Heading into my third week of my transformation challenge, and I admit… I had a little bobble in my eating routine. I’m following a ketogenic plan which is high fat/protein and low carbohydrates, forcing my body to burn fat since there are no carbs to burn. This has not been a difficult plan for me to follow. The hardest part was giving up sugar, but I had been gradually weaning myself away over the last three months (ie, replaced my sugar in my coffee with Stevia). My biggest sacrifice was in giving up fruit and chocolate, but again… not that hard, and hello… there’s lots of meat and cheese in this plan (cue my ancestral DNA to pound its fists on its metaphorical chest).
So, my bobble came this weekend. I traveled back to my hometown of Jacksonville, North Carolina to visit my dad. He’s not been doing well with his congestive heart failure, so it was a laid back time. So laid back, in fact, that when we went to eat breakfast at Golden Corral on Saturday, I completely forgot I can’t have sugar and drank a big glass of guava juice. Then that evening, I totally lost my head and had two beers (yikes… carbs galore). But that’s okay, I felt it was warranted because my friend, Stan, was back from an overseas tour and had been gone a year.
On the ketogenic plan, I get a refeed every two weeks where I can have unlimited carbs and sugar one day between 4pm-12 midnight. My refeed this week was supposed to be Sunday, but apparently I started it a bit early on Saturday. For my weigh-in today, I didn’t drop any weight at all (holding at 152 same as last week) but I did drop a full percentage point of body fat (down from 36.4% to 35.4%). That’s the number I really love see go down!!!!
In addition to my training sessions with Tra, he has me doing high intensity, interval cardio. Not a lot on my non-training days; just minimum of ten minutes of cardio, 20 seconds has hard as I can go, and 40 seconds very slow. I’ve been doing the treadmill, so for 20 seconds I run at a full-on sprint which is level 7 on the treadmill for my short legs, then 40 seconds of a slow walk. By the third set, my heart rate is hovering at around 170 and never gets back below 165!!! Yesterday, I managed to do 17 minutes of these cycles and was drenched!!!!
Today’s training session was fun. We did high intensity circuit training which included 3 reps of clean and presses at 65 pounds, 5 box jumps at 20 inches, and 30 seconds of ball slams with a twenty pound ball. We did five sets of this and I was gasping at the end of each. We finished it all off with some kettle bells which I love working out with. Got my classic fist bump from Tra when we were done and I’m off and running for another solid week of transformation progress!!!!
I loved hearing from everyone after my last post. I got comments on the blog, emails and Facebook messages, and it makes me feel great to hear from others going through this with me. #Solidarity
When stretching, make sure it’s after a low intensity warm up. Stretching cold muscles increases risk of injury.
