Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Episode 104: My goal has changed!
Transcript
- Cameron: Welcome to the Cameron's Conversations podcast. And in today's episode, I thought I'd talk a little bit about just how things are going at my end. So I'm kind of getting closer and closer to the end of my weight loss phase, but there's been a sort of funny little couple of twists, I guess, in that firstly, I had started up supplement and creatine again, which led to a bit of a weight spike. I actually touched on this in the last episode a little, but basically my weight jumped over a two-week period up by two kilos, despite being in a deficit. just under two kilos. So I'd been kind of sitting in the sort of 76s and I'd shot right up into the kind of like 78s again as well. So I've slightly moved the kind of milestone because I was initially aiming for about 72 kilos but given I've responded so much to creatine and there's been this kind of jump up, I'm now aiming for 74 because in terms of body composition I think that's where I will want to be. I don't think I'm going to need to be as light as 72 kilos. So that was one of the kind of little wrinkles. And it's a great example of why creatine's great. And I talked about that in the last podcast. But the one caveat is that it does cause a lot of weight increases. Probably, could do me a little bit by surprising my weight jumped up that much. I'd estimated it would add about a kilo. But I could tell because I've been really diligent with tracking my calories. I can tell from my progress photos, I am visually that bit leaner. I can see it even in my clothes over the last two weeks. Yet my weight, the weight on the scales has actually gone, if you like, in the wrong direction. So this would be tricky, I think, for most people to navigate. I think a lot of people would be doubting themselves. I'm quite lucky that I'm obviously a little bit of an old hand at this and that I'm more interested in what my progress photo shows and if I can see that there's a lot more definition in my upper back as there is in my arms, even to my face, like I'm looking a little leaner over the last couple of weeks and my clothes are all fitting better. And you know, I've had to put my wrist strap down in another setting in another belt buckle. I'm pretty okay with the fact that although the scale weight has gone up, that my body composition has gone in the right direction, so that's really what matters. But the other little wrinkle is as well, is that I was dieting a little bit more aggressively, and I kind of moderated that in the last few weeks, the last two weeks, because I have now just moved teams. So the basketball team I play for typically didn't play over the summer months. So I was still training, but not quite as frequently, and it's not quite as structured or... don't necessarily need to worry if I am going into session a little bit fatigued. So, and this for context, absolutely does happen to me. So when I am doing sort of an hour and a half to two hour long session, especially at the intensity that basketball tends to be played, it does mean that you can start to feel a little bit knackered, probably about 45 minutes in, and you start to find your energy levels dip. Now, that's not, wasn't really much of problem, but. Because the team that I played for the last two seasons, unfortunately we're not going to be fielding a team next year, which is a real shame because we've done really well actually. They just started the team three years ago and built up nicely, but five of our kind of like key players, just adult responsibilities, as sometimes goes the way it goes, have now had to kind of say that they're not playing this season, which is real shame. And we were a little bit short on players, sadly. ⁓ So I've then gone and... basically tried out for another team. In fact, I tried out for a couple and I have gone to another team. Now this other team have two teams. Actually, they have three. They have two teams in one division and one team in another division. And I have a suspicion that I probably will be able to play in the division two team rather than the division four team, which would be a little bit of a step up from the kind of division I'd been in. Now, the reason any of this blinking matters, there is context. I'm not just rambling about my own basketball stuff, is... that I am cognizant of the effect that being in a more aggressive deficit will have on my performance. Now, the team I played for last season, because we train out of a high school facility basically in the late evenings, like I guess many sports do to be fair, because a lot of high schools have sports centers and things like that, because of that, I didn't tend to play across the summer. So in theory, the last week of training would have been last week, and I would have had a seven week gap before training resumed in. I guess August time. However, the team that I've just moved to play all summer long. And of course, I'm not an established player. So whilst I was the captain for the previous team, I now have to reestablish myself all over again. And I want to obviously be one of the players that's not sitting on the bench all season. So there's a little bit of pressure there to make sure that I'm performing at my very best because you kind of have to make the right impression when you go into a new team and set the kind of tone straight off the bat. Otherwise... you you can climb up, but it does take a little bit longer. It's always a little bit easier to go in a bit more assertively, as I've learned over the years, if you are changing teams. Now, the reason that matters is that if I'm on a really aggressive deficit, I will look great, but, but the caveat is that I will probably struggle to perform and train and push myself with the intensity that's going to be required to play for Division 2 team. I'm just aware of that. So, what that's meant is I have taken a little bit of a backstep, and I'm going for a more moderate approach. Instead of trying to drop about sort of 0.8 kilos a week, somewhere between 0.8 and one kilo a week, I'm now dipping down and I'm gonna look for about 0.4 to 0.6 kilos per week. So that's still gonna put me on a pretty good trajectory. I think I had a little bit of a look. And right now, based on my weight, I'd be about five to six weeks off hitting my goal weight anyway of 74 kilos. As I say, that was originally gonna be 72, but given that I've been like a super responder to creating this time round, I've kind of said 74 and I'm getting close to happy, well, not quite where I'd want to be physique wise, but I'm definitely getting closer to that, that I feel like another four and a half kilos off will do the job for me. It makes sense to do that. So that's a little bit of a change intact for me. And I think this is an important point that I'm trying to make here around. When I'm working with clients, sometimes we adjust the strategy depending on the phase they're in. I have clients right now who are doing a period of maintenance over July because they've got so much on socially and that makes sense for them. I have clients that were doing in a more aggressive phase in maybe May and June who are now doing still a steady weight loss phase but just not quite as aggressive. Again, a bit like me, maybe now aiming for a slightly slower drop but still aiming to drop. I've also got clients that have gone the other way that have had a really busy May, June and now are doing a little bit of a push through sort of three, four weeks of July because maybe they have ⁓ upcoming holiday and we just want to do a little bit of an extra push up until then as well before having a couple weeks of kind of maintenance then cracking on on the other side. So the point is this is that even within your weight loss it doesn't have to be that you go at one speed for your entire journey from start to finish. I have done a phase of slower weight loss at the start of the year which was pretty relaxed it didn't really feel like a diet it was quite easy pulled a good few kilos off I did a phase of more aggressive dieting, lost a bit more weight, that was really, really successful, got down from sort of 81 to 76-ish kilos in pretty short order. Then obviously taking creatine, seen a bit of a jump up, but now I'm gonna go into a little bit of a slower phase that probably means I'm gonna have potentially another six, maybe seven weeks of dieting if I give myself some sort of leeway there in terms of if things are a bit slower on the scales than I expect. So. What I'm trying to stress is that it's okay to go at different paces at different times. It's good to be intentional about it, but for me, the key thing is as long as I'm moving forward, I know I'm gonna get there. If I keep dropping half a kilo a week, I know that in six, seven, eight weeks, I'm gonna feel pretty bloody good for it. If it happens to be 0.7 kilos a week, great, it's a bit faster. I've done the diet earlier, fantastic. But I'm not gonna stress or put loads of pressure on it. And there's something in that. that you can take different approaches at different times and I like to utilise those with clients because different points in your life are just different, right? You might have times that are a little quieter that you feel like actually I could lean into this, I could push a bit higher, harder, sorry, I could maybe pull my calories a bit lower, pull an extra 100, 150 calories off just to nudge things forward. But there's also times where you're like, that's gonna be a struggle because I've got so much on. So hopefully that's helpful in the context of understanding that actually it's okay to go at a different pace at different times. I know that's a bit of a ramble almost about me and the background of that as well and I won't go on about basketball too much in future episodes but I just wanted to touch on something that I have a slightly different goal now, right? My overall goal is yes I want to look and feel really good but I don't want to do that at the cost of the sport I play which I really really enjoy and maybe missing out on opportunities because I'm not going to re-practice because I'm going aggressively whereas A weeks ago, I was quite happy to go aggressively because it was the end of the season. I was kind of in no man's land. We're still training, but there's no real pressure. There's going to be a seven week break over summer and I know I'm going to look after my fitness. It's not going to matter. I'm already the captain of that team. But this team, it's all new. So I need to make sure I can perform. So my goals have shifted a little. So think it's important to know that it's okay for goals to shift too. So a short episode there, something a little bit different, bit of a different topic. I hope you're having a great week so far and I'll speak to you soon.