Having been through a period of significant change in the past, I know that there are adaptation periods where stuff lags a bit then thunders through in terms of weight/fat loss. However, I've not experienced anything quite like the last few weeks. With a caloric excess in intake of approximately 200-300kcals per day over almost 14 days, I've -lost- exactly 3kg. Now, this tells me exactly nothing. There are so many factors at play that I have no idea why it's happened. My training routine has changed from lots of medium to long slow training with some strength sprinkled in, to some of those low grind sessions replaced by power and/or speed work. In addition, I've had a 3 day period with no training at all, so I ended up eating less overall and thus have less food mass in transit. I've had a cold thing which headed into my guts yesterday morning and is almost completely gone today. Also, as the weight has been dropping, I've not been updating the settings on my Polar heart rate monitor so that's over-estimating how many calories I'm spending on exercise which means I'm actually taking in even more than 200-300kcals extra a day over what I need.
So, it's handy that I've had a head start on getting to my target race weight, but... I'll keep an eye on things for another couple of weeks and hopefully things will settle down again, otherwise I've got to work out what's going wrong with my thinking.
thus proving that losing weight can be an irrational science......
ReplyDeleteWith the recent stress in my life(!) I've discovered that my weight has dropped significantly (for me that's more than 1.5kg). I'm now sitting at a rock-steady 70kg and nothing I do seems to change it. Even the uptick in my running schedule (more on that in my own journal in a week) and strength training doesn't seem to affect it so perhaps my body's become more efficient at burning off its caloric intake? I know I look thinner (people have commented) but I don't think it's significantly down to muscle mass decrease, especially not in my legs. As you said, perhaps for both of us it's an adaptation period/lag and things will change again in a little while?
ReplyDeleteI know I find it hard to work out how many calories I burn through exercise, especially on my long cycle rides. I am however in the opposite situation to you and am trying to gain weight.
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