Week 7 and 8 Plan

You’re going to be disappointed, well maybe not… The plan for Week 7 and 8 will be very similar to Week 5 and 6. I will explain in a moment but first, let’s look at our starting values.

Starting Off Points:

Weight: 99.0 kg (overnight weight gain compared to end of week 6, ugh)

Hips: 112 cm

Waist: 92.5 cm

WHR: 0.82

Body Fat Percentage: 41.1

VO₂Max: 35

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The Plan:

Movement:

Karate:

Karate Teaching:

I am still running a weekday practice weekdays for 30 minutes. I am teaching karate for 2 hours a week, plus an hour kickboxing. There is also an extra hour for training 2 individuals for their specific goals. So that bring my martial arts teaching time to about 6 hours and 30 minutes a week. Jeez, that’s a lot. This is the first time I have calculated that. I have also started teaching a couple of online private sessions twice a week. (Over Zoom from my office.) I am not super active within those classes because I like to look at the screen and check form.

Karate Training:

We will continue with the 30 minute daily goal. Ideally I will be following my material daily goals. There are certain things I would like to run through every day or once a week. So I will implement that plan with more heightened hocus than previous weeks.

I have one 90 minute class style practice. A weekly practice with a partner via Zoom, usually between 45 minutes to an hour.

So my weekly total for my own training should be somewhere around 5 hours per week.

Karate Summary:

Ideally I will start logging these separately, however I tend to practice before or after classes and I usually just let my fitness tracker do its thing without breaking the practice up. I will aim to use the net karate time and then subtract my teaching from it, or something. I believe I am lying to myself about how much practicing I have actually been doing lately. Which we do. So let’s calculate it properly.

Steps:

I would like to increase this to 11,000 steps per day. Let’s see what happens.

Distance Goals:

Aiming for 3 outdoor walks a week, minimum. I would like to get to about 4 km per day whether that is walking outside or jogging on the treadmill, or walking on the treadmill for that matter. This will give me a weekly goal of 28 km. I am not going to kick myself for doing 3 km one day, I will just make sure I make up the distance with the next one!

Cardiovascular Training:

Walk-Jog Intervals:

I would like to make sure I do this a minimum of twice a week. Changing my interval time from 60 seconds jogging to 90 seconds jogging. I do not want to make my goals here to be frequency as I am concerned about my joints. So far over the last two weeks it has not been bad. However, I put this style of treadmill training to the backburner. So twice a week seems like a great place to start. If my body can do more, then I will.

Cardio and Ab Tabata:

I will be aiming to do this daily, ideally before noon. I have written out the routine. I will be following the same one from Week 5 and 6. It’s less than 30 minutes and is something I can accomplish from home, so there really are no valid excuses in my mind.

Rowing

I recently rediscovered rowing when I used it as my warm up, pre-strength training. Damn, what a great thing it is!!! F*cking intense and I am by no stretch of the imagination able to row for any extended period of time. Which just means I have to do it more. I am not obsessive, you are. So, I would like to add 10 minutes of rowing every day. This can be for a warm up, or like hyper focused on rowing, but just some rowing every day without it being long. This is not something that affects my daily steps, which is why I have not done it. But I might finally have a handle on the daily stepping thing, very few “omg, sh*t, I have to pace the house again.” In fact, that has not happened in at least a week, win for me!

Flexibility, Stretching and Yoga

You knew this was coming right? It’s there with the rowing at 10 minutes a day minimum. My current routine is about 25 minutes but that just gives me some play. Unlike the rowing, this is something I can do from home. Ideally, following the tabata routine.

Strength Training

Always my favourite. This will be the last two weeks of my 4 week routine. For some of the exercises the sets have increased, so should be good. Focused on progressive overload. I am actually really enjoying the routine.

Fuel

Water:

3L a day. I will get it this time!

Fasting:

Continuing with 20:4 IF, OMAD. I am not ready for a longer fast just yet. I think I am too active to accomplish this successfully and while I do believe in pushing yourself and your limits, I don’t feel this is where my focus should be for the next two weeks.

I have had a few moments where the idea of changing my feeding window (doesn’t that make you feel like I am referring to livestock somehow?) to something earlier. Specifically so I can walk afterwards. Curfew still in effect. However, since my workouts and training and teaching and all that take up my entire evenings, it is just not going to happen unless I eat at like 3pm. That’s just not going to work for me right now, plus I like doing my workouts fasted.

Macronutrients:

I am going to change a little bit compared to the last goal, but not very much. Instead, I would like to focus on healthier fats and managing to get more daily diversity in my proteins. Lately it is one thing, plus a shake. Now, again, this is a single meal eating style so it is not the end of the world, but I would like to have a bit more variety in my meals.

Protein:

I am keeping this at 35%. As previously stated, the aim is to add different sources within the same meal. I would also like to get some more fish sources beyond something that comes from a can.

Carb:

I am increasing this a touch from the last goal. Carbs will represent 30% of my calories this goal.

Fat:

35% of my calories will come from fat this goal. I would like to find better sources, more plant based, less dairy based fats.

Calories:

As usual, I will not be worrying too much about my calories. I would like to aim for about 1200 calories a day. Little more, little less all good. I believe my highest calorie meal has been below 1800 so I am doing pretty good so far.

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Expectations:

The previous two weeks resulting in a rather large chunk of weight loss. I suspect this will slow down during these next two weeks. We’ll see.

I suspect I will be tired during these two weeks. There are workouts aplenty.

Goals:

• I would like to continue focusing on bringing up my VO₂Max.
• Focus on progressive overload for my strength workouts, increase the weight with every workout.
• Successfully drink enough water to get my scale to read my TBW% over 40%. UGH.

Thoughts:

I know my body adapts to things very quickly. It’s bizarre, but the way things are. My concern here is that my macro distribution is a little too similar to the previous one and may cause some stalling. But that’s okay, or so I will continuously tell myself.

The 2 week change schedule is getting a little too frequent. It might be time to try for 4 weeks at a time next and see what happens. Even with the quick adaptations my body does, I can focus on exercise changes during the 4 weeks rather than diet. Something to consider for the next part of my journey.

I am feeling like I am focusing too much on the scale. I would like to bring in some Non Scale Victories in the future. I mean, many of my exercise successes are definitely not scale related but I feel like I should celebrate these a little bit more.

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Chart: