Fasted Cardio & Weekly Recap

Fasted cardio. What a crock. I decided to try it out this morning to see what all the hype is about. Now, I am not someone who can function without an intake of starchy carbs within a 30 minute window of waking of but I’ll try anything for last-minute fat loss at this point. T-22 days ‘til show time! Well, there’s a first…and a last time for everything LOL. It’s Friday and after a long and exhausting week I just wanted to be done with my workout early so I could relax after work. Luckily only cardio was on today’s agenda.

My internal clock must have been super excited for this new activity because I rose at 4:58 this morning, two minutes prior to my 5:00 alarm! I literally rolled out of bed, splashed water on my face, threw on my gym clothes and drove off. When I got to the gym at 5:20 I did my weekly weigh-in and then hopped on an elliptical for a 30 minute HIIT routine. I figured it was a good idea to weigh-in a day early to see if a) the past two weeks of carb-cycling have had any real effect yet and b) to see if a pre-breakfast weigh-in makes any difference. I did lose about 1.5 more lbs this week but that’s still nowhere near where I need to be for the stage. I guess I’ll be continuing this torturous carb-cycling for these last 3 weeks. I’ve been doing Mon-Thurs on a lower carb intake and then Fri-Sun I increase by about 20 grams. By day 4 I’m beat but to be honest, Monday was the worst this week since it’s the only day of the week where I am both on a lower carb intake and also have to do cardio PLUS weights. I think I’ll be doing a double session this coming Monday of cardio pre-work (not fasted!) and weights post-work because I simply do not have the energy for a full 90+ minute workout on such carb and caloric restrictions.  

The only other change I have made in the past week has been to increase from 3 to 4 days of cardio. Guess what? SHIN SPLINTS ARE BACK. I had a feeling this was going to happen but I really have no choice but to push through the pain right now. Just when I was doing so well with the two leg days per week too! I also have extremely tight IT bands, hip flexors, and quads to make matters worse but that’s something I can at least try to relieve by being less lazy about foam-rolling post-workout. My best friends for the next 22 days will be Icy Hot and Ibuprophen!

I’m really liking this 1 change per week schedule I’ve been on lately. I highly recommend it for anyone trying to cut fat. One week seems to be the perfect amount of time to shock your body and then just as you may be getting used to the change you hit it with a new shocker and the loss continues! I don’t really want to cut calories back much more at this point though so next week in addition to continuing with the carb-cylcing and the increased cardio I think the only change I’ll make is to decrease fruit for hopefully the last time this prep to just ½ serving. Then the following week if I need another cut I can do the same with my fats but we’ll see how this week goes first. Must be patient and trust the process!

This past week has really been a struggle for me. My low-carb induced irritation with everyone and everything has been made worse by an overly crowded gym filled with more and more tools on a daily basis. I really struggle not to snap at most anyone that comes within a 20-step radius and couldn’t stop myself from slamming the cable stack down the other day when the cheap-ass rope kept sticking during my shoulder raises. I know I must look like a ridiculous baby but sometimes I just need to scream and throw a temper tantrum! Since I took yesterday off entirely, got my cardio out of the way this morning and have the next two days of nice, quiet morning workouts to look forward to, when I get back in there to lift on Monday afternoon I should be nice and refreshed after a 4-day escape from the usuals.

Since I can increase my carbs back today I am making protein pancakes for dinner. I can’t wait for this treat! I rarely make them but for some reason I’m craving pancakes badly lately. I’m going to have to play with the recipe because I can’t seem to find a consistent norm for making protein pancakes but I’m thinking ½ cup oats, 1 scoop vanilla whey, 0.5 oz crushed almonds, ½ cup raspberries, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 egg white, ¼ cup almond milk, and voila…Bintliff’s-esque raspberry-almond pancakes! That’s my favourite breakfast spot here in Portland that used to make the MOST heavenly raspberry-almond pancakes. Now I’m partial to their cinnamon roll pancakes with cream cheese frosting but I don’t think it’s possible to make a diet-friendly version of those LOL. I’m partial to using real maple syrup but for the sake of not ruining my diet I even went out and bought Maple Grove Farms sugar free “maple flavoured pancake syrup”. At this point I’d eat anything haha.

Anyway, that’s all for today’s post. Tomorrow’s busy agenda includes back, chest, cardio (probably rowing to give my shins a break), tanning, and posing. Phew, I’m going to be burnt out come nightfall! Any gym rats out there struggling through contest prep right now? Anyone giving new diets or workouts a try as they work toward bikini season? Let’s get some discussion going! Cheers to the weekend! xo

The Healthy Minority

Over the past year I have noticed a widening age gap between myself and the majority of the people who workout at the same time as me each day. For some reason this thought popped into my head this morning on my drive in to work and I thought to myself, is the mid-to-late-20's the average age when people start to give up on their physical appearance? I can't help but notice that it does seem to correlate with the same age that people start to get hitched and have babies. I feel like I'm the minority now when it comes to healthy and fit living for my age group.

 

Full disclosure: I am now 28 despite having celebrated my 26th birthday for the past 3 years.

 

Why as a society does this seem to be so widely accepted? Is this issue equally a problem for both men and women? Is this an American thing? A Maine thing? Is my viewpoint simply skewed as my idea of what is "healthy" and "fit" has changed considerably since taking my fitness to the next level and becoming a competitor? I always hear people saying "once you have children your priorities change" or "my job has been taking up all of my time". Those just sound like excuses to me. I mean, physical appearance aside, do you really still feel good about yourself when you are exhausted and belting-in the growing tire around your waist from what is essentially malnutrition?

 

I thought I would pose these questions to all of you loyal gym rats after a similar discussion came up at work today. I had mentioned that my Grandmother's 90th birthday was coming up and my coworkers were surprised that she was still living on her own. It seems that spending your remaining years in a nursing home once you hit the ripe age of 75 is what our society expects. I don't understand why, if you remain active and eat nutritiously, you would suddenly not be able to take care of yourself! I mean, unless I develop some debilitating non-preventative disease I certainly plan to get in my daily dose of exercise until my last day. 

 

I shouldn't be complaining about feeling like I'm in the minority seeing as it's a great minority to be in. I guess I am just feeling like I have less and less in common with people my age. It's especially difficult being single when it seems like all the guys available are either way too young or have already given up on themselves despite not being tied down with spouses or children yet. The single life is a whole other topic though LOL. What do you all think? Why does our society so readily accept this quarter-century abandonment of one's health yet look almost disapprovingly toward those of us who make this our main focus?  I'm really hoping this topic will create some discussion below! 

Soul Food

I just spent the past hour lazily sprawled face-up  in an awkward yet surprisingly comfortable bridge position over my ottoman which I pushed-up against my patio doors. While it may not be the hottest of days outside, the afternoon sunshine was blazing through my living room and baking me to my core. The sun is so good for my soul.

It's just a lazy Sunday afternoon here. I finally got up to heat my 5th meal of the day, veggies and chicken breast which I seasoned with some delicious Montreal chicken seasoning, and boot-up my laptop so I could take advantage of this downtime by writing a blog post. I've had a rather productive weekend and it's so nice to have the rest of the day to just do what I want with nothing left to check-off on my to-do list.

Friday was my recovery day from training so I met up with some friends to see American Hustle after dinner. Nothing like a little Bradley Cooper action to start my weekend right! Then after work yesterday I hit up the gym for a tan followed by a back and chest lift and then a little posing practice. I'm not sure how useful posing is when I don't have anyone there to advise and critique me but at least it helps to break-in those terribly uncomfortable plastic pumps! Last night I was beyond exhausted and went to bed around 9:00 pm. All week long I had had lousy sleeps despite experimenting with Melatonin, Yogi brand Bedtime tea (which BTW is delicious and I highly recommend), and Tylenol PM. I think my brain was finally relaxed last night after the long, exhausting week though because I slept for a good 9 hours! I did still get up once to pee but luckily I was able to get back to sleep this time. This morning we actually lost one hour due to Daylight Savings Time but thanks to my fantastic sleep this luckily had no effect on me. I woke up and had some delicious pumpkin pie oatmeal and coffee for breakfast and then hit up the gym for my weekly glutes, core and cardio workout.

I started off a little tired and stiff but once I got in the rhythm it became easily the best glute burn I've had in a while! As always I began with BB squats and then went into a superset routine of Romanian deadlifts (which I'm quickly learning to love) and BB hip thrusts. The hip thrusts just aren't working out for me as I cannot find a weight that is both heavy enough to make it difficult but also light enough for me to lift onto my hips. The 25 lb plates would have been ideal because then I could just slide right under the bar but my first set with this weight (I'm guessing the bar is 20 lbs which would make total weight 70 lbs) proved too painful to rest on my hips so I dropped down to the 10 lb plates which really weren't heavy enough but at least I could still feel a burn by the 12th rep. I'll call these sets "active rests" between my much more difficult DLs. After the superset routine my plan called for Donkey Kicks. I've been changing-up my method of doing these and this week I tried them facing backwards on the assisted dip/pull-up machine. I really liked this as I could set the weight really heavy and just concentrate on my glutes since I didn't have to use any stabilizing muscles. My routines this month all call for 4 sets of everything rather than my usual 3 so just these 4 exercises took nearly an hour to get through. Next came core for which I did SB tee-pees (with balancing in between sets) and incline crunches. For cardio I did something I've been enjoying a lot this past week which is 30 minutes on the treadmill set at a moderate pace of 3.0 but beginning at the steepest incline of 15.0. This is really difficult to start but every minute I reduce the incline by 0.5 so by the time the 30 minutes is up I am at zero incline. This really hits the entire back of the legs (calves, hamstrings, & glutes) so it's a fantastic way to end a glute sesh!

Today was also my weekly weigh-in where I'd been anxious all week to find out if my recent fat cut would spark any scale change. I did drop 1 pound this week which is better than nothing but still means I've got to stay focused and continue the slow cuts. This week I am cutting my fruit intake from 2 servings to 1 as well as cutting out dairy and thus supplementing my morning Greek yogurt with some type of meat, probably chicken. This obviously won't yield a caloric change but will just serve to avoid any potential dairy-caused bloat as well as be another "shock" to my system. I'm keeping my protein intake at my usual 6 servings per day though because when I look at my intake for the past week I only managed to hit the 7 servings per day mark on 2 of the 7 days and both times I felt sick from chicken overload. I may re-try this approach again if I do a carb cut somewhere down the line but for now I think 6 is suitable for my goals. It's possible I have not plateau'd yet from my fat cut so maybe next weekend I'll see a drop of greater than just one pound. Crossing my fingers anyway!

I'm loving that it's almost 5:00 pm and the sun is still beaming through the glass. It really serves to improve my overall mood! Tonight for dinner I'm making a stir-fry with brown rice, tilapia, sweet onion, yellow bell pepper, baby bok choy, and celery all sauteed with a little low-sodium teriyaki sauce. Yum! I'm so not looking forward to starting another work week tomorrow but hopefully my Monday will start with another restful sleep and end with another epic lift. I think my plan calls for shoulders which are always a good time! 'Til next time, happy gymming! xo

Diet Tweaks

Good Morning gym rat community! It's another deceivingly sunny day outside with a temperature of about -1,000 F here in Portland. At least it's March though and by that I mean that much closer to spring! I know I have been slacking on the blogs lately but in my defense I am outrageously exhausted and busy with my two jobs, training (basically a full-time job in itself) and of course taking care of my needy pup! I'm running off of about 5 hours of sleep right now so I'm not looking forward to a day of increasing exhaustion. Luckily today's lift is just biceps and triceps which I think I can manage alright. I don't have the slightest idea why I couldn't sleep last night. I've been stressing about my diet lately as I haven't been seeing the cuts I expect to at this point but yesterday I spoke to someone who really knows her stuff and by the end of the day after making a couple diet tweaks for the next few weeks I was feeling much more relaxed. I had a great cardio and shoulders workout last night which exhausted me physically and only used 1/2 scoop of pre-workout so that couldn't have had much of an effect on me. I went to sleep at my usual time of 10:00 pm and slept fine until about 2:30 when I got up to pee (TMI?). Any bodybuilder will tell you that sleeping through the night is nearly impossible when you are drinking a gallon+ of water per day but typically I can get right back to sleep. Instead I tossed and turned until about 3:00 when I got up again all frustrated and popped 2 Melatonin which are supposed to help you fall asleep. Hey, works like a charm for my dog! Unfortunatley they had zero affect on me and I continued to toss and turn until I finally got up at 5:40 to shower and get ready for my day. I'm now on my 2nd coffee and don't see much hope for my energy levels today. Just praying work stays quiet at this point!

I'm still not fully commiting to a show just yet. I am really eager to get back on the stage and my training and diet is 100% focused on a show-date but like I said, I'm just not seeing the cuts to make me confident at this point. I think I may have cut too much too soon earlier in the prep process leaving me with little to cut down from at this point. However, after my discussion yesterday with a seasoned competitor and trainer, I am going to make a couple of changes that will hopefully shock my body into increased fat loss mode. My current macros are about 40% carb / 40% protein / 20% fat. This is typically where I would be heading into peak week but since this is clearly not working for me this time the first change I am making (which started yesterday) is to cut fats down by 10 g (1 serving) and increase proteins by 20 g (1 serving). This will alter my macros to roughly 35% carb / 50% protein / 15% fat. I'm not touching my carb intake at this time because last week after about 1.5 weeks into a scheduled carb cut I got extremely weak and dizzy and had to increase them again in order to function at work and have adequate energy to workout...and after all that torture the scale didn't even budge! After having done 4 shows I know my body pretty well and I just seem to be someone that requires more starchy carbs in my diet than others. Anyway, this weekend I will have my weekly weigh-in and re-assess my diet plan again depending on how I'm feeling and looking. By the end of the month I should know whether I am on track to compete in the show I would like.

As far as March workouts go, I started my new month plan on Sunday with glutes, core, and cardio. It was brutal! I can happily say that the past few months of hitting my glutes twice per week has really paid off. Maybe it's all in my head but I truly think they are much more solid than last season so I'm just praying that with a little more fat loss, they really show on stage! I want to get on stage this spring so badly but I also don't want to show up with the same physique as a year ago. This month my plan has changed slightly going from 6 to 5 days of lifting and 2 to 3 days of cardio. The added cardio should help with the fat loss and the decreased lifting should help with the diet exhaustion as time goes on. I am also doing mandatory rest days on Fridays. I think this really helps me recover from pounding my body all week long and sets me up both physically and mentally to get in some serious strong lifts on the weekend when I am more energized and can spend more time in the gym.

All-in-all I'm feeling really good about where things stand right now. Here's hoping that my latest diet tweaks prove effective and by the time April comes around it's smooth-sailing 'til show time! Anyone out there doing shows this spring? Please share which ones...maybe I'll see you there! xo