9 Weeks Out From Atlantic Classics
O.M.G. this last week marked officially 1/2 way through prep. The time FLIES - I guess it might also be because I am really enjoying this process. I had no idea what to expect. I read so many blog post online and people's opinions that honestly scared me away BUT I decided to go for it anyway because I figured I had to try to see if I would like it for myself. So far, I can tell you that I am loving it - but again, you never know and that might change in the last 1/2 of prep. Time will tell.
So this week everything was changed! My workouts and my meals. Let's start with my meals first. They looked like this (yeah, things got serious and I started weighing mostly everything):
B: 45 g oatmeal, 70 g blueberries, 15 g peanut butter, 30 g protein powder
S: 160 g strawberries and 30 g protein powder (mixed with water)
L: 1/2 cup brown rice, 100 g chicken breast and 90 g dill pickles (or any other green veggie)
S: 2-3 cups spinach, cucumber, sweet bell peppers, tomato, mushroom, red onion with 100 g chicken breast, 15 g light feta and 1-2 Tbsp calorie free dressing (I chose Renee's fat free Caesar dressing)
D: 1/2 cup brown rice, 100 g chicken breast and 90 g dill pickles (or any other green veggie)
S: 3/4 cup egg whites plus 1 whole egg (which I usually made scrambled eggs) and 90 g veggies (usually a mixture of mushrooms, onions and peppers)
Every time my meal plan is changed I worry a bit because I never know if I am going to go into 'Steph's gone crazy and needs more food' mode. But thankfully, this week went smooth. At times, I was a bit hungry and I checked with my coach and she reassured me that it was okay as long as it wasn't super hungry. And honestly, I'm still trying to recognize proper hunger from 'I just want to eat'...I've come a long way but I still need to work on it. As you can see I still have TONS of food from all the food groups.
New workouts are always fun for me. I'm now a fitness junkie (at one point in my life I thought workouts were torture) so anything new I love to do...to see how I like it and to see how my body responds (my body seems to be responding well to this plan). My workouts for 5 days are now in the conditioning phase with work being done on lowerbody, chest/shoulders, back/arms/abs, lowerbody and shoulders/arms/abs. My cardio has increased to 6x a week with 3 HIIT sessions and 3 steady state cardio sessions. I am still LOVING HIIT. In fact, I loved all my workouts this week. I swear I love challenging (but doable) workouts.
I also was able to get my very first official posing lessons this week. EEEK! They were amazing and highly highly recommend them (you can see a difference in my progress pics although you can also see I'm still uncomfortable and awkward). I was actually taught by a pro (she's been a pro for 2 years now) so she told me a bunch of helpful tips and tricks as well as finding the best posing positions for me. I've said it before and I will say it again - posing makes a HUGE difference in how you look. It continues to blow my mind. So now, PRACTICE as much as I can...in fact, I'm going to attempt to do it at least 20 minutes every day.
AND GUESS WHAT ARRIVED IN THE MAIL? My suit! It still needs to be stoned (aka sparkle) but the colour is amazing. Once the suit is complete I will post a coloured picture. I couldn't be happier with the colour though. Love at first sight! I would recommend Sherry's Originals to anyone - the process was quick and easy and she was so helpful.
I also played two sessions of ball hockey this week - it's a great extra cardio session that feels effortless because I'm so focused on playing - I love it so much. I did get a stick to the head (complete accident and just bad luck really) that caused a bump and some bleeding - YIKES! Good thing competition isn't tomorrow. I plan on sitting out of ball hockey the last week of competition just in case something stupid like that happens (plus I am going to be so busy).
That was my week in a nutshell - eat live breath tough workouts, healthy eats and tons of water. The closer we get to competition the more I like prep. I truly do love this lifestyle. So my weigh in was 122.4 lbs from 127.3 lbs at 16 weeks out for a total of 4.9 lbs loss - who said this lifestyle is unhealthy? Seriously that's less than 1 lb a week (and that's okay because I'm still making big changes)! I'm happy to see that number has finally started to decrease though. From my posing lessons, we decided my poses would be a bit different so comparison isn't perfect but you can still see the progress. I have 8 more weeks of work to put in - head down, blinders on and ready to knock this next week out of this world!
