugs then certainly do not take them.

same goes for alcohol. if you’re comfortable in your own skin without alcohol then there is no reason to drink.