Pivot!

At the beginning of the 75 Hard program, I mentioned starting a new nutrition regimen including more protein and calories than I previously tried. Today I checked my progress via the age-old method, *whispers* the scale, and discovered I needed to pivot (a little).

Scale Results

To be fair, I’ve been trying to disassociate myself with the numbers. The data is good to be aware of, but at the end of the day, it is just data. And I have made progress, and the numbers are moving in the right direction, just not at the rate that I would prefer to see.

So, now we pivot.

The good news is, the added calories did not make me gain weight. Just the opposite, I actually lost both weight and body fat. I could continue with this progress and I would still reach my goals, it would just take a lot longer. Mind blowing information for someone who has tried every diet known to mankind (except Whole 30) and always thought a deficit meant I needed to severely restrict calories. Now I know my maintenance calories can be a lot higher than I originally thought.

How to Pivot?

I will know for sure what the next phase of my plan is sometime in the coming week. For now, I’m continuing to focus on meeting my protein number. I think what will happen is I will have to be in a larger deficit for a short period of time, while still hitting a high protein number. The larger deficit should be fairly easy to return to, the hard part will be meeting a higher protein goal while keeping my calories in that deficit.

One Caveat

I chose this option of quicker results for two reasons: one, the holidays are coming up and starting in a good place might allow for me to feel more comfortable with a few indulgences here and there. I want to be able to enjoy different foods with my family and not feel like I am doing something to set myself back. Two, I still have over 30 days on 75 Hard so I have the leeway to challenge myself further and get the most out of the program. Why not make 75 Hard even harder? #stayhard 🤣

Caveat being — there is nothing wrong with continuing with the snail’s pace progress. It is still progress! Things are still moving in the right direction, I still lost weight and body fat, my muscle mass essentially stayed the same, if I kept this up I would continue those trends (while hopefully adding muscle mass) and in what might feel like 87 years, I would reach the end result I was after. Mentally, I don’t want this process to feel like 87 years! I want to reach my goals and tweak my maintenance phase so that I can live happily and comfortably forever and ever, amen.

I want to step off the roller coaster for good. 🎢 I also can’t wait to see what happens after I try the slightly more drastic approach!