Plateaus
I've hit some serious plateaus, both in weight loss and also in weight lifting improvement. I actually weighed a pound and a half more at the Y yesterday than I did on Feb. 4 and I can't bench press even one rep more of the same weight than I could on Jan. 1 and have perhaps regressed a little. The lack of weight loss was in part due to a couple of free-calorie days -- a food-filled Valentine's Day set me back weeks i'm sure -- but other than that I'm eating a bit less than 2200 calories of high-quality food every day and exercising a fair amount and would have expected to lose more. And while it's been a stressfull, busy month, the month before was even more stressful and even more busy with even more lack of sleep...
Anyway, I've been reading online and realize I need to build more variety into my weight lifting, and have begun doing that. (For starters, for at least the past two months I've also done my bench press first, with exactly the same weight.) And I'll keep eating right and I'm sure the weight will come off.
I do wonder sometimes, though, how it works when you're trying to both lose fat and gain muscle at the same time -- exactly how much should be eaten, and is it possible that my 2200 calories/day limit isn't enough and is somehow causing both of these plateaus? Hard to say...
What I'm sure of is that I'm not at my ideal weight yet, although I'm not too far off. I still have some flabby gut to lose!
