Given that yesterday / last week ended on a mediocre note – not bad, just not good/great – I was kinda dreading the scale this morning. On Sundays, I also take measurements for my bodyfat calculations, and I am always dreading those (that’s why I give myself 4.75 points for the week if I do and record the measurements).
But, over the course of 24 hours I dropped 1.7 lbs. (Yes, I know it’s not all fat, but it still made me feel good.) Looking at my weight tracking (yes, it’s Excel, don’t hate me), based on that first day’s measurement and losing 0.7% bodyweight per week, I’m also still a bit ahead of my goal. Yes, the four-week linear extrapolation still doesn’t have me below 210 lbs (how friggin’ long does it take?!) but 0.7% loss is still a bit aggressive, so at least it’s going down, and slightly ahead of schedule, and definitely it’s not going up.
And, bodyfat percentage dropped more week-over-week than it has the last few weeks. The approximate goal right now is to drop 0.3% per week. That’s based on losing 0.7% of my bodyweight per week and 75% of that being fat. (So, the 0.3% varies slightly, but it’s close to linear.) The actual drops the last 5 weeks vs the previous 5 weeks are: 0.1%, 0.5%, 0.4%, 0.4%, and then today was 0.8%. I’m actually now almost where I expected to be not next week, but in two weeks.
So, I know that there are random fluctuations, but it’s still a nice pick-me-up to make me think I am making progress. It’s also possible that I pulled the MyoTape slightly tighter, but I don’t think so: I actually block the measurements of each previous week (except the first) so I can’t see what the waist nor hip measurements were, so I go in a bit blinded in order to get a more accurate reading. So, when I measured 42⅜” on the waist today, I was thinking, “Uh oh, did I go up? Last week must’ve been 42″ ’cause I thought it was a round number.” But I was remembering wrong: The previous week was 43⅛”.
Looking back to 2019, I’m also finally back to being below the weight of my first week of my previous attempt at this: The week of January 20, 2019, I averaged 217.5 lbs at 28.1% bodyfat; today I’m at 217.4 lbs and 27.3% bodyfat.
Again, yes, random fluctuations, and it’s the trend over months that’s important, but it’s still a nice mental boost that I didn’t totally eff myself up last week by having some extra, unrecorded carbs.
So … here’s to a strong Week 06 coming up, and in three weeks I get to eat more! That’s right, I’ll’ve gone through 8 weeks of a cut, and that means that I eat at maintenance for a week to replenish my psyche, fill some of those cravings I’ve had, and replenish hormone levels or some other blah-blah stuff I read online that’s hopefully not broscience. At that point, I’ll also reassess progress and whether I want to make modifications to my model for the next eight weeks of how much weight loss is sustainable, and how much fat loss is reasonable.
My Fitness Blog 