Just keep going man, it’ll all pay off in the end. Your mind will play tricks on you, you’ll feel lazy, get cravings and all that, but you’ve just got to keep your eyes on the prize. Remember that cheating on your diet or slacking in the gym would essentially be just throwing money away, as you are working with a coach.
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Yeah I’m doing my best.
I don’t know what’s happening to me today tho. I just look at myself and I’m seriously convinced I’m fatter wtf
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You’re probably just depleted and/or watery. Could be just from training and diet stress, but other life stressors contribute to that as well. A lot of people also perceive themselves in very odd ways during a diet; when they are not in the gym they feel fat and small, but in the gym they feel like they should be in a bodybuilding competition. They’ll hit poses all the time, take pictures, all that. It’s just brain chemistry.
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Sounds very familiar hah
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So I just had my refeed. Oh boy.
Let’s proceed one thing at a time. First of all, here’s a video of me doing the last set of my workout. For some reason, I thought I looked good so I took the shirt off and got filmed.
Then, here’s my refeed menu pics
Round # 1
Round # 2
Round # 3
I looked like an animal while I was eating all of this.
When I finished the pasta I was almost to the point of throwing up. Man, can’t wait to come back to my diet tomorrow! It was fun tho.
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So midway through week 6, things have gone much better since the refeed. I’m feeling much much better and hunger has gone slightly down. What a properly timed refeed.
Here’s a video of a biceps superset round from yesterday’s workout. I got a tad overzealous with the weight so my form wasn’t top notch.
I gotta say that, while I was very happy with my progress up until a couple of weeks ago, I’m now feeling like I haven’t gotten leaner at all. I still look soft in my mid section despite the upper body being leaner and sometimes I flat out feel fat.
I have the rest of this week plus two more weeks left before getting to the end of the eight weeks. I have arranged with Paul for another 8 week block because I think it’ll be worth it to focus on putting on mass for a solid two months after this cut. But now I’m really starting to question whether I’ll be sufficiently lean when these two weeks and a half are up.
What’s your take guys? I have even bought a bottle of hot-rox just to be sure, I’m really doing my best because I want to get shredded and I want to get it done in these few remaining weeks.
You look pretty damn lean to me. You’ve definitely gotten leaner the last couple of weeks. Keep going man!
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Have you told Paul about how you’re feeling? I wouldn’t tinker with the program when you have a very experienced coach in your corner. Telling your coach how you feel and how you’re progressing makes his job easier, even if he tells you to keep stuff as it is; making your own adjustments make his job a lot harder.
I don’t know how you’ve arranged follow-ups with Paul, but tell him about your feelings at the first possible instance, he’ll tell you what to do.
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I haven’t yet, he asked me to compile everything into our weekly check in so I’ll wait until Sunday to tell him.
I haven’t considered changing the program, did I mention that in my post? Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. It’s just that I’m afraid I might not get to the right leanness level in these three weeks. I’m just afraid of that…
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Take it easy man, it’ll be alright.
When I say not to tinker with the program I don’t refer only to completely switching programs, but everything; don’t start doing extra work or cutting calories without a green light from the coach. Doing that would essentially be just digging your own grave. Trust the process and give Paul good, honest feedback.
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I truly hope so. It’s not like I’m afraid I won’t get there, I just fear not getting there within these weeks. It’s more an issue of time and money than anything.
Honesty, looking at the pics and videos, how do you think I’m doing? I know it’s ultimately what Paul says that counts, it’s just that until I hear from him I can’t get to understand if it’s currently all in my head or I have actually plateaued. I’m just too biased.
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In my eyes you’ve made progress between every picture you have posted here; go back a while and look at the pics from weeks 0-2 with Paul. You were a lot softer there than you are now.
It’s pretty common for a person on diet to first see progress and be excited, then see it slow down for a while and after a bit of time you make a giant leap in terms of looks (real or perceived).
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So we’re nearing end of week six and I figured I’d post a couple more pics. I hope I’m not boring you to death as my log has recently only been a collection of photos, but that’s because there isn’t much else to talk about apart from how I’m looking and how I’m feeling. Paul even suggested I do not log my workouts while we work on fat loss, which I haven’t in fact done for three weeks. And diet I don’t feel like discussing it too much in details for fairness. Just know that he made my deficit a tad bigger from this week onwards reducing fats slightly.
Here’s three pics taken today at the gym
The other day I decided to shave my upper body which would give me a little bit of a boost in confidence, looking more defined. I feel skinny as fuck right now.
I haven’t got much of a problem sticking to the diet anymore, I’m just numb towards the hunger. I’ll tell you the truth: what’s killing me here is the cardio. Doing it every day is getting unsustainable and my knees, ankles, calves, and feet hurts to the point it’s sometimes painful to just walk. I’m doing everything I can to turn that running into something else: I substituted some of the due 30-min sessions of LISS with 2-hour long walks and I’m planning to make that my only form of cardio for the rest of the diet.
You know something is wrong when thinking about your weight training session you’re going to have doesn’t make you anxious inside but then thinking about the cardio after that does.
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So you’re way past the “cardio is fun” - stage, eh?
You’re almost done with the diet, just keep on going man
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Definitely past that. Can’t believe I did say that lol.
Speaking of cardio, do you think that hours long walks can be as effective as 30 mins steady state? Haven’t checked in with Paul on this yet.
I don’t think I can express with words how much I truly hope this is the case.
Btw, I recently noticed that I have a pretty evident left to right size imbalance, with the right side being the one more developed (weirdly enough, I’m a left handed), just look at my last back pic and the Triceps. Damn is it weird man
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With such long walks there are a couple of problems;
- Being able to walk at a pace fast enough for the whole time without getting distracted.
If you don’t just lay I’m bed or sit in front of a computer for all of your free time you won’t expend that much extra energy if your pace is too slow when walking, as you probably would be moving around anyways.
Related to that we come to:
- You’ll probably become less active for the remainder of the day
Walking a whole lot with a high frequency will drain you to an extent. You’ll be tired. When you’re not walking or training you’ll probably move around less, stand less and fidget less when doing nothing. As the amount of those actions reduces your energy expenditure will reduce as well. (And thus you’ll get less bang for your buck with walks as the extra energy you spend will have to cover the lost expenditure first)
- Increased cortisol and decreased metabolism;
These go pretty much hand in hand. Long duration cardio is a stressor, even if it is low intensity, and it will increase the amount of cortisol you produce making it harder to recover and lose fat as your metabolism downregulates. Wether or not you’ll experience this in such short time as two weeks is debatable.
Troubleshooting;
The easiest fix for this would be to split the walk in two parts. Doing this would leave you less tired, decrease the cortisol output and improve the efficiency of each walk so the total time spent walking can be decreased. (Can’t give you any exact numbers, but 2x40 minutes would be one example)
The biggest problem with this approach would be setting it up. One walk in the morning and one in the evening would probably be the best way to go about it.
But as always, ask Paul what he thinks about it
Yeah, I can see a bit if difference in there, but that’s completely fixable. If the muscles had notable differences in terms of shape it would be a whole another story. (Although in real life people don’t really notice it unless you point it out)
That’s exactly what I was thinking! I was thinking an hour in the afternoon and then another one in the evening after my workout before heading to the car. This week I also added a twenty minute walk every morning before going to school.
As for the pace, I think I might work around this by choosing some nice uphill locations around home that’d still up the caloric expenditure without having to outright run to achieve that.
Lastly, regarding metabolic slowdown adaptations, it might seem strange but I have been doing my best to consciously combat this: whenever I catch myself laying back too much I stand up and do something. I increased my caffeine assumption and some of that comes from drinking freezing cold diet coke as well. Drinking something cold is a trick I read on a lyle McDonald’s book once, which supposedly helps burn a few calories to maintain homeostasis as far as body temperature.
All of this makes me think even more that I might be getting crazy with all the micro management, but it really isn’t much of a burden to me to think about this stuff (and I like coffee and diet soda).
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Personally I wouldn’t do that to avoid overstimulating the sympathetic nervous system. Also, adrenal fatigue and caffeine tolerance could occur. Coffee is beneficial in small to medium doses but you don’t want to overdo it
That’s true, there were some studies with numbers for the extra energy expenditure, but I don’t remember how much it was
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Actually I feel like I was born with caffeine tolerance. If you look at my other thread, I said that it basicaly does nothing to me, even in huge quantities and after periods not taking it. I don’t feel anything but I hope I somehow still rip the thermogenic effects.
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