I don't know if anyone else feels that this happens to them, but it happens to me. I get into a cutting phase or a prep phase and week after week I can see myself progressing well but there comes a time where, within one week's time, you say to yourself, "I'm getting fucking LEAN now."
That was this week and I love that feeling.
I am down approximately 21 pounds in 9 weeks and significantly stronger this week than when I started this cutting phase at 236. I hit 215.5. This last week I was getting concerned because I dropped almost 5 pounds and that is just too much weight to lose in a week. However, with strength being up, it isn't that I have lost any muscle in the process.
I changed 2 things this week that contributed to this drop and some of it was water.
1. I stopped a supplement that I had been using for the last 6 weeks so this would have some water weight fall off.
2. I made a diet change due to a mistake that I made about a week ago and will explain it below.
With the grocery-hoarding issues almost 2 weeks ago due to the virus and mass hysteria, there were no regular oats left on the shelves, only steel-cut oats. I haven't used steel-cut oats in well over 10 years because I remember trying them and not liking them. However, I had no real choice because this is all they had.
I have been reading nutritional labels for 35 years, but this time I made an amateur mistake. I checked the carbs and they said 27g so I simply thought, "cool, they are exactly the same as regular oats."
I started the week off by baselining at 221 on Monday and found it odd that I had sat at my 221 baseline for 5 days. This NEVER happens. At the same time, it occurred to me that eating 1 full cup of steel-cut oats in my protein drink seemed like a LOT of food. lol Of course, it takes longer to chew them because they are so much more dense than regular oats. I just figured that was the issue but it then occurred to me that I better check the serving size. That is when I realized that I made an amateur mistake because, of course, the serving size was 1/2 of regular oats. Oops. That kind of explained the weight not falling that week but damn was I strong while taking in an extra 100g of carbs per day.
Between making that small diet change and pulling the supplement that causes a little water retention, I ended up dropping about 5 pounds this last week. Again, my strength was up so this large drop didn't concern me. I didn't feel ridiculously flat, run down or any hungrier than usual, either.
For these reasons, I decided that I would only Skipload for one meal after legs (right before bed) and then do a high-carb day the following day. This is the end of my second training cycle (13 days) so I high-carbed the first non-training day and then the second non-training day is back to my regular diet. The following day I start another training cycle for 13 days.
The cool thing this week was that I finally was able to say that I am getting pretty lean now. I haven't been this light in about 2 years. I still have a ways to go to get into the condition that I want to be in, but I am now motivated even more by the fact that I can see how well my condition is improving now. My EliteFTS weight belt uses half-sizes where the holes are scattered. About 3 weeks ago I was on the 5th hole and for legs yesterday I was on the 10th hole. That is a pretty solid progression for the decrease in my midsection.
I still have almost 4 months until this cut phase is done, so I am being careful to pace myself so that I don't run myself into the ground. I feel good. I am not hungry and I am still doing zero cardio.
We are now on a stay-at-home order in Florida but I am unsure if I am going to honor that or not. I may still get to the gym to train but getting there may prove difficult. If push comes to shove, I will be forced to use only dumbbells and an adjustable bench here at home in the basement. I'm glad I have options but I want to continue to take advantage of having access to a gym, if I can. And before anyone freaks out that I am putting someone in harms way for going out, I would drive in my car, go into a gym where absolutely no one else is in the gym with me, and train by myself.
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