It Begins

Over the next couple months, I'm going to gain as much lean muscle as possible, as quickly as possible. I won't stop working until I've gained at least 15 pounds of muscle, and I'm going to document my adventures in calories and weights here.


This blog is the product of two things:

• I'm tired of being a skinny nerd.
• I realize that if I don't bite off more than I can chew, I won't end up getting anything done at all.

I've always been underweight, and I've always had trouble eating enough. On a normal day, I'll eat about 1400 calories, not many of them particularly nutritious. That's resulted in an incredibly low energy level, constant fatigue and laziness, and the inability to run a mile without stopping for air. Granted, nicotine over the past 4 years made my cardiovascular system what it is today, but that's behind me. I'm moving on.

I have terrible grades. I'm completely capable of getting decent grades, but I don't because school bores the shit out of me. None of it is new, exciting, or surprising, so it doesn't hold my attention and I end up learning nothing. Being able to focus intensely on boring shit is maybe the most valuable skill, but until I develop that skill, I'm stuck; nothing mundane gets accomplished. So I'm gonna try a different approach: Every goal I set from now on will be grand, unrealistic, and awesome.

The idea that the most unrealistic goals are the ones most likely to be accomplished was brewing in my subconscious for a while, but I never would have put it like that if I hadn't read it spelled out in The Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss.

I know what you're thinking. "lolz ethan read a self-help book and believed it lulz." Self-help books are generally complete drivel. I could write one, and you don't see me talking about how great my writing is. Tim, on the other hand, seems to really have his shit together. His writing sounds a little like marketing-speak at times, but I trust his claims enough to test them.

I'm going to test and independently verify the claim made in The Four Hour Body, also by Tim Ferriss, that his simple exercise and diet regimen will let me gain about 10 pounds of lean muscle in 4 weeks. Since my test period will overlap with Halloween weekend (and the binge drinking it entails), I'll record as much data as I can before, during and after to see how well Tim's method works, and how much alcohol messes it up.

Every time I eat something, I'll tweet the meal (@feedthenerd) along with a calorie and nutrient estimate. I've started doing this before starting the exercise regimen to stagger the learning curves and hopefully streamline the whole process of vastly increasing my caloric intake. More on the specific regimen I'm using later.