In two days from now I will be a third of the way through the challenge, which is a worrying thought! This will be a short blog from me, as I haven’t got much to report – it’s finally deload week.
Deloadingmeans cutting back on the volume of work done in training sessions. This allows my body to properly rest and recover from the previous weeks ready to go into a new set of programmes from next week.
My programme is split into three four-week chunks, with a deload week at the end of each section. It has been absolutely lovely this week to take a step back from training and I can tell that my body was ready for it, because even my deload lifting days have been quite tough, even though they have significantly less volume than I was lifting last week!
I have taken this as an opportunity to try and stick in a bit more cardio, but despite my new, harsher diet and my extra cardio, my scale weight has still stayed the same. This is the third week in a row that it’s not budged. This isn’t an exaggeration, I haven’t even lost 100g! But my last body fat reading revealed that I have lost an extra 0.5kg of fat, and an extra 0.8% overall of body fat, so the trend is going in the right direction. Perhaps this is just how much I weigh? Who knows… but as long as my body fat keeps going down then that’s the main thing. So far it’s down 5% in 3 measurements – woohoo!
I haven’t noticed the drop in calories to be honest, but I have started to notice social situations becoming a bit trickier and a bit more tempting. Still going strong though!
Over all, so far I am starting to feel a bit more confident in my body and a bit more like myself again, which is really great, and definitely a nice feeling! But if I am honest, my attitude to training and nutrition has become a kind of sad acceptance… I know what I have to do and I just do it without questioning it. I find writing it all out on a post it note and then crossing it off really helps to keep me accountable, and having the post it staring at me on my desk gets me off my bum at lunch time to do my cardio!
Next week we step up another gear with my training, adding in an extra weights session and even some dreaded drop sets. I am looking forward to getting back into it, because although the rest has been lovely this week, compared to the previous intensity I am feeling really lazy!
I’ll let you know how I get on…