Week 5 complete! 1/3 of the way there (in weight, not time)

Week 5 was a weird week. My weight bounced around a lot, and I lost less than expected.  I was also retaining a lot of water, and I think the culprit was me increasing intensity on my workouts. I plan to keep the workout intensity going strong though, so we'll see what happens in the next week.

Also, today I'm going to limit exercise to treadmill or elliptical, after last night's Goalbusters class, so that may lead to a large drop if my muscles let go of extra water in response. We'll see!

First, here was last night's Goalbusters Circuit:

Warm Up:

• Group circle passing medicine balls, 1 minute (6, 8, 10, and 15 lb balls)
• Jumping Jacks, 30 seconds
• Ankle Mobility stretches, 30 seconds
• Split Stance body weight Squats, 30 seconds each leg
• Wall Push-ups, 30 seconds
• Wall Mountain Climbers, 30 seconds

Partner warm-up, alternating 3x each:

• Wall Squat
• 40 body weight Squats

Circuit (repeat 2x, 1 minute each station)

• Alternating Waves on the Heavy Rope while squatting into a chair
• Alternate between these on the two circuits:
• Hip Rotations with Glides from a raised push-up stance
• 'Stir the Pot' with a Body Bar (18 lb) while balanced on a Bosu
• TRX Triceps extensions
• Squat Lunges with overhead arm pulls (Blue Band)
• TRX pull-ups
• Alternate between these on the two circuits:
• Kettlebell Squat, Clean, and Press - right hand (35 lb)
• Kettlebell Squat, Clean, and Press - left hand (35 lb)
• Alternate between these on the two circuits:
• Cable Machine Standing Chest Presses (60 lbs total weight)
• Heavy Bag freestyle workout

Stretching

That was it for the workout. I tried briefly doing 80 lb chest presses, but quickly realized there was no way I was going to hold out for a minute when it was the last exercise of the night, so I dropped it 10 lbs per side to finish off.

Now onto the Week 5 details... First, my progress Chart.

Click to embiggen!

Last week I ended at 301.2, and this week I finished off at 299.5... so with rounding, there's only a one pound difference when we look at my weekly progress chart. Even so, at week 5 I'm ahead of the game... matching week 8 at the aggressive 4/lb a week rate and week 10 at my target of 3/lb a week. Next week I should completely blow the 1/lb a week average off the chart... just 1/10th of a pound and I could have done that this week! I still fully expect to lower my average weight loss down to the 2-3 lbs a week range, so these numbers should start to flatten out soon.

Click to embiggen!

Now onto my detailed sheet. the first thing that jumps out at me here are the three gains this week, which I believe is entirely due to increased water retention from harder workouts. Also, this week I've incorporated FitBit calorie adjustments into my exercise. Here's how I'm tracking my exercise so far:

Circuit training: MyFitnessPal claims I earn over 800 calories. I cut this to 400 which I think might still be a little high.

Elliptical: I input age and weight and keep my hands on the HRM pads as much as possible, and use the amount declared by the machine.

Strength training: I log this in MFP with the cardio version as well as the strength details. I cut the calorie expenditure MFP declares by half, because I just don't believe it.

FitBit adjustment: I log all of my exercise in MFP with time stamps, so that the FitBit can know to adjust the calories it declares. On the day I did no gym work at all, this gave me a negative adjustment, which I'm ok with.

I feel like all of these exercise calories are likely a little inflated, but that's ok, because I know my calorie counting of food is also a little low. While it's easy to track the 5 Medifast meals, the lean and green is tougher... I don't track condiments well at all, and there's a lot of calories (and sodium!) there that isn't making it into my spreadsheet. 

That said, this is a new week starting tomorrow, and if I don't have a decent loss in the morning, I may make it a point to accurately track *everything* I cook, actually getting out the measuring cups, spoons, and scales and tracking it all. One week of that might be an interesting experiment, just to see if it makes a difference.