After five straight weeks of dieting and training hard, it’s time to change things up.
More specifically, Week 6 will be a de-load week.
What’s a de-load week? I’m actually shocked to see I’ve never written an article on this, but it’s essentially a programmed week where you scale back volume and/or intensity in order to prioritize recovery while still training.
I’ll write a full-length article on this soon, because it’s a very important piece to the puzzle with any well-structured training program. For now, I’ll explain to you why I’m taking a de-load week.
As this cut has worn on, I’ve continued to lose weight — I’m down nearly 10 pounds in 35 days. That’s a key indicator that I’m in a caloric deficit. In turn, my recovery has been challenged and my energy levels are going down. There’s less energy coming in, so naturally I have less and less energy to give to my training.
When you diet over a long period of time, this can really add up. That’s what I’m experiencing right now. I’ve been tired, sluggish, and sore. It’s been getting a little bit harder each day to walk into the gym and get my training in.
My body is giving me signals that it needs a break, so I’m going to take a form of a break called a “de-load” where I continue to train but drastically scale back the training volume for a week.
My thought is to cut my volume in half. I normally train six days a week and hit each muscle group twice. For Week 6, I’m going to train three days and hit each muscle group once.
To replace the added training volume, I’ll do more cardio this week. I still want to keep the weight loss rolling, but I need a de-load week in order to allow my body to rest and recuperate. I can’t continue to beat my body into the ground and expect progress to follow.
I had an amazing realization this week of the power of rest and recovery. Mid week, I got sick. I just couldn’t get into work, and therefore couldn’t train either. Instead, I focused all of my efforts from staying away from the gym, work, social media… literally any stressors you can think of.
In place of that, I rested. A lot. More than I have since this diet started.
Up until that day, I had been stuck at a plateau around 184 pounds for over a week. After a concerted effort at rest and recovery, I woke up the next day at a new low weigh-in.
Nearly every day since that rest day has seen my weight continue to go down.
My body needed that rest, and it needs more. My muscles are still sore from workouts that happened days ago. My joints feel achy. My sleep is crappy.
It’s time to make a change.
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Initial Weigh-in 
Week 5 Weigh-In
No need to break down this week’s post any further than that. It was a struggle, but I continued to lose weight and clocked in at an average of 1.3 pounds down from Week 4. Additionally, my new low weigh-in is 183, which is just shy of 10 total pounds down in five weeks.
That’s great progress, but it’s going to get more difficult from here. I’m not sure what to expect from my de-load week in terms of weight loss, but I do expect that I’ll be refreshed and ready to pound away at things when it’s over.
I can’t wait!
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CGF