Wednesday, October 2, 2013

A Quick Long-Term Plan

This has been on the cards for a while; I'm just writing it down so I've got it formalized somewhere.

1) Carb Nite by the book through March; after that, cautiously break out (most likely add a second evening refeed elsewhere in the week and go from there).

2) Carb Nites at least every 7th day, but otherwise not allowed until I've dropped 0.5lbs morning scale weight since the last one.

3) If weight loss plateaus (less than 0.5lb loss across 14 days, measured from morning of refeed days), add:
3a) 15mg Yohimbine and 100-200mg Caffeine in the first few minutes of training; 45 minutes low-intensity cardio (preferably brisk walking or erging - should be able to carry on a broken conversation) immediately following training.
Start at 2 days per week, avoiding refeed days, and increase up to 7. Training should start least 3-4 hours after last meal.

If the plateau continues or returns, up to 60 minutes low-intensity.

As necessary, replace the refeed day's low-intensity with:
3b) 15mg Yohimbine and 100-200mg Caffeine on waking. Half an hour later, do a 5-10 minute easy warmup (brisk walking counts), then 10 minutes of low-impact interval training (most likely erging or murderously intense sprints on grass; erging only if that's not the low-intensity of choice). 5 minutes' complete rest, followed by 20 minutes of the cardio used for 3a.
If necessary, up the steady-state to 40 minutes, then replace a second day but reset the times and work them back up (extend refeed day, then the other one).

If I still need a boost to hit a very low but not grotesquely striated level of bodyfat, modify refeed day to:
3c) 5 minutes of shorter intervals at maximum intensity (15/45 seconds very low) in place of the 10 minutes above, and add 5 minutes of longer intervals (30/30) and a 5-minute easy cooldown. Then eat something immediately.
As necessary, up that to 40 minutes steady-state, then 10 minutes of longer intervals, then if for some reason that hasn't worked, replace the other 3b day (resetting the first day's times and working them back up one at a time [extend refeed steady, extend other steady, extend refeed intervals, etc.). As a last-ditch effort, up the short intervals to 10 minutes.

For properly resuming maintenance once I'm satisfied:
1) Reset all protocols back to the minimum times, stop taking the yohimbine, and increase calories to reach maintenance. Then gradually wean off of caffeine.

From there, it's still a bit up in the air, but I'd like to have a lot of leeway with food and drink while I maintain, so keeping the conditioning in makes sense. Ideally I'd work up to 3x/week of 3c and 4x/week of 3a (on waking rather than post-workout).

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