First thing: STOP FEELING AWFUL!!!  Beating up on yourself accomplishes precisely nothing.  I’m not saying this as some airy-fairy, feel-good bullshit…hell, if feeling bad got shit done I might actually recommend it, but it doesn’t in this case so let it go.

As for motivation, I love the process of working out, most days, so motivation is easy to come by.  However, I recognize that that isn’t the case for everyone, or at all times (for myself as well).  

In those moments I think of it strictly in terms of material contingency (no beating up on myself allowed!):

I want to have a certain level of health and to look a certain way.  If I want that result, then I must workout regularly to achieve it.  This isn’t a moral obligation.  If I no longer want the result then I don’t have to do the work and that’s OK!  But if I do want the result, I have to do what it takes to get it, as simple as that.  NO feeling bad, no self hate, nothing of the sort.  Just a dispassionate look at reality and how my input directly determines my output and an understanding that I am free, at any moment, to choose whatever path I feel best, but I must be willing to accept the results.  

I can want and wish and dream all I want, but reality always bats last, and if I don’t use my desires to guide my reality then I won’t wind up where I say I want to be, that’s my motivation.

My weekly workouts usually follow one of these patterns

• M - Full body
• T - Accessory work (right now that would be shoulders)
• W - Full body
• R - Accessory work (right now it’s lats)
• F - Full body
• S/S - Rest

***

• M - Back/chest
• T - Rest
• W - Legs
• R - Rest
• F - Arms/shoulders
• Sa - Upper body
• Su - Lower body

***

• M - Upper body
• T - Lower body
• W - Rest
• R - Upper body
• F - Lower body
• S/S - Rest

As for diet, I usually eat whole foods, occasional treats (peanut butter cups and apple fritters), other than the aforementioned stay away from processed sugar, and periodically practice intermittent fasting.  On the diet front I’m lucky, I have two parents who don’t put on fat easily at all and I definitely inherited those genes.

Keeping in mind I’m speaking from a position of ignorance, because I don’t know your sex, age, goals, or what your routine looks like but, at 6’3”-4” and 170 you’re pretty skinny, but certainly not unhealthy (for reference, when I started lifting in earnest about 10 years ago I was 6’3” at 175, now I weigh 205-210).  Because of that, I can’t say it’s “better” in absolute terms, to gain weight.  If you want to look like me (or bigger) yes, you’ll need to put on some muscle mass.  If that’s not your goal, however, then not necessarily.

So, with that in mind, IF you are a man and want to add muscle mass:

• Eat at a diet composed of mostly whole foods at a slight caloric surplus
• Focus on full body workouts with heavy compound movements and medium volume, 3X/week.
• I don’t know what your cardio sessions look like but if they are too intense you may want to dial them back a bit.

Keep in mind after all this, we are all shaped differently (to some degree) and carry weight differently.  I look like a skinny little shit at 175, you might look like Channing Tatum’s hotter brother.  At 210 you may look TOO big for you tastes and will need to scale it big.  Set your goals and then monitor your progress accordingly.

Hope this helps (feel free to ask for clarification if it doesn’t) and best of luck to you!

The first thing I’d ask is why do you want choose another program?  How long have you been doing SL? Have you gone as far for your goals as you can with it?  Depending on the answer to these questions, you might just want to take a deload week and reset the program.

If, however, you’ve been running SL for a while and you feel like you’ve gotten everything you can out of it for the time being, then the answer to your question will, in your case, probably be to choose another program.  I only recommend writing your own program if you can satisfy the following criteria:

1. You have a fairly solid idea, built out of experience, of what works and what doesn’t for you in terms of exercise selection, volume, intensity and training frequency.
2. You understand muscle anatomy well enough to know what kind of stimulus tends to be best for each muscle group
3. You have the utmost internal discipline to avoid writing a program for yourself that conveniently steers you toward the exercises/volume/frequency with which you’re most comfortable or that you like the most, not what you actually need to focus on.  

It takes a while for most lifters to get to this stage, and even then there’s constant tweaking and re-tweaking and reassessing and sometimes even just aimless dicking around.  But unless you can honestly say to yourself that you can hit each of those areas solidly 90% of the time, I think it would be best to choose a program suited to your goals, whatever they may be, and go with that.  

Run the program consciously: be aware of your body’s feedback. Which lifts do you like? Which do you hate? Why? How’s your form in each lift?  Is anything hurting?  How’s your mobility? 

Exercise is a conversation with your body, and it will faithfully give you feedback, you just have to pay attention to it.