tryin to lift big in xCHICAGOx

Hey-o! My name's Jaime and I've been lurking for a few weeks and checking out all of your great tips and workouts before deciding to start my own profile and workout log. I'm 25 and I've been vegan for around two years now. My first year and a half I relied a lot on the processed vegan meat and cheese replacers, and basically ate the same as I had previously except with fake meat. Now, in the past six months, I've starting really focusing in on whole foods and getting all of my macros balanced.

I lifted in college for aesthetics but I was never that serious about it. Luckily I had a friend that went on to become a personal trainer and she would kick my ass about form every time we were in the gym together, so I'm pretty comfortable training and I've been back in the game for two months now. My goals are to bulk up and put on some more muscle while eating strict and clean, and keep my endurance up so that I can run the occasional 5 or 10k run or daylong bike ride with my girlfriend this coming summer. I train 4-5 days a week and focus on free weights and compound lifts, always tryin to lift heavy and keep my form up.

In my day-to-day life I work in a biology lab and I'm studying to take my MCAT, hopefully starting med school in the next two years. I needed to take a few years off and feel out the "real world," and now I'm ready to dive back into school. I have two dogs (a whippet and a pitt bull/boston terrier mix) and they help keep me on my training by having seemingly unending energy for walks, runs, and long afternoons spent tossing a ball around the dog park. If I could even match 1/4 of my pitt puppy's energy I think that I would be set for life!

When I'm having some relaxation time I like craft brews, XBOX, and playing guitar/bass.

I log on WeightTraining.com (profile) and recently got a profile on Fitocracy (profile), and it'd be great to connect with people on those sites as well. I get a lot of motivation cruisin through everyone's training logs on here, and plan to start my own soon, too.

Hope you're all having a stellar week!

Nice. Welcome to the group here. Yeah there are definitely people here on multiple sites as well, the more info the better. Glad you're going to be starting a training journal and sharing with us.

-Dylan

Hey.

I'm relatively new to the forum and I'm in Chicago, as well.

Welcome.