Day 1 of cut! I ran my numbers on Scooby out of curiosity. They're pretty close to what I've calculated based on what I found my TDEE to be during reset. I'm only doing a 10% cut. I hope today's not another hungry day - I've had three or four of them in a row! I took new measurements today since I hadn't measured in a month. Some are up, some are down, many are the same. The ones that did changed only changed slightly.

I'm super excited to get this party started. I'm also trying to remind myself that this is about SLOW fat loss and not seeing the scale dropping like crazy. It's really har to keep away from that mindset after having it for so many years. I think it's hard knowing how much scale weight I have left that I'd like to lose. I'd really love to have my BMI say I'm healthy, but it's just going to be a long while. And I'm really trying to let go of my goal weight and have a goal body if that makes sense.

Anyways, I will try to take pictures once a month also. Hopefully I will see changes there even if the measuring tape gets stuck and/or the scale weight sticks for awhile.

WEEK 2 of my cut -- and I'm pissed. It's like my body got confused and doesn't know how to react. During week 1 I lost 3 pounds of the 4 I gained and I was happy as a lark. This past week, however, I seemed to gain 2 pounds back in small increments. I know this isn't true weight; it's most likely water weight. But I'm pissed that my body can't seem to figure out that less calories = drop the fat already! I have concluded over the past year that I must be very sensitive to sodium, and that pisses me off even more. There have been some sodium bombs in my food diary that must have my body holding onto all of it (um, Chipotle, burger, popchips). Why can't I be like the people where sodium doesn't affect them as much? I don't have swelling in my feet or hands, but my body will just hold onto that water weight if I eat something high in sodium. THAT BITES. Anyway, I'm not giving up. I'll make better food choices and continue to trust the process

Joining this group today. :happy: Day 1 of Cut after an 8 week reset. It's been 15 weeks since I joined EM2WL, gained a total of 8 lbs (5 before reset on tdee -15% and 3 on reset). Time to start revealing the muscle I've been building under the layer of fat! Woot!

Weighed in today, and up less than a pound. That makes it a total of about 3.25 in 9 weeks and always hungry.

Taking the plunge today.

Dropping 300 cals to 2180 (per BM core), but will readjust in a couple of weeks due to starting New Rules today (yea! more food:bigsmile: ). Also putting the scale away for the next 6 weeks (level one), but taking measurements and pictures (I'll make sure to post those in 6 weeks). The reason I'm taking a 300 cal cut instead of a percent is this:

http://www.oxygenmag.com/Community/Expert-Q-A/How-does-starvation-versus-eating-fewer-calories-affect-fat-loss.aspx

Kiki said to have goals, so by the end of December (should be done with first round of New Rules) my goal is to:
Drop inches in Chest 2, waist 6, hips 4, scale weight 10-15 pounds...I think that's realistic (based on current measurements).

So I'll be posting here for my progress (slow as it may be ), can't weight to SEE a smaller me!

I stalk this thread daily for any signs of hope! haha...for real though, for signs that this whole thing is going to WORK!!! I am almost done with my reset in week 7 right now, going to start cut on July 30th after 8 full weeks of reset. I CANNOT WAIT! Don't get me wrong I am going to seriously miss my 2500cal per day (TDEE) but man oh man am I ready to shed these 6ish pounds that I've gained during my reset and for my clothes to fit properly again and to finally just maybe finally get BELOW my pre-reset weight. ugh! this has been such a long process and I'm so proud of myself for haning in there.
Anyone else afraid of themselves? It's crazy how bad old habits creep back in...I so badly want to drop down to 1500cal per day and start to lose again...I will NOT do that...don't get me wrong. But the temptation is there!! All my clothes still fit but they do NOT fit right...they are tighter than normal, my stomach feels bigger than usual....things don't lay right, etc. I just want to feel good again! Here's to praying that this whole process has been worth it and that in the next few weeks I can report in this thread about how GREAT I'm feeling! PS - one great thing about this whole process for me is that I truly for once in my life do not care about what the scales says! If I can weigh 147 (which is what I weighed before this whole process and thought I neeeeeeded to get to 135) but my clothes are falling off of me and I lose inches and feel great then I would gladly welcome that 147!! So different than where my mind was at before doing the reset!

Weighed in today, and up less than a pound. That makes it a total of about 3.25 in 9 weeks and always hungry.

Taking the plunge today.

Dropping 300 cals to 2180 (per BM core), but will readjust in a couple of weeks due to starting New Rules today (yea! more food:bigsmile: ). Also putting the scale away for the next 6 weeks (level one), but taking measurements and pictures (I'll make sure to post those in 6 weeks). The reason I'm taking a 300 cal cut instead of a percent is this:

http://www.oxygenmag.com/Community/Expert-Q-A/How-does-starvation-versus-eating-fewer-calories-affect-fat-loss.aspx

Kiki said to have goals, so by the end of December (should be done with first round of New Rules) my goal is to:
Drop inches in Chest 2, waist 6, hips 4, scale weight 10-15 pounds...I think that's realistic (based on current measurements).

So I'll be posting here for my progress (slow as it may be ), can't weight to SEE a smaller me!

I think I'm going to agree with this, for myself, that 300 might be my magic number. I've seen this before my reset, and I think my body is leaning in this direction.

I'm into Week 3 of my cut. First week, lost 3 pounds. Second week, steadily gained it back. Start of the third week, I'm ready to throw my scale out the window (but I won't, because I'm a daily weigher and want to record all data, good or bad). My body seems to be either confused or adamant about not wanting to let go of water weight. It's holding onto sodium like crazy. It's balking at the extra day of HIIT I decided to throw at it because I was eager to see the fat come off, so it's retaining water and making my muscles sore. I almost feel like I did way back in the fall, before EM2WL, when I was working out 8 days in a row and eating slightly lower cals in an effort to make a dent.

I think I'm impatient about wanting the fat to go away, so I'm going to look at my data and see what I was doing when my weight was trending downward. What I'll probably see is that I was eating at decent levels, and working out 3x/week (2 lifting, 1 HIIT). Seeing everyone on my news feed getting in great calorie burns and being so active makes me think I have to be working out super hard 5x/week, but for me that might not be the case. To compensate for less frequent workouts, however, I have been letting my cal deficit slide into the 500s. The result? WEIGHT GAIN. :mad: However, when I hover between a 200-300 deficit, the scale stays still, or trends downward even just a little.

And yes, I'm aware that the scale weight is not really supposed to be the be-all-end-all gauge of success. It's hard to see that at the beginning stages of the cut, when all I want to do is make sure the weight I gained is gone. I took measurements at the beginning of the cut, but will check them next Monday when I feel more confident that things might slim down. I will give this cut the full four weeks, giving things a chance, but I have to say that I'm not thrilled that losing after the reset isn't easy peasy. It's work. Like everything else.