Hello! My biggest plateau/ hurdle have been from scheduled days I have for eating out with friends and family. (I'm tracking calories, consistently working out, and have been loosing weight, but I feel like dinners out set me back and I have a bit of anxiety the day of eating out, that I don't want to have!) On the days I have a scheduled dinner, I am always confused about what to eat. For example, if my goal is to stick to 2000, and I estimate maybe a dinner out is 1500 calories, but then that leaves me with only 500 calories to play with until dinner time, that's not sustainable if the dinner's at like 7:30pm. I'm not sure even about tracking on days I eat out, as I know the dinner I won't be able accurately track the meal I had out. I know there is a feeling that I should track everything, but it's highly demotivating when I know I'm about to have an unknown calorie count at dinner. A thought I had recently was to just go ham on protein the day of eating out, or just treat the day as usual and track, but any additional thoughts/ advice would be amazing.
Will changing my lifts from high reps at a lower weight to lower reps at a higher weight (both scenarios going near or to failure ) result in progress loss? I currently do 4 sets in the 12-15+ rep range per exercise, and I would like to lower that to 3 sets in the 8-10 rep range because my workouts are taking way too long (like 1.5 hours or more ), but I’m afraid I will lose progress. 41 year old female , been consistently lifting for 1.5 years. Thanks !