This week started out very difficult, as most diet and exercise programs do, but these last few days have been a bit easier. One of the things that helped me the last few days is that I’ve been staying at a hotel with a mini kitchen, so it makes it easier for me to eat my meals and to form some sort of a schedule.
I had one cheat day, but it was tempting to have more since I spent the weekend with my gourmet vegetarian friend, Lloyd, in the OC. I was trying to hold out longer; but I broke down when he offered to make gourmet Mac and Cheese. I had to do it. I also ended up having chips, soda, chocolate cake, and apple pie that day. It was a good cheat day. Only 3350 calories too; which used to be my daily amount of calories a few weeks ago.
I didn’t end up doing ‘real’ workouts until this Monday; and I’ve been doing at least 20 minutes on the treadmill followed by bodyweight exercises and/or rubber band exercises. I really wish I could use some real weights but I’m limited and have no gym access until I can get back to living full time in one location.
I checked my bodyfat and weight this morning and here are my numbers:
Body weight: 172.5 lbs.
Bodyfat percent: 17.0% (29.5 lbs. of fat)
Total pounds lost this week: 3.5lbs.
Total fat pounds lost: 2.7 lbs. (about 1.3% bodyfat)
So after the first week I’m right on target for my fat loss and reached the minimum of 2.5lbs. per week. However, I’m unhappy about the fact that I’m losing muscle too. Since I lost a total of 3.5lbs this week and only 2.7lbs of that was fat; that means there was about .8lbs of muscle lost.
This is a rough estimate as there were other factors that could have contributed besides muscle loss: different scale was used, I didn’t factor water weight, etc… Bottom line, I know at least some of that was muscle loss and I also know that I can’t have that happen every week. If it does, then by the time I reach 8% bodyfat I’ll be down around 150 lbs., and that’s just way too skinny for me.
I’ve been thinking about what I could do to try to maintain or even grow muscle as I’m losing the fat, and here’s what I came up with:
1) This week I’ve had between 1000-1800 calories per day (except for my cheat day) and I think that’s too low. For my activity level, I should eat around 2100 calories to maintain a 170 lb. bodyweight. So going forward I’m going to try to increase my calories.
2) I’m going to start taking some supplements to help build or maintain my muscle mass. I just need to figure out which would be best.
3) Be better with my workouts. I did have 3 workouts this week; but all the workouts were the last few days.
We'll see how it goes next week. :)
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