Phase 3: day 14 of 35

Date: Sun 18 Jan

Sleep: another 10 hours (interrupted at 2.30am by Oscar)

Weight: 61.3, up 0.1. Interesting. Guess my body needed the carbs after two lower-carb days. Expected weight to be a bit higher than that this morning. Sometimes it can take two days for carbs to show up on scales, so will 'weight' and see what tomorrow brings.
Total down 1.4

Relaxation: walk TJ to park.

Training: HIIT (sprints: 45s on, 135s off x5). I was aiming for RPEs of 8.5/10 and 5/10 for each phase. Out of interest I checked my heat rate about halfway through my workout, at the end of a sprint phase, and the end of a walk phase. I used the hand sensors on the treadmill, so don't know how accurate they are, but I got 155 after the sprint and 120 after the walk, so I'm working at 65% to 85% of maximum heart rate when I do these. Might try and measure heart rate for the shorter interval sprints next week.

Water: 3/3 (plus workout drinks)

Meal compliance: 6/6

***

Weekly Summary
Sleep: average 7 hours - need to go to bed earlier!

Weight: down 1.1kg since Monday.
Possible reasons:
- three days off training this week, and I chose to have low-carb meals for dinner on those three days
- added some supplements on Wed (fibre drink with flax seeds, fenugreek seeds and chlorophyll; banaba extract; R-ALA)
- had lots of tuna this week because it was too hot to cook
- not much coffee or sweetener
- more water

Relaxation & recovery: walk daily, 1 x 30-min yoga session

Exercise: weights 2/2, intervals (15 mins) 2/2 = 100%

Water intake: 19/21 = 90%

Food: 39/42 = 93%
Happy with off-plan meals as they were all healthy: two salmon meals, and yoghurt, protein powder and nuts

Thoughts:
- Should have waited until the end of the week before adding in supplements, as it makes it harder to assess what is responsible for the weight loss.
- Morning yoga has slipped a bit this week as I've been busy with work. Think I might try and do it on rest days at the same I'd normally do weights or HIIT, since that time is already scheduled for exercise, and then I can do longer sessions too.
- Skin is improving - don't know if it's from taking out wheat and sugar (always helps but not sure which is the culprit) or increasing water, or both. My workout drink lately has been Vitargo (barley starch) so no sugar there either. It's nearly finished so will be interested to see if replacing it with something sugary like Surge makes any difference to how I feel.

***

Decision Day
Have been following this plan for two weeks now, so time to assess and see if I want to make any changes. Rob isn't here to do my measurements but I've lost body fat (mostly from upper body) and I'm guessing lean mass has stayed the same or decreased slightly. Scale weight has decreased 1.4kg.

Training is going to stay the same for now (weights every third day, two HIIT sessions a week on non-weight-training days). I'm going to keep food on weight-training days and HIIT days 'as is' as that seems to be working well. On rest days I don't feel like I need much in the way of starchy carbs, so I'm going to try cutting out the sweet potato at dinner. So now my menus will look like this:

Weights day (every third day)
M1: egg whites, whole egg, beans, veggies, cheese, fruit, fish oil
M2: yoghurt, nuts, protein powder, Vital Greens
M3: lean protein, salad, nuts, oil dressing, fish oil
M4: lean protein, salad, nuts, oil dressing
Weights (protein and carb drink)
M5: lean protein, veggies, fruit, rice & sweet potato, fish oil
M6: egg whites/protein powder, fruit, oats/quinoa

HIIT days (2 x per week)
M1-M4 as above
HIIT (drink with BCAAs, glutamine and Vital Greens)
M5: lean protein, veges, fruit, few nuts, sweet potato, fish oil
M6: egg whites, whole egg, fruit, cheese

Rest days
M1-M4 as above
M5: lean protein, veges, fruit, few nuts, fish oil
M6: egg whites, whole egg, fruit, cheese

Will reassess in two weeks.

End of mega-post, LOL.