Down eleven, and my four-day split still feels heavy

2026-10-15 06:29

I'm 11 lb down over about 10 weeks. Not dramatic, but it's the first time my appetite noise has been low enough to actually hit protein without white-knuckling it. I lift four mornings a week, sleep 7-7.5 hrs, and I've been treating this like a recomp, not a crash.

The weird part: scale is down, but some sessions still feel flat. Not weak exactly, just less pop. I'm not chasing shortcuts, so I'm keeping calories moderate, protein around 160g, and not adding random stuff.

Curious whether other lifters saw a temporary dip in gym output around this point, or if it's just me underfueling before sessions. I'd rather adjust training than pretend the scale is the only metric.

2026-10-19 09:17

Nice work—10 weeks at ~1 lb/wk is a sane clip. When my 4-day split felt flat around that point, it wasn’t the lifting volume; it was under-fueled sessions.

I started logging session RPE plus pre-workout carbs/fluids, and flat days clustered around <30g carbs in the 4 hours before lifting or a sweaty/salty day. A small carb snack + water with electrolytes 45 min out usually fixed it.

Are you tracking anything like RPE per set or bar speed, or just vibes? If only the last set or two fades, that’s different from everything feeling heavy.

Also, if appetite is low enough that carbs drift down, that can show up as flat before the scale reflects fat loss.

2026-10-28 15:42

There was a thread a while back about that week-8-to-12 flat spot—lots of us hit it right as the scale starts moving. One concrete thing I’d track for a couple weeks: whether the flat sessions cluster on day 3/4 of your split or the morning after a longer gap between meals.

In my old log, “heavy but flat” was almost always the second consecutive lifting day, not the first; moving my main compound to the first session after a rest day fixed mst of it. Are yours randomly scattered, or bunched on certain split days?

2026-10-30 21:22

Random but useful question: when you say flat, are you tracking anything besides the scale—like warm-up bar speed, morning resting HR, or how sessions feel after a lower-step day? I ask because my flat 4-day stretches usually traced to training fasted plus low sodium/hydration, not the program itself.

A small pre-lift snack and a pinch of salt in my water made the same loads feel less grindy within a week. Also, are you doing the same split order every week?

Swapping my heaviest lower day to after a rest day was a tiny change that helped. Curious what your flat sessions have in common.