Ep 91 | My Fat Loss Journey End of Week 2 Check In
I'm two weeks into my own Fat Loss Transformation journey, and I wanted to share an honest look at what's actually happening — the wins, the water-weight freakouts, and the small adjustments I'm making along the way. If you've been following along with The Coaching Corner Podcast, you know I'm using the same six-month program I built for my coaching clients, with a goal of dropping from around 28% to 22% body fat while holding onto (or building) muscle. This isn't about the number on the scale — it's about changing my body composition, getting stronger, and seeing the muscle I've built over the last two years actually show through.
If you missed the last episode, you can catch up here. And if you're ready to start your own fat loss journey, my Fat Loss Transformation Program is open — sign up here!
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Jayd (00:00):
It is now the end of week two of my fat loss journey. So let's take a look at my progress so far. I was able to hit almost all of my workouts this week. I still have one more to do and I'm definitely making some progress in my fat loss and I can't wait to show it to you today. Hey there. I'm personal trainer Jayd Harrison and welcome to my series on my Fat Loss Journey. This is a mini series that's part of my podcast where I'm sharing my own personal fat loss journey as I use the same program that I designed for my personal training clients. It's called the Fat Loss Transformation Program and it runs for six months. My goal for the program is to reduce my body fat percentage and get to a leaner physique closer to 22% body fat. At the moment I'm starting out with about 28% body fat and I'm not super concerned with losing weight per se.
(01:07)
I would be happy to stay at the same weight as long as I can increase the amount of muscle tissue that I have and decrease the amount of body fat that I have. Now, if you have been around in fitness spaces for a lon period of time, you'll know that it is extremely hard to do this. Both muscle building and burning fat at the same time, it is a very slow gradual process. But my main concern is to be able to be strong so I don't want to lose any muscle as I get leaner. So I'm really hitting it hard on the resistance training and making sure that I'm eating plenty of protein as I try to keep myself in calorie deficit to prioritize burning fat. And if all goes well, my goal is to build muscle while also burning fat, changing my body composition and getting a leaner, more toned physique.
(01:59)
Today we're going to take a look at my end of week to check in and reflection. I've also taken some new progress photos. We'll take a look at those as well and I'll show you what I did for my workouts and how my weight was tracking in addition to how my calorie intake is tracking. Before we get into it though, make sure that you hit the like button and subscribe to my channel if you're watching on YouTube. If you're listening to the podcast, make sure that you follow the podcast so you always get the latest episodes delivered right to your device. And also keep in mind that if you're looking for a fat loss coach who can help you to build muscle, burn fat and get in shape without shame and without burnout, I am accepting new clients into my online coaching program. You can click on the link that's in the show notes or in the description of the video below to apply for coaching with me and schedule your one-on-one consultation.
(02:56)
And without further ado, let's get into my end of week two check-in.
(03:05)
So as part of my Fat Loss journey, I am tracking everything that I'm eating and drinking with the goal of eating about 1,800 calories on average a day. I'm also stepping on the scale every morning and entering the body weight that I measure into my ABC Trainerize app. This is the same app that I use to train my personal training clients. And today I also took some progress photos. Let's take a look at the progress photos first. I decided to change the outfit that I wear from my progress photos to one of my bathing suits because I want to make sure that I am taking note of the definition that's starting to come through, especially around my hips area. Because I've been doing the abduction and abduction machine I've noticed just by feeling on my hips a growth in the muscles there. And so I want to make sure that as I'm taking my progress photos, these are also capturing the differences in my body in those areas because the outfit that I was wearing before really covered up a lot of my hip area and I want to see that definition as it comes through.
(04:10)
I also tend to store most of my body fat in my hips and upper legs. So as I burn fat, this is probably going to be one of those areas that's going to show the definition more as my body fat reduces. I still have a pretty thick layer of body fat covering my muscles so I haven't really seen a whole lot of definition yet, but something that's really common with women is that our muscle definition doesn't tend to show unless we're actively working out or flexing. So I also decided to add to my progress photos some flexing videos so that I can see my muscles and my muscle definition because that's the thing that I'm really trying to pursue as part of this fat loss transformation journey. So I took a front double bicep flex picture, went from the side to show my side bicep.
(05:01)
I took picture of the back flexing to show my back muscle definition and then some tricep definition from the side. Overall, I am really excited about all of the muscle that I have so far built in the last two years and I am extremely excited to see as that muscle begins to show more as I remove that layer of fat that's surrounding the muscles. So something that I tried a little bit new this week was I took the camera with me and I recorded a little bit of a vlog while I was walking my dog during one of our long walks for cardio this week.
(05:42)
So we had a little bit of a mishap, just a small little blip over the weekend. I decided to splurge because I wanted a treat day and I was hanging out with my Twitch chat. We were playing the new Subnautica game and I wanted to treat myself a little bit. And you know what? When you're on a fat loss journey, you're totally allowed to have treat meals or treat days. And I ordered some DoorDash because it was kind of salty and high carb. My body ended up retaining a bunch of water and so when I stepped on the scale, I think it was yesterday, my weight shot up to 142 and I was like, "Uh-oh." But that's the kind of stuff that happens, especially when you have food that's like out of the ordinary. If it's not your normal stuff, especially if you're ordering like takeout food from like a restaurant, it's just going to have more sodium in it and it's probably going to have like added sugars and all of that just makes your body retain more water.
(06:59)
So when you see big jumps like that, it's not that you like that on meal made you gain two pounds of fat. It doesn't really work that way.
(07:11)
I was feeling pretty bloated though. I will say I felt pretty bloated so I needed to drink a bunch of water and I knew that once I got exercising again, now I'm on my walk with my dog. As soon as I did that, then that water weight gets released. So that's what we're doing. We're on our daily 30 minute walk and this is my first time vlogging outdoors. I can't say I recommend the experience because there's been so many noises that I can't really control for. So we'll see what it actually looks like when I actually go to do the editing. It's really challenging because I'm also like trying not to dox myself, so not showing like street signs or whatever, but I did want to show you like a little, I wanted to take you with me on a part of the process. So yeah, this week ... Oh, I did end up actually skipping, well, not skipping, postponing my second leg day because I just wanted to give my leg a little extra time to heal.
(08:17)
It feels pretty good. So after I finish my walk with my dog, then I'm going to go and actually take care of that second leg day to tie up week one of my new resistance training program and then I'll be able to officially start week two with my upper body, which I'm thinking about doing tomorrow. So yeah, it was a pretty good week. I'm happy with my progress. I did find it amusing that my weight shot up the way that it did after I had that DoorDash. I did also, I mean, part of the reason why I ended up getting the DoorDash was because I kind of ran out of what I had prepared for my meals. So that's kind of why that happened, which we already knew that like if I didn't have food prepared, either I'm going to go for cereal like convenience food or in this case order, but it's okay to have treat meals.
(09:23)
It's okay to have treat days even, even when you're trying to burn fat because your body and your brain need that and mine definitely did. So I'm sure once I actually get back into my normal exercise routine, I'm going to drink a lot of water to flush out that extra sodium. My weight will probably be back down to 140.5 within a day or two. So that's the plan.
(09:54)
So like I mentioned when I was walking, my body weight did fluctuate quite a lot this week. Let's take a look at what it was doing. Like I mentioned while I was walking between the 6th and the 7th, my weight shot way, way up because I had eaten food that was out of the ordinary, lots of sodium, lots of carbs. And so my body was retaining a lot of water when I went on this walk with my dog, but just like I expected to happen, my body weight did come back down after I got into my exercise routine and drank a lot of water, but it stayed kind of elevated for two days and then finally came back down on the 10th. Now I did actually forget to log, but one of these days I actually went all the way down to 139. So my body weight definitely is reducing very gradually and I'm really happy to see that.
(10:49)
It is normal to see these big fluctuations in my weigh-ins on a day-to-day basis. I've mentioned before in previous episodes, body weight really can fluctuate pretty drastically from day to day, even within the same day, depending on what you eat and how much water your body is retaining, but we take the daily measurements so that we can see general trends over time. We're only two weeks into this process and this really is the first week that I was really trying to be in a calorie deficit. We really won't see the big picture progress in this data until I've been at it for four to six weeks at least. But from my trainer's eye perspective as an expert looking at my graph, even though I didn't plug in all of my weight ins, I know that I made it below 140 at least for one way in this week.
(11:44)
So that's a victory and that tells me that I'm right on track. And to be honest, I didn't do the best of jobs tracking everything that I ate and drank this week. There were a few days where I didn't completely track everything, but I was intuitively keeping track of what I was eating. But like I mentioned when I was taking the walk and vlogging, I kind of splurged over the weekend as kind of a celebration and relaxing with my Twitch chat while I was playing the new game. Outside of that, on the days that I was fully tracking, I am able to stick to 1800 calories or even less. In these last couple of days in particular, I've been sticking closer to 1600 or 1650 and this is really because I was really busy on those days and especially in the morning I didn't really have time to sit down and eat something, but I don't really mind being in that 1600 calorie intake because like I mentioned in last week's vlog, I am thinking about maybe accelerating my fat loss to be closer to a pound of weight loss per week just to accelerate things a little bit in the short term.
(12:57)
So dropping 200 calories or 150 calories below the target goal, which was 1800 calories, should allow me to burn more fat. But I am paying attention to my recovery from my workouts. When you go really, really low in your calorie intake, it can make it harder for you to recover from your workouts and it can affect your energy levels. I have been pretty sore after my workouts, but I'm not really sure if that has to do as much with my calorie intake versus my body just getting used to the new routine because it is a new workout routine. I won't really have as good of a sense of what the effect is until I've been doing this for another week or two. So my goal for the coming week is going to try to stick to a calorie intake every day of between 1600 and 1800, which will allow me to stay in a calorie deficit of at least 250 calories to burn at least a half a pound of fat per week.
(13:56)
And if I burn more, then that's awesome, but I really don't want to go below 1600, 1500 at the bare minimum because I want to make sure that my muscles are fueled properly for my workouts. Speaking of workouts, let's take a look at how my workouts went. Because I had strained one of my muscles in my hip, I decided to make my fourth leg day kind of a mobility day. So I spent a good chunk of time working on the floor doing some various calisthenic and yoga-based movements to make sure that my legs were properly warmed up and that I had given my hips a good stretch. So I did some bear squat to down dogs to start with and then I did the bear plank to Spider-Man lunge. These two movements together are so good for getting some blood flow to the legs, but also stretching out the hips.
(14:49)
You get a nice stretch in the hip flexors of the straight leg and the hip adductors of the leg that comes forward. It's also a really good core activator as well. And I wanted to give myself even more of a stretch. So I started to add a little thoracic rotation where I reached my hand up as I brought my hip forward and this really gave me a nice big stretch all through the front of my hip. So I went side to side with this and it felt really good and I could definitely feel my quads burning, which is great because I wanted to warm them up before hitting the leg press. After this, I grabbed a kettlebell and I worked on my balance training and worked on waking up all the stabilizing muscles in my legs and in my core with some single leg deadlifts.
(15:31)
I call these drinking birds because they kind of look like one of those drinking bird toys and that helps my clients to visualize what they should be doing. It's a really great movement for working on anti-rotation and it also helps to fire up all of the muscles along the legs and in the core to help you stabilize. So I did eight on both sides with a 20 pound kettlebell. Then after doing this, I did my star single leg balance for reps, which is a great exercise for waking up the hip abductors and abductors while you also continue to work on your stability, your balance, and continue to get blood flow to all those muscles in the legs. This is one of my favorite warmup exercises and balance training exercises. Most of my tightness in my hip tends to be in my abductors and abductor muscles so this really helps to loosen those guys up, which I really wanted to be mindful of before hitting the leg pres today.
(16:27)
I hit both sides for eight reps and then I went back down to the ground to do a little bit more dynamic stretching with the pigeon pose and I made sure to perform this dynamically where I wasn't spending more than like five seconds on either side. Performing this exercise dynamically really helps to light up those muscles, get some blood flow there and warm them up. When you're doing a warmup, you generally don't really want to be holding a stretch for too long because that starts to slow down your heart rate and I want to keep my heart rate up. I want to keep blood flow to these muscles. So I'm just spending a few seconds on either side to help loosen them up and this really made a big difference. And then after this, I did a seated internal and external rotation in my hips just to try and loosen up those muscles even more.
(17:19)
And I really felt the stretch and the internal rotation on the side that I had strained. So this was a really good stretch to do. Before you do leg day, it is good to make sure that you take your body through its full range of motion and the hips are such a complex joint. So it's good to practice with light or no resistance doing all of the movements that your legs do, like hip flexion and extension, internal and external rotation and then just to make sure that these muscles were really nice and warm and ready to fire. I finished up with a set of clam side planks. I love this exercise for training core stability and also getting those abductor muscles fired up and I did 15 on both sides. And then finally I definitely learned my lesson from last workout. So I made sure to do my dynamic leg swings forward and back to make sure that my hip flexors and my hamstrings were ready to go and I also did the side to side leg swings just to make sure everything was as loose as it could be so that I don't end up straining something during the strength training.
(18:21)
I also did some kickbacks to stretch out my quadriceps dynamically and I did feel some of the tightness in that muscle that I had strained on the right side while I was doing this, but it wasn't super bad and I still felt it but it was good enough to work with. So then I headed over to the leg press machine to warm up and get ready for my leg press sets. So anytime that I go to do a heavier exercise, I always warm up with really light resistance. So I did the first set here with no added plates and then after I felt out the movement, made sure that my quadricep was going to be okay, then I loaded up the weight, just putting a 45 pound plate on both sides and then I was able to do a set of 15 without pain or discomfort.
(19:11)
I also felt like I could do a little bit more. I mean, I felt the muscles burning a little bit towards the end, but I definitely could do more. And so I decided for my second set that I would add on a little bit more weight, but nothing too crazy, just an additional 10 pounds on both sides. I really wanted to go slow here because I had strained my quadricep in the week before and I definitely didn't want to do too much too soon heading back into these knee bending focused exercises. That felt really good and I was again able to do another set of 15. So I added on another 10 pounds on both sides of the machine and I did my last set and that was really juicy. I felt the burn in my quads and in my glutes and I think that this is probably going to be my starting weight next time because my quadricep felt fine and I'm going to try next week to do all three sets at this weight.
(20:09)
After I finished up with the leg press, I decided to do a lunch sequence because lunges are so good for training your endurance in your muscles, but they also help with mobility. So I did some walking lunges with the medicine ball and adding a twist to the bottom of the lunch. This gave my hip flexor a really nice stretch as the rest of my muscles were having to work. After the walking lunges, I did a set of 3D lunges, which is a variation of lunges where you do first a forward stepping lunge and then you step back to a single leg balance and then you step out to the side for a side lunge and then back to the center and then you go back into another reverse lunge. And then when you come back to the center, you start back at the top with another forward lunge followed by a side lunge and then a reverse lunge.
(21:05)
So each time that you complete all three lunges is one rep. And I was going for between five and 10 reps. I did five on the first set because I was still just feeling things out trying to figure out how this was going to feel on my strained muscle. It felt fine. In fact, it actually felt pretty good and I felt like I was getting a good stretch, but it was gentle and not harsh. And then I did another set and this time I actually did a little bit heavier with the walking lunges. I went up from the 10 pound medicine ball to the 18 pound medicine ball. This gave me much more of a challenge in my torso and I was definitely feeling my obliques the next day. And then I did the 3D lunches again and you know, those felt really good as well.
(21:46)
I was able to go all the way to 10 reps on both sides and by the end my leg was feeling great. So it was definitely the right call to turn this into a mobility, stability and endurance day. And then I finished off the workout with some stiff leg deadlifts staying in this little outdoor area because it was just so nice outside. Stiff leg deadlifts are a litle bit different from Romanian deadlifts. Romanian deadlifts, you allow your knees to bend a little bit so that you can get your hips back further. The focus on a Romanian deadlift would be glute activation. Here, I was really trying to stretch out and activate my hamstrings in the back of my thighs. So I didn't go very heavy with this and I'm trying to keep my knees from bending too much and I definitely felt my hamstrings after this workout, but that was really good because they definitely needed the stretch.
(22:34)
After this workout, I was back at the beginning of my resistance training program. I am trying to do four days a week alternating between push and press upper body, leg day one, and then a back day for upper body mainly, but there are RDLs on that day as well and then another leg day that I just completed. I am going to try to get into a routine where I'm able to complete all four workouts in one week, but it looks like at least for this week and next week, I'm probably going to have to push the last workout off just because I got a little bit off schedule because of that strain in my leg. So I will probably be including the last workout for the week in next week's vlog. I was really excited to get to do my upper body day in my home gym while streaming to my Twitch channel.
(23:28)
I used to stream almost all of my workouts to my Twitch channel and that's actually how I grew my community, but it's been a really long time since I've been able to do that just because of my crazy schedule and all of the work that I've been doing. We were all really happy to get to hang out while I did my workout. So I started my push press day with some dynamic stretches and some priming exercises because I was going to be doing some bench press. I always like to do cat cows and T spine rotations before I do any kind of bench press or chest press because it helps me to activate all those muscles in the back of my shoulders and in my upper back. And then I wanted to activate my core while stretching out my lats and my shoulders. So I did some pullover dead bugs with a 20 pound kettlebell.
(24:17)
This gave my shoulders such a juicy stretch and also helped me to fire up my core. After this, I finished up with some pike planks to keep warming up my shoulders and getting them ready for the first exercise, which is my double Arnold press. Like I said last week, I love doing the Arnold presses at the beginning of my push press day because they're so good at loosening up the tightness in my shoulders. Because I work in front of a computer for a lot of my content creation and my online coaching, I have that same problem that a lot of people have, which is my shoulders tend to be rounded forward. And if I take that posture with me into my workouts, especially my pushing and pressing exercises, that can lead to an injury in my shoulder and pain in my shoulder that I'll feel while I'm trying to do these exercises.
(25:09)
So doing this external rotation and maintaining that external rotation as I press upwards I've found has been really helpful for getting my shoulders ready and it's also a really good way to burn the shoulders out and build strong looking shoulders. After I finished my Arnold presses, I started to warm up my bench press. I always start with one set using just the barbell by itself with no weight so that I can rehearse the movement and feel the movement out. And then I decided to do a little heavier warm upset with 75 pounds on the bar before heading into my five by five using 95 pounds total. This felt really good and I think that in the coming week I'm probably going to have to bump up the weight on that. I think we are ready. The five by five felt really good though, really strong.
(26:03)
And then when I finished up with my five by five on the bench, I did my reverse flies for the back of my shoulders. This time I did them with my pinkies out and thumbs down so I could bias a lot more of the rear delts. Sometimes it's hard to get that muscle activated when the palms are facing down and I really wanted to feel my rear delts. It's such a hard muscle to feel for most people. I did a couple sets of between 10 and 15 on these, they felt really good. And then finally I finished up with my tricep dips. I did both sets with my legs extended this time, which gave me a lot more of a burn in my triceps. I felt really good and I had a huge pump in my upper body so I took the opportunity to do some flexing in front of the camera so that I could see that pump, see the muscle definition as it's coming through and I was really happy with that pump.
(27:03)
I definitely have a ways to go because my muscles are still hidden under a small layer of fat, but you know what? We're working on it and overall I'm really happy with my progress. Oh and while I was doing my posing, I saw my dog start to tuck himself into his blanket, which is like something that's so cute and I couldn't believe I was able to catch it on camera. Take a look. He's doing it. This is how he does it. He uses a little nose and he bumps the blanket up over his head and he crawls in and he just like disappears like a little cocoon. But I called him and he popped out. He is the best little gym rap and such a good helper. And then I did a little midweek check in and reflection. So let's take a look at that now.
(27:47)
This morning, which is Thursday, I weighed in at 139.8. So I have officially broken the 140 barrier and I'm officially down a pound from when I first started the journey. So I'm really excited about that, especially because after this past weekend when I had that huge jump after having the DoorDash meal and then I also put two and two together and realized that I went to the grocery store on Sunday after a really, really long day of teaching and also I was really tired and I was hungry, which you should never go to the grocery store when you're tired and hungry because then you're going to impulse buy, which is exactly what happened. I saw this, of course it was cereal because I'm a fiend for cereal, but Cheerios has now come out with what they're calling their protein cereal. It's not that much protein.
(28:42)
It's not. It's not that much protein per serving, whatever. I was like, let's try this. That sounds delicious. I love Cheerios by the way and yes, it is something that I treat as a treat meal because even though you might be thinking, "Oh, Cheerios, isn't that healthy?" Well, the honey nut ones especially or any of those sweetened cereals, like they may be a better alternative to like cocoa puffs or Fruit Loops, which is like nothing but sugar, but it's still a pretty high sugar food with very minimal nutritional benefit. So I count it as a treat. When I want something sweet to eat, when I'm feeling like I want dessert, I'll have a bowl of cereal and it'll be like a bowl of sweet cereal. So I try not to keep that in the house because I know if it's there, I'm going to eat it.
(29:31)
Well, I was tired and I was hungry and so when I saw, Ooh, Cheerios has a protein cereal, my critical thinking went out the window and I was like, "Yeah, we're going to do that. We're going to get that because then I can treat myself and it's protein." But then I look at the nutrition facts after I got home and I'm like, "Oh, this actually, this is not that much protein. It's not that much protein." And the protein source that this cereal uses is pea protein and my body does not I do well with pea protein. I always get so, so bloated, so bloated, which is why I stopped using pea protein powder years ago because I noticed I was just bloating and I was feeling really heavy and sluggish. My body doesn't do well with it. So anyway, I had two bowls of cereal with that cereal over the weekend.
(30:22)
So that in addition to the DoorDash is likely what led to my weight skyrocketing when I stepped on the scale Sunday and Monday morning. So I've been staying away from that cereal and my weight has been coming back down to normal, which is what I expected to happen. And then I've just been staying the course eating my normal 500-ish calorie meals, making sure that I'm eating three or four times a day. And my meals are pretty high fiber and high protein and I'm really doing well with that. I feel like I'm not getting as hungry as I was over the weekend when I was splurging and I didn't have meals planned. So I feel really good about where we are. I do feel like I need to give my workout plan another two weeks before I decide if I want to make any adjustments. Whenever you start a new workout program, you're going to be sore and you're going to be tired.
(31:19)
And that's kind of where I've been. I've been pretty sore and I've been pretty tired. So I'm going to give it another week or two to see if my body adapts and I start feeling less soreness and I start having more energy after my workouts and on my recovery days after my workouts. But I've been pretty tired and wanting to go to bed early. I've been feeling kind of tired in the afternoons, having maybe a little bit more coffee. Speaking of coffee, I did for a hot minute decide to get some sugar-free hot chocolate mix and use that in my coffee throughout the day. That didn't last long because it was sad and I didn't like it. I was like, "This is not hitting. This isn't hitting the way that I want it to hit." And then when I looked at the calories, I was like, "This is actually not saving me any calories.
(32:10)
It's like a 10 calorie difference between a tablespoon of the sugar-free hot cocoa mix and just using a tablespoon of the regular." So I was like, honestly, let's just go back to the regular because it's a 10-ish calorie difference. That's so silly. So I'm back in my normal coffee and I feel like everything is well with the world now. So yeah, the week is going so far so good. All that water weight that I was holding has finally flushed out. I've been staying super hydrated. I have been drinking a lot of water lately. The weather has been so hot here in North Carolina and we haven't gotten any rain so we're in a drought and I think my body feels that in addition to just the increased activity that I've had, the increased level of exercise. I've been exercising more. I'm building muscle so my body just needs a lot of water.
(33:04)
I am filling up my water bottle like five times a day at least, at least. And I'm still continuing to get my creatine in. It helps that the creatine that I use is really yummy and I really enjoy drinking it. So that motivates me to make sure that I get it in. And I think that that is helping me with my recovery.
(33:27)
I think that if I wasn't taking that, I would be even more tired and more sore than I have been. So yeah, things are going pretty well. Adjustments that I think I'm going to make, just seeing how my body is recovering, I think I'm going to start adding in more mobility work as sort of a brain break from work while I'm doing my computer work or between clients because I think that my body will benefit from that a lot. I still have tightness in my hip and a little bit of tightness still in my knee from last week when I did my leg day and that's the same workout that I'm going to do today. So I'm going to make sure that I take a really good chunk of time to warm up before I do my leg day so that I don't end up straining my rectus formoris, which is the quadricep that goes on top of all the others because I'm pretty sure that was the muscle that I strained last week.
(34:26)
I'm going to take a good chunk of time to make sure that I do my priming exercises, my dynamic stretches, I'm going to foam roll and then I'm going to also just carry the foam roller with me around to all of my exercises and make sure to foam roll between sets just in case and we'll see. But I think outside of my workouts, I'm going to start adding in particularly some hip mobility exercises just to kind of maintain mobility and to try to prevent that kind of tightness from getting so bad to the point where I strain a muscle during one of my workouts. I think that it would be good for me to make a YouTube video around what mobility exercises I'm doing to loosen up my hip because they're the same exercises that a lot of my clients are using to loosen up their lower back pain and that is something that a lot of people struggle with.
(35:28)
So I'm thinking of taking part of my vlog footage and recycling that into a follow along with me to do some mobility work on our hips. And I think a lot of people would like that. So that's what I'm thinking about doing as an extra little project for this week. But yeah, so I'm feeling really good. I'm staying hydrated back on coffee that doesn't make me sad and yeah, I'm looking forward to my workouts. I didn't work out yesterday because I was feeling really tired and beat up, which means that I'm probably going to have to squish all three of my remaining workouts for the rest of the week in back to back days. But I'm going to listen to my body and see how I recover from today's leg day. Tomorrow will be that upper body back day with the Romanian deadlifts. If I can get it done in the morning before all of the soreness from today's workout hits me, then I think I'll be good, but we'll see.
(36:22)
We'll see. So yeah, we'll see how it goes, but I'm feel pretty good. Unfortunately, the Smith machine was not available when I went to the gym to do my leg day one workout, which is fine because I could definitely use the practice squatting with the barbell. And I wanted to see how it felt given that my leg was still feeling a litle bit tight, my knee still felt a litle bit tight. So I took it really, really slow warming up my back squats, just using 25 pounds on both sides with the bar and I also tried to restrict my range of motion, not going super, super deep into the squats because it was the deep knee bend that really bothered my knee. So I took it a little easy, went a little lighter on it and then I just gradually added weight little bit by little bit.
(37:16)
So I did a first warm up set with 25 pounds on either side of the bar and then I was like, "Okay, that felt pretty good. Let's just be very gradual here and add 10 pounds to both sides." And I did another set of squats there just with five reps. It was feeling good and ultimately I decided to just stay at that weight and just shoot for between five and eight repetitions on each set. The goal here was really just to get those reps in on the movement and try not to strain my muscles, try not to strain my knee. Oh my goodness. There was this one point though where I was performing one of my sets and there were these two kids next to me on the squat rack next to me and they started like wrestling and messing around like literally right next to me as I was lifting.
(38:05)
So I did kind of have to yell at them. Don't be roughhousing in the squat rock room next to someone who's literally squatting with the barbell. It's so dumb. They were teenagers though. These were feeling good. So in my next couple of sets, I started to push the depth a little bit, trying to get my hips down to normal depth. I wasn't doing super deep squats because I still wanted to be really careful of my knee and I was also making sure that I was paying attention to activating my glutes and pressing the floor away and overall the squats felt really good. After the squats, I used the Bulgarian split squat rack to get in some single leg work. I still wore my knee sleeves for this because I just still wanted to be very, very careful with my knee and overall they felt fine.
(38:52)
I had no issues with the Bulgarian split squats. And then just like last week I finished off with some hip abduction and abduction using the seated abduction abduction machine or the good girl bed girl machine. These felt really good. I went up and weighed a little bit, pushed myself and was feeling really challenged by the end. I was pretty tired after that leg day and I think it might have been a combination of factors. It's been a few weeks since I've done an actual back squat in the squat rack, but they felt fine and I was really happy with how my knee responded. I was a little bit worried, but that's why I took it slow and I restricted my range of motion and I kept the weight pretty light and just focused on practicing my movement and that's something that you have to do sometimes.
(39:40)
Sometimes you have to deload a workout or deload an exercise, especially if you're nursing an injury. It doesn't mean that you have to completely rest from exercise necessarily depending on the injury, but you totally can listen to your body the way that I did and bump the weight down, reduce your range of motion and just focus on getting reps in because a lot of times just moving can help to loosen the muscle up and that's what happened for me. It felt really good. Now I was pretty sore and kind of tired after my leg day, but I wanted to catch up on my workout schedule so I went ahead the next day back to the gym to do my pull day, which even though is more upper body, it is kind of a total body workout because we have the Romanian deadlifts in there and the penly rows are a full body exercise, but everything felt really good as soon as I finished my warmup.
(40:36)
I spent a little bit extra time on the treadmill to make sure that I was nice and warm and then I did my dynamic stretches and all my priming exercises. I didn't film them though because I just didn't feel like it. But the Penlay rows felt really, really good, really strong. I didn't use my belt or the deadlift straps for these sets because I really wanted to focus on challenging my grip strength and my back strength and I didn't really feel like I needed the belt. After the penly rose, I did my deficit Romanian deadlifts all three sets this week at a deficit with the 135 pounds. I didn't use the belt for the first set and it was fine, but by the end my back was really tired so I did decide to use the belt for the second and third sets. I was able to get 12 reps on the first set and then in the second set I was getting tired so I only did 11 reps and my music cut off in the middle of the set because I started getting a phone call and my immediate thought was, "Crap, I'm getting a stupid spam call.
(41:40)
I better turn my phone on to do not disturb." And then I looked down at my watch and it was actually my brother calling and my niece had wanted to talk to her Auntie Jay. So I paused my workout and I talked to my niece on the phone for 10 minutes, just like pacing around. And then once I hung up with her, I got back to it and I finished off with my third set. Everything felt really good here. I felt really strong and then I moved on to my narrow grip pull ups. I did find a little booster seat. I'm using the heel elevation platform that people often use when they're doing like heel elevated squats and that was just the right height for me to be able to get a full range of motion in the exercise. I was able to get my elbows down a lot further and contract my lats a lot more and I took this shot from behind because I felt like my back muscles had such a pump.
(42:33)
They were looking so good so I wanted to make sure that I caught those muscles in action. Look, I may not have visible abs yet, but look at that definition in my back. I'm really proud of that. And these felt really good, no issues. I did go down in weight to challenge myself more. When it comes to the assisted pull-up machine, you actually reduce weight to challenge yourself more because the machine gives you a certain amount of weight to support you. So whatever the number is that you put the pin in, you have to assume that what you're actually pulling up is your own body weight minus that weight. So when you reduce the weight, you're making it so that you have to lift more of your own body weight. So I got stronger, I took away some of the support, but the reps went down and that's okay because I felt really strong.
(43:24)
I challenged myself, my muscles were burning and that's the point. After this, I did the single arm reverse flies using the cable machine and these felt really good. I especially felt my infraspinatus firing up and I took a few more shots from behind so I could really see the definition of my muscles as they were working as you can see that infraspinatus muscles really firing here and that's the goal. With this exercise, I'm really trying to bias the infraspinatus as well as the rear delt, not trying to have the trap take over the work, which is one of the main challenges with this exercise. And then I finished up my pole day with some bicep curls using the cable machine. These felt really strong and I thought a second about taking the weight up after I did my first set because I did like 18 reps and I was like, "Maybe I need to add in some more weight." But I didn't add weight.
(44:16)
I wanted to see how the second set felt and I'm glad that I didn't because my biceps by that point were really tired after all of those pulling exercises where the biceps have to actually help. And so I was only able to do like 12 on the second set. So I'm glad I didn't increase the weight because that would have been hard. And then I went outside to practice a little bit of flexing and take advantage of the pump that I had so I could see the definition in my lats and in my back. I had a really nice lat spread, still working on learning how to flex the back muscles. It's kind of a challenge, but overall I was feeling really good. This morning, I woke up really early to make sure that I could take my dog out for a long walk around one of the lakes in the area.
(45:03)
We both came back feeling really good. I felt really focused. I was able to get a lot of work done afterwards and yeah, things are feeling really good. In terms of like my end of week reflection, something that I'm continuing to learn and it's just kind of getting reinforced is that I really need to make sure that I have food prepped and ready to go in the freezer or in the refrigerator or if I don't, I need to make sure that I have on hand simple meals that I can just throw together in like five minutes because otherwise it's just really hard for me to make sure that I'm feeding myself adequately and on schedule with enough protein, enough calories because what happens and what happened a couple of days this week was I just kind of get lost in my work and I'll go for a long stretch of time without eating.
(45:55)
And then by the time I do eat, I'm just like, "I need to eat something now." And then I won't make the best choices. And I do have those protein Cheerios in my pantry and they're not horrible, but they definitely are not super nutritious, but cereal is the thing that I'll often go for as a convenience food if I don't have anything prepped. And then what ends up happening is one, it just doesn't have as much of the nutrients that I know my body needs. I don't feel as good after eating them. And then they also, because they're just so much sodium and sugars, even with the added protein, they make me feel so bloated and every single time that I've had those Cheerios or a bowl of that cereal, my body weight spikes up two or three pounds within one day. So I got to finish up that box because I got it.
(46:52)
I'm trying to level it out by adding it to some skier yogurt, which is Icelandic yogurt, very similar to Greek yogurt instead of having it just with milk, that helps me to fill up with more protein and it seems to keep me from getting super, super bloated. I still get a litle bit of bloated. I still get kind of where my body retains a lot of water, but it's better than having a bowl and a half of cereal with milk. So once that box is done, I am not going to be buying more. It does help to have protein bars ready to grab and go for the mornings where I'm really busy, but something I would like to try for this week is making some smoothies or making a breakfast casserole and making it so that I can just grab and go and eat it really quickly after heating it up in the mornings.
(47:46)
I tend to have not very much of an appetite in the morning. So eating something kind of heavy is really hard on my system, which is why I typically will just do like a protein bar in cereal, but in the past having a smoothie in the morning was a great workaround for me to be able to get the nutrition that I needed without feeling like I'm having to eat something heavy and then losing my appetite. So when I go to the grocery store later, I'm going to grab some bananas and some frozen blueberries and I will start making smoothies in the morning as part of my breakfast. The challenge with this will be to stay on top of making sure that I clean the blender immediately because in the past what I've done is I'll just like use it and then I'll put it in the sink and then not actually wash it.
(48:41)
And then with my ADHD, if it's not washed, then I won't use it and then I won't make my breakfast and then it sounds ridiculous. I know, but that's just, I know myself and I know my pattern. So I'll have to make sure that I really get into that habit of washing it right after I use it. Even if there's like leftover, I'm going to pour the leftover into like a jar and put that jar in the refrigerator and then immediately clean the blender. It's so much easier to clean right after you've used it anyway, rather than like letting it sit and get that stuff caked in. So that's my plan and I'm going to continue to eat the tacos with the black beans. I did this week get some low fat cheese to have with the tacos and it's unfortunately not as tasty as the full fat cheddar cheese that I used in the first week and since I was successful in getting into a calorie deficit in the first week, I think once this cheese is done after I've gone through it, I'm probably just going to go back to regular full fat cheddar cheese because the tacos are feeling a little sad.
(49:46)
I think what I'll do to like try to add more flavor is like add some taco seasoning to the beans and then maybe get some salsa to add to the tacos. But yeah, they're kind of bland this week and that low fat cheese is making me sad. I'm also continuing to do my tofu and egg ramen bowls because that's something that I can really quickly put together, very easily throw together and I can also make it more protein by adding more egg if I need to. That meal works really well for me. It's very fast. As long as I wash the pan immediately after cooking the eggs, then it's good. It's a fail safe system for making sure that I get some nutrition in. I will say though that when I do have the ramen, I do tend to bloat a little bit more. I tend to hold more water because it's just a higher sodium food.
(50:40)
So if I have that for dinner the night before, when I weigh in the next morning, I just have to know that I'm going to probably weigh in a pound or two heavier than I normally would just because my body is retaining that water and I'm fine with that because again, we're looking for general trends over time here and I'm in this for the long haul so I'm not worried about that as long as I'm tracking my calories and I'm staying to my actual calorie goal and I'm also hitting my protein as well. So I'll let you know how it goes in the next vlog at the end of next week when I do my reflection. I hope that you're enjoying this series so far. I'm enjoying making it. It's definitely been a great motivator for me to stay on track and I feel really accountable to you and I'm really also enjoying going through the process that my clients go through because it's giving me more of a view of what it's like for them and helping me to go ahead and actually prepare some more educational materials to address common concerns that might come up and questions that might come up.
(51:48)
But yeah, I'm enjoying it so far. I'm still pretty happy and I'm really happy with the results.
(51:56)
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner Podcast. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison AKA Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for over 10 years and I'm so excited to be sharing this part of my fitness journey with you as I go through my Fat Loss Transformation program to get lean and toned. If you yourself would like to join me in a fat loss journey, I am taking on clients right now. You can apply for my online coaching program in the link that is below this video if you're watching on YouTube or in the show notes. You can also check out my socials. I'm on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, just look up my handle, Jaydigains, J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-I-N-S. And I'll see you in the next episode. In the meantime, make sure that you are prioritizing your self-care. Make sure you're eating your veggies, eating your protein and staying active and I will see you soon.
Progress Photos and Why I Changed My Approach
This week I switched up how I'm taking progress photos. Instead of an outfit that covered most of my hips, I changed into a bathing suit so I could actually track the definition starting to show in that area — especially since I store a lot of body fat in my hips and upper legs. I also added flexing shots (front double bicep, side bicep, back, triceps) because, like a lot of women, my muscle definition doesn't really show unless I'm actively flexing. I'm proud of the muscle I've built over the past two years, and I'm excited to watch it emerge as the fat layer on top of it decreases.
The DoorDash Weight Spike (and Why It's Not What You Think)
Here's the part I want to normalize: my weight jumped to 142 after a weekend treat day that included DoorDash and, embarrassingly, an impulse-bought box of "protein" cereal that turned out to barely have any protein in it (and uses pea protein, which makes me incredibly bloated). That combination of sodium and carbs sent my water retention through the roof.
This is such an important lesson for anyone tracking their progress: a two-pound jump on the scale after a salty, high-carb meal is not two pounds of fat gained. It's water. Within a few days of getting back to my normal routine and hydrating well, my weight came back down — and by midweek I'd actually broken below 140 for the first time, officially down a pound since I started.
Training Around an Injury
I strained a muscle in my hip/quad the week before, so I made the call to turn one of my leg days into a mobility and stability session instead of pushing through pain. This included a lot of dynamic stretching, balance work, and core activation before easing back into light leg press and lunges. By the next leg day, I was able to get back to back squats — just lighter and with a restricted range of motion to protect my knee.
This is a principle I teach my clients constantly: sometimes you need to deload an exercise rather than skip it entirely. Moving through a lighter, more controlled version of a movement often helps loosen things up rather than forcing rest. Listening to my body here meant I avoided making the injury worse while still staying consistent with training.
Calories, Recovery, and Real Talk About Cereal
I'm aiming for 1,800 calories a day on average, though I've been leaning closer to 1,600–1,800 most days and thinking about nudging my deficit slightly to speed up progress — while staying mindful of recovery, since going too low can make workouts harder to bounce back from.
My biggest recurring challenge this week wasn't motivation — it was meal prep. When I don't have food ready to go, I default to convenience foods (hi, cereal), and that pattern showed up more than once. My plan going forward includes prepping smoothies for low-appetite mornings and keeping protein bars on hand, while phasing out the cereal that's been spiking my water retention and bloat every time I have it.
The Bigger Picture
Two weeks in, the takeaway is simple: progress isn't linear, treat days are allowed, and the daily number on the scale tells you far less than the trend over four to six weeks. I'm staying consistent with training, paying attention to recovery, and making small, sustainable adjustments rather than overhauling everything at once.
If you're working through your own fat loss journey and want support that's evidence-based and shame-free, I'm currently accepting new clients into my coaching program — you can apply for a free consultation through the link in my show notes or on my website.
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