I’m well into my cut for this year now; I started the process in January as I said previously, using @abchallenge to get the ball rolling. I didn’t want to go into something ridiculously strict right from the get-go, I just cleaned up my diet and made a conscious effort to think about what I was eating and its calorie content. This method worked well, and by mid-January I had lost a good few pounds, while still lifting heavy, breaking through plateaus and smashing PB’s in the gym. As always I was following my 5x5 routine, but with work commitments and having a young baby, it tended to consist of 5x5 squats, dips and chins, with the next workout being upper body and deadlifts. I did lose squat strength towards the end of the month, but I had only managed about 10 training sessions in total and some of those were not my best.
This was me January 28th - not a bad change, starting to lose body fat and water from my arms and shoulders, but still holding the majority of my body fat in the belly, as most men do. I was happy with my results; thinking back it was a half-arsed attempt, but like I said I don’t think I would have wanted to spend January weighing and measuring my food, let alone doing any cardio. Bleurgh, cardio (I will come back to this in a bit).
I had the weekend off dieting, in the knowledge that I was about to step it up a gear in February. I had also been researching Intermittent Fasting and reading about different training systems, though I have been reluctant to leave the 5x5 as I know it’s worked for me. I think for me it will be my ‘off season’ weapon of choice, and it has served me well.
So it’s the first of February and it's time to start seriously thinking about my calorie intake, cardio and micro nutrients. If I have learned anything over the past few years of body building and dieting, it’s that being meticulous when it comes to counting calories is a sure fire way to fat loss. I use www.myfitnesspal.com as my food tracker,which you all know by now. I have started to add Cardio sessions in to my week every other day, and I've gone from running two and three quarter miles in 22 minutes to three and a half miles in the same time! I have always been a good runner; when I was in the Army I excelled in our fitness tests and could run a 7.15 minute mile and a half after doing 2 minutes of best effort press ups and sit ups. I’m getting into my running again at pace after having a niggling knee injury. Running in Vibram 5 fingers and using a foam roller to stretch my ITB band was the best decision I ever made... Well, one of them at least! I do worry about muscle wastage and losing leg size from the running, but It’s only 20 odd minutes and I’m enjoying it, so what the heck. Another good thing about adding cardio is that I get to eat the calories I have burned off. I know that sounds odd- why don’t you just not do the cardio and just eat the same? Well, it’s better for the metabolism to replace burned off calories with food, rather than just sitting on one's ass eating fish and rice cakes... (Don’t sit on your ass eating fish and rice cakes!)
I’m really meandering through this entry, I can’t even remember what the topic is... is there a topic? Oh yeah.... We are half way through February now and I’m feeling really good. I have been hitting my calorie goals and getting to the gym about 3 times a week. This is how my leg progress is coming along - starting to seea bit of separation now.
I have decided on my new training system and I have been successfully Intermittent fasting (IF). I’m not going to go into the IF as I would never recommend doing something I haven’t done for at least a month or had success with, so I will write about that more at the end of the month. I will say that this is the workout I have begun today (17th Feb); again I’m not saying you should do it as I don’t know if it’s any good yet, but I can recommend counting calories and following a 5x5 stronglifts workout because I have had success with both.
I think I will leave it there for this week, but I’m really looking forward to taking another picture and putting all three together at the end of the month. It will have only been 8 weeks! This is really no time at all to dramatically change your body composition- I would be happy with twice that time scale, as I'm sure you would be too.
Ben
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