March Gains
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Overall impressions of progress

Overall impressions from the month

I've been bringing my food scale to more places with me, and it's not always easy to convince people to mind their business. In particular older women tend to project some sort of eating disorder onto my behavior, even though I am eating the exact same amount (if not more) than other women that are eating in the same situation. I realize that it's not common to see a young woman tracking her macros in a healthy manner, so I understand where the assumption (and accompanying concerns / performative sighing) is coming from, but nonetheless it's a frustrating experience to have over and over again.

I've been enjoying using Macrofactor so much that I'm willing to deal with the potential judgement or misunderstanding from people so that I can ensure that I am tracking accurately. Being in a muscle-sparing cut means that I have to be precise about my caloric deficit, and cannot go below a 400-500 calorie deficit. Given the amount of exercise that I'm doing, and the process of my body recomposition, my infradian rhythms and all the other variables that influence my total energy expenditure, I'd rather not take neither a "set it and forget it" to my caloric goals, or an guesstimation-based approach to my nutrition tracking.

So far I know I've lost ~6 lbs fat (from 58 down to 50, according to my Withings scale) from the beginning of the year and stayed relatively stable wrt muscle which is a much slower rate of recomp progress than reported in my January gains post, but is a speed I'm also pleased with as it's not extreme, there hasn't been significant muscle loss, and I'm able to keep up with my progressive overload training program.

I think it's time I consider my diet + training a "cut" and not a recomp anymore. For the last week of March, I went on a trip and took a break from training – but not from my diet :P. I was surprised by how much strength progress I lost – I assume it wouldn't be so drastic if I controlled for preworkout intake, menstrual cycle phase, electrolyte balance etc, but still – my biceps could only handle half the reps on the same weight as the last time I had been in the gym!!

During my trip, I also visited a yoga ashram, which probably should be it's own blog post.

Training with experts

I finished up my weekly split safety overview PT sessions with my trainer Mikey, and luckily enough recieved a birthday present from my partner of six Pilates sessions :P. I also found out that another trainer I've been hoping to work with left my gym, but thankfully I had his IG before he bolted so I'll still be able to hit him up for private training (dude was the exact level of nerdy and precise when it came to form that I feel I really need for certain exercises)

Metrics

nutrition and measurement stats go here

Conclusion

Honestly, I feel like I have a lot more goals than when I originally started out – and that's saying a lot, bc I had a nutzo amount of goals and aspirations at the start of January. I wanted to get into breakdancing, work towards competing as a bikini model, and do cardio – things I am not thinking about at all right now (ha-ha, even the cardio...) Now I'm focused on things like the best cues for the exercises in my program, balancing out right / left, posterior chain bias on full body exercises, protein, over-analyzing my skeletal specificities, and not getting mad at people who break water bottle code at the gym.

April Goals