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On the path to a better self

Update

I have been procrastinating like hell to write this post. I want to come back but I do feel a bit ashamed for quitting posting regularly.

Life has been good for me overall, which is the main reason why I didn't write anything in my log. The issue is that I've became complacent, and I woke up a couple of days ago thinking "no more letting myself down". So here I am.

The good

I haven't stay totally idle since last time I posted so here are the things that are going well:

-I'm in a relationship with Russian girl (the one from my previous posts), and I'm quite happy with it. She's a wonderful human being and I'm learning a ton about communicating in a relationship, boundaries and just how to be a good boyfriend. I know that for a lot here, it's beta normie shit, but this is what I'm after. For now at least, I don't feel the thrill of having a ton of sex with different girls, I do like the challenges that comes with being in a relationship. I also think that's one of the reason why I didn't post anything here, because I kind of felt that it was not really valuable or interesting for anyone, because there's a big focus on getting laid on the forum (which I absolutely don't judge of course)

-I've been doing improv and loving it regularly for months now, and I'll continue because it's just fun and gets me out of my comfort zone. Now it's Christmas break and we'll get back at it in January

-I've been in therapy regularly since April/May. This allowed me to stop feeling horrible from my previous break up. I'm more at peace with it, even though I still need time to process everything. I might always have some moments where I get affected, but I'm happy with my life at the moment

-I'm in the process of changing company. I had some interviews with a company that went well, they told me that they wanted to make me an offer, but I'm still waiting so it's not sure at all. It'd be great if it goes through, because I said to myself that I wanted to change job by the end of the year. It'd be a nice way to finish 2022, by succeeding a goal.

The bad

Even though I had all this accomplishments, I still feel like I'm letting myself down. Here are the points I'm struggling with at the moment:

-I've been playing more video games recently, and while I enjoy it and don't want to completely remove it from my life, it became something that I do whenever I have free time at home. Before it was more a mean to play with my best friend and my brother occasionally, but now I've been back playing solo games so that's why I do it more often. I need to pay attention to my consumption of it, because I don't want it to become my main activity.

-One thing that I lack here in Amsterdam, is a circle of good friends. I have friends that I see from time to time, but at the end of the day, I want a bit more. I want to improve my social skills and connect better with people. This is something that I struggle with, and the older I get, the more difficult it becomes, I don't want to end up being the guy that doesn't know how to make friends and end up lonely, especially since I intend to move from here at some point. I want to be able to build a circle again wherever I go.

-I'm not meditating anymore, I really lost that habit even though I know that it's a life changing one. I always see the difference in my attitude when I meditate regularly and when I don't. So I want to get back at it.

-I've completely stopped working out. This pisses me off a bit and it feels like the biggest let down. The funny thing is that I still like myself, I've had enough positive affirmation telling me that I look good, but I could be so much better if I put on some damn mass. Even just by chiseling my body. I'm skinny, always been. I have a fast metabolism but recently I really don't eat enough anyway. Monday I woke up with the feeling of "enough is enough", went to the gym that is across the street, and blasted a small HIT workout and the results were clear: I'm weak. My perf are low, If I'd get into a fight with most of the guys out there, I'd get fucked, and in a way, this doesn't sit well with me. I want to be stronger, healthier, more attractive.

-Connected to the previous point, my diet is shit, I don't eat enough, I eat too much sugar and it's not balanced. The consequences are that I often feel tired, and I'm more prone to sickness.

-My phone addiction is off the roof, I can't stay out of it, even when I'm lying in bed with my GF, when she hugs me, I'm reading some bullshit on it, and I don't like that. I spend already at least 8h in front of a computer because of my work, I want to do something else in my free time than scroll through some bullshit.

Goals

That's a lot of things to improve, and if I try to fix everything at the same time, I'll just burn myself so I need to prioritise. And my priority n°1 will be fitness/my physique. My goal: 85kg in shape (I'm 1m94 / 6ft4). I need to think carefully about a timeline, my mistake in the past was to try to rush the process, and with my fragile stomach, it would always backfire. Now we're going to tackle this differently, slow and steady wins the race, I'm in it for the long run. If it has to take 3 years, it'll take 3 years, if it has to take 5, it'll take 5. I'll focus on implementing the habits to reach the goal.

Plan

My next steps:

- Weigh myself (I'm afraid to do so to be honest, I know it'll be low)
- Set up a weekly meal plan with the details
- Set up a workout plan for 3*week

I fell of the horse, and as the saying goes, it's time go get back and eat that horse... Or something like that. There will be highs and lows, bump and obstacles, but no more letting myself down. I have everything that I need to have a good life in all areas of my life. The only thing that prevents me to enjoy it, is my lazy mindset, never really had to work hard to get average conditions, so I easily fall into complacency. I want to work on that, and learn to push myself. If you don't grow, you decay, there's no staying put.

Baby steps is the way forward
 
I've weighed myself this morning and was surprised by the number on the scale. I'm at 79kg which is 3-4kg more than what I was expecting in regard of my diet the past couple of months. I was really expecting to be around 75-76kg, because in the past, that was my baseline weight when I ate like I did. It got me really excited because that means I just have to gain 6kg to reach my goal, which sounds less daunting than 10. It's also a sign that my metabolism is slowing down, which means I shouldn't loose my gains as fast as I used to, 3 months of efforts shouldn't be ruined by 1 week of relapse.

Time wise, I've decided to try to reach it in 1 year. When I break it down, that means that I have to gain 0,5kg each months, which translates to ~0,12kg every week. Slow and steady and feels totally doable, while not putting too much strain on my weak stomach. I need to do more research on the amount of calories that I need to eat in order to achieve this, because so far I've found different numbers but it should be between 2500 and 2600 calories at the beginning. I'll then make a daily meal plan that matches that goal. One advantage that I have regarding this, is that I don't mind eating the same food over and over. I've been eating bland rice and chicken lunch and dinner for 7months before starting to get sick of it. So I'll take advantage of that trait of mine and just aim to have 4 meals to rotate. I'll post it here when I'll be done and happy with it.

Training wise, I'm training following the HIT protocol for now. So training only 1set to failure. I like it, and I remember that I was having a nice progression on it before I stopped training. And as a total beginner, I'll get some good gains from it. Maybe I'll have to adjust when I'll be further along the line, but for new it'll suffice. I'll follow an A-B training plan:

A:
- Pushups
- Leg press
- Lat pulldown
- Leg extension
- Biceps curl

B:
- Dumbbell press
- Squat
- Pullups
- Hamstring curls
- Overhead press (I'll need to be careful with the load on this one, I tend to have issues with my shoulders)

Training 3 times a week, I'll alternate between A-B-A and B-A-B.

Let's do it
 
Following the advice of the theDom here: https://killyourinnerloser.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&p=47496#p47496, I won't jump with a calorie plan yet. I need to measure and track my current status in order to know my BM and take it from there. So the coming weeks are going to be focused on that.

Went to the gym today, had a good session. All my perfs went up (noob gains)

Didn't track my calorie intake of the day, stomach was acting up, couldn't properly eat without feeling nauseous.

Weigh-in: 78kg (I had probably an extra kg last time because of heavy dinner last Thursday)
 
Training day. Performance was ass, dumbbell press kind of fucked up my shoulder (have quite a weak joint there), might stick to pushup for a while.

Today my emotions were all over the place, huge amount of anxiety, anger and frustration, result: couldn't eat anything.

Started to do some shadow work to unload some trauma. It helped.
 
SpongeBob said:
Training day. Performance was ass, dumbbell press kind of fucked up my shoulder (have quite a weak joint there), might stick to pushup for a while.

Today my emotions were all over the place, huge amount of anxiety, anger and frustration, result: couldn't eat anything.

Started to do some shadow work to unload some trauma. It helped.

Shadow work is huge. Keep showing up, brother.
 
Weigh-in: 78.5kg.

Diet really was not good last week, because of some situation that gave me a great deal of anxiety and so I haven't been able to eat properly. That situation was the catalyst to get back to meditation though. So there's that.

Trained saturday morning, performance were good again.

No training today, will go tomorrow.
 
Worked out twice this week. Today was wild, increased my performance but the pain was real, happy with myself that I pushed forward.

Calories intake hasn't been too good this week either, except for today, starting to find a good combination of food to take to reach my goal.

Going away with my GF tomorrow, still plan to find time to workout.

Just have to show up everyday
 
Weigh-in: 79.5kg.

Worked out while in holiday with BW and just my luggage as weight and also yesterday when I came back to Amsterdam. Started to get sick but still went, motivated by the grinder around here. Perf were not that great but at least I showed up.
 
Just skimmed your log - love the consistent posting. Helps keep you honest and on track. Keep it going
 
MILFandCookies said:
Just skimmed your log - love the consistent posting. Helps keep you honest and on track. Keep it going

Thanks man, trying to get back to it after not posting for a while.
 
Weigh-in: 78.9kg

Gym was decent today, still haven't figured out nutrition. Still need to find those easy to prep high calories meal that won't fuck up my stomach.

------------------------------

2022 was a good year. If you compare to the state I was in that same time last year, it's like day and night. I fought to get back to a happy state of mind, after my last break up. It took some time but with internal work, I managed to get out of that gutter. I wouldn't have achieved that without this community though. It literally is the healthiest male-centered place that I got to see in my life. Full of amazing individual, inspiring in their own way.

Let's start by a recap of what I achieved this year:

- Had 3 new lays, 1 of which became my GF at the end
- Got a relationship with a very cool girl, we really help each other grow and have a pretty healthy relationship.
- Attended therapy for 8 months, never managed to do it for that long previously.
- Managed to change company (even though technically I start next month, but I got hired last year so I count that in), to work in a technology that I targeted and with more money that I expected
- Totally revamped my style thanks to Radical's guide, which was a goldmine to have all the basic sorted out. Just following his free guide got me tons of compliments
- Even though I lost everything, I actually got to
- Did a vipassana meditation retreat
- Made more friends here in Amsterdam
- Started improv classes
- Invested 1000 euro in Crypto (which was a goal of mine last year, mostly lost money though)
- Got to meet some KYIL peeps, unfortunately, we got totally out of touch in the end.

What I'd like to improve/achieve in the coming year:

- I want to read more. I think I read a total of 1 book this year, let's make it 3 this year.
- Spend less time on my phone. I'm definitively addicted to it, and I know it affects my brain very much, I already have ADHD tendencies, but with this bad habits, it just makes it worse
- Reach 85kg as mentioned previously
- Finish the improv course that I'm actually following
- Get back to a proper meditation practice, I already started the last couple of weeks, just have to maintain it


I wish everyone to reach their goals and get to where they want to in life. This place has already seen a lot of transformations, improvement and I hope to be able to witness more of that.

Happy new year and success to all
 
This weekend, I surprised my best friend for his birthday back in France. Was a nice weekend. Because of that, only trained twice last week. Weight : 80kg (it is on a different scale though). Spent the weekend eating at restaurants, so not too healthy, but that's alright.
Even though it was a good and wholesome weekend, I'm leaving feeling a bit down. I'm going to be rambling, not sure everything is going to make sense but want to write in free flow to try to convey what I'm feeling and why.

So my friend's girlfriend prepared a lot of surprises for his birthday. One being me coming to visit but also other friends of his. They arrived the day after and with those people, the vibe that they have with my BF is high energy, a lot of banter and very funny. This tends to make me really self conscious, I feel like an outsider to that vibe. And I'm not saying that they don't include me or that I feel left out, I know I do this to myself. In this sort of environment, my mind just goes blank and I struggle to say anything. Same thing happened during the evening, when we all gathered in a bar with other friends to celebrate. I just get very self conscious and I just go silent. I hide myself in a sense. And it's not that I don't feel like I don't have anything to say to people or that I can't relate to them or anything like that. It's just that deep down I don't really feel interesting or funny enough.

It's something that I tried to work on in all of my 20s. And today it just feels that I never got it right. Never managed to build this social charisma, and it feels like a failure to be honest. When I'm in a group of people, I tend to become invisible. Or more precisely, I tend to make myself invisible. That’s one of the reasons why a lot of people have lays and relationships from social circles and I didn’t, even though I’ve always been well surrounded socially.
Social freedom has always been one of my dreams. Being able to connect with people IRL freely, being confident, no matter who’s in front of you, being charming, seducing… that’s what I’ve always wanted to be able to do, but this always eluded me, I’ve always had HUGE internal blocks to be able to become this. That’s why I’ve always been in awe with day game. The ability to just go up to a woman and create something out of nothing is just amazing for me. That’s why for a long time, I’ve despised dating apps, because they don’t get me closer to realizing this.

This weekend reminded me of that. Started to go into a negative spiral where I was questioning my life, my relationship, my choices etc… Don’t really know what to do with it. I do lack confidence, and it shows in all areas in my life. I have a lot of “nice guys” tendencies that just hurt me. I’ve done a lot of things to try to improve on this: forced myself to put myself into social situations, tried to learn day game (but never got past AA), doing some improv… But to no avail. So I don’t know how to tackle this anymore. I’ve been working on it for 10 years now, and for that amount of time, I shouldn’t be where I am. I don’t really know what to do with it but I wanted to write this down and share it here
 
Weigh-in: 80.2kg

The weight is increasing, happy about that.

Today I underperformed in the gym. Had to drop my weight on all exercises, I still pushed myself. I'm cooked. Will do better next time

On a side note, removed all the app from my phone that sucked my attention. Instagram, internet, e-mail... The result is that when I pick my phone out of habit, I have nothing to do on it so I put it down. I'm spending less time on my phone and I'm already feeling a difference in my mental state.

Purchased and currently reading the Alchemist.

Meditation is somewhat consistent.

Tonight, got my improv class.

Slowly building positive habits and removing negative ones. I'll be better than I was yesterday, little by little
 
Yo bro!

Charisma and social freedom = 100% trainable

Its there in your brain, just gotta unlock it

I became WAYYYYYYYY more confident and charismatic and am now high energy as FUCK

Took a fuck tonne of work as you very well know ;-)

A guy who I learned a lot about "switching states" from was The Dom:

https://killyourinnerloser.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=43525#p43525

You can lean into that brain state, and feed it, nourish it, and allow it to come out

MAC
 
Thanks MAC, yes, this is really trainable, I think I never really pushed myself hard enough to conquer my mental obstacle. A recurring theme in my life

-----------

Weigh-in: 81.2kg

I'm definitively seeing the difference in the mirror, even my girlfriend made a comment about it. I'm even impressed of how much I gained in 1 and 1/2 month, even though I know a lot of it is fat. I think I eat too much carb and processed food. I have 1 week of holidays before starting my next job, so today my objective is to finally have a good meal plan. Happy with the progress, but what the past has taught me is that it takes 2 weeks to loose everything, so I just need to be wary of my inner demons, that push me to give up.

I'm adding some stretching for my shoulder, because they're a weak point and it feels like they could break at some point. I can't do any shoulder exercises, and I've been dragging this issue for years now, and was always one of the excuses that I found to stop training at any point. Now I'm going to push forward, of course taking all the precautions necessary, but I won't let the fear of permanent injury stop me, only if I get really injured, then I'll stop.

I've finished the book the Alchemist that I started, and now I'm reading Never finished by David Goggins. This guy is an inspiration, when I listen to him and read his book, I just get so motivated to conquer my demons.

The past week or so, I've been having some reflections about my current relationship, and what I want in the future. I'm very conflicted. I love my GF and she's great on many level. We're aligned in life projects, she's funny, not the most beautiful but just above my beauty standard so it's good. When she puts make up she's really cute. She also has a growth mindset and works on herself, go to therapy, is humble. So I should just be happy with her and enjoy my relationship. Except that I have this feeling that's creeping up, and for some reasons, the last week, it has been hard to ignore it. My last therapy session and the books that I read made it come up. A feeling of dissatisfaction, of frustration, not because my relationship is not good enough and I believe I could do better, but because of something more insidious. I'm dissatisfied toward myself because I never conquered my real demons regarding of dating. I never got the success that I wished when I started my journey, because I always gave up when things got hard. And this is eating me up. I wanted to be able to get girls through cold approach, I wanted to develop myself as a charismatic guy, I had a high vision of myself and what I could achieve, but as the coward that I am, I never fulfilled that vision. Too afraid of rejection, too lazy, too afraid to fail... I feel like a weak man.

The thing is, it's not even about getting a lot of women. I don't really care about a high lay count, I never really even remember mine. My girlfriend satisfy me, there's no issue in that sense. So why does this bother me? There's something that the Dom talked about in some log (can't remember where) that I think embody what I'm looking for, what I lack: self mastery. I believe he's the one that mentioned that being good with women meant having self mastery, and it resonates with me on a deep level. I've never conquered my biggest fears. And in a way, I don't know if I can have a relationship where I'm fully committed without this "badge of honour".

And to be frank, it scares me. To go get this, I'll have to sacrifice my relationship. I'm not into open relationship at all, and I can't cater for a partner's need while trying to get other women. It just feels too much for me. So if I decide that I want to go on that path, I would have to breakup with my girl. Like jumping from an airplane without parachute. I don't know if that'll truly fulfill me, I don't know if that'll really make me happy, I don't know if the sacrifice is worth it. I don't know.

I needed to get it out some way or another. I'll talk to my therapist about it but for now, I'm not really ready to break up yet anyway. Not going to take any rushed decisions now.
 
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ssH35JwmwTM

Great vid on some exercises to get rid of shoulder pain.
 
Weight: 82.1kg

Progress in the gym is going pretty well. I can feel myself getting bigger. My pants fits more, my arms fits my sleeves a bit more. We're going to make it.

Started my job in my new company. A lot of things to go through, but so far so good. I want to use that opportunity to learn a shit ton in my field.

The future of my relationship with Russian girl is uncertain. It makes me sad because she's a really nice girl. But too many insecurities, we have some issues every week. She tries to work on herself but I'm tired of all this. We'll see
 
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