After my post this morning, I decided to play around and modify my weight loss for after my break in Week 09. Right now, my goal is to lose 0.7% of my weight per week, which translates to approximately 1.5 lbs per week, or just under 10 lbs per month. Based on research I’ve seen comparing 0.7% vs 1.0% weight loss, the slower is better for retaining lean mass.
But, based on how much exercise I have been doing, and that I’ve been ahead of my weight goals by about half a week now since Week 02, I slightly tweaked my goal for starting in 3 weeks: I upped the loss from 0.7% to 0.75%. Yes, an extremely small change. But, it shaves two weeks off my first cut, and it seems at this point that it’s doable, and it’s nice that a seemingly very trivial change right now can have weeks’ worth of shifting in the end goal. But I guess that’s because it’s going to take so long to actually lose this weight … sigh. (That’ll be 10 months to lose 50 lbs, with 1-week breaks between blocks of 8 weeks of cut.)
However, the real test will be in Week 09 and how that shapes up: I have never successfully steadily lost 10 lbs, week-over-week on average. I seem to oscillate between gain/loss on the final approach, or just plateau and never break through that 10-lb mark. So, we will see what happens in Week 09. Also, Week 09 is my only potential travel right now until mid-October, so being on the road could change a lot of things if I f–k it up.
If it looks like I’m on target that week, or slightly ahead, then I’ll try the 0.75%. Otherwise, I’ll go back to 0.7%. I’ll also be re-assessing at that point whether my assumptions about lean vs fat loss (assume 25% / 75% right now) are holding up and if that should be adjusted based on the eight weeks before it.
So … as of now, the goal has shifted slightly to be at 170.0 lbs the week of February 14, 2021, instead of February 28, 2021. Since I haven’t adjusted the lean/fat loss ratio, it will still be at about 14.7% bodyfat, which would still be the lowest I’ve ever been since I started to measure. (If, for example, the lean/fat shifts to 20/80, then I’ll be at 13.4% bodyfat. If it shifts to 30/70, then 16.0% bodyfat. So, that has the potential to change things quite a bit. The net result since Week 01 has bee 21/79 loss.)
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