February update

Numbers

Started the month at 181.5 lbs, hoping to see 177 by the end of February. For the first two weeks I continued to hover around 180-182, and it wasn’t until the last part of the month that I dipped below 180 at last, but I did reach 178 by the time the month ended.

Weekly BJJ, going well. Weekly resistance training - making progress! More on that below.

Reflections

Aiming to lose a pound a week this month felt like a reasonable goal, but it was actually surprisingly difficult. Still, I’m happy with how it’s going. I’m losing at a very reasonable rate, and I’m not in any hurry. (See my strategy update below.) Already, at 178, I’m barely overweight by BMI (and according to waist circumference, I’m already in the ideal range). Losing slowly is supposed to be better for muscles and hormones. So I’ll keep aiming for this range until I reach the weight I don’t want to go lower than (whatever that turns out to be this time). I used to aim to lose like ten pounds a month, but I think at this level of leanness that might just be unrealistic for me now. I found a similar thing during my deficit last summer.

I’ve been thinking about my “bulking/cutting” strategy and thinking it needs fine tuning. What’s nice is that, as I said previously, at my current level of muscle mass, I’m honestly quite happy with how I look when I’m in the weight range I want to be in, so that gives me the freedom to be, perhaps, more patient and experimental. I don’t think I was in that place in September or October when I began the first real “slow bulk” that lasted a few months, but even that one three-month stretch was enough to put me across that line. So here’s what I’m thinking I want to do now. I think I want to try to diet down to be a little bit leaner than I’ve been before (into the high 160s, I’m thinking?), and then just switch to something closer to maintenance calories, not trying to bulk but accepting that trying to maintain at a lowish weight while living normal life will probably mean my weight slowly creeping up over time - and then the idea would be that anytime the weight gets into the top half of the 170s, I’d switch to a deficit again and get back to the lower end where I had started. The goal will be to do enough resistance training (I think I might want to steal from the French language and adopt “musculation” in place of resistance training - so much better as a word!) that I don’t lose muscle, or not much muscle, while I’m in a deficit, and enough to preserve or increase muscle mass while in maintenance calories, depending on my motivation levels (riding the excitement whenever I’m inspired to do a lot, but being generous with myself during times of low motivation without ever letting myself off the hook entirely). I like this idea. I’m excited to give it a try! So I’ll keep dieting for now until I hit that new low, and then whenever I get there I’ll try switching to the maintenance mode and see where things go from there.

I’ve started looking for moments in my week when I can do some of my isometrics easily - times when I have thirty seconds when no one is expecting me to say anything, when I can’t be working on other things (eg learning stuff on my phone). Church was the place this first occurred to me, which I’m a bit embarrassed about. But it works! During my kids’ brushing of teeth in the evening is the second place. Lying in bed at night listening to an audiobook on my way to falling asleep has also worked sometimes. When my kids are having bath time and I supervise can be a good time. Just at the end of the month I realized BJJ class itself can be a great time for this (eg warming up before class, or waiting for someone to roll with at the end of class). I’m far from the weirdest looking warmup in class, so it works really well. This new approach, of building the isometrics into where they naturally fit in my weekly schedule, is such a game changer. It makes it much easier to hit my targets and more. I’m looking forward to continuing to refine this new approach. It feels unfair sometimes, honestly, how much easier this is for me than almost anyone would think it should be for this stuff to work.

Predictions

Ended the month at 178; let’s shoot for 174 by April. See what happens.

BJJ, resistance training: weekly consistency. Same as always.