Fat Loss II - A5

I started with 5-mins cardio outside, most of the warm-up. Then I did:

A1: Front Squat - 85t/8, 85t/8, 85t/8
A2: Bent-over Row - 85t/8, 85t/8, 85t/8
B1: Supine Hip Extension with Leg Curl - 8, 8, 8
B2: Barbell Push Press - 65t/8, 65t/8, 65t/8
C1: Dynamic Lunge - 30e/8, 30e/8, 30e/8
C2: Upper Body Russian Twist - 8, 8, 8

Then I did 5-min warm up, 4 sets of intervals (1m high/2 min med) and a five minute cool down.

50 mins, 379 cals, Max HR: 173 (98%), Avg HR: 134 (76%)

It wasn’t a bad workout today. I’m still struggling with the barbell push press, so I was happy it dropped to 3×8 today. The 30sec rest times were a struggle and I’m not sure that I managed to keep them all under 30 seconds.

- - - - -

The weather is really flaky around here today.  The rain held off long enough that we got a swim, and had dinner outside.  Although when we were outside having dinner there were times I questioned if eating outside was a good idea.  Looking at the forecast tomorrow I should get my walk done in the morning before it starts raining again.

Food for the day:

Total: 2290 calories (28% fat, 42% protein, 30% carbs)

Breakfast: scrambled eggs, orange (316)
AM Snack: beef jerky (108)
Lunch: multi-grain tortilla, eye of round, lettuce, mustard, apple (438)
PWO Snack: protein shake with cherry concentrate (269)
PM Snack: hummus, flatbread (231)
Dinner: sirloin steak, corn, butter, salad w/dressing (652)
Evening Snack: fruit salad, protein shake (276)

This morning’s weigh-in was 239.0, which is 0.4 pounds down from last week. This week has been really weird weight-wise. If it hadn’t been for the weird mid-week readings I’d have assumed that maybe this was a bit of a slow-down. I knew mid week that I was likely retaining water, so stepped on the scale to find I was 3 pounds up from Sunday. Thursday was worse as I was up about 4 pounds. I’m actually a little surprised that I ended up down at all. Since I haven’t changed food, exercise, water intake, etc. I’m assuming it was the heat that did it. Anyway the 9-week loss is 20.4lbs (2.27/week) which is usually the ‘number’ I look at to see how things are going overall. The other little compulsive number I look at is how many days I’ve been ‘on plan’ primarily with food. I still consider a maintenance week ‘on plan’ since I accomplished what I wanted to. So this is day 61 on plan with food.

The next couple of weeks will show high losses per week as I drop the spike off the graph. In a way they should be ignored as much as the gain weeks. With that thinking it will be about 2 weeks before all is back to normal. I did briefly see 233.6 at the end of March, so seriously, no congratulations until then!

Next week’s plan is:

Continue Fat Loss II phase of New Rules of Lifting, 3 days a week. 30-45 min walks 5 days a week (with my mother), aiming for 45 mins on non-lifting days. For July I’ll likely continue at the same food levels - 2000 on non-workout days and 2250-2300 on lifting days and see how that goes. I may take a maintenance week for week 9 of NROL. That would be after next Sunday. It’s supposed to be a full rest week (no weights, no intervals). I’ll likely keep up the morning walks though.

And the 9-week graph…