I survived Christmas!!!

In my last post I talked about how I was worried about going home to my parents place for Christmas and what was going to happen there in terms of sticking to my diet and training. I didn't want all my hard work to be undone!

Pictured: Hard work lol!

So the first thing I did was cook and prep all our kumara and brought all the ingredients I would need for three days worth of meals. I made sure I had everything including my teeny kitchen scales to be able to measure and cook all of the meals that we needed.

I was going down on a ferry at 2.30am in the morning for three hours, then driving for 2 hours so I made sure I had breakfast and my first two meals made and ready to go, so there was no need for me to buy snacks or junk.

Then I had all my meals ready so at home I could just cook the chicken and rice and heat everything up. Christmas day itself was easy, we just substituted some turkey breast for our usual chicken and a nice change.

When everyone else was eating dessert we were only on our second meal so  so we didn't really feel the need to join in.

While everyone was stuffed, we were only eating our normal amount of food. I guess I'm just used to eating ALL the time now!

I had some extra fruit in the afternoon and was able to ward off any cravings for chocolate and candy.

Even in the morning when my family were getting down with a big breakfast of bacon and eggs, I had some oatmeal with banana and berries.

One thing I'm a little disappointed in was how often I got to train. We got free passes for a gym on the way to my parents house and stopped down there on Christmas Eve and planned on stopping back on the way home Boxing Day. There's no gym where my parents live so I did a body weight workout in the house on Christmas Day and was gagging to get back in the gym.

Boxing Day we headed back to the gym at about 4pm only to find it closed at midday...I was so gutted. I was looking forward to a massive hit out and then it was taken away. We are really amped for the gym and needing to work out. Funny how things change when you've been working out every day and then you miss one!!

So tomorrow it will be back into it hard, I'm going to do legs for one training, back for another and then do some much needed cardio.

I'm pretty happy about my planning and self control through these Christmas holidays!! It's been a great three months so far and I'm pleased one weekend didn't spoil everything :D Also I got the additional bonus of hanging out with my family and getting some sun!!!

Month three results!

So I had my body composition test on Thursday 5 December. I just realised now that this post hadn't been put up!! So silly!!

And my results were great! Shame not to share them!!

I'm 54.6kgs and 17.2% body fat, down from 21%! We're getting there! My arms have shown the biggest improvement, which is great since I've been working so hard on them.

I've put on 1.29kgs of lean muscle and reduced my fat mass by 2.29kg.

My diet is staying the same so I don't have to worry about making any changes so far. 

Here's my progress pic from then :D

Pretty happy with the results so far, but know I have to keep working hard. 

Lifting lows

Sometimes, and only sometimes, I get days where I don't feel like I'm making all that much progress.

Whether I've just had a day where things haven't felt quite right lifting, or I haven't gone as heavy as I would like, it puts me in a bit of a bad mood.

Especially tonight, when I felt I just wasn't pushing as hard as I could weight wise, it definitely affected my confidence and undermined my self belief. On top of feeling like my body isn't progressing, it just made for a bad day all around.

It's hard to bounce back from those moments.

I know, once I've had a bit of a sleep, a bit of a think and look over how far I've come I won't feel so bad. It's hard to see how good things are when you feel you haven't lifted to your potential and what you see in the mirror doesn't match up to how you feel you should look in your head.

So, I'm going to take a step back for tonight, put today's workouts down as experience and get back into it hard tomorrow.

Updates on supps, training and progress so far!

Sorry I've been so slack posting recently! Between being busy at work, training and trying to get ready for Christmas, it's been difficult to stay on top of posting. Promise I will do better!

I've been thinking a lot recently about how much conflicting information you can receive on the same thing. Especially when people ask my about what my stack looks like and which supplements I prefer.

What I know is that the same supplement can get rave reviews from some people, while others think it is total rubbish.

One thing I'm learning as I go along is that not every way of training, technique and supplement is going to work for everyone. Something that will have an amazing effect on your body might not necessarily do the same thing for another person and vice versa. There are so many self professed experts out there who say they have a fool proof way to lose weight or gain muscle but the tips they say might work for them and few others.

My own view is I try different supplements and ways of training til I find what works best for me and tend to stick to it until something better for me comes along. I'm always open to advice and people's opinions and test everything out myself.

As far as my training is going in pretty happy. I am working on my shoulders and continue to see progress on my rear delts. I'm working on correcting my posture and getting that rear delt training in at the end of a shoulder session. It's feeling really good and having such focus is really helping improve how I train shoulders and think it's helping my overall look too. I have shoulder training today so that should be good.

I'm also doing more work on my hammies and dedicating a full session on a Sunday to them. I hit a 70kg PR on Romanian deadlifts last week which is funny because I hadn't realised I'd lifted so light on them before.

Being so quad dominant has it's advantages, and my quads are looking pretty good, but I'm really working to correct the imbalance and get some hamstring definition.



More and more people are starting to notice the change in my body now which has been both cool and interesting. I haven't had any negative comments yet (I know nice people I guess) but I am aware of how people view women with muscle and see it all the time on Facebook. I feel slightly more self conscious now training than I did before, but I know that I should expect that from here on in. Haters gonna hate I guess, and I have more than enough awesome people supporting me to help me keep on track!

The Christmas Grinch!

Training this past week has been good, and I'm’m getting back into things after my deload. I am switching between two and three a day trainings and trying to get 3-4 cardio sessions in a week. As it’s not my favourite thing it’s a little harder to make time but I'm’m definitely trying. Maybe I need a little bribery to help me along... if I do 5 times a week for 5 weeks I get a prize? I don't know, I'll think of something.

The 102.5kg (225lb) deadlift still eludes me, but I’m getting there.It’s hard wanting to lift really heavy when you’re not eating the diet for it. I swear if I ate like crazy all these lifts would be so easy!

I've been working hard on shoulders and also adding a lot more glute work into my training, I really want to be looking good in both those areas!

There is one looming thing that I’m determined is not going to derail my progress…

Christmas.

It’s started already. The chocolates in the supermarket. Christmas mince puddings. Images of delicious Christmas meals everywhere…

And I don’t really care! I’m happy with my progress so far, I don’t want to go back! So, I’m not going to risk everything I've’ve achieved for a tiny bit of indulgence, no matter how delicious.

It's my work christmas party tomorrow, we're going ten pin bowling, so I'm going to roll up with my wee bag of food and a supply of protein bars. I'm going to the gym in the morning so I don't stress about it while being out of the office for the day, and I'll train again between when we come back from bowling and dinner.

We’re heading down to my parents for Christmas. I plan to take enough premade meals, and protein bars with us that I won’t have to worry about eating while we’re down there. I know my family, I’m going to get teased mercilessly for missing out on the Christmas goodies, but I’m hoping it’s sunny enough while I'm’m there that getting into a bikini will show why I’m so strict on myself haha!

Speaking of which I’ve set up an instagram too (apparently the done thing!) so you can add me xoxajvxox and I’ll be posting a few more pics up there as I go along.

It’s body fat test day today again (it rolls around so fast!) so I’ll update when I find out how I'm’m going!