No matter how structured you make things, chances are your weight loss is going to be unpredictable.
You can eat the same foods at the same times every day. You can do the same workouts on each day of every week. You can even do them at the same times.
Heck, you can track exactly how much water you drink each day.
In the end, your weight is going to fluctuate, and it’s going to be a somewhat confusing journey.
Some days you’ll get a killer workout in and hit your nutritional goals, but you’ll wake up heavier. Other days, you’ll eat a ton of food really late in the day and think the scale will be two pounds higher the next morning, only to find out you’ve lost weight.
That’s some of what I experienced this past week. Despite being super dialed in with my training and nutrition, my weight pretty much flatlined.
Once again, I’m left to wonder if I need to make changes to the program. At the same time, I’m hesitant to stray too far from what I’m currently doing, as it’s a logical program framework and I’m losing weight.
Ah… the joys of cutting. Let’s dive into the week.
Training
I always start these blogs off with training, and honestly that’s because my favorite workout of the week occurs on Sundays when I write these posts. That’s squats and deadlifts.
We’re now a month in, and today’s workout completed the first week of my second block of training during this cut. We worked with singles at 80-percent of my one-rep max on the squat, bench press, and deadlift, and each one moved relatively easy. That’s to be expected at 80 percent. Nevertheless, it’s nice to be able to continue my powerlifting training.
The last cut I did, I had to eliminate all barbell movements really early on in the cut. This time around I’m much stronger, and I’m confident I’ll be able to continue doing barbell movements throughout this 12-week process.
We bumped the volume back up and did mostly sets of 12 reps. It was pretty eye opening how much easier this Week 1 went compared to the very first week of this cut. My body has adjusted quickly to training with less energy (aka calories), and I’m feeling strong and capable again.
Outside of that, there’s not a ton to write about in terms of training. Things are going well. I’ve bumped my cardio up to three sessions of 200-calorie spins on the bike.
My weight plateau’d this week around a new low, which isn’t a bad thing, but I think I’ll be keeping an extra watchful eye on how things progress in relation to my training this week. If things stay put, I’ll probably look to make some sort of adjustments moving forward.
Nutrition
Similar to training, nutrition is running smoothly. I still haven’t budged from my 2,400 calories a day, and my weeks have started to become pretty standardized.
I eat a pretty structured diet Monday-Friday. On Friday evenings, I’ll often opt for a couple hundred additional calories and end the day around 2,600. Then, on Saturdays I’ll fast as long as I can and make it a low-calorie day to make up for going over the day prior. Sundays don’t have much structure, but they end up in line with the diet plan.
When will I make changes here? Who knows. Still no plans to change things anytime soon. I’d much rather add in additional training than reduce calories.
My motto is to diet on as many calories as possible, so that’s the goal for this entire cut.
Conclusion
Initial Weigh-in 
Week 4 Weigh-in
Alright, I’m not gonna complain too much. My weight plateau’d, but it happened at a new low weight of 185.6 for most of the week. Over the weekend, I hit new low weigh-ins of 185.4 and then 185.2.
It’s not a dramatic amount of weight loss, but on average I’m close to 1.5 pounds down from the previous week. That’s a good rate of weight loss. It was just weird that I accomplished it by remaining at basically the same weight all week.
Can’t argue with progress, though.
I’ll be really interested to see what happens this week with my weight. I’m curious if this is the first plateau that really drags along, forcing my first adjustments to the program.
There’s only one way to find out if that’s the case, and that’s to plug away and work hard for another week!
I’m looking forward to it!
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CGF