It is done.
Two weeks did not fly by. The final days were a slog. I continued to loose strength, my weight still held at 90kg – the only of Poliquin’s predictions not to come true, I have gained, not lost weight, but I suspect this is due to my level of supplementation. I certainly struggled to sleep by the end of it, my appetite completely faded and I certainly felt depressed by the end.
The depression was the strangest thing, as I had nothing to be depressed about. Without sounding like a complete tool, I love my job, much more than the investment-banking job I left to become a PT. There were obvious perks to working for an investment bank, the pay being an obvious one, but I was lucky that I worked with some very nice people, so nice in fact that it was the realization that I was only turning up to work due to the fact that we had such a good laugh rather than the role itself that made me think that investment banking was not for me. Undeniable the stress I have placed on my body took its toll mentally; I felt down about nothing, but then found something to be down about – “what if this does not work, I will look like a complete idiot”. My girlfriend in the end had started to have enough, which was fair. I think it came to a head when at 5 in the morning I was foam rolling in our lounge to prepare myself for the first workout of the day and she came in to politely ask what time I would be heading off so she could get some sleep.
The whole experience reaffirmed my belief that when you plan your own or someone else’s training their whole life needs to be taken in to account when thinking about how much stress they can handle. A workout, whichever way you look at it, is stress. It should be good stress – enough to enforce a change without causing injury or chronic fatigue. Prolonged periods of stress lead to a chronic rise in cortisol, which usually leads to greater fat storage and damage internally. Someone working 14 hour days, facing long commutes with a new born child is going to find 3 workouts a week more than enough, and the emphasis must be on providing a boost with the workouts rather than overly taxing them, and ensuring that their diet helps them to cope as best as possible through natural food sources and supplementation if necessary.
So how did my body cope, well I now weight 90.6 kg, so up 1.6 kg since the start of the training. By body fat has fallen. I use the four-site calculation (which I widely accept is not terribly accurate but a lot better than any electrical impedance test). I was lean to begin with but I have lost a whole percentage point to now be at 9% BF, it will be interesting as the overfeeding begins (and believe me it has) to see how my BF changes.
Over the 2 weeks I lifted 187,523kg in volume load (load x reps) and completed 2354 reps, and it feels like it. My hands feel like arthritic claws, my elbows and knees feel like they have tendonitis, everything aches.
The 5 days of overfeeding should be fun, I just have to eat every two hours and eat “clean” no grains, just clean carbs from fruit, veg rice and sweet potatoes. I plan to rest as much as possible between seeing clients. I will try to use this time to read, something that I have had no time for over the past 2 weeks.
I ll post again on Friday at the end of the over feeding, just before I test out my new and hopefully improved body.
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