Day One!!
Today was the first day of our challenge. Before I get into the specifics of my day I wanted to share with you some of my personal incentives and tips on doing challenges.
As I said yesterday I really love to challenge my body through physical stressors & exercise along with nutrition. I recently was watching an Extreme Weight Loss episode and there was a moment where the contestant was talking about feeling stuck and frustrated with her lack of progression, no matter the amount of exercise she was doing she wasn’t seeing the numbers on the scale change, so they challenged her diet by INCREASING her calories and she lost weight without killing herself over every single calorie. THIS HIT HOME… I know so much about how muscle and body physiology and how your body uses the fuel you give it, &&& if you don’t give it enough fuel it goes in to SURVIVAL mode, AKA no matter how much you workout, if you don’t provide enough fuel your body will start producing extra hormones to keep you alive. Right after watching this episode a blog I follow @powercakes wrote THIS post about “checking yourself before wrecking yourself” talk about timing!!
Although I was slacking with my regular nutrition and eating, I still know that I wasn’t giving myself enough fuel for the amount of exercise I was doing, and it shows!! I have been at this plateau for a while now and it is ANNOYING. Everyone has their own goals for fitness and currently my goals are to have more definition in my muscles, as my body fat % is pretty lean I don’t want to lose TOO much more body fat, I really just want to tone up. Toning up takes FUEL & muscle challenge, case and point this 6-week challenge.
My goal for the challenge, other than completing it, is to provide you all with a basis of how to follow these fitness challenges and where I struggled. I have done food-based challenges in the past and I have been the MOST successful when I had a friend or a support group to do it with. It is so nice to be able to talk to someone who is in the same boat. So although Brent and I are doing this together, I am also going to try and be that for you all, even if you’re not doing this challenge, maybe making healthier choices, or changing your fitness routine is a challenge enough.
Brent and I picked a challenge that fits us best. We both lift 4-5days a week now and at moderate to heavy weights, so we picked a challenge that was shorter in duration and focused on “shredding” rather than bulking, or bulking & shredding. There are TONS of different programs out there that you can access for free, or you can talk to a personal trainer (hopefully me someday!!) about developing one for you. We found our plan at bodybuilding.com if you have never checked out that website you are missing out!! This website has are tons of recipes, nutrition tips, workouts, plans, and supplements that you can buy at a discounted price.
Ok on to day 1… This morning I packed my lunch box, but when I say lunchbox you might think of those little kid boxes, or a brown paper sack (my fathers favorite choice!)… my lunchbox probably classifies as a COOLER to most! Anyways in went all my food for the day, including 2 snacks and lunch… If you pack a lunch with all the food you need for the day you are less likely to cheat and grab something “unapproved” and since I was going to be at a meeting all day I knew “cheating” would be an easy option if my cooler wasn’t full…side note I hate saying “unapproved” or “cheating”, I believe you can have anything in moderation and within reason, I say unapproved mainly because this is a challenge and we are challenging ourselves to push the envelope and break our bad habits, if you can restrict the urge to have that bagel or coffeecake that’s sitting in the office and make a healthier choice for the next 6 weeks it’ll be easier to say no once the challenge is over!
Who says healthy is boring! Chicken, egg, and veggie salad for lunch.
The biggest challenge for me during this all is going to be eating the amount of food that is recommended, and I know that I need to eat it! Most of you are probably thinking I want to eat more than the plan is saying, but its actually the opposite. I calculated intake on my workout days and it is about 2x the amount I was previously taking in. I WAS SHOCKED!!! I honestly don’t know how I am going to be able to do this… After my breakfast this morning (2 quiche muffins, 2/3c oats with almond milk & 1tsp agave, ½ lg grapefruit, & 1 travel coffee mug with a splash of almond milk) I was full until 12:30. I couldn’t believe it! But this was close to TWO of my regular breakfasts. So that will be my challenge to up my calorie intake to FUEL MY BODY to get the results that I want!
The workout tonight was AMAZING! This plan is really nice for me because I like to SWEAT during my workouts. I have a hard time doing pure lifting sessions because at the end even though I feel great, I don’t feel like I did a workout because I hardly sweat. This program has you do a heavy lifting session and between lifts you do a minute of a ballistic/large muscle group or cardio exercise. For example I did 11reps of chest press followed by 1 minute of step-ups on the bench. This keeps your heart rate going during the rest period, I LOVED IT!! It also made the workout a lot more intense and difficult, I was BEAT at the end of my workout and a sweaty mess!
Post workout sweaty mess obligatory fishy face!
What type of workouts do you like to do? I would love to hear how you change up your routines to challenge your body!
~Allison
Allison In Wellnessland 