Is It Really Cheating?......

Is it really cheating? Or just a slight twist on the truth of the matter? I can't decide! Funny, because I'm normally so black and white about things. But in this case I'm a nice shade of grey. Anyway, I'll let you decide;

1. I am not really allowed to eat lollies or sugary treats in my current training nutrition guide. But I eat two Vitamin C tablets a day and I savour every suck like it's a barley sugar or something similar. Cheating?

2. I'm allowed unlimited green vegetables with dinner. I like to think fruit and veges can be interchanged so straight-after-dinner (and I mean so straight after, that you could have counted it as actual dinner!!!) I had 1 x green apple, 1 x orange - that still had a very greenish tinge to the skin, about 78 green grapes and one half of a whole pineapple - that had greenish skin on the outside. In my mind, I was sticking to the plan.

3. I am only allowed skim milk and only a small amount per day. I don't count coffee as my 'milk portion' as the final product doesn't look or taste like milk.

4. I am encouraged to eat copious amounts of lean chicken breast. Do chicken mince patties count? Take into consideration that I mop up the excess oil with a handy towel before I eat it!

Yeah, righto. I get the picture. And the scary thing is, the more I wander from the path, the easier it is to get well and truly lost. Time to rein myself back in and follow the straight and narrow!!

On the positive side, I have hardly had a processed 'thing' in weeks. Just a couple of plain rice crackers to shelve my endless tuna-in-olive-oil feeding frenzies.

So maybe I'll concentrate on writing about the training, which is going very nicely. I have a new regime as of this week and it splits my back into two with the wide grip (lats) and the close grip (rhomboids) having their own session each. Intense!!! Both are tough and with 5-6 sets, they can be really long too. But the results are starting to happen and I feel strong and healthy. Cardio is becoming a balancing act to ensure that I stay fit but don't strip away that beautiful muscle. I've found a new interval program and it starts tomorrow with the intensity going up but the overall time staying reasonably low - can't wait!! I definitely miss having that upper-edge of fitness that I had not long ago, but it's quite exciting to have a new goal and follow a different direction for a while, and know I can up the cardio-anti when I need to in the future.

Along with the nutrition and the training comes the endless mouthfuls of vitamins, minerals and supplements. I can't quite believe how simple life was just over 7 weeks ago compared with now! Here's a picture of my kitchen shelf with 2/3rds of my potions. These are the vitamins and minerals, not to be confused with training supps. I found that spreading them out with a corresponding sticker for what is to be taken and when, really helps my overworked brain. Most of these are to assist in joint mobility by the way.

Mental note to self: tablets are laborious to take but are way easier to stomach than powders! I'll admit that the cholorophyll tabs smell and taste like that awful old Spirulina stuff (fad of the 80's & 90's big time!), but the one I dread, and avoid when I'm too weak to fight it, is the magnesium powder. Oh god it's awful! I've thought about re-selling this bottle on ebay and opting for a nicer tasting version but can't be bothered. It is literally a close-the-nose-and-drink-the-shit sort of potion. Not for the faint-hearted. I tried to 'hide' it in one of my delicious banana/choc protein shakes and fully ruined my shake which put me in a terribly  black mood for 12 hours. It cannot be hidden. In anything. Yeah, I know - toughen up Princess!!

So that's my week. I didn't do anything incredibly silly or funny this week. No inside-out clothes or worm tablets, just the usual eat, sleep, work & train - and I love it!!

Brain Freeze - Learning Too Much!

My lovely friend, Kylie, sent me a great DVD made by an Australian figure champion by the name of Lorraine March. I'm watching little segments at a time to let it all sink and and try to actually learn what it is she is trying to teach me. The segment I'm watching at the moment is on nutrition and she has a fairly basic approach to it all. If you want to lose weight, eat less, move more. Not rocket science. However, when you are already fairly lean and you want to lose more, it becomes more of a scientific approach..so she says. So for me it's about eating the right thing at the right time and pairing it up with the appropriate exercise routine. It can get a little complicated and I find myself arguing out loud with Lorraine. She doesn't seem to mind a debate and doesn't answer me back, which is good. Eventually we agree on the point and I sometimes concede that she knows a little more than I do. Sometimes I don't.

One of the more interesting, and oh-so-true, comments that she talks about is the average person who wants to lose weight, and their approach to food. In the short time I've been in the health and fitness industry, I can say that the majority of those wanting to lose weight don't eat breakfast. And they then find themselves not hungry up until early to mid afternoon. And no, they aren't lying about it, it's bound to be absolutely true! And I can remember, for years, not eating a thing until about 2pm most days. So why wouldn't this be conducive to weight loss?

Well, you've all heard about Metabolism. According to my new friend, Lorraine, Metabolism is the rate that your body burns energy while at rest, eg. while you're sitting down and not active. Clearly a higher rate of metabolism will aid in weight loss, a slower rate will not. There are only 2 things in this world that will affect the rate of your metabolism and they are;

1. Exercise

2. Food

So here's a thought; When you wake up in the morning and your metabolism is nice and low due to being inactive during the night, what say you have a beautiful healthy breakfast and wake that metabolism up? You may just find you are hungry again in 2-3 hours time, and that will freak a few people out who are used to being on a food-fast until at least lunchtime, but it's only because that Metabolism is turned on and starting to speed up. You'll have to believe me that this is the way to lose weight - the fasting way is rubbish for so many reasons and ultimately won't work long-term - and don't forget that it comes with a cost! A lack of food will mean a deficiency in the essential vitamins and minerals that you need to thrive. Hair and nails and skin and energy will be the main indicators that you aren't taking in what you should.

As for exercise, of course this too aids in speeding up that Metabolism. But you won't have the energy for exercise unless you eat right - and so the circle goes on. I can usually tell fairly quickly if I'm training someone who hasn't loaded up with some good energy (carbs) prior to exercise and it must feel awful being flogged when the petrol tank is running on near empty!

So that's the serious stuff I've been learning. And then Lorraine (my DVD friend) said something that made me laugh out loud. She said the following;
"You get some brown rice and boil it in the microwave, stirring every 10 minutes until the water is absorbed. Then you take a chicken breast and simply boil it in water - couldn't be simpler!! So a bit of rice and a bit of boiled chicken is great, and then I put a couple of drops of soya sauce and sometimes even a drop of sweet chilli sauce and that makes a beautiful meal!"

HAHA - how can that be??? No one in the western world would consider boiled rice, boiled chicken and a drop of sauce a DELICIOUS MEAL!!!! A bowl of good fuel would be more apt! Someone please kick me if I ever say I loved a bowl of boiled anything!

On the food note, I had reason to go and buy some worming tablets last week and found that you actually had to eat quite a few squares for it to work properly. I absolutely expected it to taste chalky or revolting, like that awful carob rubbish! So I put the whole 7 squares in my mouth to get rid of it quickly....and then found that it tasted better than Cadburys!!! OMG - so ripped off!!! If I had known I would have savoured each and every square and maybe matched it up to one of my limited daily coffees!!! Don't let anyone tell you any differently - worm chocolate tastes good!!! Probably enhanced by the fact that it's the first sugary thing I've had in a month.

Ok - enough for now, back to the weights. Talk again soon!

I Admit It - I've Been A Cranky Pants All Week!!!

The only reason I'm writing about this is because I feel so much better today than I did on Tuesday. When I look back, the week started with a hiss and a roar with a 10km run and a couple of great weights sessions. But alas, that was in the 'old days'....back when I started my day with a bowl of beautifully soaked rolled oats and plump sultanas...maybe a little dollop of yoghurt and even a sweet square or two of banana..mmmmmmm.

By Tuesday things had changed and it was time to finally and fully implement my brand new nutrition plan. So I had a choice of a protein smoothy, or eggs whites (1 yolk) and fruit salad. I chose the eggs-who wouldn't? And at 7am on Tuesday, I had full intentions of cooking the worlds most bland eggs and sprinkling some nutritious chia and flax meal over them, maybe even go a little out-there with a dash of salt & pepper, and wash it all down with a 1/2 cup of fruit salad.

That is until 7.05am when the ensuite floor drain started overflowing at an alarming rate, and my 9 year old daughter began mercilesly nagging me to straighten her hair for her first day of school, and my youngest cherub wouldn't be budged out of a ridiculously huge school uniform ... he's 3!!!! (note: we actually had to arrive at school with him all uniformed up!) So, in between arguing about hair, trying to prise oversized clothes off, and desperately mop up litres of tepid, milky water, I ditched the eggs idea and went with a smoothie. While I'm the first to admit that a smoothie tastes good, it would have tasted even better if I'd had my oats as an entree.

So I spent the whole of Tuesday morning feeling 'a little out of sorts'. Others may label it as 'shitty' or 'cranky' or 'having a faced like a smacked bum'. I prefer 'out of sorts' - it's kinder. By morning tea time I was less than ready to tuck into lentils and tuna, but they tasted great....yep they did....absolutely....maybe...I.'ve actually tasted better....maybe needed a bit more salt!

Honestly, it would be fair to say that I'm balking a little at the changes. And then I thought a bit more about everyone else in the world who has ever been thrust into a new form of eating and how hard it is. Firstly, it just grates being told what to do. Secondly, taking away comfort food (even if it is perfectly healthy), doesn't even seem fair! On the upside, I believe I am suddenly more empathetic in this area and that can't be a bad thing.

So I have decided, before I lose any good friends who are probably SICK TO DEATH of hearing my moans, I'm going to shut up and eat up! A positive attitude will honestly make grilled, dry chicken taste better. And who needs sauce anyway????? I've been through some of the stages of food grief (ie anger at the injustice of it all, teary at the thought of not having a full fat yoghurt treat each night, and a bit of depression that party food is something of the past for the next 9 months) and I'm back on this ride again. I'm all chia-seeded up and dangerous!!! Chlorophyll is my friend. Magnesium powder keeps my joints happy. And Fish Oil only tastes really bad if you burp!! That's the way Kirst!!!

On the training front, all is good. I've noticed a distinct increase in the weights I'm lifting and my attitude has been really good. The workouts are a bit longer than usual (a solid 70-90mins rather than my snappy 1 hour), and I'm not able to indulge in quite so much cardio, but I'm putting trust in Sammy and actually doing as I'm told.

And then today, after a hard week, I was treated with a situation that made me actually laugh out loud. I left home at 8am, took my children to school, chatted with some of the teachers, arrived at the YMCA for work, conducted a one hour PT session, left work and went to the butcher, checked in at the hairdressers regarding an appt on Saturday, met up with friends for coffee, went to Woolies to do some shopping and finally arrived home for a nice quiet hour before getting ready to head out again to pick up children from school. It was at this point, and only this point, that I noticed I had my cool little Lorna Jane skort on inside out. For the whole day!!!!!!!!! I'm so embarrassed!!! HAHAHA!!!!