Struggling with nutrition and workouts

I am on the beginner template week 4.2, and I have experienced a major lack of motivation. I bought a scale to measure what I am eating, but I am not being consistent with it. It is kind of a pain. Most of the food I eat is precooked. I have taken 5 weeks off of working out, and it has hurt me mentally. Is there an efficient way to use MyFitnessPal like tally food up during the day or do it all in one shot or do it at the end of the day? I also do not want to start the beginner template over but that might be my best option. I think my issue was mainly I was struggling with the deadlift. Also, I wanted to improve my mobility as well as get stronger. I was trying to find a reliable mobility routine to complement my weight training. i overwhelmed myself in the beginning. I know I need to exercise, but I set my goals way too high. I am 6 foot 4, and I would like to weigh around 230 or 240 pounds, but I weigh around 205 pounds now. I know I will have to eat around 4000 calories a day, and my appetite is not too large. I would like to get in the best shape of my life. I want to know the best way to get back into working out. I have the read the To Be A Beast by Jordan Feigenbaum and studied the nutrition advice but weighing cooked meat is different than uncooked meat.

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BingBong,

Thanks for the post and I hear what you’re saying. Sounds like a frustrating experience, for sure. I think you may be putting a bit too much pressure on yourself to do all of the things quickly. It may help to know that while you’ll definitely get stronger, gain muscle, gain flexibility, and cardiorespiratory fitness in the next few months, your end goals are likely years away. This makes sense though as most people are not strong, muscular, fit, and mobile, right?

A few suggestions for you:

  1. The most important thing to do here is to find a way to get back to regularly exercising. If that means restarting the BT at phase I or moving on to phase II, so be it. It doesn’t matter how much weight you start at or even finish the BT with. The most important thing is that you exercise regularly, find enjoyment in it, etc.

  2. I would skip any additional mobility training. It will improve a lot through exercise in and of itself. If you find that 6 months from now, you’re missing certain positions or ROM that you need and would like to specifically work on- then we can discuss. For now, it’s a waste of mental bandwidth.

  3. I’d focus on eating 200g of protein per day over 3 to 5 meals- each with a fruit and/or vegetable, and fist-sized or larger serving of whole grains. Let’s aim for maintaining your weight first and then see if we can slowly add weight once you’ve gotten into the swing of things.

-Jordan

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Good Suggestions.

Thanks Dr. Feigenbaum. Greatly appreciate it.