ArmdandFabulous’s BodyBlog

Decided to change my cardio a little and did it HIIT style yesterday…20 mins on the stairstepper…the smaller one that no one seems to ever use at the gym, including me..(but really does a great job of targeting the glutes-yeah, that one)..and then another 20 mins on the eliptical..I just kept doing a rate of 30 seconds level 3 or 4, then 1 min at level 7, then back down to level 3..then up to level 9 for 30 seconds…just totally random so it kept my body guessing…then at night I did two 10 min runs…this seemed to shock my system pretty well, and the scale finally moved DOWN a little today..yaya!~~…..(Even though I totally ate a big Hershey bar yesterday-oops..my bad!)

So the moral of the story is:  DO your HIIT!!

Lately I’ve been eating more junk than I normally allow in my diet…not sure if it is the weather/change of season..or body just tired of me trying to control the calories and rebelling at this point..I haven’t really been THAT strict on myself so not sure if the rebelling really is the reason….my usual habit is to eat clean for a few days then reward myself with something I’ve been craving..like some ice cream/piece of cake.etc…never a huge buffet type meal or anything…and I’ve always been able to manage it and not really gain weight…well, I take that back..I do gain a couple pounds here and there, but I can and do usually just do more cardio to burn off the excess calories right away, no problem…the same day I consume the extra calories, I normally am in the gym doing enough cardio to burn them off…I also do pretty well with drinking a gallon of h2o a day…but this past week I have hit a wall I guess…while I have indulged in some not so "clean" diet choices, (nothing out of the norm) I have also kicked my a** in the gym with extra cardio and have kept up with my workouts which normally keeps me out of trouble with weight gain…yet this week I have managed to go up continuously on the scale despite my efforts to redeem myself from the diet stumbles…I know that the scale doesn’t tell the whole truth of what’s going on in our body and we shouldn’t only go by what it says…but, while still writing down what I eat and monitoring calories, this week I have just creeped up..and up…hmmm…this is not the norm for me…so I took my waist measurement the last couple days, waist is the same…so I’m hoping the extra calories have been put to good use, in the form of muscle building …hey, a girl can dream, right?

warmed up with 3 sets pushups..all sets were in the 12-15 rep range…

CHest 

Incline smith 3x

Hammer Chest machine  3x

Cable Crossover 2x

DB flyes 2x

Machine Flye 2x

Flat db press 2x

Rested 1-1.5 mins between sets

Back

Pullups 3x

Pulldown machine 3x

DB rows 2x

Seated cable row 2x SUperset with close grip lat pulldown 2x

Bent over row 2x

I can really feel this one!…Haven’t ever worked back and chest together in the same day and it exhausted me…no way could I consider cardio after this.  A change is what I need..feel like I am plateauing, not really gaining much muscle now and I know it’s because I need to up my efforts/workout intensity if I want progress to continue.

DIet has been no bueno lately …today I had a little chat with myself and decided it’s time to RE-FOCUS and get my head back in the game…

I gave my shoulders a full 7 day rest this time, so I thought I would hit them hard today 

it’s just 4 exercises…

Side lat raises 4 sets 15, 12, 8, 6 to pre-fatigue the shoulders, then

4 supersets of DB presses and upright rows

4 sets lying side laterals with elbow bent…but by the time I finished my shoulders were burning…definitely shocked them!

**A guy in the gym was kinda staring at me as I worked out and finally came over to ask "Are you a bodybuilder?"..I said, "No", and he said, "Oh, I was just wondering because you look kinda cut up"….

Oh my what a compliment!! It made my day

Ok peeps, it’s time for me to change something about my diet/training to get the progress going in the right direction again.   Up to this point, I have monitored protein intake and total calorie intake, but haven’t too closely counted my daily carb intake.  Sometimes I have ventured into the whole carb cycling thing by not eating them after 12:00 or 5:00, but haven’t been consistent with it because when I mess up the diet it is usually clearly due to excess calories, so haven’t gotten to the detail of noticing how many carbs a day does what for me yet…I recently had a friend in town and for me that is bad news diet wise…I even tried to guard against falling into bad eating decisions by bringing packets of protein and even packets of superpum250 to keep me from craving the junk that is always all around at the strip…as soon as I had one margarita (I made it healthier by ordering it with NO salt!! lol), the hungries start and I want junk…I had 3 mcd’s hamburgers, 4 apple pies (they’re on the Dollar menu, I had to do it, that’s practically giving them away!)..french fries…(since I never usually eat at McD’s, the low prices were a surprise to me and too good to pass up..lol..I make great excuses huh?)…can’t remember what else I ate..but the point is, it was Baaaaad…the good news is, after a couple days of drinking a gallon of water and keeping up with my workout schedule, I redeemed my previous weight and the scale didn’t go up…amazing isn’t it???

But now I feel like I’m ready to get a little more structured and want to get these last 10 or 12  oh who am I kidding probably 15 lbs gone so I can move into Phase II–possibly a little “bulk” phase…which is exciting to me because for this past year I have been trying to build muscle while I cut fat, which is frustrating, when I start losing weight I get freaked out when I look in the mirror and it seems I am losing muscle too, and then I stop trying so hard to lose weight…but I am not where I want to be bodyfat or definition wise…so now I feel like I just need to go for it, and as long as I keep the diet numbers (protein, carbs, etc) right, then I will be ok and whatever muscle I lose I can put back on…what has me excited about a bulk phase is that whenever I have cut back on the cardio, I have noticed much faster muscle gains…it’s really unbelievable how fast they can grow…but I have had to burn them away with all the cardio trying to make up for my bad diet decisions to keep from gaining fat back!!!

So anyways, I still have a lot to learn, I know I can’t learn everything in a year (still can’t believe it’s already been a year that I’ve been lifting weights!) ..but I was wondering what the best carb cycling plans out there are..I’ve heard of doing 3 days low carb then one high, then 3 medium…or one day you have carbs with breakfast, lunch and dinner, then the next day only breakfast, then the next day with breakfast and lunch only, etc…I saw in the current Oxygen mag that a low carb day should be half your bodyweight, a medium day would be = to your bodyweight and high day would be 2x your bodyweight -3…but to me these amounts seem a little high…anyways, that’s where you come in..what carb cycling plan works best for you?…are there other plans that work better than the ones I’ve mentioned?  I would love to hear any input or suggestions on this!

I skipped my leg workout last week and felt guilty about it until today…wow have I gone up in strength!

Went up in weight on squats and leg presses and was able to do more reps…really surprised myself and now I’m considering only doing legs every other week!! 

I’m naming this one "the stinger"…by then end of it my shoulders were on fire!

*went up in weight each set

seated military press (behind head) 12, 10,8,6

arnold presses 12, 10, 8, 6

standing side lats 15, 12, 10, 8

upright row 12, 10, 8, 6

to finish, a superset with:

seated bent over lats 4x 10 & standing front raises 10, 8, 6, 4

incline db press  5 sets…15, 12, 2×10, 8

dips (assisted)-3 sets 10-15

incline chest flyes 3 x15  superset w/ bodyweight dips using bench to failure

flat bench w db 3×15 

lying db tri extension 3×15 

flat chest flyes 3×15

triple set w/ rope pushdowns, decline pushups (to failure–not many reps…arms were pooped at this point), cable chest flyes

Decided to skip the bench pressing today, I have been consistently doing it for some time now..

ALso I have changed my rep range…last week actually is when I started doing it, instead of doing 6-8, I have started doing 12-15 reps…I already felt the effect of the "shock to the system" in my back after one workout–I was sore like when I first started a year ago!!!

I tried something out this morning to see if it really works…cardio on an empty stomach.

The whole idea of it has always seemed crazy to me…your body has had NO fuel for 10 hours or so, and then you want to go and push it further by making it do cardio…seems like your blood sugar and energy would be too low to get much out of it without eating first…but according to some "ripped" bodies around this site, it is a secret trick to burn more fat…

Despite that, I never wanted to try it because I always believed you are supposed to EAT soon after waking to keep the metabolism from slowing down..but out of curiousity I decided to try it out today.  Well, I didn’t do it on a completely empty stomach, I had some SUperpump250 or I wouldn’t have gotten myself out the door without eating!

I was able to run for 40 mins, and I didn’t pass out!…now lets see if this way works better!

Wow I just realized that two days ago was my one year anniversary on bb.com!  What a difference a year can make

While I have not completely met my transformation goal yet, I have made a lot of progress towards it this past year that I have to give credit to this site and the people on it for achieving…

All the information about workouts, diet + supplements, nutritional info, etc. that is available right here has helped to educate me on the "how" to transform that I never would have gotten any other way..I knew so little about how to do it, I wouldn’t have even known what questions to ask or what info to seek out!!

The encouragement and support given from fellow bodyspacer’s has been a huge factor in my progress…the compliments, tips and suggestions from others on this site who have similar goals and similar struggles with achieving their own fitness goals reminds me that I’m not alone, which keeps me going when I get discouraged… 

I have gone from just wanting to be a certain weight number on the scale and clothing size to wanting muscle and a physique that I never would have dreamed possible for myself, had I not seen what others have achieved with their bodies on this site…the transformations (completed or ongoing) of others on here motivates me and pushes me to work harder when I have slacked off…

And of course the blogs…the inspirational, educational, informative and funny blogs here help me to feel connected to a group of people that I normally would’t have access to in "real life" because there just aren’t that many people in my circle who are interested in fitness and health, sad but true for a lot of us…

So for me, the past year being a part of this community has truly been priceless, I wouldn’t have made it this far on my own without it…thank you bb.com!!