Building a body: A world of ups and downs

I have my ups and downs, as does everybody. I always have an 8-10 week period I can go as hell at the gym with insane progress and then I have a period – probably of the same length – when I am just going to the gym to workout. My so called “maintenance mode”. I go to the gym and train less hard, don’t stick to a food regime and of course mainly gain some fat and probably also lose a little bit of muscle mass.

Is not having progress a problem?

I have asked myself this question alot of times, even discussed it at the gym. To answer the question: No. Not if you are talking about months. As long as there is year-on-year progress. I have had my on and off periods. My start was slow, then I made a humongous amount of progress, then I gained a few pounds of fat again and after my holiday I made a lot of progress again.

But you can’t always make progress, that’s impossible. And I guess you just need to have some periods that you are lacking at the gym, don’t have any gains or even lose some gains! Only then you will be able to notice the progress you make during the time you go hard. Just make sure you know how to get out of that maintenance mode and be able to hit the gym hard again.

You can’t always make progress. You need your down periods to notice your progress in your up period!

How do I get myself motivated?

When I notice motivation is lacking, I will not try and turn it around immediately. I know that won’t work. At least not for me. I kinda take a short period of going into “maintenance mode”. I also try and set a date when I want to pick up the pace and hit the gym hard again. Mostly I will take a fairly easy date, e.g. “after I return from holiday” or “after christmas”. So now it’s “after christmas” and I am picking up the pace, going into full blow beastmode probably next week 🙂

If you set the date, try and keep your calendar empty. Make sure you are able to workout a lot, almost every day, no distractions. Probably takes me about 2-3 weeks to get to my beastmode motivation level, but after those weeks I can go hard for more weeks to come!

And what about my diet? It actually tends to change automatically if I am motivated. I just stick to a food regime and make sure not to eat too much of the wrong things. It’s not that hard. My diet is: Stick to the plan from Monday to Friday and cheat – just a little bit – during the weekend.

Throwback Thursday

Another thing that really helps to get myself motivated, is to go to my Instagram profile and do a throwback Thursday with my progress pics. If I see the progress I made and the “decay” (that’s relative of course) I had in the rest period, I will get motivated instantly and all I want to do is just go to the gym and workout! It makes me realize I don’t want to go back to the IT-nerd look. I just don’t want to be fat, but also because of the round face I get when I get fat 🙂

My confidence has grown a lot since I transformed from the IT-nerd to the IT-nerd who works out. I don’t want to lose that!