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For those of you who are also fans of Mark's Daily Apple you might already know what I mean about sleeping low. Essentially, avoid conventional wisdom to replace used glycogen be eating carbs right after intense exercise at night, combining that with intermittent fasting and only consuming carbs during the IF feeding window. That's the shortest explanation I can come up with, but feel free to follow the link and get more details. For the last 11 weeks I have been following a program that has me feeling pretty good after having dropped from 220 to 212 pounds on the scale and dropping 4.2% in bodyfat percentage. The downside is that the first 6 pounds on the scale happened in the first 6 weeks, so it's kind of plateaued since then. I've got 1 more week of that program which corresponds to zero week and then it's time to either start it over again or try something new. With the success I've had, I kinda want to keep going with it but I feel like I could've done better with a better diet. I did break a few bad habits and perhaps I should be content to move along at that pace. So, I've decided to split the difference and do something different...for 1 month and then go back to the original plan. Consider it a 1 month de-load phase, but not quite. I'm still going to be running sprints and doing interval weight training circuits. However, I'm going to attempt to switch up my schedule so I'm doing those at night, sleeping more in the morning and drastically changing when I eat. Hopefully that kick starts some more serious fat burning. So here goes... Week zero goals: Finish what I started: Yesterday was upper body training, today was sprints, tomorrow is a leg day and Thursday is upper body again. Friday is sprints, Saturday is legs and Sunday is rest. At that time, I will take all new measurements to see what the final tally is. Week 1 - 4 Goals for days 1 - 6 in the week: Goal #1: Intermittent fasting to eat only between noon and 8 PM. This is setup well by my previous challenges of eliminating the morning drive thru and the night time snacking. So, it's really a continuation of the path I've been on. Goal #2: No carbs at all after training sessions. Protein is okay, but no carbs or the glycogen depletion experiment is out the window. Goal #3: Moving training to the evening hours will be a switch for me, and probably the hardest part of this challenge as well as the most important. If this doesn't happen everything else falls apart. Without the training there is no glycogen depletion. I've always worked out in the morning as I can get it in before the day gets in the way and I end up not doing something at night. But, honestly, once the kids are done with homework and in bed, I'm either watching TV or playing video games. There's no good reason why I couldn't workout at night and just get more sleep in the morning. Even if it's just 5 sets of 20 burpees (just, ha!), that's not that time consuming, extremely tiring and can be done in any weather. Day 7 is a rest day to do whatever I feel like. Week 1 - 4 Goals for everyday in the week: Goal #4: Sleep. Gots to get me some ZZZ's or once again this will fall apart. So, at least 7 hours of sleep a night. The ol' FitBit has me averaging only 6 1/2 over the last 3 months so I definitely have a lot of work to do. This is something I need to do regardless of training or nutrition. It could be a big reason why I've plateaued in the first place. This is a rather unusual challenge for me. I don't generally create goals that are dependent on other goals as it seems like a setup for failure. But, I've promised myself that this is just for this month. Then it's back to dancing with the date that brought me this far in 2016 for the May challenge.