Cardio’s done. That was pretty easy this morning. It wasn’t too tough to get up this morning… I have a big presentation to HSBC later today, so needed to get up and out! Cardio was good – it went quickly, I was focussed, and while I didn’t push terribly hard, burnt the right number of calories and endured 
Last night was interesting… I’m picking my words carefully here – I was ravenous. I got back from work, and I just needed to eat – lots and lots and lots. But the good thing was, I wanted to eat good things – not bad. So I got a half chicken from Swiss Chalet – which I didn’t completely eat… but also got a side of fries – I wanted to try one or two. Funny thing – I opened up the fries, looked at them, the smell hit me – I could only manage to have about 2 before it almost made me sick! They were so fatty, greasy, soggy. They were not good. I can’t believe I used to down them! Good – positive change though
And this ravenous state is teaching me something… that the body’s telling me one of two things:
- It’s cold outside, and therefore it wants to develop a thicker skin (in contrast to the fact that I’m trying to get rid of fat)
- It’s ready to grow again… it’s ready to fill those muscles up again
I think it’s a bit of both – but this is a good sign… I need to be wanting to grow when I start growing. And in fact, this links in quite nicely with something I read recently… that one of the best times to ‘grow’ is when you’ve been cutting for a while – the body’s ready and eager to start sucking up those calories and build muscle – that’s why footballers can grow so quickly in the build up to their season.
So this has got me thinking about how I want to approach Stage 3 of training. My expectation is that I’ll want to lose about 10lbs of weight in Stage 3 (as opposed to ~25-30lbs in Stage 2). I’ve noticed a great loss of muscle in Stage 2 (but without the sustained decrease in strength that you’d normally expect). So I’m almost considering upping my calorie intake (good calories) by 500cals a day, which should maintain the muscle, while still allowing me to lose fat. I’ve got some great plans that I can start to follow – so we’ll just see. I’m not convinced of any approach yet – let alone what training plan I’ll do (I need to look into that). It’s still going to be a cutting phase – I’m going to follow the guidelines I set up a few weeks ago. But with regards to nutrition plan, supplements and training – they’re still all TBD.