Nutrition Coaching Update

I've had a hard time getting myself to write blogs lately. As evidenced by the dearth of entries in the past month. However, I've had many people come up and ask me about how my nutritional coaching is going and would I recommend them doing something similar.

So here is my update on working with Joy Victoria.

We've been working for closing in on two months now. For the first five weeks we did a maintenance diet where I would get used to tracking my food in a different manner and making sure my body was truly at maintenance and used to the new food ratios. You can read about that HERE.

This is the change in physique before starting the calorie cycling.
Carbs for the win!

Now we've been doing a calorie cycling program for about two weeks. Three days at a lower calorie level, small deficit, and then one day at maintenance. This has been a particularly interesting process because at first I didn't think much was happening. For the first ten days or so, my weight didn't change, it stayed fluctuating between 179 and 181 lbs.

Then, I was scheduled to have a high calorie day on a Tuesday. That morning I weighed in at 180.6 lbs, the higher end of my natural oscillation. I thought, "well, I can't stay at a deficit for forever, that will ruin my lifting, so whatever. Eat more cereal and trust the process."

The next morning I weighed in at 178.2 lbs. After a day of eating an "extra"100 g of carbs.
The following morning I weighed in at 177.6 lbs.
The following morning (today) I weighed in at 176.7 lbs.
Ummm... so much for it not working. I guess I just needed a bit of time for my body to adjust.

I'm actually not thrilled to suddenly be 4 lbs lighter. My mentality is one of "OMG, I'm wasting away and might lose my gainz!" I'm trying very hard to reserve judgement on this until I've trained today and see how I perform on Sunday. So far, this weight loss and calorie cycling hasn't adversely affected me:

Log PR at 202 lbs. Did 200 a couple weeks prior, so a baby PR, but I'll take it! Thanks to @onestrongnurse for the video and encouragement! @the_jon_andersen_ifbb_pro @jonandersenscomplex #deepwater #strongman #strongishappy #strongwoman #splitjerk

A video posted by Kristin Newman (@strength_geek) on Dec 12, 2014 at 9:50am PST

Who knows why I suddenly dropped weight over the past 3-4 days, despite not doing anything different from when my weight was stable. The body is kind of weird when it comes to change. Weird as in, it doesn't like it much and behaves accordingly.

Next up: Resources for people who want guidance themselves.