Behind the scenes of showing up to the gym and lifting, my experience with putting on weight has been a total game of numbers.
While I initially figured that this endeavor would involve plenty of simple arithmetic — be it counting calories, reps or pounds gained — I never considered how great of a strain this project could place on the financial numbers that I hold most dear as a broke student.
The most important aspect of putting on weight is the food required to grow and build mass. Unsurprisingly, eating an average of 4,000 calories a day — as I have aimed to do — is likely to have an inverse reaction on one’s bank account.
Although a diet high in protein and carbohydrates can provide plenty of calories for the body to build off of, an easy added edge that most athletes turn to in their “bulking phase” comes from consuming supplements.
From my time perusing the aisles of various diet and supplement shops, the typical jug of whey protein powder will steal from your wallet no less than $20, and upon returning home you’ll likely find that the package is only half full.
Products like these do tend to give you the user results, though at a high cost. Now in my second month of dedicatedly working out, I’ve just made my second purchase and have spent close to a full paycheck of a coffeehouse job on…powder? Not the best of realizations.
If you’re “getting jacked” the right way, you’re also going to need a new wardrobe, and not because you’re going to be looking so damn good all the time (though it is a nice side effect, if you ask me).
No, you’re going to need a new wardrobe because you’re going to outgrow all of those clothes you’ve fit in since high school.
While it’s sad to see that Piggly Wiggly tee find a new home in the cart of a Goodwill customer, you start to really feel depressed when you find that a designer replacement these days costs as much as a full tank of gas.
The moral of this column is that, in many ways, a reinvention by way of a body transformation isn’t going to be cheap. But at the end of the day, the effort to make it work pays off when that number on the scale (currently 140 for me, y’all… 10 POUNDS AWAY!) reflects all the hard work you’ve been doing.
jd202409@ohiou.edu
