Assessment 7 - Tue 14th Dec 2010

So whats news since last time?

well the Weary lunch was excellent and despite Melbournes weather doing its best to ruin things, I have to say I that I did look really good - the snow white form fitting Karen Millen was awesome - and very attention grabbing :-) Even got compliments from some of the rugby players themselves saying how fit I looked and what was my routine!

How cool is that - being asked by elite sports people what I was doing to be so fit...can't wait for the next lunch in Feb...

Amer, the guy who is fixing my shoulders even suggested I should try entering a body sculpting competition...interesting, not sure about that though - I'd have to be even more strict about my diet and exercise to lose another 5% body fat and its fairly dull as it is! Besides not only would I disappear, I don't like the body builder look - and fake tan orange is just sooo not my colour.. :-)

I also haven't been going so well on the exercise bit recently, having only managed 2 weight sessions and 1 cardio session a week for the last 3 weeks - not really sure why, a couple of times I've been out on a night and not felt like training the next day, 1 day my gym didn't even open (!) but I'm waking up really tired.

Sleep isn't the problem anymore - in fact, I can't get enough of it! but the last week or so I've been really lethargic and not recovering after a training session, which is a bit odd. I never normally have that issue - even when doing the ridiculous amount of training for Kilimanjaro I wasn't getting as tired as I am now.

It could be a combination of things, but Kat says its probably my body is still on adrenaline overload from pre climb - think it would be a really good idea to do absolutely nothing over Christmas...except eat of course! :-)

just as well I'm taking myself off for a relaxing mini break on christmas eve to 27th, then watching the ahses on 27th dec then will have 2 days enforced inactivity while flying home to England for New Year. That should give my weary body a nice little break. So just one more week of training to go - I can do that!

so whats my assessment telling me since last time 4 weeks ago - am doing extremely well! Body fat down to 13.6%!!! crikey thats 1.4% in 4 weeks and am weighing in at 54kg nearly another kg. Really good results - and to me thats surprising given how little I've been training. 

My back is so lean now I'm getting really good definition, and my tummy has virtually no fat on it at all - unfortunately I don't have the 6 pack abs showing cos I've got a lot of loose skin, but we're working on that - come on Gotu Kola.

My legs are still not losing fat in the same proportion as the rest of me, which is odd - I'm eating spinach, broccoli, brussels sprouts or cauliflower or all 4 every day and lots of the stuff too - apparently this shows I still have an oestrogen imbalance, so we're really going to work on that after Christmas. Good - lets have nice thin hammies and calves in 2011! :-)

The food bit is all good news - my brother is soo going to hate me when I tell him that not only do I get to eat meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, but I can now cook using BUTTER!!! 

yep thats right - got to eat fat to lose fat... so can also eat more avocados (about 4/5 a week - yum!!)  and can start adding in CARBS...

good carbs of course - brown or wild rice, sweet potato, pumpkin, quinoa or gluten free pancakes - PANCAKES!! haven't had pancakes for MONTHS - and my pancakes are always gluten free cos I'm coeliac, so no worries there

oh did I mention the FULL FAT CREAM?? mmmm...strawberries and cream....

right I'm off to fry up some turkey breast in butter, lemon juice, garlic and thyme with spinach, peas, cauliflower and sweet potato, followed by blueberries and strawberries with cream and cinnamon - yum!

:-)

Happy Christmas!

Assessment 6 - Wed 17th Nov photos

Assessment - photos! back, shoulders and arms really looking good...and my butt! very happy about that :-)
bring on shorts weather....

Assessment 6 - Wed 17th Nov

Good result today - lost 0.3% BF so bang on 15% and down to 54.9kg - how exciting have broken 55kg! can't wait to see my photos - my back, arms and shoulders are looking really fab - very buff!
Biggest area of improvement since the last assessment (at last!) is my calves - probably because the last 2 weeks or so I've been sleeping like a baby, and after 3 weeks of no fruit I can have berries again - woohoo! love my fruit


Its very cool when you bump into someone you haven't seen for literally years and they compliment on how fantastic you're looking - even better have got the Weary Dunlop lunch next week at Crown - not many people can carry off a skin tight white dress - watch out boys! :-p

Assessment 5 - Tue 26th Oct

Not such a good result this time, although my weight is down to 55.6kg a loss of about 1kg, my BF % has gone up by 0.5% so that puts me at 15.3% BF. 

I guess its not too surprising really as I've been off the diet for 4 weeks whilst climbing Kili and then being sick and I've only been back in the gym for 2 weeks. I also haven't managed to get into a good sleeping routine like I thought I would - been stressing about getting a new job! 

So now I've got a new job its time to focus properly on sticking to the correct diet and getting into a maintenance training routine - having got this lean I want to stay lean.

I've got to cut out fruit, I've been eating too much, generally about 4 pieces a day and I need to go heavy on the dark green veggies mind you I'm not really sure how I can increase how much I eat, I'm pretty good with the greens and have a big green salad for lunch most days as well as a combination of broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts for tea. Trying to think what I could have to snack on thats green. 

The maintenance training routine is going to focus on doing weights and I need to do 3 days on 2 days off. Each session needs to be about 1 hour - 45 - 50 mins of weights split into legs 1 day, back, biceps,abs 1 day and chest, shoulders, triceps 1 day  + 4 mins tabatas on the rower (that means go very very hard for 20s, rest for 10s) - I tried it and 4 mins is plenty long enough!

I've got 3 weeks before my next assessment, so I'm aiming to be back to where I was pre - climb

Haven't got any photos from my assessment so I thought I'd just throw this one in cos I reckon I look pretty good! Lets go Racing!

and this one - cos I climbed a big mountain!

I'm back!

well its been 6 weeks since I last posted anything - seems like longer than that - so much has happened!

ok so lets do a quick catch up 

I CLIMBED MT KILIMANJARO!!!! 

Woohoo!

its was the hardest thing I've EVER done - mentally and physically - not for the faint hearted thats for sure! trouble was I got sick with a severe chest cough, fever and flu the day I left for Africa....could hardly get out of bed to drag myself to the airport...and it didn't get better the whole time I was away. I climbed the mountain stopping every 2nd or 3rd step to cough up my lungs and green goo - twice I broke down in tears cos it was so bloody hard - I nearly quit...

but I didn't....and I made it...and its was amazing once I got to the top, check out the photos!

I did say I probably wouldn't go to the gym for 3 weeks after Kilimanjaro  because I was sick of exercise - well I haven't, not because I didn't want to, but because I have just been sick - mind you the upside of this has been - lots of sleep!! 

I did say that once I got back I'd be getting a lot more sleep, well I think I've finally caught up on the last 3 months! :-)

so where am I at?

well I'm sooo glad to be back on my low/no carbs diet

CARBS ARE EVIL!

I've been eating anything and everything the last few weeks to try and get better, but I've felt like a total fat blob - now that is certainly not true (pick up my new size 6 tailored suit today....very excited! and the spray tan lady complimented me on my beautifully toned legs....bring on short shorts this summer!), but my body just doesn't like carbs anymore - and I'm talking about multigrain bread and brown rice here - so not even crappy carbs like white rice, white bread, sugar or pasta.

lean is the way to go - curry for breakfast again - yay!

I've also got back to the gym this week for the 1st time in 4 weeks - phew! how nice is it to be back training again - albeit not to the same extent as before - definately no more office block stairs for me!

well....until the next mountain... :-)

so now I've got at least another 2 weeks before my next assessment which  I'm looking forward to  - it will be very interesting to see whats changed.

I'm going to really focus on eating lots of broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts and getting lots of sleep - lets see if I can make some progress on my calves and hammies!

Assessment 4

Wed 25th Aug

Its been 3 weeks since my last assessment  - seems like even longer! Its been a very busy few weeks work wise, training wise and social wise!

Writing my food diary has been like pointing an accusing finger at myself - it seems like every other night I've been out drinking and even though in most cases I've limited myself to 1 or 2 glasses of wine, and my eating has been exceptionally good in applying all the rules, it really feels like I've totally undone all my good work. 

The trouble is, being so tiny now, even 1 glass of wine a night is enough to completely upset my sleep, so I'm usually tired when I get up and as a result probably haven't been training as effectively as I should be, so of course I've been stressing about that a bit.

Work is also pretty busy right now in the lead up to Spring racing carnival, and I feel that my training time is starting to impinge upon work time so I'm not getting stuff done as well as I usually do - and I'm a bit stressed about that!
hmm...I've got a nice little -ve feedback loop going on with myself at the moment.

In 2 weeks it will change - when I head off to climb Mt Kilimanjaro - once I've done that I will have way more down time - and I'm going to be using it..all of it...I probably won't even venture to the gym for about 3 weeks afterwards! :-)

Ok so whats the result of all this craziness? well I have lost more weight - down to 57kg on the scales at fitness 1st and amazingly enough I've lost nearly 1% more body fat! I'm down to 14.8 % - wow! 

Even though when I started the modulation I was already at a low BF of 17.5%, in the last 7 weeks I've managed to lose nearly another 3%. This is really cool.

 

 As can be expected there are some areas not doing so well in light of the last few weeks - I have put a bit of weight of my stomach (due to stress!) and I'm not losing fat on my calves (due to sleep issues) and hammies (oestrogen) - so no surprises about that at all really.

 

So here's me now:

                                                

                                                

                                                          

                                             

                                                             

                                                             

                                                         

                                                         

                                                      

                                                          

                                                        

 Again I think, once I get back from my holiday, I'll be able to totally scale back the training to a maintenance level which will be much more relaxing and I think the sleep will fix itself as I won't be worrying about whether if I've done enough training to get up the mountain!

I'll switch to bikram yoga instead of dragging half a beach up and down an office building!

Other changes I've noticed - I am getting much better definition in my arms (yay!) and my shoulders are so lean that after training I notice theres a little wriggly vein visible on my left shoulder (I think thats quite cool) 

I bought a pair of pants for work just 3 weeks ago - size 6 (!!! I've NEVER been size 6!!) and they fitted 'snugly' shall we say.... and now? not quite falling off me, but definitely too big - I'm even contemplating getting them re-tailored to fit!

Even better, is that with the butt exercises that Nicola (at Teamfit gym) has shown me, my bum is not so flat and is beginning to round out a wee bit - watch out Kylie!

Bring on summer....I'm going to be looking amazing!

so whats new on the diet front? This is where it gets even better - I can eat bananas again!!! yay - I love bananas, and have really missed not eating them, and I can have a glass of red wine every day - have probably been averaging that the last few weeks anyway - (oops!) but now its official :-)

The things, now I'm officially supposed to be drinking red wine, I'm not really sure I want to anymore - because it upsets my sleep so much! I'll have to find a happy medium.

otherwise, not much change - keep up the protein intake, keep up the cruciferous veggies

I won't be having another assessment for about 7 weeks - Kat is on holiday, so it will give me time to get settled into a post mountain routine, where hopefully sleep is a much more prominent feature! :-)

Assessment 3

Wed 4th Aug was my 3rd assessment and its been 2 weeks since the previous assessment.

I wasn't too sure how I would go - my diet for the most part has been really good - I'm definately getting the hang of the animal protein for brekky and I've increased the amount of protein at lunch and I think I managed to eat broccoli, cauliflower, or brussells sprouts nearly every day.

I've found that if I plan my whole weeks meals on Sunday and cook 2 curries and a spag bol then that pretty much sees me through the week. Its all about being organised mainly.

However there have been some hiccoughs - last Thursday I was at the Weary Dunlop lunch which turned into an all day/nighter on the beer followed by hang over cure food on Friday. Saturday was another big beer session at the Turf bar watching the Bledisloe and I was out again last night with the very cool guy I met at the Weary lunch, so all that combined with 4 days off training probably undid all of the previous good work!

so what were the results?

well I did lose 0.3kg, down to 57.7kg and body fat down a tiny 0.1% - lost a bit on my tummy (1.4mm) and calves, didn't lose anything on my thighs and bizarrely I put weight ON, on my knees!

Apparently that is to do with poor sleep - and that doesn't really surprise me as I seem to have lost that ability recently - 4.5 - 5 hours is turning into a good nights sleep at the moment, which is making getting up in the morning to do training a real struggle.

Hopefully the new magnesium supplements will fix this.

So new stuff to implement, instead of yoghurt for 2nd brekky I need to either have more animal protein or maybe a boiled egg, then the yoghurt I can have with my afternoon cup of tea to stop my body going into survival mode - at the moment I'm finding that after lunch at about 1:30 I'm just not hungry so I tend not to eat anything else until 6:30 - 7 which is quite a long time given how much exercise I'm doing. So just to keep things ticking over, I can have my yoghurt and berries at about 3pm.

Sweet potato, need to add this in to stop getting sugar cravings - not sure where thats coming from as I don't have a sweet tooth at all.

Lastly I need to make sure I'm eating a minimum of 4 cups of veggies a day - I probably am, by the time I have green + raw veg mixed salad at lunch and steamed veggies for tea, but I just need to really load up on veggies.

Again not much change, more of a tweaking really.

This weeks favourite curry - West Sumatran Kangaroo curry with coconut milk and cashew nuts (bet you didn't know they had kangaroos in Sumatra!) - damn I cook a good curry!

so heres me at week 3:

I am becoming seriously tiny! Theres a tiny bit of definition beginning to appear in my upper arms which is one area I really want to change, the other major area I wanted to change was the spre tyre round the belly - well as you can see, thats gone completely! (so has my bum....hmmm..need to work on getting that back!)

so there is progress. I am really going to keep my diet as clean as possible for the next few weeks - the last week has seen too many big nights on the beer, my body just can't handle it anymore and I then have a terrible nights sleep and wake up feeling totally drained and lacking in energy the next day.

I'm going into serious hibernation for the next 5 weeks - until I have climbed Mt Kilimanjaro, no more big nights out - quality over quantity from now on! 

N.B Sun 8th Aug

not going so well on the clean thing - this weekend up in Sydney - disaster! another all dayer watching the rugby, hung over this morning and had crap food at the airport.

At least I had a good curry tonight! my favourite - Saffron chicken - damn I cook a good curry! :-)

best behaviour from now on...

Assessment 2

Tue 20 July

Since the last assessment I have completely cut out the plastic bottles only drink water out of glass - luckily we have proper filtered water at work.

I now tip my food onto a plate before I reheat it and before I put left overs into tupperware for freezing I let it cool down completely or alternatively I just put the whole saucepan into the fridge.

The salty water was a bit weird for the 1st few days, but I think I've got used to it now and I definately like having 2nd breakfast at about 10:30!

Hobbits are on to something...

I've not eaten any tuna at all and have had broccoli, cauliflower virtually every day for tea.

I have had meat for breakfast every day for the last 2 weeks - this is the bit that I'm finding hardest. The whole concept of kangaroo or turkey is a bit alien - must be a British thing, but I have stuck to it. The main thing about the meat is that I'm finding I'm doing so much more cooking - its really eating into my limited time in the evenings which I'm not enjoying at all, I'm just not getting any mental down time as I find I'm trying to think up imaginitive things to do with chicken

The rest of the 2 weeks I probably haven't been as clean as I should have been - at least 3 days i had take away curry for lunch (in a plastic tub..oops!)

I've had to keep a food diary again and I think there were only 5 days that I really did everything correctly...

The assessment went really well, according to the scales I lost 3kg in the interveining 2 weeks (my other gym scales have registered about 1kg) and after doing all the pinch tests, Kat calculated I'd lost 1.5% body fat!

Thats pretty impressive. The biggest area of change was the hammies, but hardly any change on the cavles

Heres me at week 2:

Changes to make to my diet for next time include more protein at lunch, and more fibre - an apple or stonefruit with lunch. Add Chia or flax seeds onto soups, into curries. More fat in the form of avocado or coconut oil and milk.

I think I've hit on the solution to the brekky issue - curry! I love curry and the way I cook it, it is completely healthy - I do everything from scratch - roast and grind the spices, I use olive oil instead of ghee, yoghurt instead of cream, lots of garlic, ginger, cumin and tumeric, tomatoes, onions and if its not a brekky curry I add extra veg even if the recipe doesnt call for it - brilliant!

Last week I had Kerala Kangaroo, Saffron Chicken with cashew nuts and a spag bol (just the bol).

 

I'm eating so much curry now even the Indian guys at work think I'm weird! I'll add the recipes I use on another page.

Assessment 1

Tue 6th July

I met Kat at 5:00 at fitness first and the 1st thing we did was to weigh me - 61kg (3kg heavier than the scales at my gym - odd!), then we went to Kats office to start the measurements on the 12 'fat' sites.

Overall Kat calculated I had a body fat % of 17.5 which is pretty good, and apparently a lot better than virtually all of her clients starting %.

here's me at assessment 1 (abs! I have abs! how cool is that!):

My problem areas are my quads and hammies - which mean an oestrogen imbalance, and my calves - a sleep issue (no surprises there really have always had sleep issues!)

After examining my food diary that I had kept prior to this meeting, Kat explained the changes I needed to make in my diet - increase intake of Broccoli, Cauliflower, Sprouts (yuk!) and Kale. I need to eat animal protein for breaktfast, I can have good quality yoghurt mid morning with berries, but not the banana and honey I was having, my lunches were generally good - but no more tuna - EVER! its chock full of mercury, salmon is good and there are other fish - must look them up 

I could have nuts and seeds but not mixed so its all almonds or all walnuts for a day or two then change

Cooking needs to be done with organic coconut oil and coconut milk is ok for making sauces.

I also had to stop drinking out of plastic bottles or heating food in plastic containers because they contain xeno-oestrogens (bad oestrogen - gives men 'moobs').

Every morning I also had to drink a glass of salted water to stimulate the digesive system.

ok thats quite a lot of information to take in, I think I was quite brain fried by the end of the session!

Pre Assessment

Before meeting up with Kat for my 1st assessment I had to keep a food diary. A typical days food for me would be:

8:00am Breakfast: Full fat greek yoghurt with berries and honey or banana and honey, cup of tea

9:15am: cup of peppermint tea

10:30am: fruit, cup of green tea

11:45am: another bit of fruit

1:00pm: lunch - generally salad of rocket and spinach leaves, raw white and red cabbage, grated carrot, red and yellow capsicum, tomatoes (sometimes), avocado, mixed beans, tuna/chicken/beef/cheese and lemon/olive oil vinaigrette

kiwi fruit

3:00pm: cup of tea

7:00pm: dinner - stir fry (no oil) chicken/lamb/beef/tuna mixed green veg and tomato sauce

8:30pm: cup of camomile tea

and at least 1.5 - 2l of water.

sometimes lunch would be reheated spag bol (no pasta) and then salad for dinner or at least once a week I'd get curry from a takeway place for lunch.

Weekends would be green eggs and ham on gluten free toast + red orange juice for brekky, then whatever I felt like or more likely whatever was in the house

This is really easy food to throw together - doesn't involve lots of preparation or cooking time which is important given that with all my training, by the time I get home from work I only really have about 2 hours before I go to bed - sad but true I'm often in bed by 9:30!