Day Fourty-Four

Today's Weigh-In: 215.1 lbs.

I'm still maintaining a slow but steady weight-loss of about a pound per week. Pretty happy about that. My energy in the gym and recovery capacity hasn't been awesome, to be perfectly honest, but I knew going into this that I would have to make some trade-offs to achieve this goal. In the past when I started to have trouble recovering I would end up eating more, but that would stall my weight-loss efforts, so I would basically stagnate. But this time I have one goal, and that's weight loss with as little strength/muscle loss as possible, and so I know that having to reduce my volume and stick to the basics is a necessary thing. I really like being in the gym and training, so it's hard mentally, but once I hit my goal and ramp up my calories I'll be able to ramp the volume back up.

Right now I'm mostly focused on hitting my strength work (back squat, bench press, shoulder press, deadlifts, and Olympic lifting) consistently and only adding in as much conditioning as I feel I can recover from, which right now is about 2 really short (5-10 minutes) workouts a week. I've been doing a version of CheatMode on my workout days, fasting for 16-18 hours, eating one meal, hitting my workout, and then eating the rest of my food (including higher carbs) after. On non-workout days I've still been mostly doing the fasts but eating lower-carb and spreading things out more evenly, and just eating less food. It's definitely working; the numbers don't lie, and I'm leaner visually (can see my ribs more clearly, and shoulders look more cut). Still got a long ways to go, but if I can keep up this momentum I will definitely hit my goals.