Starting the third week of my fitness journey today is a really cool place to be. I feel like doing just the three workouts a week and then concentrating on my diet the rest of the time is really helping me stay consistent. Though the dieting aspect is not easy, its worth it. Dieting though has always been the toughest part for me. Luckily, I really love and enjoy working out, running, lifting weights, all that good stuff. But when it comes to my diet, that where in the past I have always fallen short and end up elbow deep in a tub of ice cream. In the past, I have always always relapsed back to eating terribly. Not only terrible foods but in overall calorie intake as well. It wasn’t uncommon for me to be eating regularly at over 3,000 calories a day. Which is ridiculous considering my maintenance intake is more around 1,800/day. I’ve said it a million times and I’ll say it again staying consistent is key. Luckily for me, this time I know that I will stay consistent because I have a much stronger why than I ever have before.
Mental Check
Overall this past week I have been feeling pretty good. Knocking down my calories even more this week hasn’t seem to effect me a whole lot either which is nice. I will admit that to adjust for the lower calories I decided to extend my fast throughout the day and only eat one meal instead of one meal and a smaller one. This way I can still have a really big satisfying meal every day while staying underneath my calories. Right now I am shooting to be at 1,350 calories a day.
This morning however, I did feel my first sense of being groggy and tired. I’m sure most of it is attributed to just a restless night of sleep but I will be keeping an eye on my energy levels this week too. If my calorie count is too low I will start losing will power and will naturally crave fatty and carb laden foods to compensate for lack of sleep. The only reason my calorie count may be too low is because of the type of workouts I am doing. I am pushing my muscles to the fire to their full capacity 3 times a week. The workouts I am doing are designed to build dense solid muscle, and when they are in repair they may be using up a little too many calories. So that will be one thing I will be keeping a close eye on this week so I can adjust if need be.
Focus Points
Last week my focus was calorie/protein intake as well as getting more sleep. I think I did really well in both departments. Just by drinking 1 protein shake every day I have noticed it helping my overall performance in the gym and conditioning levels. I was not nearly as tired by the end of my work out and I could push myself even more. Extra sleep was great. I am sure I have that to thank for my over all well being feeling. Another thing I want to continue to focus on.
This week I will continue to keep up the protein and extra sleep I do want to add some more focus points of this week. This week will be water intake.
I am not very good at keeping good levels of water intake. To be honest, I haven’t done enough research about proper water intake to really give my two sense on it, but I will say when people tell you that you need to be drinking an entire gallon of water a day to be healthy is probably bad advice. Your body is generally pretty good at telling you you need water. Any extra water intake is really for additional health benefits like clearing out toxins, energy, performance, etc. Now I don’t mean to say that proper water intake isn’t extremely beneficial, but I do mean to say that it can be excessive. My main reason to focus on it this week is to further increase my energy levels through hydration as well as use it as a tool to curb hunger. Often, when you feel hunger its actually a miss diagnosis, you are actually in fact just thirsty. So I am hoping that upping my water intake will help with those things and then all the other benefits are just bonuses. With my water intake right now, I have to add water just to get to the proper amount I should be consuming.
Week 2 Weigh In
11/13/17 – 184.6
Loss: 1 Pound
Well, even after adjusting my calories this week I am down just a pound. I think this is due to two main factors. The first being that because my body fat isn’t super high to begin with, I imagine that my body might be going into “starvation mode”. This is essentially when your body realizes that it’s not getting an adequate amount of calories to maintain body fat so it slows down metabolism to promote less fat loss. Luckily, this is usually only very temporary, and after a second week of getting proper protein, that shouldn’t be an issue for next week’s weigh in. The second factor is due to muscle gain as well. Since I am starting to workout again after a long time off, my body is able to gain muscle that I once had very rapidly, again this is only for a short period of time. It’s always hard to make strength gains but to get back to where you once were is usually much easier to do. So I think with the combination of those two factors in mind, my overall calorie count each day is still solid. I think going anything less than where I am now would just be counter productive to what I am trying to accomplish.
Always be sure to remember that the number on the scale is almost never the goal! It’s almost always about overall body fat percentage. Though that is much harder (and expensive) to accurately measure, that is the real goal. I mean, if I am to gain 5 pounds of muscle and lose 10 pounds of fat I would look a lot better than if I were to just simply lose 15 pounds of fat. I am going for overall aesthetics here, so simply the number on the scale isn’t what is most important at the end of the day.
But hey, even then, 1 pound. Progress is progress. Don’t forget to take some time to pat yourself on the back too! I would much rather lose a pound a week than gain 1!
As always, thanks so much for reading everyone! Please feel free to leave a comment about some things you would like to see on here from me for future posts, or tell me about your fitness journey! Likes and shares are always greatly appreciated.
You’re not getting any younger!
The Cardinal Gift 