What's going on, body?

Much as I'd like to be at my race weight of 62kg by the start of the race calendar, I've not actually been trying to lose any weight over the last 4 weeks.  I'd set a goal of 62kg for later on and not actually been attempting to be in calorie deficit.

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.

Monday falter

Yeah, bit of a messy one yesterday.  Good gym, but evening excess.  Will update you all later when I'm home with my laptop to upload photos...

Also, due to oopsage, no packed food today for work, so it's a tricky one to plan the day - thank god for the bananas on my desk as a bit of a help though!

Another hungry day

It wasn't so bad this morning, but throughout the afternoon I've just been hungry all of the time. Lack of exercise (I did iron 5 shirts, 2 dresses, 2 jumpers, and two very complicated cardigans though and that has to count for -something- right?) means less food than on an exercisey day, and even though I'm over the number of calories I'd like to have had today, I'm still under maintenance levels. Then again... I'm still hungry. I won't even start cooking dinner for an hour yet as well.

That said, we've cooked up big batches of lamb biryani (with brown rice this time) and beef chilli, so there's been a smell of cooking food in the house all afternoon which probably hasn't helped.

I'm definitely feeling mentally fatigued around food and exercise both at the moment, which is a bugger 'cause I still want to shift that last 2lbs. I almost moved 1 last week, but as keeps happening, there are meals out, fancy meals with lots of wine in etc. Always some excuse to go a little bit OTT. Having bought lunch only twice since 1st January, making lunches is getting a touch frazzling and I'm bored of all of the evening meals I keep cooking. Some are a bit too time-consuming to do on a week night (chicken in black bean sauce, vindaloo, tikka masala etc.) and just end up with me feeling too tired afterwards. I need some re-vamping in the meals and to cook a bit less often; so weekend batch cooking is really helpful there.

I'd like to just go on maintenance for a while and stop trying to lose those 2lbs, but if I do that, I'll end up gaining, given all of the weekly excesses that keep happening. They are only once a week, and I am doing weights 3x a week and cardio once or twice and I am staying reasonably to well under maintenance on most days and definitely not going over maintenance on all days bar one each week.

So mentally fatigued with it all at the moment. For sure. But what to do to fix that?

Today went like this:-

B - greek yogurt with 1 scoop and some Dorset Cereals muesli
L - ham, lettuce and Philadelphia Extra Light on toasted granary bread
S - celery and houmous
S - a lunchies bar
D - pasta with salmon fillets, peas, broccoli and low-fat cream cheese stirred through

Calories (kcal) [kcals to maintain weight (inc. exercise)	1661 1793]
Protein (g)	122.1 (30.2%)
Carbohydrate (g)	172.9 (40%)
Fat (g)	53.6 (29.8%)
Fruit & Veg	3.6