2016 (so far).....

Evening everyone!

I hope you've all had a good weekend and are feeling rested and ready for a brand new week.

Time for me to reflect on the past couple of weeks :)

 

The first thing I want to say is that I've been struggling to find time for blogging. I think that's because I'd been focusing most of my time in preparing for my 5 Day Clean Eating group. This actually took up a LOT of my time and I'd definitely underestimated it. I kept going over and over the same things time and time again to check I was happy with it and that I hadn't missed anything out. It was important to me that the group was useful to my challengers. I mean, that was the purpose of it right? I wanted to be able to teach and show people what clean eating was all about and how they could incorporate it fuel their body with nutritious food and achieve a healthier lifestyle. It was really important to me that I got it right. So, yes, I did spend a lot of time on it and my blogging suffered as a result. But I now have the basics organised so that next time I run the group a lot of the work is already done. Yay! And now we've had the opportunity to run the group I'm glad I spent the time on it that I did. More about that in a minute!

 

Right, so this new workout that I've been doing.....well actually it's going GREAT! I truly didn't know how I was going to take to this one as it's so unlike anything I'd ever done before. I was worried about using weights so much. I didn't even know if I was strong enough for it! My biggest worry though, was that without loads of cardio exercise how would I even maintain my current weight, let alone drop any more pounds!?! The proof is in the pudding as they say. About one week in I started to feel really bloated and pudgy around my belly area. I could see that I was already toning up my legs and shoulders but my tummy had started to look way worse than it had been a few weeks earlier. I mean, it was really quite big when I looked in the mirror from the side and it just felt really flabby. I wasn't making it up, Rog agreed with me but he said I should ignore it and not worry. Then I made the stupid mistake of getting on the scale in the hope that it would be the same as it was before, proving that I shouldn't be discouraged, but to my absolute horror I was 4 pounds heavier than I had been the week before!II was so upset and I truly felt like I'd taken a massive step backwards. It wasn't the number that upset me particularly, I just felt that all of the work and effort I'd put in over the weeks before had just been undone. Needless to say I was really quite upset about it and it made me question if I wanted to continue with the programme or go back to my old one. Luckily I had Rog on my side and he managed to convince me to keep going. I googled it (I love Google! What did I ever do without it?) and found that other people doing this workout were also experiencing the same sort of thing. This put my mind at rest especially when it was made clear that this is actually quite a normal reaction when using weights at this sort of frequency when you haven't been used to it before. Apparently it's caused by inflammation. When you work out, it causes little tears in your muscle fibres (that’s why you feel sore after a workout). When your body heals those little tears and strengthens the muscle there’s so much going on that the area swells up. The fluid needed for this obviously weighs something—and that might show up on the scale. But it’s temporary. I'm a scientist at heart so that made me feel a lot better about it. And wouldn't you know it.....in this last week I've dropped that 4 pounds back off and all of the water retention has gone leaving me feeling that I'm exactly where I should be!!! So it's full steam ahead with the workout schedule! 

So, back to my clean eating group! I was really nervous about doing this. I'd never done anything like it before and I wanted it to be worthwhile. Plus I'd given myself a deadline of a start date so I couldn't get out of it, even though I did consider backing out a couple of times! I thought that it was highly possible that nobody would be interested and I wouldn't even have any challengers. But I was wrong!! I got a full quota of challengers in the group (each one of them approaching me rather than me having to pester them - bonus!). It was ideal. It seemed to run well and my challengers were actively involved, posting about their days and asking lots of questions. They encouraged each other and it was a really positive experience. I've also found some opportunities for improvement so I'll be making those tweaks for the next time I run it (I'm hoping that this is something I run every few weeks depending on interest). Let me know if you're interested and I can start to build up a picture of how to plan these for the future :) I've had great feedback from my challengers that they're ready to start to make some lasting changes to their health and fitness. I'm so happy!!! 

 

At the same time as my clean eating group some of my very good friends have started a fitness routine where they're following a workout schedule (one of the ones I've previously been doing) and it's been awesome listening to their daily trials and tribulations, as well as their daily successes! I'm so very proud of them and I love being able to help and support them. They're telling me that they're seeing improvements every day and I know they're going to crush it! 

 

I honestly have to say that 2016 has started on a really positive note and I cannot wait to see what everyone will accomplish this year!