Phase 3 - last 4 weeks

Well, it was the first day of phase 3 today. Oh. My. Goodness. I have a feeling that this month is gonna suck, just a little bit.

With the focus on fat loss while retaining the muscle I've spent the last two months building, I had more heart pumping, lose your breath kind of moves today. Quite a few more supersets and active rest periods mixed in with work periods. A lot of jumping rope, some jump squats and long jumps. And as far as weight sets and reps, we stuck to 3 sets on everything and the reps went way up - to 30 in some cases, so obviously, the weight had to come down.

I actually like using lighter weight to squat. I feel like I am accomplishing more when I can get really low and keep tension on the legs. Heavy weight with low reps or lighter weight with high reps - they are both difficult but in different ways. It's nice to change pace like this. I am going to be so lost when I don't have a program like this to follow come January!

FYI: I don't like leg extensions. My quads burn so bad doing those. 30 reps about kills me. Done!

I was so wiped by the end of today's workout. Not sure if it had anything to do with my low cal eating. I really don't want my workouts to suffer this month!

I switched to a super strict diet on Saturday. Not sure how long I will be able to maintain it, but I'm shooting for a week just to see if I can see some result from it. If not, then I literally have NO idea how to lose fat. Basically I'm cutting calories to 1200 and eating very little carbs. If that doesn't do it.....then I don't know.

During the last couple of days of watching calories meticulously and cutting starchy carbs WAY down, I've noticed that I don't have any gas. And if you are a regular follower you'll know that quite frequently I complain about having terrible gas all the time. So not having any the last couple of days has opened my eyes to something. It could mean that I'm sensitive to wheat. Or, it could mean that I eat too much high fiber cereal. Maybe just too many carbs in general?? Maybe my stomach has a harder time digesting them? I mean, it hasn't solved the problem, but it has definitely given me some ideas to talk with my doctor about. I'd be interested to hear if anyone out there has had similar issues with that and what you did to resolve it.