Defining

Is this a hypothetical, or what you're actually lifting? If the latter, you can just keep trying to increase reps with the new weight until you hit 10.

RIGHT?! For myself, I tend to end up right back at square one though. Plus a bit of extra existential doubt to throw into the mix. Sometimes it's useful for me to think rather than feel, in order to understand where the spark is though. Like, yeah, I like movies - but WHY? I'm eating at maintenance, but eventually - at some point - need to lose about 20lbs of fat. I refuse to try any proper fat loss campaign though until/unless I have workouts and protein intake dialed in, because that way lies madness and ending up in a worse place than where I started. I'd rather stay fat than lose 10lbs of muscle because I was being an idiot about it. BUT, I'm very very very bad at staying consistent with my workouts and/or protein for longer than 2-3 months at a time. And recently I've been struggling to get started at all. My thought process is that if I eat MORE, it will be a way to add extra energy which in turn should help to kick my ass into gear for the warm months, and then I can either continue with what I'm doing (assuming I don't gain a TON of weight) or when I'm ready just drop down to 'normal' protein levels which coincidentally should then take me into a deficit without needing to change much. I'm also noticing a pretty major mid-day energy slump, which kicks in around 2pm and doesn't recover for the rest of the day - I'm off caffeine entirely right now, and I'm only on moderate carb intake so it shouldn't be any spike/crash cycles from that. The thing I'm coming back to is sleep quality, but I've even been feeling lately that my sleep has actually been improving (at least in terms of how often I'm waking up during the night). I typically walk the dogs around this time, which forces me to get up and move, since I know that otherwise I'll just sit for the rest of the day. It's also the reason I've been trying to get into the sun earlier in the morning as well, to support my circadian rhythm. I don't nap well, but at this point I'm feeling pretty defeated with the 'I'm doing everything properly, why is this still an issue' side of things. What else is the on the list, smelling salts? _____________ May 17 - The future belongs to those who prepare for it today. - Malcom X (el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz) _____________ May 18 - Success isn't about the end result; it's about what you learn along the way. - Vera Wang

This reminds me a little bit of my friend who always cleans up before her housecleaner stops by for the week; she says that she wants it tidy so the cleaners can do their stuff as fast as possible. But some weeks, it would make her life a LOT easier if she weren't so stressed about picking up the dog toys and getting dishes off the counters for someone to come in and wipe down those surfaces for her. I completely understand that it's not easy to reach out for professional support, and you may have previous experiences which colour your trust and perspectives around that process. Would it help to consider approaching it in a way where you say to your therapist/support 'I know I need help, but I also have issues around asking for/dealing with the process of getting help - so that needs to be addressed along with the recent issues I'm dealing with as well'? AKA. 'I know the floor needs to be cleaned, but do you mind helping me clean up the dog toys first?'

Sounds like a pretty damned good week thus far!

Um. I don't know how I've missed these details. But that kind of sounds like an epic and aspirational goal set for me! How did you get into gamedev?!

So I just caught up. I don't have any suggestions or tips, I'm sorry. It sounds like you've been dealing with a TON of very challenging/shitty/painful situations with an incredible amount of grace. Giving yourself time to process, to take care of yourself in whatever way you need right now, and to draw boundaries as/when needed in order to keep space for yourself to breathe are all totally legitimate 'goals'. If the option is available to you, professional support may be helpful as well? Tank has hit the nail on the head: taking a moment to conserve your energy and regroup - that's more than enough of a 'goal' right now.

I'm ok! Promise. This is dumb, but I was gearing up to get into ANOTHER argument with someone last week..... The TL;DR is: that I've pared back a TON of my online engagement in the last week or so, hopefully in a permanent way. I have better things to spend my energy on. On that note, I've been pondering a quotation I encountered recently (by Ethan Hawke via TED talks): "What do you love? [If] you get close to what you love, who you are is revealed to you, and it expands." I have wasted a LOT of time in the past trying to 'figure out my identity', or 'find my why', or a 'purpose', or some kind of bullshit along those lines. And I've always struggled to find a meaningful answer. But for whatever reason, THIS way of thinking of things really seems to resonate. So I'm going to spend a bit more energy meditating on 'what do you love', in the next few weeks. I'm also debating trying a kind of 'radical' intervention, as a re-set to try to pull my own head out of my ass. 2,200kcal and 260g+ of protein each day? It's a good time of year to try it out, I suppose, since it's easy to go out for a couple extra hours of dog walks a day (though that'll need to be more morning/evening to avoid the worst of the heat). Hey, maybe that dovetails in nicely with 'get more sun outside' in the morning? _____________ May 16 - Don't you ever let a soul in the world tell you that you can't be exactly who you are. - Lady Gaga (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta)

You and I are fundamentally in disagreement about this, and I think it is misleading and potentially even dangerous to suggest that there aren't hormonal implications 'for the first two weeks', or that a 40% deficit isn't 'extreme'. Suffice to say, the OP should consult with professional for their own needs and health, and I'll try not to clutter up his thread with anymore back and forth.

There are very real hormonal implications to extreme deficits, and many of them cause lots of very undesirable side effects. Going on a 1,000kcal deficit or the average person is almost guaranteed to affect your performance in the gym, decrease NEAT, and run a much higher likelihood of losing a higher proportion of muscle mass in that time period (which is only offset with sufficient protein intake, especially BCAAs). You actually SHOULDN'T train hard when in a high deficit (30%+), because your body will not be able to recovery properly, and you will lose more muscle than if you chose a more moderate exercise and/or deficit strategy. Independent of all that, extreme deficits are far more likely to result in rebound behaviour (unless they also dovetail with eating habit interventions), and are a terrible choice for adherence for more than a short period of time (eg. 10-14 days). A month at a 40% deficit will break most people's willpower, understandably so. Plus it's far more difficult to hit basic RDAs for vitamins and minerals - which, even with supplements, can be extraordinarily challenging to meet with higher deficits. That being said, I agree that there's no need to eat a big meal before hitting the gym, @4leafclover - if anything it'd be recommended to NOT eat a ton for 1-2hrs before working out. Getting in a pre-workout shake for additional protein is helpful, but isn't really too important if you're already eating sufficient protein for the rest of the day. I also agree that often 'I'm not losing weight' has more to do with underestimating intake and overestimating expenditure (ie. eating more than you realise, and doing less exercise than you think), but that's also why I like to use the 'sedentary' TDEE as a baseline and then just add on specific workouts on top. So for example here, you'd take a 'sedentary' TDEE and add in 3-4x ~300kcal for each workout, which averages out to something probably around 2,300-2,400/day TDEE all else being equal. You'd only reach 2,700kcal/day with 'moderate activity', but true moderate activity levels are typically only reached if your daily job is physical (eg. hotel cleaner, framer, landscaper, etc.). Regular workouts and average step counts don't = moderate activity, unfortunately. Let's say, for sake of discussion, that you're actually eating closer to 2,200kcal instead of 2,000kcal (10% is a common 'margin of error' to consider when estimating calories), at which point you're back to a 700-1,400kcal deficit a week, which translates to relatively slow fat loss. There isn't anything inherently wrong with that, unless it's not working for you. If you want to see faster results, I like using the 2 weeks on/2 weeks off strategy for adherence and just general ability to still enjoy life. So, for example, that might look like 2,400kcal on maintenance weeks, and <1,700kcal for deficit weeks, with protein intake ideally hitting 180-200g/day. If you have a pre-existing condition that affects your exercise selection, the best 'next steps' for you would be to consult with a trainer (and ideally a nutritionist too), to determine where your routine could benefit from adjustments. Strangers on the internet are no substitute for professional advice.

I feel seen...

If you want to try getting into the 'extreme' side of trying to gain muscle whilst not gaining a ton of fat, there's a nifty study here (https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-015-0100-0) about resistance trained men & women who actually gained muscle and LOST fat at the same time due to cray high protein intake (in a caloric surplus 10-15%). They averaged around 3.4g of protein per kg of bodyweight (that equates to ~280g for yourself); gained less weight than the 'normal protein (2.3g/kg)' group; gained more fat free mass (mostly muscle, plus some connective tissue typically); lost more fat. I dunno if I'd want to try something like that long term, but the study was for 8 weeks and the participants still saw results - that's a reasonable period of time to experiment with, IMO. Again, only if you're looking for ways to increase kcal without adding a ton of bodyfat back.

Belated reply, but yes, there's a thing called 'muscle memory' in this context; combination of a legacy of previous training to recover strength with previously established neural pathways, as well as cellular remnants from previous hypertrophy. The most important thing is though: LISTEN TO YOUR PHYSIO. Don't slack off, but also don't push too hard too fast. Recovery is a process that takes time. Be safe!

That's actually my 'bed by 11pm' one, since I typically actually aim for 10-10:30 instead. I'm stumbling a bit on the 'no reading in bed' bit though, because that's the hinge habit that sees me still awake at 3am sometimes. New camera arrived late yesterday, so now I need to get my ass in gear and make sure I can use it well enough to stop needing to book in photographers for listings! I've mostly been focusing on what I don't want (ie. to be the same a year from now), but I think I also need to maybe remind myself of a few things I DO want: - to feel competent (or at least like I have the potential to be) in a chosen field/interest - to be excited with what I have planned for most days - to feel financially secure from sources I feel personally responsible for - to feel stable in my housing (which I always have had, and always will - but my gut doesn't feel it even though my brain knows) - to feel comfortable in my body, and confident in my health, strength, endurance, and mobility - to sort out a career/business/job where I don't feel anxious when I have to check my phone - to feel that I'm contributing to friendships in a positive and equivalent way - to continue to love and take joy in my puppies, because they are excellent puppies _____________ May 09 - Life isn't a matter of milestones, but of moments. - Rose Kennedy _____________ May 10 - Surprise is the greatest gist which life can grant us. - Boris Pasternak

Sweet, simple (but not easy!), and thoughtful.

HUGE WIN!

First off, congrats on your progress thus far! And +1 on everything the illustrious Tank has suggested/mentioned. I'm a numbers kind of person, so here are a few to keep in mind: - for fat loss & muscle gain, a good protein intake to shoot for is 1.6-2.2g+/kg of bodyweight; you're well within that range with the recent increase, but if you're feeling like you've 'stalled', that might be something else you can play with - most TDEE calulators put maintenance intake for a 25yo male at ~180lb and 5'8" around 2,100-2,200kcal/day; that means that at 2,000kcal/day you're pretty darned close (5-10%) to maintenance, and any fat loss in that context would only look like 1/4lb of weight loss a week AT MOST - you can add another 200-300kcal deficit for each workout you do, but realistically speaking the changes you're going to see at this point will be smaller than what you saw when you first started (and some of those changes will be masked on the scale with water fluctuations anyway) - when you lose weight, your resting energy expenditure (REE, aka BMR or basal metabolic rate) will go down because your body needs less energy to perform basic functions; unfortunately, sometimes when you lose weight your BMR will be slightly lower in comparison to someone at the same weight who was never larger - this has to do with your body becoming more efficient when in a caloric deficit - there is a study that suggests that taking regular 'breaks' can help to further lose weight/fat over time, rather than constantly being in a deficit (https://www.nature.com/articles/ijo2017206) - so you'd eat at maintenance for 2 weeks, and then in deficit for 2 weeks (but keep your protein levels matched to your bodyweight, not as a proportion of total kcal), and then swap back and forth; this strategy has the added advantage of potentially helping your performance in the gym on the maintenance weeks, plus having the mood-booster of not being in a deficit - your body has to 'work harder' (at least to start with) when you use novel movements, and compound multi-joint movements in particular stimulate more muscles at the same time; so you might consider switching out your split to a Full Body routine, just to shake things up a bit - this would also have the added benefit of increasing the frequency of stimulation for most of your muscle groups, which can also help to improve strength & hypertrophy gains Finally (just to reiterate the most important point): try to stop worrying about your weight - increasing strength and losing bodyfat is a HUGE indicator of excellent progress, focusing on metrics like strength and girth measurements is a much more productive way to assess how things are going, vs watching a number that can change after you pee.

Have had terrible focus, and didn't hit any of my 'official' goals for my challenge, but I also didn't do the things I told myself I wouldn't, so.... win? _____________ May 08 - We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. - Sir Winston Churchill 35% of the year is gone (eep!)

I had an excellent day walking dogs and visiting with a friend, but did very little useful otherwise. _____________ May 07 - I can, therefore I am. - Simone Weil

So, uh. I've totally forgotten to track my walking at all thus far this year. Is it too much to aim for the full thing in 6-7 months? My brain says 'yes', but then my body remembers when 25km/day was easy (at the end of walking the Camino). 12km/day is LOTS, even including dog walks. But on the other hand, it's only an extra ~2hrs a day on the reading/treadmill desk.

Such, such good books.

I do actually mean work, I needed something that could go a bit wider for real estate photos. But, I DID pick a model with some funky video features as well. I'm actually considering entering this contest, since it adds a bit of external structure for my goal: https://contests.gearfocus.com/ I am still sore after days of sitting at a desk, but whatever the physio poked last week seemed to have really made a difference. I don't want to call it too soon, but I'm super hopeful about this one. In the meantime, it's going to rain all weekend, so that might be a good opportunity to take a closer look at my 'adulting' habits, and see what I can do to streamline access and/or design my environment better to reinforce those patterns. Or I might just sit on my bum tomorrow and enjoy some quiet time with the dogs. Both, or either, would be time well spent. _____________ May 06 - I attribute my success to this - I never gave or took any excuse. - Florence Nightingale