As my last coach log (last week) detailed, I was dropping weight too fast and had to slow things down. Had the look or visual matched the drop in weight, I would have been fine with that, but it didn't. I was leaner but I was more just a slightly smaller version of myself. That's not exactly the goal and this is precisely why scale weight only tell a part of the story when gauging progress.
I am maintaining a weight roughly 3.5 to 4 pounds heavier than my lowest weight last week and I look substantially better. My strength is back up a tad and muscular contractions (and pumps) are much improved. Now, I don't use the pump to gauge my condition all that much but I still wanted to note this. During a cut phase, pumps usually will decrease considerably or it just takes longer to get a good pump. If I'm in the off season, I can blow up with blood from just one or two sets. When I start to get depleted, it takes longer to hit that max pump; the more depleted I am, the longer it takes to get to the max pump.
After doing my Skipload last week, I still didn't gain a lot of weight -- that is one thing that I have noticed during this cutting phase is that while only doing Skiploads infrequently, I am not gaining anywhere near the amount of weight from the load as I usually do. Of course, I had no plans to baseline after this last load because I just did not want my weight that low, so soon. Everything has been going well this week considering my weight is still about 3.5 pounds above that very low baseline from last week.
For the above reasons, I had considered doing a high-carb day tomorrow after finishing this first training cycle of 5 days, but I don't want to do that. I am not terribly depleted, not terribly flat and I think that going through my second training cycle (another 5 days) will allow me to drop more body fat without the weight starting to drop too quickly like it did last week. I can then figure out whether a high-carb day is needed, a Skipload or a combination of both. I do feel that I responded very well to the one meal Skipload after leg day and then a high-carb day the following day but I don't want to put the cart before the horse. I will let everything play out over this next training cycle and make the decision from there.
I did increase my NEAT this week by starting nightly walks with my wife and daughter. I train around 2pm and then we do our walks around 7pm or 8pm in the evenings. Pretty chill walks but we do make sure that we are constantly moving so that the time isn't wasted. My fitbit says that based on my HR and the time walking, I am burning about 450 calories in that hour, give or take. I think that's bullshit but I do notice a change in my condition this week and the walks are fun and they go by very quickly vs. if I were to do an hour of cardio where one hour feels like 4 weeks. Some would call these walks "cardio" but I do not because they are chill and I am not forcing a specific HR or stressing my body much, at all. I consider cardio much harder than this and these walks are chill.
For those of you focused on numbers, my low about a week ago was between 213.5 and 215. I was only 213.5 for one day but it was just too damn low. Right now I am 217 and I plan to be around 215 by the time I high-carb or Skipload again in about a week.
I listed these numbers for reference only. If I only cared about the scale weight I could have stayed at 213 or even pushed back to it after the load last week. I want the visual and that is really all I am focused on right now.
I am still fortunate to be able to have training options so the only real impact to your progress or plan is that I have to get my sun outside instead of the tanner. In fact, I prefer to get my sun from outside, anyway, but it just takes more of a time investment than going to the tanner.
As with everyone else, everything is day to day but so far, so good. My biggest stress right now is having to use cheap-ass toilet paper vs. the good stuff. I can't complain too much and I hope all of you are doing the best that you can right now during this difficult time.
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