#rpcut

I’m into my third week on maintenance, and still hanging in there. I have my ups and downs, but overall, there is SO much good stuff to report.

Athletics: I’ve been on one-to-one CrossFit programming for the past few months -- not because I have any particular competitive aspirations, but just because I have some individual goals I’m trying to reach (specifically: my first muscle-up!). I’m really, really enjoying the process -- primarily just on an intrinsic-motivation level, but I also have to admit that it has been absolutely invaluable to have so much individual attention and feedback during the relative physical chaos that I’ve been inflicting upon myself here recently. :) Performance-wise, it has definitely been a year of two steps forward, one step back, and six to the side -- and since performance was by far the primary driver behind my choice to do this second cut, right now it feels very rewarding to realize that the gym feels pretty damn awesome.

First, I’ve been shocked and thrilled at how fast my barbell strength has started to return over the past couple of weeks. Cumulatively speaking, I’ve spent almost the entire past YEAR in a caloric deficit (and am technically still in one right now -- more on that in a minute), and therefore truly can’t remember the last time I PRed anything with a barbell. Raw strength just hasn’t been the priority this year -- and I’m okay with that, because, objectively speaking, I was pretty deficient in gymnastics skills and needed to stock the toolbox with a wider range of abilities. But, with the recently increased fueling alone, I’m already a lot closer to a few of my old strength numbers than I’d expected to be (example: over the past two weeks, I’ve added FORTY pounds onto my tempo back squat sets without any change in the perceived level of effort). I’m definitely not yet as strong as I was a year ago (when I weighed 40 pounds more!) -- but I also didn’t realize how comparatively fragile and ‘brittle’ I had felt for the past couple of months. It’s like the old metaphor about putting the frog in the pot of water and slowly turning up the heat -- if you do it too fast, he’ll jump right out, but if you do it gradually, he’ll just sit there and allow himself to be cooked. Now, since coming off cut, heavy barbells suddenly feel like something I can successfully ‘fight for’ again, which is a relieving, exciting, and validating place to be.

And, secondly -- knock on wood -- none of my new gymnastics abilities seem to have taken much of a hit this time either. Last time I came off a cut, there were some performance changes -- handstand push-ups, which were a brand-new skill at the time, suddenly started feeling a lot harder (which, granted, may have been partially mental), and my overall pulling strength also took a sneaky decline (which took a while for us to ‘notice’ and address, because it just seemed like random bad days at first). This time, I’ve been proactive about keeping extra pulling work in the rotation, just in case -- but so far, none of the gymnastics feel any harder than they did three weeks ago, and a lot of stuff feels a bit easier -- my muscle-up pulls in particular have gotten a lot stronger. (Coach used to have a lot to say about those attempts -- “look for the ground,” “don’t pronate; keep neutral grip,” “don’t slack off with the pull” -- but a few days ago, the last time we worked on them, she just silently watched me swing -- then cocked her head to the side, paused, and said, “...You know, at some point you just have to decide you want it bad enough.”)

Sleep: My sleep is slowly recovering -- I’m tracking it with my FitBit, and I’m gaining a couple extra minutes every night. I was averaging about six (often severely interrupted) hours during the cut, but have now worked my way up to an average of seven uninterrupted hours, where (1) I barely wake up and (2) can successfully put myself back to sleep if I do wake up. And if I wake up starving overnight (which has happened a couple of times), I’ve learned that I overall respond better if I get up and have a bit of protein (as opposed to trying to tough it out without extra food, the way I did on cut). There have also been a handful of nights where I have slept ALL NIGHT LONG -- like, didn’t even wake up to pee -- which feels kind of miraculous.

Social: I’m still feeling a bit socially isolated -- turns out, when you continually make excuses to not hang out with your friends (in an attempt to avoid food-centric situations), they eventually stop asking. :) However, I know this is going to get better over the next few weeks -- first because I’ll take the initiative to make it so, and second, because with increased calories AND gradually-lengthening daylight hours, my mood is now dramatically better and I actually want to be social again. (Something I did not take into account is that, as a born-and-raised Floridian, I already suffer from significant seasonal affective disorder now that I live in NC, and cutting during the winter definitely made that ten times worse!)

Visually: for lack of a more ‘PC’ way to phrase this -- shit is POPPIN’. The newly increased carb stores inside my muscles means the definition is unreal. My upper back, shoulders, and arms in particular are making me super happy. I look so much fuller and healthier to myself than I did just a couple of weeks ago, and yet my clothes are still fitting the same way (really hoping I get to keep this awesome new smaller bra size over the long haul!).

Food/bodyweight: This is the arena where there have been a few bumps in the road.  On one hand, maintenance is (obviously) absolutely delightful. I can have a couple bites of chocolate after dinner, eat the samples in Costco, order a nonfat cappuccino at Starbucks instead of black coffee. When I’m working a 12-hour shift, I can toss a Quest bar in my bag for dinner rather than having to prep something that contains zero fat. I can sprinkle goat cheese on my egg whites, add whipped cream to my coffee, and just ‘eyeball’ the green beans and rice in my meal prep containers instead of weighing them down to the tenth of an ounce. And when I have a workout that feels ‘moderate’ by RP standards (like last Friday, when I had tempo back squats AND jerk clusters AND deadlifts), then I can eat as such -- an extra 60g carbs spread over the remainder of my day -- which opens up my food options considerably.

On the other hand, the scale has definitely taken more of a jump than I wanted it to -- and, unfortunately, right now I’m still in a transition phase where that number does carry objective significance.

Cut Week 11 average -- 137.2 Cut Week 12 average -- 135.8 (Final end-of-cut nadir weight: 133.7) Maintenance Week 1 average -- 135.6 Maintenance Week 2 average -- 137.7

For reference, while it’s normal to gain as much as 5# on maintenance, you definitely don’t want to jump anywhere near that high right out of the gate while still moving through the steps back up to base. I’m still on the tab they refer to as Maintenance 2, meaning I’m still one or two notches below the caloric intake that someone my size ‘should’ require in order to stay steady. However, I’m also not super starving (most of the time!) at this level of intake, which means (sadly) that my metabolism is still depressed from the months of cutting -- it’s not yet firing on all cylinders and ‘asking’ for more food. I have total faith that it’ll get there eventually, but the official opinion from the RP group is that I’m not ready yet based on the above numbers; I’m looking at at least another week on this tab, and probably more like two weeks. And while I’m eager to jump back up to what’s called New Base (where I get more fats with my meals -- a.k.a. back to whole eggs, avocado, and more cheese and peanut butter!), I do know the group is right and that I need to listen. Fortunately, the scale is starting to (appropriately) very slowly move down again (daily weights for the past few days have been between 136.2 and 137.3) -- so this week’s average will likely be lower.

I don’t need (or even want) to stay at my end-of-cut weight. I really don’t even need to care about the number at all, as long as I can keep all my gymnastics abilities. And I was (surprisingly) one hundred percent okay with the first couple of pounds of regain. But I’ll admit, in spite of all the hard mental work regarding emotional detachment from the scale -- all those weeks of telling myself that I wasn’t going to be ‘married’ to a number and that anything ‘around’ 140# was okay -- that it was still very hard to watch the scale climb up and up and up every single day during that second week. And also that, for some ridiculous reason, I’m currently still finding myself inexplicably attached to the concept of 136# -- which somehow just ‘feels’ like a good number in my head, significantly better than 135 or 137 (yeah, I have a Thing against odd numbers). However, my gut is telling me that my final sweet spot is ultimately probably going to be more like 138# -- and so I need to internalize the fact that that is (1) completely okay, (2) completely arbitrary, and (3) -- in the grand scheme of life -- also completely unimportant. :)

I’m very eager to reach a point where I don’t have to focus on the numbers so much. Honestly, that’s mostly why I’m so eager to get ‘through’ this phase -- apart from wanting more food (LOL), I’m also just ready to be rid of some of the mental burden. However, realistically, I know that I have significantly depressed my metabolism over the past year, that I’m in a more extreme situation now than I was following my first cut, and that it’s therefore normal for it to take a while for things to ramp back up. Which also means that I have to continue to pay attention for a bit longer, because a lack of prudence during this crucial phase could easily mean loss of progress -- which is the last thing I want after so much diligent work.

I will freely admit that I’m posting this ‘timeline’ mostly for my own benefit, so that I’ll have it to refer back to at a later date; it may not be of tremendous interest to anyone else. But as I type this, I have 24 hours to go until the ‘finish line’ of my second Renaissance Periodization cut. I’m once again feeling pretty satisfied, proud of the journey, and, in most ways, dramatically more prepared and mentally ‘settled’ about the endpoint than I was after my first cut. However, the one concept that continues to make me (irrationally) anxious is the prospect of slightly higher bodyweight potentially impacting my CrossFit movements—thus this post.

Objectively, I do recall from my last cut-to-maintenance transition that the concept of improved fueling / increased glycogen stores pretty effectively offsets any slight bodyweight bump. However, I’ve been CrossFitting for over five years and just gained the bulk of my gymnastics skills within these past six or seven months. In other words, I’m still so new to this ‘toolbox’ that any performance fluctuations (which I’ve long been accustomed to with a barbell) still feel irrationally frightening on this new playing field—like, but I could do FIVE strict pull-ups yesterday, and today FOUR feels hard; therefore THE WORLD IS ENDING! (…My coach is continually talking me off the ledge in this regard. :))

At any rate, this is one reason why I kept track of certain gym accomplishments (a.k.a. ‘non-scale victories’) as the cut progressed. I am definitely not someone who PRs barbell movements on a cut (quite the contrary; my strength has suffered significantly this year), but my gymnastics have improved literally beyond all recognition, of which I am very proud. As such, I wanted to keep track of my performance milestones at various bodyweights along the way, so that I’ll have this mental tool for the inevitable struggle bus days. When sets of handstand push-ups feel impossible, it might help to be able to look back at this post and say to myself, no, your bodyweight is NOT the issue, because you did this same thing in a metcon when you were TEN POUNDS heavier! It’s just time for a rest day, that’s all. :)

Without further ado, I give you RP Cut #2: the Non-Scale Victory Edition! :)

Week 1 average: 148.4 lb (although, admittedly, about a pound of this was Bagel Bloat from my massive cheat weekend in NYC just prior to starting the cut—I had been averaging 147.4 prior to the trip) Non-scale victory: recaptured a 193# back squat (which is only 7# off my all-time best despite weighing 20-25# less than I did at the time I achieved that PR).

Week 2 average: 146.4 lb Non-scale victory: 2 sets of 5 unbroken handstand push-ups (single abmat, no plates) in a metcon setting!

Week 3 average: 145.3 lb Non-scale victorIES: five unbroken strict pull-ups! three unbroken ring dips! 4 sets of 50 unbroken double-unders! ...It was a big week :-)

Week 4 average: 144.2 lb Non-scale victory: PRed Fran at 8:28. Definitely still on the slower side, but I was thrilled by consistently large-ish sets (thrusters as 14/7, 8/7, and 9 unbroken; pull-ups as sets of 3-5 the whole way!). Afterward, my coach made the point that I likely could have gone faster for competition purposes by doing smaller sets, but that this was the right approach/stimulus to use for training.

Week 5 average: 142.6 Non-scale victory: basically blitzing through a metcon that included both TTB and HSPU (two relatively new skills for me), and staying consistent with both. Did all the sets of 10 TTB as 6/4, and sets of 5 HSPU as unbroken 5s (albeit again to just one abmat, no plates).

Week 6 average: 141.2 lb Non-scale victory: weighted pull-ups with a 10# plate! Also, sets of 4 HSPU with 10# plates—something I had struggled with as recently as three weeks prior—felt EASY. (The high point of this week was the moment when my coach grinned at me after a particularly sharp set of those and said, “See, this is why, when you get salty about stuff, I say to you, ‘remember when you couldn’t do a handstand push-up negative?’” :-))

Week 7 average: 141.0 lb (but this was a bit artificially inflated because it was the week that I ‘should have gotten’ my period; in reality, this was also the week I broke the 140 barrier / saw a couple of weights in the 130s for the first time ever in my adult life!). Non-scale victory: not a big flashy accomplishment, but I was pretty pleased when I felt basically fine / barely sore at all after doing the equivalent of about 90 pull-ups in one training session.

Week 8 average: 140.9 lb (but again somewhat artificially inflated, this time by being home for the holidays) Non-scale victory: non-gym-related, but: going home for 2.5 days for Christmas and meeting both of my goals, which were (1) getting my protein in every day and (2) eating and enjoying normal food without ‘cracking out’. I was also proud that I could recognize the exact moment (on the morning of the third day) when I was starting to lose my restraint, and was able to use the clock as a tool to reel myself back in.

Week 9 average: 138.7 lb Non-scale victory: there were three this week: (1) got my first truly RXed handstand push-ups (abmat + 25-lb plates), on New Year’s Eve, (2) did 50 burpees in 2:58 (!), and (3) did a set of 10 easy unbroken toes-to-bar that felt as though I could’ve kept going!

Week 10 average: 138.1 lb Non-scale victory: ‘graduated’ to performing official muscle-up attempts! I have all the ‘pieces’—five strict pull-ups, three strict dips, sharp transitions on the low rings, strong hollow swings on the high rings—I just have to figure out the combination of mental cues that allows me to put it all together.

Week 11 average: 137.2 lb Non-scale victory: sets of two RXed HSPU in an EMOM setting—that actually felt dramatically easier than the singles I had done two weeks prior! Also, coach started programming my wallballs with the 20# ball—which I obviously despise, but also secretly love, because it feels like a vote of confidence. :)

Week 12 average: 135.4, with a nadir of 133.7 lb (!!!) Non-scale victory: sets of 3-4 unbroken false grip ring pull-ups (which feel weird and uncomfortable, but several of the boys in the gym spontaneously commented on how good they looked and how “you just add a little kip in there, and [you’ve got your muscle-up]!”, which felt really good to hear. :)

…I’ll soon link this post back to the fuller/longer one detailing more of the multidimensional ins and outs of this second cut, but thought that the above timeline deserved its own section (in the interest of partitioning the various aspects into manageable ‘chunks’, rather than writing my usual rambly novel :)).