Hi. I'm 35 years old and currently addicted to lifting. 3 years ago I weighed in at about 320 lbs. I managed to lose about 140 of that with diet and exercise. I made a lot of mistakes with lifting along the way and I learned a lot about the iron. I've read starting strength from cover to cover and ran the program for 4 months, resetting it a few times. I tried madcow, 531 and I was also a client of Martin Berkhan over at leangains.

I'm here because I want to get leaner and stronger and I've not made much progress in the last year. My lifts suck. I've reset my squat at least 15 times and I can't get past 200 lbs. I'm just not strong enough. My bench has gone from 185x5 to 200x5 in the past year. My deadlift has gone from like 195x5 last year to a very difficult 255x5 last week. My main interest right now is strength training but my appearance is important too.

I thought that the reason my lifts were not improving was because I was losing weight for so long so I increased my calories to 3500 the past few months to try and get my lifts up and all I got was fat. The result was no better for me than being on calorie restriction. Now I'm back to cutting.

I never miss a workout, I don't drink or do drugs. My nutrition is spot on with about 200 g protein a day.

I found a local clinic online that tests your levels and prescribes you what you need but they charge $850 for just the initial visit not including anything!

I went to medical school in my home country but I am not licensed to practice medicine here in the US. I am very familiar with nutrition, physiology, endocrinology etc but by reading through here I can see you guys are way more advanced in this specific field than I am

I'm here to learn from this community as much as I can and hopefully continue to improve in the hobby that I have fallen in love with.