Life, Diet, Recovery and General Mindset Update
My final year university exams are from next Monday to the Wednesday after and they’re pretty hard so there’s a lot of stress associated with that right now. I’ve always been easily stressed by this sort of stuff but I’m trying my best to ease it. Another important point related to these is that I need to be as focussed as possible which I’ll mention more later. There’s a few other bits stressing me out right now too but I won’t go into those.
Sleep has not been great this week or last week. Most nights has been in the 6hrs, 2-3 have been in the 7hrs and then one night at the weekend I got like 9hrs. Most people reading this are probably thinking what the hell am I complaining about and they would love 6hrs sleep but for me it’s not much. Usually I get 7-8hrs and I really try to make that a priority because even an hour less seems to effect me pretty badly. Maybe later in life, maybe now even, 6hrs is the best I’ll get and I’ll have to deal with it but it definitely makes a difference which is why I’m noting it. Last couple of days have been better though so hopefully I can keep that up.
Calories wise, I’m eating more than I had planned and mentioned in my last T-ransformation update. So far my average for the week is 2048 cals vs my target of 1714 so about 300 over. There’s been a couple of reasons for this. First, since last week I’m hungry pretty much all the time. Up until then I wasn’t usually too hungry unless I went like 6hrs without a meal but now I’m hungry as soon as I’ve finished my meals. This started once I restarted lifting so maybe it’s that or maybe it’s because I increased my calories a bit last week and now my body doesn’t want to go back down - I don’t know. The other reason is to try and recover a bit more. Most mornings I’ve woken up feeling rubbish and a few days I’ve felt spaced out, some of my joints were achy and like my sinuses were blocked - just generally run down. At one point I thought it could even be COVID again but between my household one of us tests basically every day and we’ve all been negative every time. Anyway, the hunger and feeling spaced out is especially problematic right now with my exams obviously.
My weight has been pretty stable every day this week so far so I’m probably somewhere around maintenance although I expect I’m probably below it a bit and will have like a 0.5kg drop in weight any day now. My physique looks probably the best it has so far and my strength is still going up in the gym so all great there. I think there’s a chance I could be recomping somewhat. I guess what I’m trying to figure out is whether I should keep eating as I am, eat less or even eat more and also whether I should change anything activity wise. I’m really enjoying both cycling and lifting and they’re basically the only things I leave the house for right now so I don’t want to do those less ideally. Decreasing either would probably make me less happy.
So onto eating then. Considering all I’ve written out, it seems like a stupid idea for me to drop my calories anymore until my exams are over at least. Doing so might hinder my performance physically and mentally, not to mention my well-being. The benefit would be losing fat, however right now I am in a good place since I’m getting stronger, hopefully building some muscle and maybe losing some fat. Maybe it would lead to a better T-ransformation result but it also might not. Keeping things as they are is probably sustainable, just uncomfortable, but will probably be made much better with more sleep. I always sleep more on weekends so I’ve got that in my favour and I think I can carry that on into next week. Better sleep and recovery also means potentially more muscle, less fat and more focus. Finally, eating more is tempting and basically would have the same benefits as maintaining but more so. I wouldn’t lose as much fat, might even gain some but if it’s just for a week or two it will be fine.
To conclude this huge wall of text, for now I think I’ll keep calories around 2000ish, focus on sleeping and assess how I feel after a few days. If I’m struggling a bit I’m happy to creep the calories up a little more but ideally not to the point I gain weight. If I start feeling good and sleeping well I might bring calories down a little bit but I’ll be cautious of how I feel. Then once things are a bit less ‘stressful’ I’ll resume the weight loss. I think at some point I’d like to get down to about 70kg because I think that’s where I’d look best but I could always lose that extra bit of fat later in the year after a period of maintenance. It might not be sustainable all year round with my lifestyle but it’d be nice to reach if I end up going on any sort of holiday this year.
If you’ve made it this far thank you and well done. I wrote all but the last paragraph early this afternoon and the rest now (about 21:30) after I thought about stuff some more. I was tempted not to post in the end because I feel like it got a bit longer and more personal than I usually am but writing it all out really helped me sort out what I’ve been thinking about for the last couple of days. If anything it’ll probably be useful for me to re-read in future so I can remember how things were. Anyway that’s enough for now.
