The Home STRETCH

Howdy!  One week to go, one week to go, ONE WEEK TO GO!

My pal Tim wasn't kidding when he said these last two weeks were the hardest.  High Fat Low Carb diet - I am HUNGRY!!  So normally, I do really well with the low blood sugar - I push through the nausea and forget I'm hungry.  Not on this diet - I feel like I am eating just enough to stimulate my cravings, and I am starving!

Firstly, I am definitely eating the 2 snacks per day now.  I've tried it two ways - Breakfast, Snack, Lunch, Snack, Dinner - and Breakfast, early Lunch, Snack, early Dinner, Snack...  This weekend, not so good.  Saturday night I HAD to have an extra protein ball snack... and about 40g smoked salmon... and a teaspoon of butter (yes weird I know, I read that was a good idea on a diet such as this phase).  Sunday night was no better, with the same except the salmon replaced with Parmesan cheese.  

I started vaping again this past weekend, again just the evenings.  I haven't done it for weeks - haven't needed to.  I also managed last week Monday-Friday without it so I'm not too concerned!  Just need to get through these last 7 days...   Had a home weigh-in this morning, 74.7kg and 29.9% body fat - I think my scales weigh about 400g too heavy and 1% too light?  So body fat% is moving really slowly, but I am still losing 1kg+ a week :)  We're sitting in at just over 9kg loss so far, with 1 week to go - the 10kg loss is a REAL thing that could be happening!!

In other news, at the gym last week, Tuesday, after my class, I got a trainer to spot me 4 reps of flat bench dumbell chest press - USING 15kg dumbells!  PB for sure.  Later in the week we had a couple fast-paced chest presses (incline, single arm, normal), and I am solidly on 12.5kgs now so maybe this week I will get the chance to push up to 15kg again.

I also bought some skin-firming cream and have been using it a lot.  I do not have that stretchy skin that some of my family members have, that bounces back - so I was expecting some problems if I lost weight relatively quickly (which I have).  However, I don't seem to have as much as I anticipated - but it can't hurt to use the cream anyway.

I'll leave you with this - again, I know this doesn't actually reflect what's happening on the challenge, but still, pretty good feeling to be consistently in the top ten F45 wide: