This was probably one of my most productive weeks in this cutting phase, so far.
Though I don't focus entirely on scale weight, I did set a goal for the month of March to be below 220 by the end of the month. I did this because I know what I look like at that weight, and I felt that this goal was in line with the look I wanted to achieve over the course of the month.
I dropped this first week to 224 from 227 and the weight drop doesn't do justice as far as the improvement in condition. At the same time, my strength has gone up and especially in my legs where I need it the most. I feel that recovery is pretty good but I also feel that I am starting to flatten out more than usual by the end of the first training rotation (about 6 days) where usually I start to really flatten out about 8 or 9 days into the rotation. For this reason, I made the decision to push my high-carb day to every 6th day -- after each 5-day training rotation -- instead of after 2 full rotations going about 11 days.
I am now going to push to being below 220 without much problem by the end of the month unless for some reason my decision was wrong and having the high-carb days closer together ends up not working. However, I don't anticipate that happening. I have yet to Skipload during this cutting phase and it has been about 6 weeks. I am depleted but not overly depleted so the skipload just hasn't been necessary, yet.
There has been a lot of discussion, lately, about stress and how it relates to the SNS and PSNS so I have been paying close attention to my stress levels not just now but when my gains were the best over the last 18 months. I have to say that my stress levels the lowest right now that they have been throughout the entire last 2 years. I can't help but think that this is going to benefit me considerably as I move forward, provided that I continue to keep the stress in check.
While stress levels are low, I am watching my resting HR and my blood pressure because they are up over the last 10 days due to changing supplementation for fat burning. This is to be expected and the changes aren't dramatic or concerning. However, I will continue to monitor both as it has only been 10 days. It does appear that the increase in both has stopped and has stabilized, though, which is important.
I will know by Thursday whether moving the high-carb days closer together was a good idea or not. That will be just in time to do my coach log for next week so I will update at that time.