Train, Eat, Sleep & Repeat

Well that's what the experts say that life is all about. I am constantly questioning whether I can possibly live by this mantra. Especially when the late afternoon hits and it's searingly hot and the chilled wine is calling!

I think the trick is not to think about it so much and just do it.

So this week I've thought less and done more. On Wednesday I roped my lovely (and very strong) friend, Tammy, into a workout. We completed a set of 4 upper body exercises followed by a 1km run followed by one leg pressups. We did 6 rounds with increasing reps each round. I felt really sluggish and think I would have cheated had I not had a partner with me. That's not very encouraging at this early date.

The next day brought two training partners and another full-on workout using only weight plates. There's an exercise for each body part and they are performed back to back, only resting at the end of the set. Sweat was pouring and I was really feeling it by the end of the third set. So we swapped it up a bit and did the fourth set to a 1minute time with 30 secs recovery between muscle groups. Awful but good.

The following day we hit legs and it was my first intense strength session for a while. Six exercises, four sets, 10 reps per set. I managed 50kg on the squat rack but feel I could have gone a touch heavier. I'm going for the best form I can manage with a nice slow and consistent cadence. We must have done good because my butt is killing me today!

Today was bis and tris and we hit them hard. 3 supersetted pairs and four sets of each combination. We finished with an ab circuit of; 20 x barbell push-outs, 20 x swissball pull-ins, and 30 x bicycle crunches performed 3 times each. I'm wrung out now. Time for a rest day.

But all in all, I'm happy with the training I'm doing. I definitely need more guidance but at least the basics are all there. And I must add in here the huge difference having training friends makes!! I'm sure these fantastic girls feel grateful for the workout but have little idea just how much they help me get through. I'm going to hold on to all of them for as long as I can! I'll know I'm getting stressed when none of them want to come over for a workout. Then I'll have to start bribing them.

It's New Years Eve and I deserve a few cold wines tonight for sure. Thank god wine fits into the bulking up phase - hehe.

Bulking Up - What the Hell!!

Bulking Up – What An Awful But Necessary Mission

So I’ve spent the past few days reading everything I can on my first serious mission – bulking up. The theory behind this is to build up muscle in the ‘bulking phase’ before losing all excess fat in the ‘cutting phase’.

The first dozen or so articles I read basically advised me to eat and eat so that my calorific intake exceeds my exercise, resulting in weight gain. The articles were not so concerned with the quality of food, more the quantity. Being a complete amateur I can only say that instinctually this didn’t ring true for me. So I kept hunting and reading and finally found a series of articles that discuss the concept of ‘clean bulking’ (as opposed to dirty bulking). I’m happy with this information and will follow this road.

Clean vs Dirty Bulking

Quite simply, dirty bulking is eating pretty much anything you like, putting on a lot of weight and accepting that a large portion of this will be fat. While doing this you work out like crazy and build muscle and eventually spend a fairly intense period cutting before a comp – that is, losing the excess fat.

Clean bulking, on the other hand, is about putting on weight by increasing your intake of nutritionally sound foods eg. Bigger or more meals while adhering to mainly clean foods. This method will definitely result in less bulking as you are only aiming to eat enough to allow maximum weight gain in the form of lean muscle. It is again accepted that there will be fat gain, especially for females, but the less fat gained the better. This means the cutting phase is shorter and less intense.

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/the_truth_about_bulking;jsessionid=2553B35C6053C2C93651FA1CB00F0F86-mcd02.hydra

The bigger theory is that a body can only put on a certain amount of muscle and this is the maximum that can be achieved. No amount of eating can increase this maximum speed so the excess food is unnecessary and also detrimental.

Yes, I’m going down the less traditional road. I simply can’t be in the fitness industry and condone a feeding-frenzy-for-one! I also must take into consideration my personal battles I’ve had with food, and I believe that a massive food party would mess with my head beyond belief. And I’m not doing anything to sabotage the balance I have in life. One of my ‘rules’ when it comes to health and fitness is to not only talk-the-talk, but also walk-the-walk. This way I have to consider exactly what it is I am parroting on about because I will use the same measuring stick on my own life. Let’s face it, who wants a personal trainer that doesn’t practise what they preach. That just doesn’t make any sense.

Clean Bulking Starts Now

I’ve done the calculations. I weigh around 61kg right now and fluctuate 1kg each way depending on life. According to the calculations I require approximately 2,400 calories per day in order to put on weight to achieve muscle growth. It’s more than I normally eat and I’m feeling really full all of the time. I’ve had to change the order of my day to fit most carbs in the morning and less in the evening. Please note: this has nothing to do with the fear of storing carbs as fat at night – anyone who knows me knows that I don’t subscribe to this theory.

So here’s my latest daily intake – which is open to change if need be;

Breakfast:        Protein Shake. Oats, skim milk & banana – full as a bull after this!

Snack:              Protein Shake, Fruit

Lunch:              Salad & Tuna sandwich, or, Brown Rice & Vegetables

Snack:              Nuts, Crackers & Cottage Cheese

Dinner:            Lean Meat & Salad (I’m normally a dinner carbs girl but that’s changing now)

Snack:              Yoghurt, Fruit

And believe it or not – this can equal 2,400 calories!

The other consideration is the ratio of protein and carbs I’m getting. According to the sources I need about 205grams of protein per day. With the above I’m still only hitting about 180g max which is disappointing. I’m going to have to add yet another shake or start finding alternative and interesting sources to eat. I understand that real food is far superior to shakes however it’s bloody hard to eat more food let alone eat protein filled goodies.

Carbs are coming along nicely – surprise surprise! – and fats are usually found within my food choices eg. Avocado, olives, good oils.

My next consideration is the supplements I need…

First Stop - Diet.....

Eeeeek!!!! Time for honesty. I’ve had an extremely rocky road with food over the years! In my teenage/twenties years I went completely off the rails and the pendulum swung heavily in both directions. Funnily enough, I can assure you that being too thin is almost more damaging psychologically than being too heavy!! Anyway, this whole issue is a story in itself but I’ll say that I have been the same weight for about the past 15 years. However I have only been mentally secure about the whole weight thing for about the past 10.

Part of the way that I have recovered from such a turbulent time was to take the whole focus off food and definitely no calorie counting, otherwise I’m prone to becoming obsessive about it. These days I prefer to look over a full day and make sure I’ve consumed a fairly proportionate amount of protein, carbs & healthy fats – along with a few treats here and there. With this I add some moderate to high intensity exercise and figure that whatever weight I end up with is where I should be. Fighting this for the sake of a couple of kilos is just asking for trouble as far as I’m concerned.

So here I am, preparing my mind for a year of muscle gaining, fat burning training. I don’t have any sort of mentor/trainer yet but I’m working on it. So I’ve scoured the net and it seems that my first priority is to eat more and gain muscle.

And the first thing I have to face is my diet. So I found a website that takes all of the guess work out of it and I have been plugging in exactly what goes in my mouth during the day. My initial findings are;

-          I need to basically triple my protein intake if I want to gain any muscle.

-          I’m doing ok on the fats front – surprise surprise!!

-          Carbs are looking ok but they could do with a bit of portion control in order to get the mix right.

So I went out today and bought brown rice. My husband kindly ate it under his pile of stir fried veges and lean chicken (I’m taking them all down with me!!!). Re the rice, he said, “Mmmmm. This is different’. Different means it takes like shit. He protested this fact but I am a realist. I have made a decision to make two pots of rice from now on. The kids can have white while Rob and I can adjust our pallet to appreciate ‘different’.

My Decision

Hi. Welcome to my new blog. I’ve made a decision and I’m quite terrified about it so want some friends to come along for the ride.

The Decision

I have decided that, in 2012, I will compete in a body building competition. There. I’ve said it. I can’t go back now. So what’s the big deal? Maybe as we go along, you’ll get more of an idea about why this is so huge for me. At this point it’s sufficient to say that I’m really terrified about it – of course it’s in a good way…well partly. The other part wonders if I’m setting myself up for a big embarrassing fall. It’s reminds of those celebreties that suddenly become walking-ads for Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers, and you just know they’ve done it for a) the money, and b) the accountability. Whether it actually works or not can be judged by the longevity of their association. Sigh. But I’ll never know what I’m made of unless I take up the challenge. So here goes……

About Me

I consider myself completely and totally ‘average’. I’ve got guts. I’ll give anything a go … once… and I’ll generally fight to make it work… but I truly have never excelled at any one thing. I’ve always wanted to excel but never quite had the skills in anything to ‘make it big’.

I like to keep busy and I have a husband and three children who just about take up all of my spare time.

I’ve lived most of my life in New Zealand. Moved to the Gold Coast in 2006 and then up to Cape York in 2009. Here in 2012 I find myself in Katherine, which is in the Northern Territory of Austrlaia.  I became a very proud police officer in 1998 and only stopped in 2011 when we came to the NT. I hadn’t really considered any other occupation because I’d been very happy with my policing role on the whole.

Over 2009/2010 while in Cape York, I struck up a friendship with a colleague’s wife. She is one of those women that you look at once and you just know she’s a gym junkie! Anyhow, we hit it off and began training together. While no stranger to the wonderful world of cardio and weights, I had never ‘got’ the whole resistance training thing. I believe it was partly due to the terribly boring and generic programs supplied by gym instructors with the only instructions being, “come back in 6 weeks and we’ll change it for you”. Now I dare anyone to do the same program three times a week for six weeks. I’d rather chew my arm off and eat it for brekkie!!

So this new friend of mine, Kylie, taught me a huge range of techniques that made it possible to incorporate resistance training into cardio routines. She dropped curve balls every so often such as; pyramid training, matrixes, crossfit, supersets, dropsets and more that I’ve blanked out due to psychological damage I suffered completing them! I grew to love our training sessions and quite quickly became hooked on both the sessions and also the way my body was reacting to the training. I had always ‘poo pooed’ muscles and swore I’d hate to look masculine. But as my body responded, I noticed a lot of changes occurring eg; I literally halved my cardio sessions (which normally consisted of an endurance style of running) yet didn’t put on a kilo – actually dropped weight! I became physically stronger, more confident and very proud of what I was achieving. And I must point out that all of our training sessions (3-4 per week together) were carried out in a garage – nothing flash, nothing electrical, no big machines, just plain old dumbbells, barbells, the odd bench and a few miscellaneous items, like besser bricks for higher lunges.

Kylie and I had spoken about body building competitions because she had competed once and done well. The idea of competing myself honestly never entered my mind.

Me & Competitions

I guess it’s relevant to point out here just how terrible I am at competing. I don’t do it. I avoid it like the plague. I have never been in a race, a triathlon, a city-to-sea fun run or anything similar. In 1998 I had to complete the NZ police entrance test. I ran 2.4kms in 11:15. All potential recruits had to line up and take off together. I was the only female and the 8 fellas had to do the run in 10:15 so I knew they had to go faster than me. However, when we all started out and the guys took off at a near sprint, I was so discouraged that I actually considered crossing the road and running straight home, and may have done so if I hadn’t left my bag at the starting point. I cried with relief when I finished the run and I was eventually accepted into the College. It’s a pattern - I choke on competition day and have been known to pull out part way through or simply not turn up at the starting blocks. I’ve always been this way and never addressed it. I believe it’s not healthy to be so afraid of being measured against others. I know that no one likes losing but you also can never win if you don’t give it a go.

So this is my year. It’s time. I don’t want sympathy I just want some company along the way. I promise it won’t all be this heavy. I can be quite funny at times and I’ve always been very honest.

I can predict that the next 9 months will bring laughter but also tears. I’m ready for the pain and I can’t wait to see what I can achieve.

Thanks for coming……