Get-Lean March (and Other Goals!)

As promised, I will be posting my goals for the month. I will also be posting my 1^st Transformation photo here on my blog, as you can see below:

Do YOU see a difference?!

I apologize ahead of time for the crappy quality, but that “Before” shot was me taking a picture of a picture on my laptop screen – I do not have internet access on the laptop, so I had to acquire the photo another way. As you can see [give or take], I have gone from shapeless to improved. I have such a mixed array of emotions from seeing these pictures, ranging from disgust, to pride, to disbelief. I am seriously convinced everyone was lying to me last year, when they said I looked good. Ew.

So now that I’ve gotten down this far to where I ultimately want to be – and I never thought in my life I would get to this point – I have assessed my goals for March to improve on my physique. Basically, I have a giant stone block, with the general shape. I am going to start chiseling the extra rock away to my liking, to create the sculpture.

I have to keep in mind that the INBA is going to judge me based on a "fit bikini chick" criteria: be curvy, tight, proportionate, toned with no visible muscular striation. Be feminine. Be confident. That latter part, I am working on in a different way, although this journey is contributing some damn good results on its own thus far.

INBA Bikini Divas: Can I GET to this level? We will have to see.

The following will be my personal plan for this month’s 30dayPUSH. Goals for April and May will be reassessed based on the end results of this plan:

MARCH GAME PLAN!

Goal Summary: Get lean & tighter, build a booty & some curves!

How I’m going to achieve these results:
* NUTRITION- Continue carb backloading (CBL), but restart the recalibration phase (ultra low carb for 7-10 days) to deplete glycogen stores and make body fat the primary source of energy. Drink a gallon of water a day. Will be tracking macros closer and maintaining consumption of 1g protein per 1lb of bodyweight. Also, fat intake will increase to .5g fat per pound of bodyweight. Fats will come from healthy sources as well as animal fats and butter. Decrease fat intake during CBL nights. DO NOT CBL EVERYDAY. Keep emptying glycogen stores.
* CARDIO- Incorporate high intensity interval training (HIIT) to further empty glycogen stores and encourage use of body fat, resulting in major fat loss with muscle retention. This will be done 1) during a fasted state in the AM, or 2) pre-weight training, with a 20-30 minute break between the two. The HIIT model to be followed (optimal for pre-contest women) will be 2:1 (2 minutes of low-intensity walking followed by 1 minute of 100% maximum energy output) for 6-8 cycles. HIIT will be performed 3-5x/week.
* TRAINING- Weight training will now have a lower-body focus. Will be training glutes 3-5x/week, and legs 1-2x/week. Focus on high reps of 10-12 until failure per set, to stimulate hypertrophy in all gluteus muscles. Upper body will be trained 2-3x/week using push, pull & core exercises. Upper body split will be Back, Arms and Chest/Shoulders. If not using the split, try to do as many compound upper body exercises to hit the most muscles.

Anime Central (ACen) 2013 is right around the corner – May 17-19. It is a yearly tradition that my best [male] friend and I started since 2005. Even though the INBA is not until the end of August, I would like to get in tip-top shape by May. I gotta look and feel the part when I dress up as Xena, right?! Strong yet feminine is what I’m shooting for. Also, summer is not far away from that due date, so all the more reason to get in shape and bust my ass working hard as much as possible during these next 3 months.

And, my reward to myself for working extra hard during these next few months? A shopping trip to Victoria’s Secret - or it can also be referred to as, The First Time In My Life I Will Go Bikini Shopping And Like It...

 Which will subsequently lead into Summer 2013: The Year Jenina Stopped Wearing Baggy T-Shirts & Silly Tank Tops Over Her Bathing Suit At The Beach.

(LOL, these sound like terrible movie titles.)

The journey, the results, and the rewards resulting from the results are all rewards themselves. Boy, do I love fitness.

90dayPUSH

I am proud to announce that I've joined the #fitfam! :-)

First I want to mention Instagram. The main reason I use Instagram frequently (more than Facebook these days) is that I can follow who & what I want - and this translates to numerous fitness professionals, healthy recipe ideas, motivation, encouragement, progress tracking, and feedback. For me, the news feed has been a way for me to wake up every morning and get energized. It is such a convenient way to keep track of a day, or capture a moment and immediately "photoblog" it. I love that a lot of fitness-minded individuals have used it not only to track their daily progress, but help encourage others who are also on their own difficult journeys.

One of the people I follow there is Ciara Gale. She is beautiful and very fit. She's very inspiring not just in the physical sense, but she is one who encourages love, which she does easily with her big heart. You can find her on Instagram, or Facebook, or even her own website, CIARALE.COM.

While she is a personal trainer, she offers a program called 30dayPUSH. For a much more in-depth description, and even for sign up, you can go here.The goal is accountability, tracking, and progress. PUSHers must "phototrack" every day for 30 days, no matter how you feel that day. If you worked out, great. If you gorged on crappy food all day, and have developed a food baby, you still have to phototrack.

We (the PUSHers in the #fitfam) all are to update on the website with our photo for the day. It's a great way to motivate each other and keep yourself from falling out and giving up on your goals. People who fail to track get removed from the program, and this is so that everyone is accountable and removes any negativity or lack of motivation from the group. This is done in conjunction with keeping a daily fitness journal that Ciara provides as well. One must "push" to meet goals every day. These goals can either be 1) a customized training/nutrition plan she provides or 2) your OWN outlined plans and goals. Everyone gets to set a "focal point" for the day which does not necessarily have to relate to fitness or nutrition. Example: if you wanna be nice to at least one person for that day, or read a book, you can make any of those your focal points.

I am doing #2 - I am coming up with my own goals, nutrition plans, and exercise protocol. I will provide that syllabus in a separate post, which is going to be after this one. The point stands, I must push to meet all my goals, whether pre-determined or self-created (which will be the case with this PUSHer).

But, while the norm is a 30-day program, 30dayPUSH VII will be a 90-day program. March, April, May. So lots of phototracking is going to happen soon.. this Friday, in fact.

I'm excited to be doing this and becoming part of the #fitfam because I'm primarily alone in my fitness journey. Yes, this is first and foremost for me (something I have never dared to declare in the past). Yes, I have great followers on Instagram. I have people in my life who encourage me at home. Yet it is fundamentally different when you actually meet others who are going through the same pathways and hardships as you are, more or less.

I admit, it is quite difficult to motivate myself every day, all by myself, but once you determine that you want something with all your heart, finding that motivation is not impossible, if not actually easy to acquire.

I can't wait!! :-)

Just a long overdue rant.

**DISCLAIMER: Lots of bitching ahead.** 

I just can't accept the fact that I have obligations in life that are not related to the things I enjoy, or let alone things that truly matter. As the days tread on, I am coming to realize how incompatible my job and I have become, and must break up soon.

To put it simply, I work in an office. You know what they say:

"This is not an office - this is Hell with fluorescent lighting."

If you know anything about me, I do not belong couped in some cubicle. I am restless and my mind processes a hundred million things per second, and my body is always itching to do something - get up, walk around... subconsciously sabotage what it knows my heart does not want, by making it difficult to wake up in the morning, by getting anxious when too much monotony has surpassed in a given time. Then my mind wanders off to pursuits and interests that, however unrelated, fill my heart and mind with joy, excitement, eagerness, and peace. Then I realize quickly what I am doing, and trying to stifle those desires to seek other things is what exhausts me so much by the end of the day. And you guessed it, fatigue, depression, and anxiety are the by-products.

But this is what I have been doing for 5 years.

I've been told by people (mind you, people I am horribly incompatible with) that I should just shut up and be grateful I am employed. And that in this economy, employment is scarce. They have a point, yes.

But should I really be grateful about that? Should I be thankful that thousands - no, millions - of us, are all mindlessly just "jobbing" around, quelling our deepest desires and the cries of our hearts, just to have the GREAT OPPORTUNITY to make ten dollars per hour while we constantly get spit on by management and treated like we're all scum?

Should I be thankful that the artists, the creators, the thinkers, the builders, the ever-so-compassionate few who sacrifice their lives every day to save others, are not respected as they should be? Whether you work in an office (like me), or work in a fast-food establishment, or you're out there building roads or pulling people out of fires and cardiac arrests, the "system" just deems us replacable - if we dare act differently, we are tossed for a more compliant model. After all, there are plenty of sheep out there who would be grateful for the employment.

It's not like there's more of us than them, right? We couldn't all just band together and stand up for what we all believe we deserve, because that would be too exhausting, right?

I have never been the type to accept the conventional, especially not at face value. I have an engrained problem with authority. It's not that I'm arrogant and that I cannot recognize wisdom above myself - no, it is quite the contrary, I value respect [as well as people who are worthy of that respect] to a degree that is lost upon my generation. I have a problem with people throwing their weight around, people that loudly proclaim falsities and belittle others. I have a problem with liars, cheaters, thieves, and extortionists, who strip the good, honest people of any extra resources they must have, under the guise of lawfulness. We must pay exorbitant taxes, have numerous restrictions on just about everything, uphold "bans" and "prohibitions," and avoid making a scene. All while we're being made to be dumber, lazier, and sicker.

I could go on for a very long time about the injustice of the itinerary of life that we "lawful people" must abide by. The ill regard I have for the school-college-doing shit you don't want-debt-soul sucking job-kissing ass to your ugly boss-slaving away for years for shitty pay-maybe retirement-death model. But I think I've already spoken volumes about it.

There's so much more to life. There's "getting by" ...and then there's living. I have always been told (whether with favor or disgust) that I cannot handle being caged in any way, shape, or form. Think Eowyn from The Lord of The Rings. We can possibly blame the fact that I am a full-blown Sagittarius. And what I've mentioned above, and the job that I must divorce from very soon, is currently my prison. Fortunately for me, and with great inconvenience and liberation alike, my heart and soul are getting way too big to fit in it. Sooner or later, and I feel it may be sooner, I'll be out.

Carbs Galore!

On Saturday night, I went to see my best [girl]friend play in The Vagina Monologues in her community college. I'd never seen her in a play before, so that was my main reason for going - her. What an interesting experience that was. The actors all did fantastic jobs, and one woman almost had me crying waterfalls at my seat from her heartbreaking performance.. but when I got home that night, I begged my boyfriend to put on an action flick. Well, I didn't really have to beg.. much.. at all, actually: The Expendables it was.

And every pore Sylvester Stallone possessed was gloriously glistening on our new TV. A TV I had to  purchase, because the little computer monitor of a boob tube we had was now incompatible with most Blu-Ray players.. which also broke and had to be replaced. F**king technology.

This is good fitspo, right? I mean, dude's like a 67-year old BAMF powerhouse..

ANYWAY!....

I'm not sure who's actually reading this, or if anyone is following this regularly, but for my sake and the sake of this blog, I am finally going to update. I've been thinking of updating all week (and weekend) but, with a lack of my own internet connection, as well as my always-busy life, I simply didn't get to. I really don't plan to, and will not, abandon this thing. It helps me focus on my goals and keep track of things nice and neatly. Plus, I get to write. If I talked to someone about all this, their head might explode. I'm afraid I've already talked a few people's heads off with all my obsession with exercising and proper exercise nutrition.

So this February I'm experimenting with John Kiefer's Carb Back Loading. It's been a hell - and heaven - of a ride. I've made some significantly good gains at the gym. I've gloriously... moaned (ugh, hate that word now, thanks a lot, Vagina Monologues...)... after a rigorous iron-slamming weight training session and being able to stuff my face silly with white rice, tiramisu cakes, FRENCH FRIES, Rocky Road frozen yogurt, Mariano's macadamia nut & white chocolate butter cookies (the Devil, I tell ye!).. hell, I can't even name all the sugar-laden, high-glycemic, insulin-spiking, delectable CARBS I've been eating after training sessions.

It's not all sunshine and dandelions, though. The first half of each day is spent curbing my appetite, which coffee helps with. People are constantly trying to tempt me with food during the day. It's not like they stopped doing that when I was eating clean, but it's difficult when someone is literally dangling cream cheese shortbread cookies in your face. Or the smell of fresh white rice wafts over to my cubicle. Or I accompany my sister to the Filipino store during our hour-long break and there's fried rice and lumpia (eggrolls) and ube cake everywhere...

On a good note, I've found that Kiefer's AM Accelerator formula - which consists of coffee, heavy whipping cream or coconut oil (which cost me an arm and a few toes at the nearby GNC.. damn them), and vanilla whey protein - is actually pretty flavorful in the morning. It also helps keep my stomach from growling like crazy. While a tad oily, I really don't mind my coffee smelling like coconut and vanilla. I am, after all, a pina colada & macaroon fiend. But no one knows that.

I'm also reading up great reviews on coconut oil itself. How 3 tablespoons or so of daily consumption fuels the body in so many good ways - one being weight loss. I'm not afraid of fat anymore. I take fish oil supplements daily, put good spoonfuls of coconut oil in my coffees and protein shakes, eat fatty fish and meats. During one all-ultra-low-carb day (before back-loading actually began) I made oven-baked fried chicken lathered in mayonnaise, a good rub, butter, and grated parmesan cheese as the breading, and put it atop a leafy bed of sliced cucumbers, spinach, and lettuce. I was definitely not bitching about the lack of carbs that evening. I've tried eating a can of tuna mixed with melted pepper jack cheese, meats with avocado, broccoli and veggies cooked in butter... the list goes on.

I love butter, and I love full-flavored meats. I've come to love all the variety of nutritious veggies I can eat in heaping amounts daily. Yet after all this, I still love carbs, and I highly doubt carbs and I are going to have a fallout or a break-up anytime soon, which makes this carb back-loading all the more awesome, difficult, and crazy...

Let me just begin that when I was strictly eating clean, I knew every meal I was going to have for the day. I simply had them lined up in the fridge, and only had to eat a meal when it came time to do so. And I had carbs in every meal - slow-burning, filling, whole carbs. Brown rice, sweet potatoes, 100% whole wheat, etc. I didn't always like sweet potato. I came to love these foods. This system is great for those who want to stay on track and have predictability and consistency.

Nowadays, each day is an exercise in patience, discipline, and control.. even more so than just sticking to a clean eating regimen. I must prolong FAT burning in the morning by avoiding carbs during insulin-sensitive mornings, simultaneously accelerating the fat loss and curbing my appetite with caffeine, prevent muscle proteolysis from occurring by consuming whey with the fat-burning morning beverage, get my dose of MCTs (medium-chain triglycerides) for thermogenesis and numerous other health benefits, graze throughout the day pre-training with extremely low-to-no carb, high-protein, moderate fat foods. Sometimes I don't even eat all day, then have some filling cottage cheese and whey right before training, TRAIN LIKE A MOTHER-, then slam all my daily required calories post-training. I'm not at a deficit, I'm definitely not starving myself - so while I'm not calorie counting, I have my personal macros in mind and must meet them if I want my body to grow and strengthen accordingly. Let's just say you don't get strong in the gym and meet your daily protein/carb/fat macros by eating a stick of gum and a sliver of a grain of rice every day... NO.

It's really tough. After a night's binge (and many food babies later) of carbs and miscellaneous foods, I fall asleep... HARD. Crash is more than the appropriate word for those instances. I guess they were right when they said you get a good night's sleep during carb back-loading. I get so lethargic, that if I were to doze off on the couch, I will get stuck there. SO ridiculous.

I'm still trying to get the correct amount of sleep, since with all the things I have to do during the day, I don't get to sleep on time, but the quality of every individual hour of sleep has drastically improved. (I still gotta keep those stupid, anxiety-inducing dreams at bay though...)

I look so little! Little girl body!! Yeesh!!!

So far, carb back loading has made me stronger, more solid, a complete couch brick, and a happy fat kid all at once.

There are days I freak out because I carb back load on an off-day (no training), or I train super hard to the point of soreness and nausea, and I hold back on the carb intake for the day, fearing that I will get bloated or produce unneccessary fat again. When I do that, I actually get really inflamed, swollen, and stay sore much longer. That's when I started back loading on off days, to see if eating carbs would help me not feel like such a sore, fat pimple, ready to burst. I had a piece of chocolate one night right before bed, then the next day, I back loaded even though I didn't lift. So far, my stomach remains tighter than it used to be, my new upper body muscles are solidifying, and I'm not looking excessively bloated. Or feeling like an edema victim.

I have about two more weeks until February is over, and will weigh the outcomes of carb back loading for a month. I will start incorporating HIIT cardio soon, as well as supersets and drop-sets in my training sessions. I really want to shed this excess body fat already. In the near, near future, maybe I'll crank out some more progress pictures - I'm still really timid about posting such pictures, but for the sake of accountability, I will.

Busy as always...

I just wanted to check in and point out that I have not abandoned this blog yet. No way, there is too much to write. I have just been busy with life.. as always. I shall return with more posts hopefully in the next day or two.

Carb Back Loading: Recalibration Phase

I've been dropping lots of random references to Carb Back Loading (by DH Kiefer) and I believe it's about time I explain myself, and why I am trying to experiment with ditching the traditional bodybuilder's contest diet of dividing macronutrients evenly throughout the day - eating most of my carbohydrates at in the morning, carb-cycling, and having to deal with an on-season and off-season physique.

Let me just remind everyone that I am not very seasoned in any of this stuff. I have only taken up the interest of fitness and nutrition seriously since last year, and my year or so of research is pretty much the baseline for all things I've been doing in regards to getting in shape the right way.

First I must make a disclaimer clear: I am not talking any smack about traditional clean eating or bodybuilding dieting in any way, shape or form. I believe this works very well, as it has worked wonders for me during the entire month of January, as well as last year when I first cleaned up my food intake and calculated my macros.

For many, the traditional way of doing things works. Why? It is a set routine - eating mostly protein for muscle synthesis, tons of veggies for fiber content and numerous other nutritional/health benefits, and clean, good fats, and slow-burning carbohydrates for energy and bulking. Coupled with the elimination of "processed crap," so to speak, and ignited by resistance training and cardiovascular exercise.. this discipline proves worthy results, time and time again. I would imagine it works for people who are mostly diligent in their meal timing, don't mind keeping track of every specific detail of their caloric and macronutritional intake. I became this person, and I pretty much enjoyed the routine and predictability [and security] this plan provided for me.

But above all things, I am also an impatient person. Believe me, I have been trying all my life to be patient and cool, calm, and collected. And I may seem so in many ways (after all, I did have the patience to commence transformation on my body through a complete lifestyle change).

However, it cannot be denied that the very core of me is an eager, hungry, dissatisfied child. My very existence is the antonym of complacency.So I relentlessly, to this day, still research and read and find whatever I can, to improve my results and achieve my almost bottomless list of goals. Also, my brain craves constant learning.

And that is how I discovered Carb Back Loading.

I want to go ahead and thank Kiefer endlessly for all the research and work he has done to put this out for the world, but I have yet to completely see the complete results of it for myself. So I have taken it upon myself to buy his E-book, and begin the experiment on myself:

- Throw all my (and others') preconceived notions of diet and nutrition timing out the window,

- Follow the outlined plan for success.

For starters, carb back loading is the practice of restricting your overall carbohydrate intake for the day until after your workouts, until the evening, until pre-bedtime. No going over 30g of carbs pre-training, train heavy, and then back load. This flies in the face of every resource and article out there that states one must eat most of their carbs in the morning, and abstain from them as bedtime creeps closer.

Kiefer has done numerous research regarding insulin in the body, and it is known that insulin is the most sensitive in the morning. Insulin is anabolic - it will stimulate growth. Growth of muscle cells, but also fat cells. Eating carbs first thing in the morning will grow fat cells simply because insulin sensitivy is the highest in the morning. This is why breakfast is OK to skip, per Kiefer. As long as you get your required caloric and nutritional intake for the day, it shouldn't really matter that you're skipping breakfast. You can put off most of your eating until later on in the day, when insulin levels begin to taper off. Eating carbs in the morning not only spikes your insulin, but also interferes with the fat-burning process your body undergoes first thing in the morning.

The first 10 days are the recalibration phase, where one depletes his or her glycogen levels of any carbohydrates. This is where I'm currently at.

The point is to prime the body to switch to using fat as a fuel source instead of carbs. An example of a day would look like this:

-No eating until after 2 hours (minumum) or later of awakening.

-Coffee in the morning, mixed with heavy whipping cream (pure fat, for filling) or coconut milk (or oil), 10g of whey isolate (to prevent muscle breakdown), and small amounts of Splenda. This mixture accelerates fat-burning during its most active stage (in the AM) and does not increase your insulin levels so that your body is kicked out of fat-burning mode. The whey isolate prevents your body from breaking down your hard-earned muscle as well.

-Grazing ultra low-carb meals during the day, whether training or not. Make sure meals are high in protein, moderate in fat (fat is a slow-burning source with ample calories and, provided you are training, does not harm you), and green veggies are eaten in abundance. The carbs in veggies are mostly fiber, which does not count toward your "usable" carb intake.

-Total daily intake must be below 30g. Any more and insulin will be kicked up and your body will stop using fat cells as fuel.

Fat should not be feared. Animal fats, oils, nuts (in moderation), even butter are okay. Fat isn't really what makes people get fat - it's the carbs, especially eaten frequently and at the wrong times - that make our fat cells grow.

Undergoing this recalibration phase myself, I have not been calorie counting, but I must be aware of every gram of carb I might consume. Going above 30g is too easy to accomplish, especially when Americans consume 5 times that per day. Almost everything has carbs! Consider that Americans love to eat out and get fast food and buy convenience food. I'm not exaggerating that everything has carbs. THIS IS WHY AMERICANS ARE FAT.

Anyway, as for the 30g or under of carb consumption, I need to maintain ketogenesis in the body. The body needs to be depleted of carbs for 10 days, so that when I finally train & carb back load, my muscles will be super sensitive to soaking up the carbs I will finally be eating, and hungrily store them, not giving fat cells a chance to absorb them. Besides, post-training, the fat cells are not in a state to react to insulin, which is of great benefit.

And on the 10th day, especially after training, your muscles are in a catabolic state. You just tore them down by lifting weights, and they need to repair themselves. Insulin levels spike after working out. This is the optimum time to feed your muscles. Consuming carbs post-training between 3-7pm is highly advantageous since muscles are desperate to tap into your glycogen stores, yet the fat cells (post-training) do not respond to insulin. Insulin helps transport all those carbs - the simpler, the better - to your muscles. This is where the "junk food" comes in - from white rice and potatoes to straight up donuts and pastries, etc. One may eat these simple carbs up until bedtime. The simpler the carbs, the better the results. Slow-burning carbs would be of great disadvantage during this phase since they will take longer to digest.

Carbs go to muscles, fat gets burned in the morning. When muscle increases in mass, even more fat is burned. This means simultaneously bulking (packing on lean muscle mass) and cutting (losing body FAT), which is almost unheard of.

If you are seriously interested, go purchase this guy's E-book and even check out dangerouslyhardcore.com, where he frequently posts articles and you can even check out the forum for lots of great tips and such. The forum contains a bunch of people who are doing this.

I've tried for weeks now to find something wrong with this, or anything proving that it doesn't work. So far, the only negative thing I see in it is that IT IS NOT FOR EVERYBODY. This is for people who train hardcore & push themselves to failure (not just cardio). This is for people who don't mind cutting out their carbs during the day, and not eating them until post-training. This is for people who don't mind skipping breakfast and having very little calories during the day. Because as soon as you start eating carbs early in the morning, you automatically kick your body out of fat-burning mode. Then you pack on fat.

With this knowlege, I'm certain I never wanna eat another carbohydrate during the daytime ever again.

And besides, what better than rewarding yourself with tasty food after a rigorous, badass lifting session? And having that splurge work directly in YOUR favor?

I'm not sure what I'm more excited about - the fact that I'm losing this long-unwanted body fat from my pregnancy, the fact that I get to eat all kinds of food during this contest prep (I can have healthy veggies, full-flavored meats, cheese, butter, healthy oils & nuts, AND the "forbidden" foods), or the fact that all that "cheat food" is going to go straight to my muscles post-workout - which means significant MUSCLE GAINS!

So far, my waist has shrank significantly. I''m seeing a faint hourglass shape, as opposed to the apple my previous 30%+ body fat body likes to sport. To be blunt and to put things into perspective, my stomach doesn't stick out past my boobs anymore. And I have small ones, so it didn't take much - but now, there is no GUT there. Even during this ultra-low-carb portion of the plan, I find I'm becoming more focused, and my weights have all gone up by a few pounds. (Someone who's getting weaker would not be able to do this). I'm sleeping much deeper and less likely to wake up in the middle of the night for no reason. I'm seeing muscles pop in the gym that I didn't know existed, and I see striations IN THE MUSCLES when I'm straining hard with the iron.

Besides the few days of dizziness, and excruciating desires to look at "food porn" involving upclose shots of carby, sugary foods - I cannot complain about this. It is garnering me some wild results, and I have not even begun the carb back-loading portion of the plan.

(This explains why I never got fat in high school, binging on Burger King and pizza with my guy friends after every excruciating night session at the gym - and why I had some nice muscular definition back then. I'm super stoked.)

Once I'm finished with the recalibration phase (This Sunday evening, post-training, will mark my first carb back load meal), I will update you all with my progress.

Until then!

Winning.. but nowhere near finished!

I finally now have balls to post some progress pictures. Here's one.



What you see up there is a progress photo. Yes, I finally just swallowed my insecurities and did it. The left shows me on the beginning of January.. the beginning of my journey. The right side, believe it or not, was me this Saturday.

A lot of people have told me I've lost weight already and it's only been 4 weeks. I thought the rule was, it takes YOU 4 weeks to see changes, 8 for your close friends/loved ones and 12 for the rest of the world to notice. I guess I'm progressing quickly!

My ultimate goal though is to prevent plateauing. I need to shock my body frequently and have it blast fat and gain muscle simultaneously for the next 7 remaining months. So that means never settling into a routine, and constantly executing progression overload (increasing my weights week by week) so that I get an excruciating, effective workou

While I am proud of my progress, it is not time to get uber-excited (or complacent) just yet. Obviously, I still have a long way to go, I have many little goals between now and the actual competition that I must be able to check off, before I can get contest ready. I plan to get in really good shape by May though, since Anime Central is happening and DUH, I need to get in some amazing shape before cosplaying. (If I'm dressing up as super-awesome characters, I need to achieve that superhero/comic-book body by that time to be credible!) That'll just make it that much better when summer hits and we're all getting ready to hit the beach.. I want that moment of triumph. I'll work hard for it.

On a random note, I decided I'm going to make my cosplay from scratch (as much as I can possibly do) this year. I know it's not anime-related, but I really want to be Xena, the Warrior Princess. It will fulfill a deep-seated, long-desired, childhood dream! Not to mention, Xena inspires me to be strong inside and out, and to be a complete BAMF and be proud to be a woman.. a great thing to harness for fitness motivation as well!

I freakin' LOVE Xena.

(Yes, I'm saying Xena is my fitspo, or "fitspiration"... and that Superhero physique is what I'm going for. This blog is called Nerd Girl Fitness for a reason.)

I did P90X Isometric Abs with my friends today. Let me tell you, that was the most brutal ab workout I've ever experienced.. and it was only 15 minutes long. We were all screaming, complaining, and groaning, but we did it, we got through the entire thing. Needless to say, I am sore as hell now. With that said, I love that I'm exploring different modes of exercise other than just lifting weights.

When I have more time I will write a separate post on how my Carb Back Loading experiment is going. It's a whole 'nother ball park which requires much explanation. I'm on Day 4 of having only less than 30g of carbs. Every carb-laden food is torturing my olfactory senses in every way possible. Day 10 I will lift heavy and mark my words, I will eat the crap out of some Lou Malnati's pizza. Gods, I cannot wait.

A New Month! (& Many other new things!)

I have to say, the last 2 weeks I have not been training as much due to sheer exhaustion. I am still eating clean, however I have had more cheat meals than usual.. nothing extravagant though.

As January has ended and we go forward into a new month, I must outline some observations and evaluate how the month went:

- I DEFINITELY need to get more sleep!

- After 31 days I feel AMAZING. The clean eating, even though I've been eating everyday at a huge caloric surplus, has definitely helped in energy levels, as well as helping me lose the right weight (fat). Last weigh-in I lost 2 pounds but lost body fat.. so I'm guessing I lost more but gained some in muscle mass. Always a good thing! :)

- I can feel my abdominals wanting to come out. I am no longer bloated! The obliques no longer feel as squishy.. though postpartum belly needs some serious work!

- While the results aren't entirely obvious (to me at least) I can definitely sense a SHIFT in my body composition. I undoubtedly have taken on a VERY different shape than what I used to have back in my non-active days.

- I have made significant gains in my legs! I upped my squats and have incorporated various forms of Deadlift exercises into my lower body routine. I love them!

- My upper body still needs a lot of work. But this month I will simply focus on making them STRONGER! So, lots of pushups for me until my upper body can catch up with my lower body.

- Even though I've been having bad days and days where I feel burned out, I still love to train, and most of all...

- I'm SO proud of what I have accomplised in 31 days alone.

Beyond the slight physical changes I'm noticing, I have become more organized, and my discipline and resolve are strengthening. Bodybuilding and adopting a healthy lifestyle induces more than just physical transformations.
Because of my unquenchable thirst for knowledge, I have also been learning more and expanding my horizons. I am reading articles and journals and books I never thought I would be reading!

My current project - ahem, obsession - is John Kiefer's Carb Back Loading. I finally purchased his E-book after not only hearing about the concept of carb back loading, but trying to look up every article and opinion out there ATTEMPTING to find something wrong with it.. anyone or anything that disproves the crazy theories. So far, I have found none. Strength coaches, professional powerlifters, bodybuilding competitors of all divisions, HELL - even CEO's! - swear by this. I feel like I stumbled upon some very strange, powerful, object.

Basically, Kiefer states that one can achieve significant muscle & strength gains and simultaneously lose tons of fat by "back-loading" carbohydrates - after a 10-day recalibration period of depleting glycogen stores in the body (by refraining from eating carbohydrates, forcing the body into ketogenesis), one must do heavy resistance training during peak hours of 3-7 pm and eat a decent amount of simple carbs POST-training.

So what does this mean?

I can skip breakfast, have coffee, eat small, high-protein/good fat meals throughout the day pre-training, then TRAIN LIKE A BEAST AFTER WORK, then go home and ravage white rice, donuts, or pasta, what have you, until I go to bed. The carbs feed the muscles, while the fat cells get starved. It all has to do with hormonal responses in the body throughout the day, the cycle of insulin and growth hormones, and so much more science I wish I had more time to elaborate upon.

Sounds pretty frickin' ridiculous.

But since I refuse to speak against something I have not tried, I will experiment with this for a month. Today marks Day 1. The first 10 days will be excruciating as my body must recalibrate with the loss of carbs. Kiefer is ripped, by the way, I mean RIPPED, and he is a physicist. He's smart as hell, and has read some 40,000 medical journals and has an inquisitive mind I have come to admire as a wonderful trait to have. He claims the implementation of his research yield typical results. Yes, typical. He even says doing this half-assed will still garner results.

Look - no, really. LOOK at this guy. Do YOU know any physicists that look like this?!

It won't hurt to try. At worst, my body fat will spike back up, but the best case scenario, I will get even stronger IMMEDIATELY and start to get really cut. Besides, this will be a true shock to my metabolism, which is needed to keep my body from adapting to a certain thing and hitting a plateau.

And the best part is, I'll no longer get tempted or long for those delicious treats, or turn down offers to join my friends for dinner and such, because it'll all be working to my advantage.

AND! I have timed my recalibration period perfectly, so that on the 10th night, post-training, I will have my first meal of delicious carbs during the return of The Walking Dead (Feb. 10). Yep, I went there. It's gonna be a DAMN good Sunday.

Hello Carb Back-Loading.

And Hello, February! Month 2 of 8, I WILL accomplish even more goals this time!