The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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I wrote before on Reddit on the WW threads about negative thoughts and lifting (under a different username). I thought I might continue here.
I have switched to 5/3/1 programming over the past few months. First doing Original, then Forever-style programming last month. I haven't really progressed at all though. It's been very difficult for me to gain weight. Since starting my new job, I have eaten more than ever in my life, but weight gain is still very slow - I have ramped up from eating about 3000 calories a day at the start of June to over 4500 now and only have 2kg to show for it. I still freak out every time my scale gives a lower number, and I am still paranoid about not gaining any muscle. Over the past month I got frustrated with the lack of progress on 5/3/1 and decided to push it a bit further. I am now doing FSL for supplemental work and have cut out rest days nearly entirely so I'm in the gym every day. This is basically the opposite of what Wendler counsels... but I'd rather err on the side of doing too much than doing too little.
I've been lifting for 8 years now and one of the biggest mistakes I see people make is having the wrong mindset. They think they signed up for a sprint when in actuality its a marathon. My suggestion without even reading further simply going by my priors is, "lift for a bit longer and then come back".
So you are not gaining any "weight".
Looking at your weight over a short timeframe is a bad idea because;
It varies based on waterweight.
You can't delineate muscle gain/loss with fat gain/loss.
It's a low resolution way to check if you are making progress.
Check your calorie intake. And fix this. Looks like you have this covered.
Are you lifting more weight (or more reps, or shorter rest) ? If you are not getting stronger, your muscles will not get bigger, regardless of calorie intake.
Are the other variables in check? Adequate sleep? Adequate PROTEIN?, etc? Control for all the variables otherwise your conclusion will be useless.
Wildcard: Are your hormones in check? Failing to put on muscle despite tremendous effort might be a symptom of low testosterone.
Really impossible to overstate the value here in general across a ridiculous number of dimensions. Strength, cardiovascular fitness, mental health, mental sharpness, digestive health. Just everything works better with good sleep. People have different patterns, so there's no one formula, but I am absolutely only operating at my best if I'm going to bed early enough that I wake up at dawn without an alarm. If you're not waking at sunbreak, it may well be time to check on what's going on.
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