XveganX

Yeha 30 for some reason was no thang, even though I thought it was indeed going to the thangest of thangs, and oddly enough, yeah 28 fucking sucked. That was for other reasons though I think. But gettin' decrepit doesn't help either. Glue them locks! or buy some big big ass bolt cutters haha. But you're right, being straight edge and vegan seems to be a free meal ticket the world round which is pretty awesome. I know I've put up my share of bands/random travelers. You going to TIH!?

2L pop bottles filled with water in a grocery bag. Ghetto dumbbells.

I went vegan before I started training so I can't really say I experienced getting weaker as part of my diet. However, sometimes I feel like this too. Everyone has bad days, BUT, how do you KNOW you are getting weaker? Do you keep track of your lifts? Can you really see a direct and constant decrease in strength? or did you just have a bad day at the gym today? My guess is that it was probably the latter. And if you did see a decrease, can you really say it was from your vegan diet? Can you rule out all other possibilities? Has your routine/diet been consistent? If it does come down to your diet, which is totally possible, I can tell you its not the fact that you are vegan causing it. Maybe you don't eat enough, or your macronutrient ratios are all messed up or something, but meat doesn't magically make you strong dude, being able to eat anything just makes things easier, but if you're looking for easier you did indeed pick the wrong hobby. Figure out the problem and fix it.

Ok I will sasquatch! Starting with yours... This is purely for aesthetics. I feel like getting to and maintaining (at least for a few months) 10% or lower is do-able as plenty of our meat/dairy eating counterparts do it. 80/10/10 seems really counter intuitive to me but I'd be willing to give it a shot, especially because that type of diet does appeal to me in terms of personal food preferences. @Precisionfemale, reading your post I think it sort of makes sense, with the amount of cardio you were doing per day i'm sure you were burning up the extra calories about 2000. I'm just going based on my BMR and subtracting a couple hundred, however there are days where I do extra cardio, and I also cycle. I did a 140km ride thursday and ate my face off as soon as I got home. @Iron Clad Ben, Just curious about your body type, where were you at before starting 80/10/10, and before you got into fitness in general? I just find whenever I am eating over 2000 calories, say 2500 I will begin to put fat on. Even during my last bulk I was eating about 3000-3500 calories a day and put on 30lbs in 4 months. For the time being I've decided on the intermittent fasting thing, I'm going to give it a shot for a month and see how I feel/look at the end of it.

Condensed version: I'm trying to get to under 10% BF and I feel like I'm starving all the muscle off my body, how should I feel and how aggressive can I get with dieting and cardio? i'm very worried about overdoing it and loosing muscle, but at the same time, it seems like the conventional stuff just won't let me get past about 15% BF Hey everyone, I haven't been on the forum that much recently. Been training and all, just no time for posting! But well, I really need some help. If there are any vets out there, people who have done contest etc, help me out here! I've been training for about 3 years now, maybe a bit more, and I've always been plagued with the same problems. Most of my body weight is in my torso, I have always had skinny arms, and legs, (which is a whole separate problem haha) and a little gut, even 13 years ago when I was emaciated during my "ok I'm vegan now, but wtf do I eat?" phase, had a little skinny fat belly. I can't complain about everything though my back is pretty strong... I'm 5'8" sitting at 150lbs 15 or 16% BF right now Anyways, more to the point when I started training, I was told, if you want to get big you've got to eat big, and eat big I did, because at this point I had become very good at managing my diet and well I pounded the calories away.... so I did get bigger and stronger, packed that newbie muscle on, but I got fat in the process. So by about the time that I had really gotten my bearings in hte gym I decided it was time to cut. So, I made the mistake of going all out on the diet, I ate maybe 1700 calories a day, ran intense intervals on an empty stomach in the mornings, ate a low carb diet, etc. the result was I lost weight, but just looked really damn skinny. So I gave up on that after a few months, took a break from training and eventually got back into it, put my weight back up to almost 180lbs and I was the biggest I had ever been but again, seriously fat (for me). So, after reading some layne norton articles about pre contest preparation I went on a much better diet. I ate my BMR X 1.2 and minus a couple hundred calories, worked out to be about 2000 calories a day. Just did my normal resistance training and sometimes walked on a steep incline afterwards. This went pretty well, and I stuck with it until I got down to about 137lbs, and thats where I ran into problems. Getting those last few pounds off was exceedingly difficult and came at the cost of muscle. I was losing weight but not body fat at that point, I was WAY more hungry than I had been on the diet up until that point, and was seriously losing my motivation for the gym. So, I faced facts and thought that I simply didn't have enough active tissue (IE muscle) on my body to support being at a low BF %. So I took a bit of time off, and went back to bulking and hit the gym way harder than I had before. over about 4 months I got back up to 180 and was feeling really strong, I definitely made some solid gains during the bulk, but again, took on a lot of fat too. So March 1 of this year hits and I decide its time to try and get the beach body happening, I started dieting again, which has been going well, I'm leaner than I was during my last cut, however something different happened this time. When I got down to about 155lbs I stopped losing weight, but I did continue to lean out and lower my BF% for about a month. I think this was partly due to the fact that I started cycling more consistently, but also I just thought I had gotten into that zone. However, it didn't last that long and now I'm sitting at around 152, and I've made some changes in hopes of shredding off another 5% or more. I started doing morning cardio, just 30 minutes walking on an incline, or 30 minutes on the spin bike at a moderate pace, I've started running intervals (nothing tooo crazy though) after my weight training and I've also started doing slow, low rep high weight workouts in hopes of encouraging myofibrillar growth rather than sarcoplasmic growth. This started to work, I dropped a few more lbs started to look leaner, but the problem is, I can feel that I'm much more hungry most of the time, and I can deal with hunger pains but I know they mean my body is probably breaking down muscle now too. It might just be psychological but I feel like I'm not lifting the same in the gym now either... Anyways, I know this is long, but thank you if you read it. Basically what I really need to know is, what I should be feeling like during this phase. Something in my body has definitely changed, and I basically want to know if I should stick with it, or call my loses and go back and try to bulk more before trying to get down to a very low BF%.

This was a while ago and I don't have the bottle anymore, but I remember with NO Xplode the flavorings for certain flavors are not vegan. It will not list them in the ingredients on bodybuilding.com but on the actual bottle it says there are milk ingredients. also http://www.bsnonline.net/details/noxplode.html on their page they list it as having milk ingredients (and this section is separate from their "this product is processed in a facility that... etc") I take purple wraath right now, which from my understanding is vegan, but I just take it for the BCAAs in it, it was the cheapest at the time of buying it, I don't think the NO stuff does anything but make your skin tingle.

Welcome to the forum, sounds like you're doing everything right! Nice to see some other hardcorey types on here! Kingdom are pretty sweet I also turn 30 next week, have been vegan for about 13 years and play in a hardcore band, solidarity sistaaaaaaaaaaaaa. P.S. "Budget Travel" aka dumpster diving, AMIRITE?

My pleasure man, just recently I thought I had pulled something in my shoulder but it actually turned out to be one of my neck muscles. Still took about a month to heal up but I was able to do most of my shoulder exercises throughout. I have a friend who is a doctor in physical rehabilitation and she was incredibly helpful thats why I stress going to see a doctor, she bent and twisted me a few ways and then knew exactly what was going on. I'm from Charlottetown originally, lived there til I was 19 and then moved to halifax which is where I still am!

Deadlift - 335 Squat - 315 Bench - 185 Total - 835 BW - 165 5 foot 8!

Whats up to billy, vegan brother from my home town! haha First things first you have to go see a real doctor. Massage Therapists are a great resource, and while they are pretty adept at anatomy compared to your average Joe, they are not qualified to fully diagnose injuries like that. The shoulder is a pretty complex part of the body, and you could have injured one of many spots including something outside of the shoulder itself, The doctor will diagnose it by having you move it around and seeing what motions do and do not hurt, and they might have to get you to get an xray. Does it hurt at rest? or only when you move it? and what motion makes it hurt or not hurt? You probably won't want to hear this but whatever's happened will take a minimum of 4-6 weeks to heal if there is an actual muscle strain (it might feel like it's fine before this but its not, trust me, you might not be in pain but you'll be prone to reopening the injury). You'll need to lay of it for this time if you want it to get better. Sucks, I know. Start stretching as frequently as possible, maybe every couple hours. DO NOT over do it. More intense is not better in this case, just do arm circles in a comfortable range, and if you can wall walk as deep as you can without feeling pain. Frequent, light stretches is the name of the game. And I think your ideal bench depends on how your body is built, everyone is different. I'm a short guy but I use a pretty wide grip and it feels good to me and I've never hurt myself, but when I get into a close grip its just ruins my elbows.