Two Year Fitfam-Anniversary!

Hey guys and girls,

Firstly I owe you all an apology for not blogging more often! towards the end of the calendar year and beginning of a new year is always super busy for the Insurance industry and I have just been swamped with lots of work.

I have some time on my hands this afternoon and thought it was about time for me to post, and here is to hoping I will be able to post more often so you can follow my ongoing journey and continue to be inspired. 

So it will soon be my 2 year Anniversary inducting myself into the 'Fitfam' and I cannot lie, it has been a roller coaster. At the beginning I had all the motivation and focus and Lost an amazing 24 kgs within 5 or 6 months. However all that hard dieting, workouts, and fade detox (maple syrup diet) really did batter my body if I was going to be honest with you. I lost all my boobies, and that dented such a huge hole in my confidence! I attribute that to the Maple Syrup diet. I have that all fixed now ;-) and have new found confidence. 

I'm also no long trying to get as small as I can, because if I have to admit to myself all I wanted to do was by 50 kgs! This rolled on a cycle of me becoming so obsessed with the scale and doing all I could to continue dropping the weight. I forgot where I started and one day I found a picture of myself from 2009 and thought 'why on earth am I killing myself? Look at the beautiful healthy woman you have become' Also thanks to someone special my relationship with food and my obsession over the scale has diminished!! 

Now when I say obsession with food, I mean before I would not eat what I wanted because I didn't want to ruin my 'gains', now I eat whatever whenever, only difference is now I'm tracking my macro's properly with the aid of an electronic scale, which I strongly urge you to get. I have tried different ratios of macros, 40/40/20 and 50/30/20 (Carbs/Protein/Fat) but that wasn’t really helping me to drop the fat which is currently the phase I'm in, once I shred I will then gain some healthy weight but mostly muscle, I will do this by increasing my current Carb intake. I am currently following ratio of 20/50/30. Low carbs I hear some of you thinking, well I am an Endomorph (a person with a soft round build of body and a high proportion of fat tissue.) so I researched and I worked out I need to cut the carbs to drop unwanted body fat. I still take in enough carbs to fuel my insane workouts and so far even though it has just been a few days i feel great.

If you are thinking of doing this, please do it properly! Don't just cut out your carbs or do any guess work, use the internet and figure out how many calories your body burns at resting rate, factor in your daily activity which will both give you what your daily nutritional needs should be. Once you do this then use MFP to start tracking what you eat. I have customized mine as MFP automatically factors a ratio of 50/30/20. 

Check out this article it was pretty useful in helping me figure out what my daily requirements are: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/macro-math-3-keys-to-dialing-in-your-macro-ratios.html

By the way I do not log my exercise into MFP as you should ideally only stick to the calories/macros suggested after you have worked out your BMR and factored in your daily activity. This may seem like it will take up all your time, however if you want to be accurate and get the results you want then I can’t stress how important this part of it is, otherwise all those hours in the gym could potentially be wasted.

Since I have been tracking my daily intake properly I have also started a lifestyle called ‘if it fits your macros’ otherwise known as iifym. This lifestyle basically allows you to eat whatever you want as long as it fits into your daily macro needs. I am following this because I believe it is ok to eat some foods that are not ‘clean’ however; I do not use it as an excuse to eat junk all day! I keep my food clean 80-90% of the day and may have a little treat IF IT FITS!!!  This could be something you might want to look into especially if you have a sweet tooth. I eat pancakes every other day, in fact I always make a batch on Sundays. I will start posting recipes, my first will be the carrot pancake I made last weekend which serves 9 pancakes and was 49 kcals per pancake and only 1.38 g of fat and even low in carbs at 4.13 with 4.91 g of protein.

Remember strong is the new sexy and that is what I am to achieve by the summer and I hope to be flaunting a nice set of ripped abs on the beach!

B xx