MDE wrote:
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">But the mind is powerful enough to add substance where there is none, and thus everyone is losing fat and adding muscle, and you get huuuuge forum threads and stories and whatever. Because(and this is from personal experience) when looking in the mirror, if you truly want to believe, you`ll see progress where there is none.</div>
Excellent post, and this exactly describes the blessing and curse that bodybuilding forums are in this day & age.
How anyone can seriously undertake an aesthetic program such as muscle gain / fat loss
without knowing your lbm/bf numbers is beyond me. If you don't know how many pounds of lbm you have and how many pounds of bf you have, how on earth do you measure progress from week to week, month to month, year to year?
Strength goals are easy to measure. And if you're a competative bodybuilder, well, you may not care what your bf/lbm is as long as you're leaner and bigger than the guy on stage next to you.
Putting those two scenarios aside, I would say that 90% of us in here are training for aesthetic purposes. I see lots of thought & planning & sweat & tears go into their programs and diet. But what I fail to see...repeatedly...is some quantifiable measurement of progress, other than "I gained a two pounds", or "I lost 3 pounds" or "I look jacked today".
Getting a bf/lbm analysis is a relatively simple thing to do. Is the test perfect? Heck, no. But it's better than nothing, and at least you can find out if what you're doing is putting you on the right track.
With regards to the anabolic diet, I have indeed tried it. For me, eating only p&f and p&c meals turned my stomach into a gas factory, and after 6 weeks I gained 1 pound of muscle and 3 pounds of fat. I know this because I measured b/4 and after
That's all I needed to know to make an informed decision.