Clean & Lean 30 day Challenge - Day 20

Progress summary:

• Weight: 60.7kg (vs 60.7kg last week, vs 60.5kg the week before, and 61.5kg the week before that)

Er... I think I may have a plateau on my hands.

I tried to apply logic to this process to analyse what was happening here... I ended up totally confusing myself. It's not simple.

So first I looked to my diet to see if that could hold the answer. My average intake is 1700 cals (MFP), and I burn on average 1900 cals per day (polar loop). This is an average of 200 cal/day deficit (~0.2kg a week loss). This is not a big deficit, and maybe I'm underestimating my calories in somehow and actually coming out even. So perhaps an option is to decrease average calories in and see if that has an impact on weight loss.

Then I looked to see if any combo of low calorie/low carb/high exercise would lead to optimal results. No clear answer there either. See below for my attempt to analyse this... confusing, no?

The thing is I'm looking pretty slim, and I'm right around the weight my body has kept at comfortably for the last 3 years. My body is very smart. Maybe it wants to stay here! This is vanity pounds territory :(

I've been doing some reading on this:

• Jillian Michaels: Vanity Pound loss
• You are so vain @ Foodbabe
• Glitter Diaries - plateaus

I really like the idea of dialling up the intensity of workouts, rather than their length. I've been doing 30 day shred and perhaps this is the perfect antidote to blast through that plateau.

So... I have a plan.

1. I'm first going to aim to increase my average daily deficit to 300 calories (this is really the highest I want to go) and see if this helps. This I'll do for the last 10 days of my challenge.
2. If I don't see a difference at the end of the month I'll try some more advanced techniques:
• Structured calorie cycling to mix it up
• Carbohydrate cycling
• Temporarily increase number of sessions or intensity. A 30 day shred challenge maybe?