Is this possible without the use of anabolic steroids?
The answer is ‘yes’, but not everyone
can do this.
Let me explain.
Welcome to my channel.
I am the lifting dermatologist,
a Belgian doctor with 28 years of weight lifting experience.
If this is your first time here,
and you want me to help and motivate you
losing fat, building more muscle and an aesthetic physique,
next to advice about skin care and hormone optimization,
start now by subscribing and clicking the
bell, so you don’t miss anything.
To explain how I made my body looking much more muscular in less than 2 years,
even at my age (44), I will shortly address 4 topics.
First: Genetics, the importance of which is
not measurable nor changeable.
But I guess I got lucky in the genetic muscle building potential category.
My late grandfather was a professional boxer when he was in his twenties, and had the exactly
same physique like I have, easily building
muscle.
Resistance training:
You must realize, as I have explained in earlier videos,
I started working out with weights
when I was 16, taking this very seriously,
and doing this consistently over 20 years.
And, just like everyone performing resistance training properly
(what that means is explained in other videos I made),
I build my base of muscle in my first decade of training.
Next: Diet
And this is the most important part in my story.
In my first decade of training (from my 16
till I was 25),
I did not pay much attention to my diet.
I just ate whatever I was served (still living
at home), I did not count calories,
probably was never really in a proper surplus, and almost certainly did not take in enough protein.
Although this was not an optimal diet for
muscle building, like everyone in their first
years of weight training, no matter what split you use, no matter what diet you eat,
you build muscle anyway.
Of course, after a decade of training, progress slowed down, and I read in the bodybuilding
magazines of the nineties that one should
eat big to get big, and that’s exactly what I did.
I started a dirty bulk, for years on end,
eating as much calories, and as much protein
as possible, stuffing myself, drinking weight gainers,
even putting my alarm clock at night to eat a tin of tuna.
Getting a busier professional life, next to
a family and the birth of 3 babies
(2007, 2009 and 2013),
my interest in resistance training diminished.
By 2014 I weighted 87kg (for 1m72cm), and carried a thick layer of fat on top of my muscle.
In May of 2015 I started using MyFitnessPal to track calories, started eating in a caloric
deficit, and even without weight training
I lost weight easily.
I weighed 68kg by the end of 2015.
The look of my physique in the mirror (more ripped than ever before at the age of 41),
motivated me to take up my weight training again,
seriously and consistently, from January 2016 up till this day.
As you can image, next to losing a lot of
fat, I lost a lot of muscle tissue as well
when my weight went down so quickly in the second half of 2015,
being in a serious caloric deficit, without working out.
And this is exactly the secret to this short
story,
and this amazing transformation I made in this last 2 years.
I work out harder than I ever did before,
nowadays three 90 minutes,
very intense, full body workouts a week.
And this is when muscle memory kicks in, and the myonuclei that were already in my muscles
(triggered by decades of training in the past) could speed up protein synthesis much more
rapidly than in someone else that starts working out at the age of 40,
because these myonuclei were already present and waiting.
More info on muscle memory by clicking on this card.
And of course, in order to build that lean
muscle tissue, I alternate longer periods
of slight calorie surplus (‘lean bulk’),
with short periods of calorie deficit (‘mini cut’),
with in between those 2 week periods
of maintenance.
This is how the MyFitnessPal graphic looks, since the start in May 2015.
My weight went up drastically again, but judging by the mirror,
it is muscle tissue that replaced the fat tissue.
Last topic:
Hormone Optimization
A lot of guys over 35 or 40 do not realize
they are suffering
from subclinical low testosterone levels and symptoms.
I was one of them.
I never could have believed my T levels were low, since I thought I was a muscular strong guy.
And I just thought being less energetic, feeling a bit down, or whatever was part of getting
older, having small children in the house,
stressing you out,
making you sleep less, and so on.
Only in the spring of 2017 it dawned on me that my testosterone levels could be low.
And that was when I got tested them for the first time.
And indeed, around the very low end of the normal range.
That’s when I started my research into hormone optimization, and together with some colleague
doctors, I got my levels way back up near
the high end of the normal range,
and I feel better now than I have the whole last decade.
All the typical low T symptoms have disappeared, I have much more energy to train, and probably
this is one of the contributing factors to
my most recent transformation.
More info on how to optimize your hormone levels, what the low T symptoms are, and the
actions you can take to normalize your T levels
I explain in my Hormone and Testosterone Optimization Playlist.
Conclusion: Was this transformation possible without the use of anabolic steroids?
The answer is ‘yes’, but not everyone
can do this.
You have to have good genetics, you must have built a foundation of muscle by working out
properly for years on end, you must first
strip of the fat, and then build muscle again
much more rapidly thanks to muscle memory, and proper hormone optimization.
Thank you for watching, thumbs up, and see you in another video!
