ishkur

Bodies are all different. I found that I lost a bit of muscle when I dropped my protein from body weight to around 100g. I also found that my recovery was much slower and I had DOMs for a longer time. However, I have read many good outcomes of low protein intake from a few people... I just haven't found that in my experience. Overall, I believe a very spot on CLEAN diet along with eating enough food and adequate progressive lifting will allow you to maintain and possibly build (very very slowly) your muscle regardless of protein as long as you are getting some and other good healthy foods along with supplements and especially amino acids.

I think you are using way too much exercises in your workouts, i suggest you to drop most of your exercises as i think you may be over working some body parts and use compound exercises like bench press and squats, deadlifts.

 

Separate your workouts a bit more to allow your body to heal and grow, i workout the same body part every 5-7 days.

 

You may benefit from incorporating an exercise like the chin up, pull up or pull down in your upper body wo because they work the antagonist(?) muscles of bench press and other pressing exercises, bench press works chest, triceps and front delts while the pull up/chin up works the biceps, lats and rear delts.

 

Edit: Sorry i didn't pay enough attention to your initial question, what comes to my mind is, due to the high amount of exercises working the same muscle groups ypu are distributing your strength in small amounts between this exercises making the work out more oriented to endurance instead of strength and mass.

 

Now endurance training is not optimum for mass gains acording to some studies i have read about and it can in turn make you lose some mass. You also have to consider that womens naturally tend to have a slightly higher body fat % so that might be helping you gain fat.

I haven't gotten a pull up bar yet, but I may in the future. I'm just trying to work with what I have currently, as I'm on a budget as well now. What exercises should I drop and what are more compounds I could add? The reason I did so much is because I can't really lift heavy for things like squats, so I thought adding more, and adding accessories would help me where I'm lacking. :/

I've been bulking since the end of April, I started at 110lbs and now weight 120lbs at 5'7" (female). I've been bulking on 200-300 extra calories (I burn around 700, and eat 2100-2200 on training days, 1800 on rest days). I lost a load of weight doing loads of cardio and running, but I had teeny amount of lean mass at the end. My original goal weight was 130, but I still had a lot of fat on my waist and got down all the way to 109lbs and still had the excess stomach fat while the rest of me was bone frail. So I decided to purchase a home gym set, including a olympia bar that reaches 300lbs, and 2 dumbells that reach 45lbs and start a bulk. The problem is that I am very weak, and even though I'm trying my hardest I don't seem to be growing equal amounts of fat and muscle. My legs have gotten bulkier (yay) and my arms are slightly larger but my gut has packed on loads of fat. I was taped by my husband about a month ago and it is around 38-+ inches and when I began it was 35-+. I have upped the weight on a few of my exercises, but not by much while some stay the same.

My diet consists of around 50-70g fat, 120-160g protein, and probably way to many carbs at 250-400g. I have a myfitnesspal account and I weight everything that goes into my mouth.

I workout 4 times a week, mon-tues-thurs-fri, wednesday and weekends are off. I usually do nothing on those days, but about 2 times a month I will hike for 8 miles on the weekend. I'm not a fan of working out, so I don't have a desire to go to the gym on weekends for cardio and also the fact that I burned myself out on it for years.

Training days look something like this, upper monday-thursday, lower tuesday-friday:

Upper (4 sets 10 reps each)

warm up- 30 pushups

lying chest flys @ 14lbs per db

lateral raises @ 10-12lbs per db

bent over rows @ 55lbs

dumbell press @ 20lbs per db

dumbell rows @ 20lbs

upright row @ 35lb plate

preacher curls @ 10lbs

tricep press @ 40lbs

shoulder press @ 14lbs per db

dips @ bodyweight

single lateral raises @ 10-12lbs

front raises @ 12lbs

rear raises @ 12lbs

bent arm lateral raises @ 12lbs

Lower

plank @ 1 minute

side plank @ 1 minute each

leg extension with a resistance band (3 bands comes with the set -hard, medium, easy-, I have all 3 bands on) 25 reps x 4

crunches 25 x 4

goodmornings 12 x 4 @ 40lbs

dumbell bend 25 x 4 @ 40lbs

bridges 30 x 4 @ 45lb plate

bicycle crunches 25 x 4

squats 12 x 4 @ 55lbs (I don't have a rack, I can barely get this weight over my head)

leg lifts 20 x 4

calf raises 25 x 4 @ 85lbs

sumo squats 12 x 4 @ 35lb plate

straight leg deadlift 10 x 4 @110lbs

more leg extensions 25 x 4

Any suggestions?