Muscles feel like lead

If you're doing a lot of exercise and you feel listless, tired, have crappy sleep, stressed, etc. then it could be a few things.

You may not be getting enough calories to support your activity level. You may be insufficiently hydrated. One of you macros may be out of whack (fats too low, not enough carbs, etc). You may be physically taking on more activity than you can handle at the moment - scale back a bit and build up some work capacity. Jetlag (well shift-lag).

Or a combination of 2 or more of these factors. You'll just have to examine every area of your life, nutrition and training schedule and see if any of the things I mention may be factors for you.

If you're doing a lot of exercise and you feel listless, tired, have crappy sleep, stressed, etc. then it could be a few things.

You may not be getting enough calories to support your activity level. You may be insufficiently hydrated. One of you macros may be out of whack (fats too low, not enough carbs, etc). You may be physically taking on more activity than you can handle at the moment - scale back a bit and build up some work capacity.

Or a combination of 2 or more of these factors. You'll just have to examine every area of your life, nutrition and training schedule and see if any of the things I mention may be factors for you.

These are all good points too.

Thanks guys! I've been wondering about my calorie intake but wasn't sure if I was just crazy. I'm at 1200 right now, but last time I was this active I was up towards 1500-1600 and seeing results. This time the results have been pretty slow coming. I lost 10 lbs this month, but most of it was in the last week or so. I'll try increasing my water too. I'm pretty good about it but it is pretty humid here in the south. I might be understimating. Thanks for all the advice.

If you have a small amount of weight to lose, then 2.5lb/week is pretty aggressive. You'll likely need to moderate that a bit to something like 1lb/week to be able to recover well and retain lbm. You want the majority of the loss to be from fat stores as opposed to muscle, bone density, fluid and connective tissue if you want to stay healthy and injury-free.

Just a bit of food for thought...

I'm pretty dense, so to get down to my max for my weight (per the United States Air Force) I have about 10lbs more to lose, with an ultimate goal of 20-25lbs more to be on the safe side. I'm not really set on a weight, as much as just getting back in shape. Weight isn't as important to me as seeing the results in my measurements, etc.
For the most part, I eat back my calories. There are somedays that I am a bit on the low side, but then there are days that I go over. I track my total activity with my UP band.
I'm going to increase my calories to 1500 and see if that helps. I agree 10 lbs was a lot for a month and it came off very weird. I lost like 2 lbs the first 2 weeks and then the last couple of weeks it was much more quickly, about 4 lbs in a week last week.

It's likely due to the new activity. Increased glycogen stores and water. This initially masked the rapid weight loss due to the calorie restriction. When the initial water weight dropped off after a few weeks, your actual weight loss was revealed pretty sharpish.

Now you are doing this level of activity regularly, barring any extreme swings in sodium intake and accounting for menstrual cycle, you shouldn't see large swings in water weight retention. You should now watch your weight loss on 2 weekly intervals. Adjust as necessary for a slow and steady weight loss. This will make the majority of the loss fat and allow you to continue your high level of activity, too.

Ignore this sort of thing at your peril, because the next set of symptoms are usually increased rates of injury and decrease in effectiveness of your immune systems response.

Thanks! I can't afford to get injured or sick, so I'll start experimenting with my calories to find the happy medium. I really appreciate the advice!

No problem!

It's nice when people listen to it!