You wouldn’t think that training with light weights would be especially fatiguing, but I really do look forward to rest days in these mesocycles. I try not to be too sedentary, and “borrowing” my bosses dog helps in that regard. I do try to rest and relax though.

I also don’t modify my diet much if at all on rest days. I try to keep within +/- 100 Calories of my target for the week. Since I’m in a cutting phase, if an extremely modest one, I don’t worry too much if I come in below the target. Last week I ended with an daily average calorie intake of right at the bottom of the range (88 Calories below the target). So far this week I am running 68 Calories below the target. With the way I have my diet structured, this isn’t apt to change much in the next few days. Below is an image from my tracking spreadsheet for first two weeks of this cutting period.

This spreadsheet calculates my target for daily Calories based on comparing my Calorie intake with my change in weight over an 8 week period. So if I have lost 4 pounds over 8 weeks, that is half a pound per week which works out to 250 Calories a day. If my average Calorie intake in that period was 2200 this would imply my maintenance level would be about 2450. The sheet then uses that figure and adjusts based on the option selected in the left-most cell. The Recomp option equals losing .25% of my body weight per week, so pretty modest. At my current weight this works out to just under half a pound per week or a reduction of 250 calories.

The graph below shows my progress so far.

The red line in the graph above displays the actual scale reading each morning. As you would expect, it bounces around quite a bit. The blue line is a 7-day trailing average. Meaning the point for today is an average of the last 7 days. As you can see, this smooths out most of the jags you get from the daily measurements. I find it much more useful to use this figure in my calculations as it avoids the problem of using a period where the first measurement was an oddly low one and end was an oddly high one.

The green lines indicate the range I would expect to have the blue line fall in over the period of the graph. The solid green is the expected weight I would see if the rate of loss selected occurred every day. The dashed lines indicate a range of +/- 1.25% of this value. If my current trend continues I’ll likely pass out of this band but since I deliberately selected a small weight loss goal, I won’t complain too much if I lose faster. I’m not feeling particularly hungry so I don’t feel any need to significantly increase my calorie intake.

It will be interesting to see how my progress continues over the next few weeks. I would like to get down to ~175 lbs before taking another maintenance phase. Probably another long one now that I’ve come to the conclusion that maintenance phases a the real key to long-term weight loss.

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