I don't fancy myself much of a whiner but ... prepare yourself; I'm gonna whine.
I only recently stepped off the gas and am TRT for 10 weeks (8 more ... and ... counting ... slowly). I anticipated losing scale weight but 7 pounds? Come on, now. Somehow, I pissed off the God of Gainz.
Oddly enough, I have been very strong while the scale weight has fallen. I have been a well-respected Prep Guy for almost 20 years and yet I seem to need something to explain to me how this could happen. I'm kidding; please don't respond with your best guess. Obviously, I was holding a good amount of water and though I will flatten out a bit and lose some size over the next 8 weeks, I also know that as soon as I step on the gas again, I will fill out immediately and blow up again.
In the meantime, I am focused doing 3 main things during this cruise phase:
1. maintaining as much muscle as possible
2. holding my condition
3. allowing nagging aches and pains to subside and recover
Though I could complicate the shit of these goals over the next 8 weeks, I know what I am doing and the plan is quite simple:
I am cutting back on volume roughly 30% as my recovery will not be as good.
I am not going to reduce my caloric intake unless I see my condition start to slide. Most will cut calories claiming they don't need as many calories while volume isn't as high and strength isn't as high. I disagree and feel strongly that to increase recovery during this TRT phase, my calories need to remain as high as possible unless condition dictates I need to cut back. Cutting calories usually will impact recovery ability.
The decrease in training volume should help the mild inflammation that I am experiencing in my left bicep tendon, my right triceps tendon and my left hamstring high near the glute. I emphasize again that this inflammation is mild or I would take this time to rest and not train, allowing some time for the inflammation to subside considerably. I don't feel the inflammation is bad enough to need that approach. I typically will feel the inflammation during warm-ups and then not at all while training. I also do not feel the inflammation after training or the following day. This is a good sign that it is mild and should easily be rectified over the next handful of weeks.
Right now, my workouts are not impacted beyond staying away from a few exercises that might exacerbate the inflammation.
Though I am attempting to hold as much strength as possible during this time, I will not force myself to attempt to handle weights that feel too heavy. The plan is simply to back off slightly on the weight and add reps unless I happen to come into the gym and feel strong that day. I suppose you could say that I am going more by the feedback that I am getting from my body vs. attempting to try to force the body to handle the heavy loads that I was using while I was gassed.
The only thing that I have changed (at least for now) with my nutrition plan is that I am no longer starting my Skipload on Saturdays and I am only loading all day on Sundays. It is possible that this played into the lower scale weight as I had an extra day of not loading. Still, my scale weight is down no matter the reason.
I have roughly another 4 weeks and I will do blood work again to make sure that everything is good. I have no reason to anticipate that it won't be but never say never. I do the blood work to make sure that everything is good.
I also anticipate that the drop in scale weight will level off quickly if it hasn't already. I certainly don't anticipate dropping much more weight as this phase progresses.
