The other day I stepped on the scale only to find that once again, my weight had hit 160. I tried running to the body fat percent devise for reassurance, only to see a number larger than before. WTF. Granted, the devise I used was different than the one I had been using to track my progress, but still. WTF.
This was discouraging. And when I say discouraging, I mean knocked down, what the hell more can I possibly do?? discouraging. I felt like all the hard work from the past few weeks was null and void.
But then I got a couple unsolicited compliments:
"Wow, you look like you've lost so much since the last time I've seen you [2 weeks ago]."
"I can't get over how much you've lost in the past few months. You look so toned and healthy."
Ladies, ladies, please. I've lost zero.
Of course my body fat has gone down tremendously and clothes fit better and yadda yadda yadda. But there is something psychologically driving about seeing the scale go down. Naturally, lifting as much as I do involves forming muscle, especially when I'm packing in creatine and protein like it's my job. However, I'm at the point where I'd like to start burning fat faster than I'm putting on muscle.
Fortunately, I've entered the reduced calorie, carb-cycling phase of Jim Stoppani's program. I am now doing around 1650 calories and 70g of carbs 6 days a week and one day of >200g carbs (I can't wait for that day, Jersey Mikes, I'm looking at you). I don't know how much good the carb-cycling will do because there's not much research that I can find to support it (granted, there's not much research against it either), but the reduced calorie diet is probably the ticket.
Ummmm..... okay hold on. No crap. Cutting calories is obviously the solution. The reason I've not been seeing the scale drop is that I've been eating too many dang calories. End of story. I haven't been excessive, but I haven't been creating that deficit. I've been going by the "hunger" principle of if you're hungry, that's your body saying 'hey, I need more calories.' Okay sure, that may be true, but there's a few issues with this:
Sometimes your body is really saying, 'hey, I'm thirsty.' Sometimes your body is really saying 'hey, I want a tiny snack, not another meal,' and sometimes it's just your body being whiny because it's used to being spoiled, but really, it's fine and doesn't need any more nutrients, macro or micro.
I ignored the whines for the first time two days ago. I drank some water and eventually gave in with some celery (yeah, I know, I sound like an anorexic teenage girl). The thing is, I knew I had enough calories for the day and I knew every calorie had contributed essential vitamins and minerals. It wasn't like I had reached my daily goal by eating 3 donuts; everything I ate was chock-full of (insert things I've heard my nutritionist father say, but I couldn't explain if my life depended on it [such as flavonoids, phytochemicals, and polyphenols]). Basically, if I ate, I would be satisfying my body's habit of breaking even. I had to be the parent telling their toddler no. I had to be the mean owner taking their cat to the vet. I had to be the kid studying in the library when everyone else was at a raging keger. I had to be tough and stick it out.
Today is day 3 of being tough. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
