Why Isn’t It Working?

I’m doing really well at finding ways to lose fat that DON’T work for me right now. How do you like that for positive spin?

I was doing really well last fall. Even up until Christmas. Then something happened. I think it started with lifting weights in a traditional way. Great for getting me stronger, but not so great for helping me lose fat (remember, everyone is different). Perhaps, they weren’t heavy enough.

Here’s the only unit of measurement I kept last fall till now:

It was mid-February when Kim and I wrote our articles about The Metabolic Effect Diet book. What was funny was I wasn’t doing ME workouts at that time. I was doing regular strength training. But I needed to assess my goal. I wanted to lose fat first, then get stronger. So I restarted them, and you can see my weight dropped a little. My fat percentage did, too, just teeny bit. But now I’ve been stuck for about a month. Not just at 153/154 pounds, but also I’m not losing fat.

Why? I’m not really sure. I think what I did last fall was more in line with ME’s Eat Less, Exercise Less model, and lately, I’ve been doing the Eat More, Exercise More philosophy…but I’m not entirely sure I’ve been “eating more.” Or I was eating A LOT MORE. And I know how well the Eat Less, Exercise More plan works for me. It doesn’t. I know because that’s what I did for four years.

Luckily, I keep track of my workouts. I WISH I would’ve been at least writing down my food last fall, but I wasn’t. Going back and looking at my workouts, I was doing a ME workouts three times a week. I was walking more–at least 4-5 times per week–and most of my runs were sprint sessions.

Lately, I’ve been following and endurance protocol ME shared a few weeks ago. Maybe, I need to take it down a notch. I’ve tried the ME protocol for two weeks and there was very little movement with my progress. I went down a half a pound last week, but back up this week. So, for the next week or two, I will do go back to what I was doing in the fall:

Food will look like this (actually won’t change much, but I will write it down in case I need to evaluate what I did during the week):
protein smoothie for breakfast
my typical huge salad for lunch with lots of protein
2 small snacks if needed (apple and 1T of PB or a pear and a few almonds or a protein bar on the go)
Extra snacks or carbs on long-run day, Friday (because I am training for a half)
protein-focused dinner with lots of veggies

Workouts like this:

Sunday:
ME weights
walking for 30 minutes or more optional

Monday:
walking for 30 min. or more required
Run sprints (for 20 min.) with warm up, should get me to 30 minutes of running

Tuesday:
ME weights
walking for 30 minutes or more optional

Wednesday:
walking for 30 min. or more required
Run or cycle sprints (for 20 min.)

Thursday:
ME weights
walking for 30 minutes or more optional

Friday:
long run
walking optional

Saturday:
Walking and rest

Okay. Let’s see how this goes. Off to run 8+ miles today…