One month in, 2 weeks left. I've already planned my Dominoes pizza. It's always the one thing I crave when cutting.
Woke up this morning and weighed in at 60.3kg. That's 3.2kg in 4 weeks. I was aiming for around 0.6-0.9kg loss each week, plus water weight loss in the first week, so I've pretty much nailed it so far. Last week saw me up my steps and (enter sad face here) drop my calories. I really didn't want to have to do it, but the weight just wasn't budging. Here's a rundown on everything!
Training
Training is still going well, even though i'm still working out from home. There's no reason why I can't go back to working out at the studio now, but I'd rather finish this mesocycle off at home and return to the studio when I go back to bulking in a few weeks (I've already started laying down the foundations for my next bulking mesocycle. It feels so good to plan a program with some actual weight!).
Here's my leg session from yesterday:
- Hack Squat (Using a foam roller, bands and dumbbells)
3x 10-20
- Banded Prone Hamstring Curl
1x 60 second isometric hold each side
2x 8 each side
- Banded Reverse Lunges
3x 10 each side (no rest, 10 reps on one side, then straight into 10 reps on the other, carry on repeating until you've done 3 sets each side).
- Single Leg Calf Raise with a Kettlebell
4x10 each side
- Bodyweight Calf Raises
1x 15 (toes in)
1x 15 (toes out)
2x 15 (neutral toes)
As I mentioned above, last week I upped my daily step count to between 10-12k each day. Prior to that I was doing 7-10k each day. I'm still not doing any cardio and I don't plan to. As I mentioned in previous posts, I'm not a believer in doing cardio on mini cuts. It's more of a personal opinion more than anything. I just believe cardio is a tool that should be utilised on a longer cut, not a mini cut. Drop your food as low as you can on a mini cut, get in and get out.
Nutrition
Unfortunately I had to drop my calories by a further 200 at the end of last week. My weight was yo-yoing around the 63kg mark and even the extra steps wouldn't make it shift. I dropped all 200 calories from my carbs, so I've been eating at:
1,800 Calories
139g Protein
42g Fat
216g Carbs
I'm pretty confident these will be my macros for the final two weeks. They seem to be working nicely.
I was asked the other day by a follower to upload a Full Day Of Eating on to the members site, so expect to see that over the next couple of weeks.
Because food choices aren't guaranteed at the minute (what with the small issue of being in the middle of a pandemic), I haven't been following a set meal plan. However, I am naturally a creature of habit, so I tend to stick to the same group of meals everyday. These include oats, granola and yoghurt or toast and a shake for breakfast, something rice, pasta or couscous based for lunch and something potato based for dinner.
Recovery
I'm still continuing to recover nicely. As I mentioned in my previous two posts, my recovery strategies don't really change based on what phase I'm in. It's important to stay consistent with them year round. For me, this includes:
- Staying on top of my sleep (no caffeine past 3pm, blue light blocking glasses on at 7pm, no food past 8pm, going to bed and waking at the same time everyday, etc.)
- Foam rolling and mobility work twice a week (light foam rolling session on a Wednesday evening and a big recovery session on a Sunday. This includes a hot bath, foam rolling and lacrosse balling my entire body, mobility exercises and stretching).
- Stress management (deep breathing post workout and pre meals, and meditating before bed)
A couple of weeks ago I also purchased my first Oura ring. I've now started to build up a decent chunk of data on the app, and so far I'm really pleased with my investment. I think it's going to be a great tool to be able to utilise. The step tracking is really handy. Having to have my phone in my pocket 24/7 just wasn't possible and therefore I wasn't seeing an accurate step count. The sleep tracker seems really accurate and the recovery feedback is fantastic.
Something like an Oura Ring shouldn't be your first step. You need to work on your recovery habits first, before buying something like this. An Oura Ring gives you a 1% advantage. Working on your recovery strategies gives you a 99% advantage.
Lastly, a new step I've been taking is to measure my blood pressure every morning. I'm not sure why it's taken me this long to start doing it, if I'm being honest. It's a really valuable bit of data to have. My dad had a blood pressure monitor stuffed in the back of his wardrobe, so I've stolen that (with his permission!) and have started recording my readings on my phone. Interestingly my blood pressure has been really low every morning since I've started taking the measurements. I don't however have any symptoms of hypotension (dizziness. feeling sick, blurred vision, etc.) so it's not something I'm worried about. It's just handy to no what my normal is, so if anything changes I can keep track of it.
Scale Weight & Body Composition
I started this mini cut at 63.5kg, and this morning I weighed in at 60.3kg. My initial aim was to get down to 59-58kg by the end of this. I think there's a still a possibility of me getting there but, to be honest, I'm more than happy with how my body composition is looking, so I'm not getting too tied up in chasing a scale weight. Couple more weeks then we'll deload and enter the bulk 2.0!
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