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!