Diet finished a couple days ago

So I finished up the diet a couple days ago, but I've been busy with midterms and assignments so I didn't get a chance to post my "after" picture.  Either way, I went through 16 lbs in 30 days, and I've been back to the gym since haven't lost that much strength.

I still can't check my squats or my deadlifts because of my knee but I did get the go ahead from my physiotherapist to do empty bar, or lighter dumbell squats and deadlifts.

I now need to go and figure out how many plates I need to stack up to get an empty bar at the right level from the ground.  A 45 lb plate is actually made at the perfect height to be broken from the ground to do deadlifts with, so I never had to do this before (I started with 1 plate on each side).  The act of breaking the bar from an unmoving position (a "dead" position, thus the name) is extremely important for deadlifts too because it's the hardest part of the lift, so I'm not going to just lift it without putting the bar back down on something.

I always see people at the gym doing deadlifts where they don't put the bar back on the ground after each rep.  This is wrong.  Those are not deadlifts and they don't work your body the way deadlifts do.  Don't be that guy!

Now to relax, get back to promoting this blog, checking things out at bb.com and going to the gym!

Day 17 - new pic

It's getting kinda harder to see the differences in the pictures recently, but I can tell that my pants are definitely getting looser and I'm starting to get some more muscle "tone" ("toning" the way many marketers advertise it doesn't really exist, it's really having less fat over a muscle).  In a few more days we'll see what's up.

Yesterday I went back to the gym for the first time in a week and a half or so, and it felt great.  I didn't lose too much from my gains for upper body.  I didn't do any lower body stuff still because of the knee.  Going again today, will check the rest of my upper body and maybe even do some cardio.