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!!