So, last week I left you on something of a cliffhanger as I had revealed after only four weeks I had lost a stone on my current diet. As well as the general complaints from my girlfriend about looking ‘too skinny’, I could feel it in myself.
This forced my hand a little and so sought immediate council from Gareth (MaxiNutrition Nutritionist). He explained that this sort of thing happens regularly when getting into the routine of a diet, “you never know how your body is going to react” he said. He also said that it’s going to adapt as you go along and things will change here and there.
One point he did explain quite well, was that this is a counter-intuitive programme. “By doing lots of running, you will lose both fat and a little bit of muscle weight, so you need eat extra to keep everything in order,” he said, “plenty of protein needs to be consumed for the muscles to grow, and enough calories so you’re eating more than you’re burning.”
So my calorie target has now been upped to 2500, the protein now at 150 and the fat and carbs at 50 and 300 respectively. Gareth also said that changing little things like eating nuts or cottage cheese in your morning / afternoon snack will help.
I’m essentially now breaking this into 7 sections, take a look right, that’s a day from this week (week 6). The idea is to divvy the protein up in those 7 sections equally. It’s a lot of eating, but I’m hoping now that this can get my weight back up in the right way.
It’s interesting to see that as I’ve hit the halfway point I have seemingly switched focus. I feel like I’ve stripped all the crap away, and now I’ll be putting weight on in the right way. I’ve noticed a small bit of definition on my stomach, but as I’ve lost a lot of weight, it doesn’t look big by any means. I’m sure as I really push the exercises and eat more, I’ll see a big change in these remaining five weeks.
As for last week’s exercises, check them out, right.
You may have noticed that the rest periods have decreased to only 30 seconds, this is tough, especially with the reps increasing also.
You’ll also recognise that many of these exercises have been done before, apart from the added twist on the side plank. I’m not sure if you have ever moved your hips and down during a side plank, but it burns like nothing else.
Now, as always with these exercises, they’ve been pretty ad hoc and on the go. I went to a Krav Maga class last week, it’s essentially a self-defence class built around real life situations. It was absolutely brutal, to the extent that my legs and upper body were in real pain come Saturday.
I counted it as one of my workouts for sure, and I have absolutely no idea how I managed a 7 mile run on the Friday.
Saying this, I still did my best to fit in a workout Saturday morning and a mini one on Sunday.
On Saturday it was my girlfriend’s birthday, so, as you can imagine there were a few beers involved and maybe 3 cheeseburgers. I called that my cheat day. Plus, I need to put on weight, so why not have a few beers!
This week I am off to Rome, and taking my exercise plan with me!
