Intermittent Thoughts on Intermittent Fasting - Programing Success: Accept Your Weaknesses, Learn From Your Mistakes, Identify Your Strengths and Build a Better Body!

Image 1: You may call it "toning" or "shaping", but in the end it's bodybuilding in the literal sense.

Assuming that you are all "lean and mean" by now and thus ready to build some serious muscle (for those who missed it, read last week's installment on "Why you better lean out before bulking"), we can finally delve into your first steps on your way to ... wait. I hope you did not forget your "motivational elevator pitch" from the first part of this part of the Intermittent Thoughts, where I asked you to come to terms with what it actually is that you want to achieve. Now, the good news is that regardless of whether you are just sick of that lose skin on your upper arms or want to compete against Phil Heath at the 2012 Mr. Olympia, there are a few fundamental principles that apply regardless of whether you are striving for "toned" 11 inch arms or Coleman-esque 22 inch guns.

Gaining weight? Yes! Getting fat? No!

With that we have actually arrived at the very first of three key points, I promised to address in this issue (cf. end of last installment): effective ways to measure your progress. In the "weight loss installment" of this series you have already learned that other than the morbidly obese "King Size Homer", physical culturists and athletes who do not compete in weight-classes are ill-advised to step onto the scale too often.

Figure 1: Lee Priest's transformation is certainly amazing, but let's be honest, do you really want to run around like Michelin man in the off-season and then have to resort to extreme measures to get back in shape for a few days, only? (comparison posted by "Tibo" at the SRTrading Forum)

While dieters (here indicating people who want to lose fat), may get discouraged, because their weight-loss stalls, when they are actually just beginning to finally add some muscle to their increasingly lean physique, many self-proclaimed (hobby-)bodybuilders think that "gaining muscle" is all about increasing their off-season weight (interestingly, many of those people do not even compete and define their off-season as the time when they do not go to the beach to impress the ladies). What could make sense for a professional bodybuilder like Lee Priest (cf. figure 1) certainly is not an appropriate approach for the average gym-rat, whose "weight loss arsenal" is less well-stocked than the ones of a high level pro-bodybuilder ;-) Or put more simply, when former chubby, like Peter Griffin (cf. "Healthy Weight Loss") bulks up the way, Lee did, he will not (and I guarantee that) be able to drop that fat again and achieve the grainy look from figure 1 (right) within a few weeks time before a contest, by diet and exercise (and OTC fatburners), alone...

Figure 2: Other than for the "pros" with their versatile arsenal of "weight loss tools", the journey of the dirtily bulking average self-proclaimed hardgainer is a one-way street.

And even for the self-proclaimed "ectomorph" there is nothing worse than a dirty bulk, where the number on the scale serves as his / her yardstick of success. This is especially true, because many self-proclaimed "hard gainers" are lean mostly because they are still eating like a bird (or missing even the most fundamental basics like a sufficient protein intake of at least 1g/kg per day), even when they claim that would eat until they puke. If those people start forcing down tons of calories in form of sugary weight gainers, most of their weight gain will come from fat. Their initially low fat cell count will soon have to increase to provide enough storage capacity for the "valuable" energy, so that, rather sooner than later, the former "ekto" finds himself in a similar situation as Peter Griffin, who, no matter what he will do, will always have a harder time leaning out than his friends who have never gotten chubby in the first place.

Bottom line: Do not rely on the scale too much. Yes, you want it to go up steadily, but faster weight gain does not automatically equate greater muscle gain. Keep a close eye on your waist circumference and decide a priori when (no matter how close you may be to your superordinate goal, e.g. "achieving 20" arms") you need to cut back on calories to avoid "adipolateral damage" ;-)

Taking stock also implies coming to terms with yourself

Image 2: Just as when you are "dieting", the scale is not the best meter for your progress. A measuring tape, a notebook and a digital camera should be your tools of choice.

Assuming that you have decided that you could use some additional muscle on your scrawny frame, another often overlooked thing you will have to do even before you start "bulking" is to take stock of how "scrawny" you actually are - not by stepping on the scale, but by taking, or rather have someone take measures of your waist, your arms, your chest, your shoulder and thigh cicircumferences. Just like any good custom tailor would do. You will then take a camera and shoot photos, from the front, from the side and (don't neglect that!) from the back. Depending on how much progress you have already made, this may seem ridiculous or even embarrassing at first. After all, you probably do not look any of the cover models you are looking up to... but remember: You take these photos as a yardstick - your yardstick. It won't help you if you keep admiring the girls and guys from the magazine-covers and shy away from your own mirror image.

In order to make a change you must initially objectively assess and accept where exactly you are standing in order to decide what you want to change and by which means you can achieve that. As long as you keep thinking of you and your body as disconnected units, you will never achieve whatever physique it may be that you are dreaming of. So, this kind of  initial stock taking is way more than just setting the baseline reference. It is (at least for many trainees) also a matter of coming to terms with theirselves.

Bottom Line: You are your own yardstick. The figures on your measuring tape and your weekly progress pics are objective measures of your progress, which is defined against where you are coming from. 10" arms are an awesome achievement, if 8" where you are coming from!

Build on your strengths while working on your weaknesses

Start out with your strengths! What is that you like about your physique? What is your most developed muscle part? And if you are already training... ask yourself what it may have been that you have done right, here. I remember that I have always been pissed off that my legs appeared to grow like crazy, while my arms and "most importantly" (my perception at that time) my chest "just wouldn't grow". I looked at the figures and pictures and then peeked at my routine. "How on earth can my legs grow like that if I only train them once a week and do nothing like some warm ups on the leg extensions and some squats?" It was back then, when I eventually realized two things:

Image 3: Do you really think anyone would know Tom Platz, today, if he had decided to neglect his strength (obviously his legs)?

1. Everybody has certain strong and certain weak body parts. Part of this is genetics. Especially if you have not reached your "full genetic potential", an even more important factor is however what you do in the gym, at work or in your free time. If you are carrying beverage crates all day, chances are that your "strong" body parts are your neck and your back, no matter if those are the muscle groups with the greatest genetic potential. If, on the other hand, you are like I once was and have a reasonable training plan for your legs (because people say that you have to train legs ;-), but are so eager to grow your chest and arms that you totally overtrain them, you must not wonder if you grow tree-trunk legs, whie your arms and chest shrivel away.


2. Success comes from building on your strengths, and working on your weaknesses. It does not make sense to stop training legs, to "save the energy" for whatever other bodypart you feel is lagging behind. Not only will you run the risk that your former strength becomes your future weakness. You could also end up with two not one weaknesses by overtraining your weak and detraining your strong body parts.

For me that meant that I had to maintain my leg regimen and adapt my chest and arms routine by cutting out a lot of high volume auxiliary movements and focusing on improving my strength and technique on those movements of which I felt that they worked - and YES! This meant that the classic bench press was no longer a part of my routine!

Bottom line: Cherish your strengths and stop lamenting about your weaknesses. Analyze and build on what worked for you and acknowledge and learn from your own mistakes.

Hearing and listening to what your body is telling you

Image 4: Cable crosses certainly cannot replace the bench or dips, but they allow you to practice to flex your chest against resistance.

I see, that was a shocker. Dr. Andro does not do bench presses!? Well, not exactly, I have reincorporated them into my routine months later only to rotate them out again with the next change in my regimen. While the bench may have built massive chests like the ones of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Franco Culambo, but it just did not build mine.  

Sticking to what does not work, because people keep telling you that it does work is probably the most stupid and yet most common mistake I see in the gym.

If you read all the information in the "SuppVersity EMG Series", then you will be aware which exercises work best for the average trainee in the Boeckh-Behrens and Buskies study. You do not even know if these are also those exercises that work best for "the average trainee in general", but you can easily find out if these are the exercises that work best for you - and more importantly, if they are not, you should give a damn about how they rank in anyone's "Top List" (mine included!).

Bottom line: Never, I repeat, never(!) assume that what worked for someone else, or even the majority of the participants in a scientific study must also work for you. Listen to advice, build new routines based on scientific studies, experiment, but do not stick to a routine / exercise if, after 2 weeks, your body still keeps telling your that it ain't right for you.

Weight is important in weight lifting, posing is key in body+building

Image 5: If you want to maximize muscle gains, posing - or rather learning to flex your muscles against resistance is obligatory (img Johnny Jackson)

In case you are now wondering how on earth you can find out if the bench press or the dip (which is my favorite for chest) is right for you, when you do not have access to the complex measuring apparatus Boeckh-Behrens & Buskies used in their studies, I assume that you have never been posing or deliberately practiced the so-called "mind-muscle-connection" - have you? What? "Posing is ridiculous?" Well, that was what I thought as well, when I began training. I mean, I never even remotely thought about competing, so why on earth would I practice posing? The reason is simple and has little to do with the ability to showcase your muscles, but all with your brains ability to address the motor neurons on your muscle fibers.

If there is one thing I want you take away about goal setting for muscle building from this installment of the Intermittent Thoughts then it is that your primary goal in the gym must always be to work the muscle against resistance and not to break personal records. Here lies a fundamental difference between weight lifting (as in O-lifting or powerlifting) and bodybuilding. As someone whose primary goal is to improve his physique, the lifting weights is only a means to a completely different ends.

If all you want  is to build a bigger bench, fine! But don't expect to make similar gains as someone who understands that he is at the gym to work his muscles, not his ego. By practicing posing and doing what I like to call 1-2 "acclimatization sets" with ~50% of the weight you would use for 6-8 reps before every exercise, not as a warm-up but to memorize the movement pattern, to feel and flex the target muscle and to be able to transfer this pattern to your working sets, you will soon be able to decide which exercises are working for you, and which aren't.

Bottom line: You are not in the gym to move maximal amounts of weight, but to induce maximal muscular stimulation. This requires that you train your mind-muscle-connection and accept that the weights you are using are just a means to another end - the physique of your dreams. Remember: You increase your weights to keep challenging your muscle, and thusly to be able to record a new personal best in the notebook with your body measures, not the one where you keep track of your weights.

Preliminary conclusion(s)

Although, I did not get totally side-tracked this time, I still have to postpone the scientifically based considerations of the implications of the biological underpinnings of skeletal muscle "hypertrophy" (and maybe hyperplasia), at which I have been hinting in yesterday's blogpost, to another installment of the Intermittent Thoughts.

Note, in view of the pictures I have been using in this part of the series, I may have evoked the false impression that these rules apply exclusively to "bodybuilders". This is however not the case. There is no fundamental difference between training "to look good naked" and training for the "Mr. Olympia", as far as the take-home messages from this installment of the Intermittent Thoughts are concerned. Flexing your muscles, "posing" and practicing the mind-muscle-connection for example could be even more important for the ladies who want to "tone" their physiques than for the skinny ectomorph whose primary goal is to "get big".

For the time being, you would be well-advised to get yourself a measuring tape and a camera to take stock of where you are, physique-wise, to (re-)evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, to identify what worked for you and to get to know and learn to flex all the muscles in your body - and yes, there are more than biceps and chest, or chest and biceps ;-)

Intermittent Thoughts on Intermittent Fasting - Programing Success: Stocktaking, Goal Setting, -Tracking & -Resetting to Achieve a Healthy Weight & Shed Excess Body Fat

Image 1: You need to know exactly where you are and where you want to go. Read on to learn how your very own PPS can help you in achieving the goal you set as a homework from the last episode.

Assuming that all of you did your homework from the last installment of the Intermittent Thoughts, you should by know know the general direction into which you want to be heading. The first thing we are going to do today, is to revise these meta-goals. As I promised, I am going to try to tackle this in an as concrete, yet non-prescriptive manner as possible. So let's say you are "chubby" and want to "get lean" (please bare with me, even if that is not you, I will address gaining muscle and increasing performance in the next installments) Let me ask you a few questions, then. What is "chubby" and how would you define "lean"? I mean with your meta-goal being "going from chubby to lean", you are about as lost as with the idea of going from "New York" to a "less crowded place". Is it "New York" as in "New York City" or "New York", the state, from which you want to escape? And that "less crowded place", would that be the South-American rainforest, or rather the tidy world of the American suburbs?


PPS - The Personal Positioning System

To assess "where" chubby or whatever you are coming from is, you cannot simply whip out your shiny iPhone and use the GPS map. What you will need is a PPS system, a "Personal Positioning System" that will not only tell you were you are, but - if programmed correctly (and this is what you will learn in this and the following episodes) - also where to go next in order to achieve another step towards your destination goal. Contrary to the GPS, where the reference points are the many base stations of the system, your unique reference point is you! This fact has one very important implication: Just as the accuracy of the real GPS system is limited by its knowledge of the exact position of the base stations and satellites (EU's Galileo system will provide a whole new dimension of exactness in this regard, being about 5x more accurate than the old GPS) the goal-directedness of your everyday efforts in the kitchen and the gym will depend on an unbiased accurate assessment of your starting point.

Figure 1: So you are "chubby", yes? What kind of chubbiness are we talking about here? Is it the American Dad "Stanley Smith goes Anorexic" kind of imaginary chubiness? The Peter Griffin "Well I am a little too well-fed" kind of overweight chubiness or rather the "King Size Homer" kind of morbidly obese chubiness?

It does make a significant difference, whether you are "chubby" like in slightly overweight chubby or as in "chubby" as in morbidly obese chubby and it can become a life-and-death issue if you are "imaginary chubby", as Stan Smith in one episode of season 2 of American Dad, where he stops eating, because he believes that he was "chubby". Obviously, each of these points of origin would require different lifestyle interventions.

Image 2: Not to a pair you can identify with? Well, maybe not yet... and no matter how your goals may change (for many health and longevity become increasingly important with age), diet and exercise will always be essential parts of the life-style that will help you to achieve them.

Note: I am consciously talking about "lifestyle interventions" here and in the course of the whole serious, because the results you may get from a "dietary and/or exercise regimen" are only sustainable, if you make them a vital and appreciated part of your life - a part of a new life-style! This does not mean that you have to eat the same foods or train the same way that helped you achieve your aims for your whole life - in fact, this could well be counter-productive - but it does mean that in one form or another they will accompany you for the rest of a life. where the way you look and perform (the things usually associated with exercise and nutrition) are only two of the sides of the "health & longevity, savoir-vivre, performance and body composition" rhombus from the last installment (figure 2).

King Size Homer: Wait loss at all costs

Let's start with "King Size Homer", a victim of the sedentary Fast-Food Society. No matter what his dreams for the future may be and how much he may suffer from the way people react to the way he looks (Lewis. 2011), Homer's first and foremost concern must unquestionably be his health... interestingly, though, the latter will automatically improve with every pound of body fat King Size Homer is able to shed off his morbidly obese body. A 2002 study by Kopp et al., for example, showed that weight loss (unfortunately induced by a debilitating crutch that is known as "gastric surgery") alone led to significant reductions in circulating IL-6 and CRP and major improvements in insulin resistance. Now, those of you who read yesterday's news on the benefits of HIIT as a supplement to the already intense training regimen of 29 judo players, may remember my remark on how "classic cardio training" such as walking on an inclined treadmill turns into high intensity interval training for people like King Size Homer, after all, they are carrying a weight "normal" people would if they were doing a farmer's walk. It is thusly not surprising that regardless of the type of exercise, and even in the presence of "the crutch" (bariatric surgery, cf. Egberts. 2011), exercise has been shown time and again to promote weight loss above what fasting, medication and even surgery (all of which can become necessary in some really extreme scenarios) alone can achieve (Chaput. 2011). Moreover, and this is probably even more important, constant revision and adaptation of his exercise and nutrition regimen are going to be the decisive factors which will keep Homer from falling back into his morbidly obese state once he has cut his body weight in half and achieved an astral body like Peter Griffin, already has it.

King-Size Homer's PPS-Cheat-Sheet:

• Goal(s): Lose weight at all cost, your health demands it!
• Tracking: In your case each pound counts - a standard scale will suffice to track your progress
• Resetting: Achieve "normal obesity", BMI ~30kg/m² before resetting your goals

Family Guy, Peter Griffin: Feed the Muscle, Cut the fat

When King Size Homer arrives at the "just" obese "Peter Griffin"-stage, things will change. He will by now have at least a minimal amount of fitness and in view of the 100+lbs of fat he has lost, simply using the stairs instead of the elevator will no longer suffice as his high intensity exercise for the day. The traditional hours on the treadmill in the "magical", yet factually non-existent fat-burning zone, on the other hand, will at best make him lose equal amounts of muscle and fat mass and thusly set him (or the now "just" obese Homer) up for the imfamous YoYo-effect. And as if this was not already enough Peter will hit a  weight loss plateau after about 1-2 months, anyways. By then, his body will have have succumbed to the chronic level of low grade stress and will no longer respond to further reductions in calorie intake and / or increases in training volume. Peter will lose faith, give up and... eat. He will end up fatter (not necessarily heavier) than before, will feel miserable and like the "biggest loser".

Figure 2: Changes in fitness, insulin levels (lower levels indicative of higher insulin sensitivity), carbohydrate and fatty acid oxidation after no more than 6 HIIT sprinting sessions on an electromagnetically braked cycle ergometer (data based on Whyte. 2010)

A better alternative for Peter, and anyone out there who can identify with him, would be to perform a 6x30s all-out-sprinting HIIT regimen (4.5 min active rest in between the bouts) three times a week. A regimen like the one that reduced the waist-lines of 10 "Peters" (BMI 31kg/m², waist circumference 101.3cm) in a recent study by -2.4 cm (highly significant, p<0.004) within no more than 2 weeks (Whyte. 2010). The six HIIT sessions also significantly improved their aerobic (VO2Max, p<0.013) and anaeropic (mean power, p<0.04) performance, reduced their elevated insulin levels and shifted their metabolism towards the oxidation of fatty acids instead of carbs (cf. figure 2). 

Image 3: You eat nutrients not calories. Weight loss comes with a nutrient dense, not a calorie deficient diet.

Note: If you are not (or no longer) morbidly obese it is absolutely imperative not to go on a starvation diet, if you do not want to starve for the rest of your life. A recent study by Sumithran et al. shows pretty conclusively that even one year after a 10-week weight loss intervention on a very-low-calorie diet, "levels of the circulating mediators of appetite that encourage weight regain after diet-induced weight loss do not revert to the levels recorded before weight loss" (Sumithran. 2011)! In this context, it is also noteworthy that the subjects in the Whyte study did not reduce their habitual calorie intake, all they did is HIIT 3x a week. Other than the "King Size Homers", who will have to dramatically cut down on their caloric intakes, the "Peter Griffins", i.e. sendentary obese people, should not decrease their calorie intake, but increase their nutrient intake (more often than not the former will be a necessary consequence of the latter, because you will feel stuffed and satisfied with far "less" quality food). The first step here would be to cut out all pre-processed foods from one's diet and start preparing your meals from whole foods. And while 1-2 servings of fruit like the ones in image 3 won't harm you (high fructose corn-syrup is and absolute no-go, though), vegetables, fish, eggs, meat, and milk products (if you tolerate them) should make up the major part of your diet, which must provide you with adequate amounts of protein >1g/kg and fats (poly-, monounsaturated and saturated fats!). Instead of calories you will begin counting the number of eggs, the tablespoons of coconut oil, the cups of broccoli etc. This goes against the mainstream calories in vs. calories out paradigm, but once you see the difference it makes if you cut out 1x tablespoon of coconut oil vs. 2 x tablespoons of sugar in your diet, you will understand that foods with identical "caloric values" can have very different effects on your body composition. The use of an intermittent fasting regimen, as well as the reduction of the carbohydrate intake to <=120g/day can be facilitative, as well - but we will discuss that and possible supplemental fat-loss adjuvants in a separate issue with concrete advice on programming dietary success.

Peter will yet have to acknowledge that those benefits subside about as quickly as they came, whenever he reverts to his previous sedentary lifestyle. If you look at the data in figure 2 you will notice that the pronounced immediate metabolic benefits, i.e. the increased insulin sensitivity and the increased fatty acid oxidation begin to wear off within 72h after the last training session. Not only for the Peter Griffins out there, it is thus of utmost importance to train regularly, at least 3 times a week (ideally 3x HIIT + 2x full-body resistance training), consistently and intensely to "keep the mitochondria from clocking back up" and your muscle primed to suck up superflous glucose from your blood stream (on a side note: a recent study confirmed a relationship between exercise-intensity, not frequency or total volume, and improvements in insulin sensitvity, cf. Dubé. 2011)

Peter Griffin's PPS-Cheat-Sheet:

• Goal(s): Lose fat, keep (or build) muscle
• Tracking: A simple measuring tape to measure your waist circumference and your training log, in which you will record the weights you are using on the (optional) weight training days
• Resetting: Get your waist down into the <36" inch zone before you even remotely consider dropping the loss of body fat as your primary goal; at the same time set out to increase weights or reps on your major moves (squats, bench, deadlift, pull-up) every 2nd week

Anorexic Dad, Stanley Smith: Skinny fat no more

Image 4: Already lean?
Then forget about the scale!

Our third example, American Dad, Stanley Smith in the "Anorexia episode", is particularly near and dear to my heart, because I see way too many "almost anorexic" trainees (not only women!) whose life is dictated by the number the scale is showing them in the morning. Among the men in this group many actually went through either one or even both of the previously discussed stages, where each pound they lost on the scale did actually make a difference in how they looked - a correlation (not causation ;-) they have internalized in a way that they cannot grasp the idea that with a body fat percentage in the ~15% range (for men), the scale is probably your worst adviser when it comes to evaluating your progress and programming success.

Probably due to the unreasonable and (if you asked me) utterly unsexy ideal of the "beautiful" female model, whose major features are skinniness and a severe lack of skeletal muscle tissue, this obsession not with how much, but rather with how little you weigh, is rampant within the community of female fitness junkies. Based on the misunderstanding that weight loss (at least for females) would equal improvements in body composition, thousands of women starve themselves into what Dr. Connelly often refers to as an "reduced obese state" (also read the study on the changes after starvation diet in the red box above) - and that despite the fact, that many were "too skinny" (remember skin = fat + thin dermis) to begin with.

Image 5: When you have achieved a "normal" degree of leanness, building a beautiful body has little to do with losing weight, it's all about modulating the ratio of lean to fat mass (photo originally shared on Facebook by Erika Rice).

As it happens, Carl Lanore's significant other, Alisa Profumo, the "lovely and talented co-host" of the Casual Friday Episodes on Super Human Radio, reposted two images of a woman on her facebook page, which are so exemplary of the phenotype of the "imaginary obese" that I must repost them, although I do not even know who the lady is. What you see here, ladies and gentlemen is the exact opposite of what 99% of the women's magazines are still propagating:

Gaining, not losing weight makes you sexy!

Toning up, ladies and gentlemen, is about building muscle and losing fat. Regardless of whether you want to look like a goddess or just "look good naked", the concept of overall body "weight" has no significance in this context. It is thusly only consistent to give away your scale to the "King Size Homers" in your neighborhood (or anybody you do not like ;-) and to rely on progress pictures, like the lady in image 5, who gained 9lbs and finally overcame the "skinny fat" physique that tricks so many women (and men) into believing that they got to lose weight to achieve the physique of their dreams.

For the "skinny fat" and anybody who wants to improve his physique beyond simply being lean, progress pictures are thusly a must. In that, it is yet not necessary and probably not even advisable to take daily pictures like the ones that made John Stone (watch his transformation video) world-famous (you will just stress yourself about how "slow" your body changes and the increased cortisol certainly won't help with the progress). One picture each week, taken in underwear in the morning, standing upright (no posing) on a specific spot in a room, where you can ensure that the lighting is always the same, is enough to objectively track your progress.

Being fit and healthy, the Stanley Smiths out there will keep or reduce (depending on how lean they already are) their HIIT exercise and increase, split and periodize the resistance training component of their exercise regimen from two to (initially) three sessions per week, while keeping a constant eye on the volume - after all, you should always remember you are not in the gym to burn calories! While the other idiots may be, you are in the gym to achieve your goals and I assume none of you has set "burn 1,000,000kcal" as his long-term goal, right?

Stanley Smith's PPS-Cheat-Sheet:

• Goal(s): Lose fat, build muscle
• Tracking: Weekly training pics (optional: a body-fat caliper) and your training log, in which you will record the weights you are using on the obligatory weight training days
• Resetting: Especially for the women the next long-term goal may be "hold what you achieved", for the men it is likely that the focus will shift from losing fat to building muscle  

Image 6: Plastic models illustrating the different densities and consequent volume differences of fat and muscle tissue (img from onemorebite-weightloss.com)

Still not convinced that your scale is worthless? Then have a look at the image on the left. What you see are plastic models of 5lbs of fat (yellow) and 5lbs of muscle (red). Now, imagine how a 7.5lbs muscle strand would look like (+25% in size) - obviously still less bulky and than the 5lbs of fat. And now, think about what the scale will tell you when you exchange the ugly 5lbs of fat for the aesthetic 7.5lbs of muscle: It will tell you that you have gained 2.5lbs of ... body weight. Something you could hardly care less about, because your progress pics don't lie. You are 2.5lbs heavier look a hell lot better than before ;-)

Ah, and before you ask. As a physicist I can tell you that the body-impedance scales you can buy at every turn, which claim to give you exact numbers on your body-fat and body-water content, are about as exact as the weather forecast for the next week. They may be able to give an account of general trends, but the "exact" numbers they display are pretty random.

(Now) I am (already) lean - what do I do?

With all this thinking about goal setting, -tracking and -resetting for "healthy weight loss" and the first steps on the long way to an astral body, the time flew by so fast that I did not even have the chance to address the excellent "homeworks" Jahed, Pablo, RF and Angimal submitted in response to the last installment of the Intermittent Thoughts. I will make good for that in the next installment, when we will discuss goal setting, -tracking and -resetting for those who are already past the Stanley Smith state (anorexic or not ;-) and finally want to add some serious muscle to their now ripped, yet still undermuscled physique.