Over the past year, I've been making really good progress on losing weight and getting healthier. A year ago, I weighed 148lbs and had 31% body fat, yikes! As of January 2014, I had gotten down to around 131lb - 132lb and 23% body fat which is much better - but not good enough. I wanted something to really help push me over the plateau and get to where I want to be. So I decided to sign up for another bootcamp - I know what you're thinking "didn't you do like four of those last year?". The answer is "yes", I did do several bootcamps last year but they were all 4 weeks and I never focused on my diet very hard. This bootcamp is an 8 week bootcamp designed for Bikini Competitors and is very focused on heavy lifting and clean eating.
We meet with the two owners/trainers Bonnie & Steve three days per week (Monday, Tuesday & Thursday evenings) for a hard workout. We also have homework: an additional leg workout to be done on Fridays or Saturdays plus 3 days per week of high-intensity cardio.
The biggest shock to most people is the diet. For someone at my height, I'm supposed to be eating 1200 calories per day with 40% from Protein, 30% from Carbs & 30% from Fats.
I know you're all going to be shocked by this (LOL) but I keep careful track of everything in the MyFitnessPal app AND in my own excel sheet so that I can more easily spot problem areas/meals and make adjustments quickly. You'll have to enlarge this to see it but here's a report showing a summary of weeks 1 and 2 - you can see how many calories I ate each day, the nutrition breakdown on an average day, workouts done, notes and the change in body composition from the start of week 1 to the end of week 2. The most exciting part is in the top center where it shows that in two weeks I lost 5.1lb of body fat and gained 1.4lb of muscle, yay!!
The biggest shock to most people is the diet. For someone at my height, I'm supposed to be eating 1200 calories per day with 40% from Protein, 30% from Carbs & 30% from Fats.
I know you're all going to be shocked by this (LOL) but I keep careful track of everything in the MyFitnessPal app AND in my own excel sheet so that I can more easily spot problem areas/meals and make adjustments quickly. You'll have to enlarge this to see it but here's a report showing a summary of weeks 1 and 2 - you can see how many calories I ate each day, the nutrition breakdown on an average day, workouts done, notes and the change in body composition from the start of week 1 to the end of week 2. The most exciting part is in the top center where it shows that in two weeks I lost 5.1lb of body fat and gained 1.4lb of muscle, yay!!
We also took "before" pictures, but I'm definitely not sharing that until/unless I have a really good "after" photo to pair it with. Even though I'm only eating 1200 calories per day, I'm rarely hungry as long as I make sure to get enough protein and make sure each meal has some fat in it. If your snack or meal is FAT FREE, then your digestive system can burn through it too quickly and you end up hungry before the next meal. I've been trying to share some of my favorite recipes so hopefully that will help anyone who may want to cut back a little on their diet and still eat tasty food.
| | You'll probably notice that at Week 2, I started taking one of the supplements they recommended, called KreAlkalyn EFX. It's a buffered creatine instead of a standard creatine monohydrate so it's not supposed to have the side effects such as the jitters, bloating, etc (so far I've had no side effects from it). I take one capsule in the morning when I wake up, and another capsule pre-workout. I don't know how to tell if it is working/helpful or not, but since my trainers recommend it and I don't have any negative side effects, I'll keep taking it until the end of bootcamp (or until the bottle runs out). You can also buy this at GNC or at Vitamin Shoppe but I love Amazon. |
| For Weeks 3 - 4, my goal was to lose 4lb of body fat and at least maintain the muscle I gained in the first two weeks. To help continue to lose fat, I added another recommended supplement called GNC Genetix HD ProSculpt. It has a lot of caffeine and energy/metabolism boosting extracts and is supposed to help power you through your workouts so you can push your muscles harder and for longer. The bottle says take twice daily but my trainers recommended once a day, pre-workout. I don't normally drink a lot of caffeine and a full serving of this has 200mg (2 cups of coffee) so I feel the effects pretty quickly and it definitely gives me more energy and zip to push through a tough workout. Some days I will do a half serving if I already had caffeine in the day. Note: it's a drink mix and I strongly recommend using VERY COLD water and diluting it a little more than the instructions. | |
I also cut out any pastas, bread, rice, potatoes, and other high carb/starch foods in an effort to keep my calories low and still get enough protein. In addition to sharing some of my recipes, later I'll share a typical "day of food" as well as some of my favorite snack choices. As you can see, I didn't make the same amount of progress in weeks 3 - 4 as in weeks 1 -2 but I still did really great. I'm down to 125lb with only about 5 more to go to my ultimate goal of 120, woohoo!
I even got a "shoutout" from Bonnie on the Bootcamp page about what great progress I'm making!
