BBG Weeks 5 – 8

Weeks 5 to 8 were a lot better than the first four weeks. I think the first four weeks are more about getting into a new routine and lifestyle change, if you are just starting out on your health and fitness journey. Or like me, recovering from adrenal fatigue – or any other illness.

They say it takes 21 days to create a new habit so I guess the first 4 weeks are more about creating new healthy habits and quitting any bad ones, like my sugar addiction!

The intensity of the workouts start to increase and there are more sessions to be do each week. The most noticeable increase is with the burpees. If you like burpees then you’ll be happy to know that you get to do an extra 5 burpees each time. No more 10 x burpees. This is not fun!

The fun doesn’t stop there. A few new moves also get added. Like the broad jump burpee. This is the same as a burpee but instead of jumping upwards you do a big jump forward. I actually prefer this over normal burpees. Must be something to do with my blood pressure! Another burpee type exercise is the drop push ups. This is basically a burpee without the jump but when you are on the ground you actually drop into a push up. My arms were like jelly doing these!

My aha moment

If you’ve been following my blog then you’ll know it has taken me a long time to recover from adrenal fatigue. I wasn’t crashing after work anymore or on the weekends but I was still finding it really hard to get motivated or have the energy to workout and I was procrastinating a lot!

My naturopath had suggested I switch to a low carb, high fat diet which I started at the beginning of July but only lasted 9 days before I gave in to emotional/stress eating! I started the diet again last week and so far haven’t had any uncontrollable cravings :) I don’t know if the change in diet is making me more alert and energetic but I have been noticing that I feel more and more like myself.

What else has changed? I finally started meditating again. You can read last week’s review here. I started meditating at night because that was when I could fit it in but I don’t think I was getting the full benefits. Plus I was falling asleep half the time! So I knew I should meditate in the morning but I was only just getting into a routine to wake and workout. I caught up with some girlfriends the other weekend and had a really good chat with them. They knew everything that I had on my plate and that I didn’t want to give anything up. But they could see I was struggling. They suggested I alternate my mornings between meditating and working out and see how that went.

So on Monday I woke up and did my meditation. On Tuesday I woke up and meditated and then worked out. And that was my routine for the rest of the week. I guess I just had to let go and let it all fall into place.  Letting go has been really hard for me to do. It’s not that I’m a control freak. It’s the organisational Virgo in me. I have to plan things and then I have to stick to the plan. But then it got to the point where I was avoiding my plan because I knew I couldn’t do everything on it or procrastinating when I did try to tackle my to do list.

BBG Weeks 1-4

Four weeks ago I made the decision to restart BBG. At the time I still wasn’t feeling 100% and a global start date for Round 3 had been announced so it felt like the right choice to hit restart. During these past four weeks my health has improved and I felt like I was finally back in the game.

In my first part of my review on Kayla’s BBG I explained how it was a 12 week exercise plan incorporating a mix of resistance training sessions, High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) or Low Intensity Steady State (LISS) cardio, and stretching. The intensity and number of sessions increases every four weeks to use a technique called progressive overload. The first four weeks are broken down like this:

2–3 sessions of resistance training 2–3 sessions of LISS cardio training 1 rehabilitation (stretch) session

The 2-3 resistance training sessions are what the BBG is all about and they are the same in weeks 1 and 3 and the same in weeks 2 and 4. I think this is great because you can try to push yourself a little harder the second time around. And with each week that goes by your fitness does improve. I really felt this in week 3. I think it was a combination of my health finally being 100% again and also my fitness getting back to what it was. When I re-started BBG I was getting through each 7 min circuit once and just making it through one more exercise… if I was lucky! By week 3 I was proud to say I was making it through each circuit twice before my alarm went off. I’m not saying those 7 minutes weren’t hell. The hashtag #deathbykayla wasn’t made up for fun! But I was finally able to make it to two rounds in those 7minutes. I’m not saying that you should be doing the same. I’m just saying that I knew my body was capable of doing that so I was happy to get back to that level again. It’s important that you go at your own pace. Push yourself but don’t do go overboard and push your own limits. Work within your own level of fitness and each week it will improve – whether it be making it to the next exercise or doing full push-ups.

Back in the game

 

I’m so excited to be writing today’s blog. I’m so excited because I finally feel like me again! I noticed this on Wednesday as I was walking around the office. I was thinking to myself –
‘I feel good’
‘I feel happy’
‘I feel energetic’

I thought about it some more that day and again the next day because I still felt good. I finally felt 100% like me again! I didn’t want to question it but I couldn’t help it because it has taken so long for me to feel like this again.

What was different? Was it just a simple as the virus finally being out of my system? Possibly. But I had also made some changes after my follow-up with my naturopath. I had told him that I was feeling 90% better but still feeling like my energy levels weren’t what they should be. He wanted me to continue with the Metagenics liver detox but after I told him about an unpleasant side effect I had had he told me that was a sign that my body shouldn’t go through that again. Instead he suggested I take Legalon (St Mary’s Thistle) to protect my liver and switch to low carb, high fat diet. He recommended I buy The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance book to get my body to burn fat for fuel instead of glucose. He explained how changing the energy source for my cells would change my energy levels, and help with my weight loss. He also suggested I get the New Atkins diet book and follow the 2 week conversion protocol to get my cells into fat burning mode.

I started the New Atkins diet on Monday. I will post a full blog when I finish the 2 weeks but basically it’s less than 20g net carbs a day and high in healthy fats. This means that for 2 weeks I can’t eat grains, rice, pasta, nuts or fruit. And especially no fast food or my weakness – chocolate! I have written a couple of blog posts about being a chocoholic/sugar fiend and have noticed it getting out of control these past couple of months which no doubt just kept me in the vicious sugar cycle. I recently came across this article from Food Matters about adrenal fatigue which listed craving sweet food as a symptom. A couple of months ago I had never heard of adrenal fatigue and now that I’ve gone through it I keep seeing and hearing it everywhere. Funny how that happens. This blog post from The Holistic Ingredient just came into my inbox today and has a simple definition of adrenal fatigue that resonated with me. It also promotes an e-course that I have never heard about and a couple of weeks ago I may have kept reading. But not today. Today I feel like I am in recovery mode, if not already recovered!

Kayla’s Itsine’s BBG

I first discovered Kayla Itsine’s Bikini Body Guide (BBG) on Instagram while I was doing Maxine’s Challenge in 2014. I loved the fact that she was an Aussie (she’s from Adelaide) and she was helping so many women achieve amazing body transformations across the globe! I was keen to start her program but waited until I completed Maxine’s Challenge 2014. I only made it to about week 6 then I hit holiday mode in December! I started again on 5 January 2015 with Kayla and her Instagram followers all eager to kick start NYE resolutions. I made it to about week 10 but had also started Maxine’s Challenge 2015 and struggled to make the 2 programs work together. I’m now almost fully recovered from a virus that knocked me around for weeks so I feel like this program will be perfect for me as it is less demanding that my previous routine.  

So what is Kayla Itsine’s BBG? It’s a 12 week exercise and training plan. There’s also a healthy eating plan you can follow and you can get them both here. The exercise plan is a mix of resistance training sessions, High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) or Low Intensity Steady State (LISS) cardio, and stretching. The intensity and number of sessions increases every four weeks to use a technique called progressive overload.

Challenge complete – Where to now?

The 12 week training and meal plans of the Maxine’s Challenge have finished but the challenge is not quite over yet. To complete it all Challengers have to upload their final picture. The requirements of this final photo is the same as the registration photo – you have to be holding the day’s newspaper, wear the same type of clothing in your ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos, and standing facing forward with arms at your sides – no posing.

I remember stressing so much about this final photo when I completed the challenge last year. Should I get a tan? Get a professional photograher? When to take the photo, where to take it and what to wear. I had put a lot of hard work in so obviously I wanted that hard work to show. In hindsight I don’t think it was worth all the stress. Maybe if I had made top 50 I would think differently. But I never entered the challenge in competition mode. Of course it would be nice to win, who doesn’t want to win. But I was always just competing against myself. This year I almost didn’t even bother taking my final photo because I hadn’t achieved much progress but I wanted to make sure I crossed that finish line. Read about my final week of the challenge here. 

But the completion process of the challenge is about more than that final photo. I love that you have to answer a few questions about the challenge when you upload your final photo. It gives you a chance to reflect on your journey – the complete journey – by asking the following questions:

• What did you like most about the challenge?
• What was the hardest thing about your challenge?
• What impact has the challenge had on your life?
• What would you say to people who are thinking of doing the challenge?
• Anything else you would like to tell us about your challenge?

I wish I had included my answers from last year in my Maxine’s Challenge 2014 review but unfortunately I didn’t. It would have been interesting to compare the two responses because both rounds have been completely different for me. And in saying that I realise that I can’t compare them just like I had to stop comparing my progress photos during this round against last year’s photos. The funny thing is last year I had to learn not to compare myself to others and this year I had to stop comparing myself to well, my former self.  And that’s what I love so much about Maxine’s Challenge – the lessons you learn about your self.

Challenge – Week 8

  At the end of each week I have been saying I’m more determined for the next week and every week I continue to struggle. But something happened this week. It was like my brain just flipped a switch. I was finally in challenge mode. I woke up early to workout, I ate less chocolate at night and I got 8 hours sleep most nights!

I didn’t think I had cleaned up my diet that much this week so I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had lost 2 kgs. That includes the kilo I had put on over Easter! So while this challenge has been different in the fact that I’ve only lost 1kg every 4 weeks I know I am building muscle and I can see my body shape changing. What is annoying is that I feel skinnier and find my reflection in the mirror skinnier than how I look in my week 8 photos.

Challenge – Week 7

As usual I had high hope of smashing it this weekend. How did I go? Pretty average once again. I managed all my weights workouts but not according to the plan. I missed one cardio workout. Again. I ate well during the week with the odd chocolate at night and then I was missing meals and eating crap by the weekend.

How about my mindset? Well I had to overcome some personal obstacles work wise which I found really draining. It was such a challenge and I felt I hadn’t achieved anything which just left me feeling deflated. Which is maybe why I found running in the rain on Saturday so cathartic! I don’t know what it was but hubby was so miserable about getting rained on while I was loving it! Call me crazy!

Challenge – Week 5

After last week’s chocolate binge I was determined to get back on track this week and eat clean and workout in the morning.  I still can’t believe how fast this Challenge is going. The first four weeks flew by and I was disappointed with my results but that will only push me harder. On Wednesday I went to my gym after work and had a Helix scan (body composition analysis).

 

 I had got one done towards the end of last year’s challenge. I obviously knew I had put on weight since then but it was good to compare the two scans. It was especially good to remind myself that I have lost weight before so I can do it again. I currently 2.7kg more than I did in September but I have also gained 400g of muscle. According to the scan my target weight should be 62.4kg. I would still like to get under 60kg and stay there this time.

Manifesting True Success – Week 2

I began Week 2 a day behind after not making the time for Day 7 last Sunday. On Monday I failed to make the time again which then meant for the rest of the week I was playing catch-up. Knowing I was 2 days behind the whole time created unnecessary stress but I did manage to change my workout routine to morning workouts (half the time at least lol).

I think the fact that I am trying to implement so many changes and feel like they are all a priority is the reason I am struggling to find and maintain balance. But with that said, even though I missed meditations and/or workouts here and there I made sure I found the time to catch up and eventually get them done. Week 1 was about learning how to align choices and aims with the values and worthwhile goals within us. I think that’s exactly what I’ve done this week!

Week 2 is about breaking free of the cycle of static choice-making and introduces the concept of making dynamic choices using the acronym SMART.

S – Stretch more than you can reach
M – Make everything measurable
A – Agreement with your inner self and those around you
R – Record your progress
T – Time limits for acting and getting a result