For some reason I desperately want to eat fat and sugar at the moment. I don’t feel like I’ve been overly depriving myself but cravings are quite stark. Feel great generally though. I don’t feel like I’m seeing particularly noticeable progress with fat/weight loss but cycling steadily improving so not getting too hung up on that.
What % of your daily calories come from fats? It’s possible that you might have inadvertently cut too much out of your diet (or too soon).
This was the last time I added it up on my fitness pal
I think it’s probably just the case that cutting calories at all and exercising as much as I am that I’m going to be hungry at points 
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I think perhaps weighing yourself can be counterproductive sometimes because it fluctuates so much. After my binge on Sunday I weighed as ~68kg on Monday morning. Weighed as 66kg again after my ride that evening. What the fuck does that mean? It probably doesn’t matter- 68kg is still light enough and my measurements are steadily coming down.
For some reason at the moment I’m having to remind myself quite often that I’m making steady progress on all fronts and that there’s no reason to think that I shouldn’t hold the course. Being able to do >20 pushups or 3x12 was unthinkable not too long ago. Upper body felt solid as fuck on the bike last night; shadow from the sunset looked fucking awesome if I do say so myself- only legs moving 
Definitely notice benefit of the core/upper body work climbing out of the saddle.
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Thinking about it, it might just have been 2kg of shit
Weight is a measure that’s best done under consistent conditions and infrequently. Much better to focus on managing the input measures which drive it in real time (i.e. Calories consumed/ calories burned, quality of recovery etc).
I only weigh myself every 2 - 3 weeks on the same day at the same time. It’s too easy to think you can chase the scales, which is counter productive.
Intellectually, I know this.
I can be a tad obsessive 
Ran out of protein powder and money 
I’ll survive, I suppose. Had three good sessions on Fri, Sat and Sun but hardly any sleep since. Hope I can make up for it before this Fri.
When was your last complete lay off?
How would you define that? Do you mean a full week off?
Longest gap was 25th Feb to 6th March. I’m just doing as much as I can on a weekend at the moment but only one day was max effort/heavy.
I won’t train again until Fri.
Yes a week or heaven forbid,two week of no lifting. You can run, swim, play sports but no intense weight lifting.
Sounds like your last one wasn’t that long ago though.
Yeah, well my problem is usually keeping the motivation to carry on lifting.
How often do you change your routine? Either movements and / or rep range and set structure?
Other than squat I change the movements based on what I can be bothered to do that day. Been doing chins and press-ups for a few weeks now though. Reps change each session and usually so does the weight, though not always each session for each exercise.
Squatting from the pins has been a constant and so have Good Mornings. I will soon go to something along the following lines (so much to read about that system) when I feel the need to but anything is good right now as I’m just a beginner really:
https://www.westside-barbell.com/blogs/february-2017-articles/westside-for-raw-made-easy-by-burley-hawk
I’d be interested to read more about what the system really entails as I found the guy writing that article a bit incoherent despite his best efforts to sound like some kind of authority (or maybe I’m feeling grumpy this morning and his writing style irritated me into missing the point he was making!).
I did agree with his point about not over complicating things. For me training is about a few basic things: Train to a goal; focus on good form, make sure you’re progressing over time, vary movements reps and speed, do active recovery. All the systems that I’ve read are variations or productising of all or aspects of these basics.
That was a recent outline on their site but I love the podcasts with Louie Simmons (Westside Barbell owner):
That article is about as clear as anything I’ve read about it. You have to piece things together but I enjoy listening to Louie.
Yeah Louie is always a good listen. A proper guru in the world or powerlifting, any sports scientist would want to camp themselves in his gym as his approach is so conducive to proper quantitative study. He’s then applied it to other sports where it transfers. That comes through when you hear him talk about squatting.
I’d still say that they’re not doing anything different but they’re bloody good at it with terrific attention to detail and the application of a scientific approach.
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I agree. It seems the amount of variety they use allows them to hit a PR each week in some variation of a lift, always using max effort and so always improving. As a beginner I’ve wanted to stick with my main squat to get a good feel for it before starting to do a lot of variations.
But the whole point of the conjugate method in my language is to find your weakness and do ‘accessory work’ and then when you re-lift you’ll be stronger because your weakness has now been ‘fixed’.
This is obviously because they treat the main powerlifting movements as their competition lift and its the poundage that counts through force. Most people don’t train for this! Most want something to transfer to a sport or other interest or just the vanity of looking better. The conjugate method does not directly do that - hence my first principle above - know what your goals are. You have to answer a simple question coherently - why squat? Its bloody difficult, very taxing and requires tremendous mental and physical effort, so you have to have a bloody good reason for doing it. The guys at Westside are doing it to win stuff and pay the bills, but that’s not you or I!
Yes the conjugate method is a lot of accessory work and I agree with what you’re saying. What I meant was that they lift max effort every week but to do this continually need to vary the lifts. My understanding is that accessory work makes you bigger and max effort work makes you strong.
They don’t train the full competition squat and don’t max out on deadlift, as far as I can tell, but do a lot of box squats. They increase their competition squat by box squatting with less weight.
I just want to be stronger and like the feeling of a successful squat. I don’t care about looking like a bodybuilder but not being skinny would be nice 