May 20th (3 Months!) Update

Yall my cut is almost OVER!! I'm so ready! Some milestones were hit in the past month and I'm just so ready for my back to be healthy again so I can get back into lifting! Anyways, I've got two weeks left on this cut and here's where I am:

Initial Measurements 2/20/2018:

Weight: 152

Waist: 31.5

Hips: 39.5

Bust: 34.5

Thighs: 24.5

Arms: 12

Measurements 5/20/18

Weight: 141

Waist: 30

Hips: 38
Bust: 32

Thighs: 22.5

Arms: 11

So far I'm really freaking excited about these numbers. Considering that I really hadn't changed much in weight or inches from Feb-Apr (3 pounds, 4.75 inches lost total), I'm extremely proud of myself. If you add it up, I've lost 8 pounds and an additional TEN inches between April and now. So in total, from February to now, I'm down 11 pounds and 14.25 inches. So. Stoked.

I'm going to continue this cut through the end of May, and will be kicking off June 1st with a year long recomp. For those of yall not really acquainted with it, a recomp is where you are trying to maintain your weight, but work on muscle. SO ideally, whatever weight I am June 1st, I want to be the same weight on June 1st next year (a couple of pounds with way will be okay) but I want to look completely different. I'm a little nervous though, because its definitely going to be an adjustment eating at maintenance calories and doing more lifting than I have been, if my back cooperates of course.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to compete in May with the Beastmode games thanks to this wonderful back injury, but I did complete my 5k under my goal which was 36 minutes. 

Anyway, I'm sure some of yall are curios what I've been doing the past 5 weeks to drop the weight. The secret? Cardio, cardio, cardio. And diet, obviously. I aimed to 1200 NET calories a day, so I'd eat around 1500 then do minimum 250-300 cals at the gym 3-4 days a week. I've been doing a lot of running, some biking and a good bit of rowing depending on how my back feels that day. Now keep in mind I loathe running. But, now that I see what kind of results it yields, it will always have a special spot in my training. Once the recomp starts, you don't really focus on cardio as much. I'll plan on 2 strict cardio days a week, the rest will be lifting & crossfit workouts. So that pretty much wrapped up the past 5 weeks, now here's some pictures! I'll post one more round of pics and an update once I start the recomp so that I have something to compare it to.

April 9th

So I slacked and never updated a second time in March... whoops! I promise I started to but never got it finished or could get pictures done. So I decided when I got home from work today that would be the first thing I'd do. Honestly there is nothing better to jump start a cut than taking progress pictures (insert eye roll here). Can you say reality check?!

So late in February I did something to my back during back squats and it has really bothered me since then. Clearly I need to work on form once I get back to doing them, but its really put a damper on me. My doctor (whose husband does Crossfit, yay!) just recommended doing less weights, more cardio and yoga. I've started yoga but probably haven't been resting it like I should so I figured now would be as good of a time as any to start a cut. Now I'm not "dieting" per say, but i do need to get my body fat percentage down because being at (or around) 30% BF is not doing me any favors mentally or physically. Why should I kill myself to try doing a pull up when I literally have 15 (25 if I wanted to go extra small) extra pounds weighing me down?! So This week I'm starting with 1600 calories a day and cutting back as much sugar as possible. Maybe next month I'll look more into cutting carbs, but I don't do well on super restrictive diets.

Progress

Here's where I'm at physically: I kicked my cut off with my very first EVER 5k yesterday, on a treadmill of course, but still I was stoked! I'm the girl that hates running. I'd rather row or swim but running just makes me want to die. To me, its mind numblingly boring and my shins hate me for days afterwards. So, running 3 miles in 38 minutes is huge to me. Of course the Swamp Rabbit 5k is in less than a month so leave it to me to procrastinate training for it.

Last week I hit a big milestone on bench: 125lbs! I'm literally 10 pounds away from my goal for the entire 2018 year! Its only April! So I've adjusted that goal to 150 for the year. Here's to hitting that goal early too! 

Another big goal I've settled on this year would be hitting a good snatch. Lets be honest here, I SUCK at snatches. I absolutely cannot get to parallel, much less beyond, with a bar over head. So I've been working on my shoulder, hip, and thoracic mobility as much as possible-which is where the yoga comes in. Holy cow, I am so not flexible. Its humiliating. So hopefully even 30 minutes a day will improve my mobility. 

Last but not least, my other new goal is doing a handstand. This is also where losing 15 pounds would help drastically. Plus shoulder mobility is needed. I'm just all around lacking in those departments.

Mentally, I'm alot better than I was but I still have a long way to go. I did two-a-days one to two times a week through March and literally lost about 2 pounds. My diet is all over the place and I know it. If you haven't yet, get a My Fitness Pal account and track every single thing that you eat/drink for a day. You will be shocked. And even though I've been tracking for months, I wasn't adding in sauces, butters, oils, etc. I know that doesnt sound like much, but did you know Chic-Fil-A sauce is 140 calories per container. That's another 300 calories on top of my grilled chicken meal. That's turning a meal that's around 500 calories into a 800 calorie meal. On a 6'4" man, that isn't a big deal, but when you 5'4" and have a calorie limit of 1600, that adds up fast. Plus I was being very lax in general when it came to food. "I'm working out twice a day, I'm not worried about this extra hundred calories here and there" is a quick and sure fire way to kill your progress. I learned this the hard way. Don't do that to yourself! It's so discouraging!

So hopefully April will yield more progress when it comes to losing the weight. Here's my dreaded progress pics (the husband wasn't here to help so had to go with the self time and zero help form angling the camera) and my measurements. Let's see what this body will do in the next month!

Weight: 149 BMI: 25.6 Body Fat %: 27% Waist: 31 Hips: 38.75 Bust: 34.5 Thighs: 23.8 Arms: 11.25 (relaxed)

March 3rd Update

Life: The past two weeks have been pretty busy. I've been aiming for 5 days a week minimum at the gym and even that is hard to accomplish! I'll follow up more on gym stuff a few bullets down, but so far I've kept my 5 day a week goal! Work has been crazy and kids have been sick off and on. Noah had the flu during my last post and so I had to take some extra days off unexpectedly which threw a wrench in things. The following week I had a two day summit with my work, which hit my diet pretty hard (free lunch and breakfast anyone?) but overall I think I did pretty well. 

Diet: I think I may have hit my stride diet wise. Rather than strictly counting calories, I've been focusing a bit more on macros. I'm still aiming for my 1400 calorie per day goal but if I go over a bit I don't stress too badly over it. Mainly I've focused on protein. I did my macro goal on a TDEE calculator and that has really made the calorie counting easier. Mentally its easier to think "I've got to get my protein in for today, so do I have to eat this rather than that" instead of "I cant eat this because my calories say so." Plus its been said that protein and fat help you feel fuller and I can say I agree. My protein goal is 140 grams per day and my fat goal is 62 grams, while my carb goal is 70 grams (normally i hit around 50 grams. The protein doesn't leave me much calorie room for carbs). My meals are normally protein heavy and I have to eat one protein bar and drink one protein shake (post workout) to hit my goal every day.

Example meals are:

• Breakfast: 5 hard boiled egg whites and one avocado
• Lunch: Home made chicken salad with celery sticks
• Lunch: Spinach Salad with grilled chicken and lite ranch
• Dinner: Chicken thighs or breasts and veggies
• Impromptu quick meal: Rotisserie chicken from Ingles, Walmart, etc (Get two and shred one for chicken salad the next day!) 
• Snacks: Quest bars or protein shake

Its pretty easy to work things around your kids and husband this way to, because you can add some carbs and stuff for kids while I eat things a little plainer.

Gym: Okay so the first week was ROUGH. I failed to hit any of my previous maxes, I killed my poor shins and busted my mouth doing push presses. My weight bumped up a bit (Hello PMS). It was overall just a bad week. I took my rest days on Wednesday & Sunday but just wasn't feeling it all week.

Week two, I killed it. I hit two new PRs (personal record for those curious) and completed my first every open workout (18.2-modified to back squats rather than dumbbell because our gym doesn't have enough equipment). First PR was on bench- I hit 115 and was really feeling 120 but took too long of a break in between. Oh well, there's always next month! My next PR was on power cleans, which I think was my proudest PR so far. I attempted it on the first week and flopped. I barely could get 100 even after 3 attempts. The second week, 18.2 consisted of finding your 1RM(one rep max) clean, I figured after all those squats I would be DEAD. After 3 attempts (mainly getting form down) I got 115 easily. SO PUMPED! I took a week off of pretty much all running to heal my shins so I'll be working on that next week again. Plus I did Mon-Fri workouts this week and two rest days back to back. By Friday I was losing the motivation to go and was feeling so tired mentally, but I also hit my power clean PR on that day. Its all between the ears!

Progress: Okay so I'm not doing pictures on these updates- I'll probably do them on either monthly updates or every 6 weeks or so. But here are my numbers! (SO EXCITED!)I'm skipping all the extras this update and just hitting the main ones.

Weight: 150
Waist: 30.75 Hips: 39.25 Bust: 34.25 Thighs: 24 Arms: 11.75 All in all, I am very happy with these numbers. I've had some days where I was feeling extremely discouraged, but who doesn't? As long as my numbers keep on this trend, I'll stick with this diet and routine. There are rumors that we may be hosting a power-lifting competition at our gym by summer, so I'm really hoping that happens. It would be super nice to not only hit my yearly goals by then but also do an actual competition at something I'm really growing to love and feel confident doing. I cant wait to see what the next few months hold! 

Peruvian Anticuchos De Corazon

            
First and foremost I want to be extremely clear that this is not my original recipe. Secondly, it is by far the best heart recipe that I have ever put in my mouth. Like, it change my husband's life good. So I just had to add it to my recipe list because it just needs to be spread to the world!              So I got this recipe book for Christmas called "Buck, Buck, Moose" by Hank Shaw. If you love venison, I suggest you drop everything and buy this book right now. Anyway, so we had killed a doe really late in the season and her heart wasn't touched so I suggested we make it for dinner. Now Brandon never had good deer heart at this point and he was vehemently against it. "Just put lots of bacon on it and I'll try it," he would say. I had already eyeballed this recipe in the book so I knew this was exactly what I was going to do with it whether he wanted it or not.             So when it came down to the day of cooking, I actually didn't have all the ingredients that I thought I had so I did some improvisation to the recipe. Honestly it tasted so good the way I did it that I don't think I would add those extra ingredients if I had them on hand right now. So here's the ingredient list:

• 3 Roasted red peppers, chopped (I did NOT use these in my version)
• 1-4 Chipotles in adobo, 1 being mild, 4 being very hot. Use your discretion.
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• Salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 2 to 4 venison hearts trimmed and cut into 3 inch pieces.
• Skewers
• My addition-bacon

Before anything, prep your venison heart. Trim off ALL ligaments & silver skin. You're gonna have a bad time if you don't. Also, this is more of an appetizer recipe so unless you have a ton of hearts to use you wont be able to feed a football team with this recipe.

Mix all the marinade ingredients into a food processor and blend until pureed. Take your heart pieces, using a meat tenderizer, and flatten a bit. You want the meat tenderized but not paper thin. Submerge the heart pieces into the marinade and let sit for at least one hour-preferably most of the day. About and hour before cooking, soak your wooden skewers in water to prevent burning.

Once you're ready to cook, put the heart onto the skewers. I took the piece of bacon and threaded it in between each piece. I only did this because my husband was adamant that heart is nasty and he needed bacon to cancel it out. I'll probably use bacon every time I make this though because it was really good. Grill on very high heat with the grill cover open. Make sure to keep an eye on it because bacon fat has a tendency to flare up on the grill. Baste with remaining marinade as it cooks, about 3 minutes per each side. You don't want to over cook it or it can get very chewy. If you're not a fan of rare meat, I suggest you stay as close to medium as you're comfortable with. 

Let rest a few minutes after cooking and enjoy! By the way, Brandon had a melt down. He was tempted to call the local processor and ask if he could buy all the hearts he had! Luckily the processor didn't have much cause I'm kind of weird about getting organ meat from anywhere that I didn't see how the animal was handled after the shot. So if you decide to keep some organ meat form your deer next year, I definitely recommend the heart for starters!  

February 20th- Getting Started

          I've been meaning to make this post for a while but I just keep forgetting.. Well not forgetting as much as I never get to blog before 9 pm and I'm tired. Anyway, if I don't hurry up and post these stats while I'm at them, they're going to change and I'll forget where I was.  I guess maybe I've been putting this post off because it's a super vulnerable post for me. I've never be comfortable in my skin, with my weight, or my physique so this is a huge leap of faith for me. I want to be as transparent as possible with everyone that may read this blog.           Side bar; I'm sure there are people out there who have thought, "why in the world would she be blogging about fitness. I mean she is FAR from fit!" And I halfway agree. I'm very far from being fit, I'm very far ( and never will be) perfect, and I'm far from being super inspirational to people. But at the same time, there has been so many times that I've thought to myself while going through this journey, "man, I wish someone with my goals posted something." I don't want to compete in bikini competitions. I don't want to run marathons. I don't want to be a crazy heavy power lifter. I don't want to swear off pizza for the rest of my life. I just want to be able to lift heavy things, look good in a bikini, and run a few miles without dying. I want to see what my body can do. And if there's anyone else out there who feels the same way, well maybe I can inspire them.               Brandon and I had a serious conversation one night when I was feeling down on myself after a super poor performance at the gym ( I say this like it was months ago and it was like last week). I had been intermittent fasting for about a month, doing 16:8 some days and 18:6 others, and my performances plummeted. I was tired. I wasn't that hungry, but I wasn't losing weight either. I was getting obsessive with my calorie intake on My Fitness Pal. Things just were going in an unhealthy direction very, very quickly. Anyway, I binged for like three days straight and felt super bad about myself. So Brandon pretty much told me I needed to decide on what I wanted to do.                "Do you want to do hours of cardio and be crazy restrictive on your diet? Because if you do that, your lifts will decrease but you will lose the weight. Or do you want to get stronger and be happy? Because you may not realize it, but there's always someone watching. Maybe not every single gym session, but I guarantee there's girls in that gym who think "Man, I wish I was as strong as her". So quit being mad at yourself, because you are good at this whether you believe it or not and you should have fun doing it." That conversation led me back to this blog and here we are. So let me go ahead and give you the numbers and pictures before I back out.  Weight: 152 BMI: 26 Body Fat %: 27% Waist: 31.5 Hips: 39.5 Bust: 34.5 Thighs: 24.5 Arms: 12  BMR: 1,414 kcals TDEE: 1,749 kcals Daily calorie goal: 1400. (Macros: 40% Protein, 40% Fat, & 20% Carbs)

       I'll try to start posting weekly, or at least bi-weekly with progress. I probably will only do pictures once a month because I am not a fan! Also I saw a quote on a documentary that summed up exactly where I want to be fitness wise- "I want to outrun a powerlifter & out lift a runner." Well rounded fitness is my goal so here we go! Week one is a go!

Switching Gears

It's been nearly 3 years since I've posted. In those years, I've gained a daughter, some random knowledge, and a whole new love: fitness. I've been wanting to post for a long time, but with a blog that's pretty much following an 'exclusively hunting' theme you kind of run out of things to say. Not to say that I don't love hunting nor that I don't plan on posting about hunting anymore, it's just hard to post about the it all the time without sounding like I'm beating a dead horse, especially if I'm not going to exciting new places anytime soon. Anyway, after much thought, I've decided to blog about my journey into fitness.  Now some background; in 2015, Brandon and I started visiting a local gym. I quickly learned just how out of shape I and how badly I wanted to get in shape. But then, in the summer of 2015, we decided we wanted another baby. So naturally gym time slowed down due to morning (all day) sickness, swollen feet, a sore back, and a rowdy toddler. Finding a gym with a babysitter was a feat in its own, so gym time came to a complete halt. In July 2016, we welcome our little Elizabeth Claire into the world. Now this may be in my head, or it may be a true physiological reason, but I really feel like the nearly one year we spent in the gym prior to becoming pregnant helped my labor, birth and recovery 10 times more than when I had Noah. Maybe it was the squats, maybe it was the deads, I don't know what it was, but there was a huge difference; and it really has influenced me to want to get in the best shape possible.  After Claire was born, we had to wait 6 months before we could take her to the gym daycare (thank goodness for the YMCA!) so I really didn't do much diet wise before we started. This theme continued all the way through the year 2017. All gym, no diet. Therefore, I'm only 8 pounds down from where I was in January 2017. So I will be the first to admit that 2017 was a learning year. I learned a lot, and I did make gains- considering I was pretty much on a "bulk" all year (insert eye roll emoji here). On my next blog post I'll post all my current stats, I don't want to overload everyone with information here. I will say that I did drop 2 pants sizes and have maintained that, but there's still a lot of cutting that needs to be done.  Now here's what we did gym wise in 2017. Normally warm up with cardio; jogging, stationary bike, elliptical, pretty much whatever was open and  whatever I felt like doing. There were plenty of times that I went and did no cardio at all. Most days, we followed a crossfit type routine. My husband prefers just straight powerlifting, but I always felt like I needed to do more than that to burn the fat like I wanted. The YMCA in our location does a "Beast Mode" class. The first class I ever did consisted of an obscene amount of thrusters and burpees and I completely fell in love. The instructors were ( and still are) straight up amazing. They would leave the daily class up so we could do them in the evenings. There were plenty of weeks that I would do these classes 4 & 5 times. I did see results. My lifts increased, my cardio became bullet proof, and you could definitely see definition (especially in my upper body) that wasn't there before. But the scale never moved. My clothes fit the same for months. Now that was discouraging. By the end of the end of the year, I had to take a 6 week hiatus. My husband played softball which took up one, sometimes two weeknights, and my son played T-ball which also took up two weeknights. After that came the holidays, so essentially I went to the gym maybe once a week until the beginning of January.  My lifts dropped dramatically. Cardio game was weak.  It's time to crack down.
So January first came, and instead of the traditional "lose 25lbs" resolution, I decided to make legitimate goals that I want to hit this year.

• Do a 5k- The swamp rabbit 5K is coming May 4th, so I've been working on my cardio game.
• Bench- 135lbs.
• Deadlift- 285lbs
• Squat- 215
• Clean & Jerk (Power or hang)- 135lb

Now I may come up with other goals as the year goes on, but for now this is where I'm at. The month of January was the first time that I really tried cracking down. The results were not what I expected, but I'll touch on that on my next blog. I think I've given yall enough info for tonight, and I've got a flu positive almost 5 year old in the other room, so the bed is calling my name. 

Also, if yall haven't gotten the hint yet, by switching gears, I'm going to start emphasizing fitness on this blog. I don't and never will claim to be an expert, but I want to share with yall my story. No one else, nothing fancy, just a chubby girl who wants to make gains and get fit. So I'm super excited that I get to share this journey from the very beginning with yall!