fitnessprincess’s BodyBlog

The importance of using multiple measures to assess progress was never more real to me than yesterday.  I woke up and as usual weighed myself and freaked out.  My bodyweight was the highest it has been in 5 years.  As a lifetime WW member, this just devastated me.  When I woke up originally I felt slim and firm.  After weighing myself only minutes later I felt fat.  For the last six months or so I have endeavored to take photos to assess my progress every 4 weeks or so (for a while I did this every two weeks but I quickly realized that it was easier to see changes if I did this every 4 weeks).  Actually I should have done this last week but I was returning from a trip and just didn’t get to it.  I almost didn’t take the photos because of how I felt but I decided this might be the last chance I would have before winter (I live in New England and it is simply getting too cold to put on a bathing suit and take pictures outside).  So, I got dressed and took the photos.  I was never happier in my entire life.  I could see some small positive changes in my lower body (butt and thighs) and I realized that things weren’t as bad as I thought after all.  So, I am going to push ahead and stay focused and think positively.
If you are on a weight loss or a recomposition journey (like me) then I encourage you to use multiple measures to assess your progress -don’t focus solely on body weight as you may be missing the bigger picture.  Post your body weight, measurements, %bodyfat, photos, and lifts here or on an off-line journal regularly.  Use the relative changes (don’t focus on the absolute numbers) to assess your progress.  I will also add that I find it useful to keep track of my nutrition as well and I use a computer program to track both my nutrition and fitness progress (many folks use FitDay which is free but there are many other programs both on-line and off-line).

This was an interesting trip.  I never had any problem eating while traveling when I was following the WW flex plan so I wasn’t expecting any problem this year now that I am training for figure competition.  LOL!  It is interesting though how things change when you change your frame of reference.  Now I am following a different set of rules for my nutrition plan and it was amazing how challenging it was to eat well/healthfully during my trip.  I think it will help everyone reading this to understand that I now have a set of nutritional macros I am striving to consume each day (I work with Cathy Savage) and the foods I eat must provide those macros and they cannot be processed.  I think it also will help if I tell you up front that I am a vegetarian and don’t eat meat.  I will eat fish so you can consider me a pescatarian but I generally eat tofu, wheat gluten (seitan), beans (all varieties), egg whites and some dairy yoghurt and cottage cheese but not much dairy in order to get my protein.  I don’t use protein powder - don’t like the stuff and don’t consider it food.
As the experts always advise I always pack emergency items.  Knowing from past experience that it is often hard to get the protein I need, I packed quite a few tofu and seitan-based primal strips (awesome product!  my favorites are the thai peanut and mequite lime strips).  LOL! Boy did I underestimate what my need would be!
Now this was as conferences go a pretty good professional conference.  They actually have several different food tracks: low-fat, diabetic, vegetarian, and vegan!  I signed up as vegetarian but I quickly realized that their idea of vegans and vegetarians are people who don’t consume any protein, i.e., people who only eat vegetables.  So, I switched to the low fat track - swallowing my personal values after weighing the possible consequences of having no protein for the next 4 days.  This wasn’t much better unfortunately.  It was most enlightening however.
Breakfast was a buffet offering cut fruit (melons, etc.), scrambled eggs, sausage, pancakes, toast, boxed cereals including packets of instant oatmeal (thank heavens for small favors!), donuts, danish, biscuits and gravy and what I originally thought was cream of wheat but apparently was "grits."  Ugh!  I took a box of cereal (Total whole grain with raisin or Kashi heart-to-heart) and made myself a packet of Quaker instant oatmeal and got some fresh fruit.  At break time I got a cup of coffee with soy milk (the only positive was that they offered soy milk!!) and a pear.  Of course, they offered donuts and danish which I just ignored.  Lunch and dinner turned out to be pretty similar so I will describe them together.  These meals started out with "salad" that consisted of one piece of lettuce cut up and 3 croutons (which I discarded out of principle) and bowls of fatty-looking dressings.  I passed on the dressing (why do you need any dressing on a piece of lettuce) and breathed in my salad.  Oh and I forgot to mention that they served freshly baked rolls - various kinds at lunch and dinner that were reportedly excellent - everyone kept stuffing their faces with rolls after slathering them with butter.  The main course at lunch and dinner were veggies on pasta, rice, or potatoes (which I didn’t eat for the most part) for vegetarians/vegans (sometimes an occasional bean or chickpea was thrown in - ooh! protein!) or chicken or beef or salmon on pasta, rice, or potatoes for low-fat and regular meal plans.  The difference between low-fat and the regular meal tracks turned out that they slathered sauce on top of whatever the protein source for the regular track folks.  Now I realize no one is excited out there yet about the meal offerings but hang in there.  Desserts were literally to die for - huge slabs of carrot cake bathed in 1" thick layers of icing, pies that were a mile-high and wide - again as I said:  "to die for." No wonder America is "growing!" (groaning is what I like to say).  Of course, if you were on the low fat or veggie tracks, guess what you got: fresh fruit!  a half-cup of mixed fruit or strawberries - not much imagination unfortunately but that is too often the case though most welcome here given the circumstances.  In the afternoon,  I had another cup of coffee and another piece of fresh fruit.  After dinner I did the same thing made tea or coffee and had fruit again.  Of course, I quickly realized I wasn’t getting enough protein so I started consuming my stash of Primal Strips at mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and evening and you can guess the significance.  I ran out of Primal Strips.   I then turned to beef jerky which was the only protein I could find that I could keep in my room.  Even with all my effort to get protein, I still ended up behind in that macro and way ahead on carbs - most of mine in the form of fruit.
If you are a carbohydrate addict as I am, it was a nightmare (fruit innocuous as it might be for you is a trigger food for me that I eat only once a day or less if I can help it).  Somehow I managed to make it through the meeting but I came back Sunday and binged badly Sunday night on more carbs - ugh! and got right back on track Monday with no problems.
For those who are wondering why I didn’t go shopping for food at the meeting.  This was held on a university campus in the hotel on campus - no refrigerators, etc. available and no way to run into town for food.  Lastly no way to get the menu in advance of the meeting either - I tried.  That said, if you are traveling these are great strategies:  1) get a hotel room with a refrigerator; 2) when you get there stock it with healthy choices; and 3) if you are at a fixed meeting site ask conference programmers if you can get a copy of the menu for the meeting in advance.
OK lessons I learned:  1) flexibility/adaptability is key; 2) if things do go wrong don’t beat yourself up; and 3) get back on track right away.

First, I am still alive and working out.  Life has just been hectic and I haven’t had time to post.  I actually just returned from a professional meeting and I have a bit to say/share about my experience at the meeting but I will save that for another post.  Anyway, I am alive and well!

I often read posts where people knock other people in the gym because they had a negative experience.  Well, if you are expecting one of those posts this isn’t going to be another one of those.  Mine is actually a positive post based on a good experience I had today in the weight room in my gym.

Since it is Tuesday I was forced to rise and workout before going to work.  Tuesdays and Wednesdays are rough for me because I don’t get any choice and I much prefer to workout after work.  So bright eyed and bushy-tailed (reality:  bleary-eyed and half-asleep) I woke up this morning and went to the gym to face back/leg day. I was focused on deadlifting (which I actually enjoy truth be told) when this well-built guy in the smith machine next to the cage I was working asked me:  "Are you a body builder?" I almost dropped the barbell on my foot.  I was so stunned.  Over the last few months I have been somewhat of an oddity in the weight room.  Most women workout on the second floor with a set of free weights that range from 5 to 27.5 lb.  The real weights, smith machines, barbells and benches are all on the third floor.  If I get any reaction as a general rule, it has been either mild amusement or irritation (I am taking their space/equipment).   My knee jerk reaction to this nice man was to mumble that I am an aspiring figure competitor.  To which he replied that he was a body builder from another university who had just moved into the area.  He started asking me what federations were around here and we ended up having a really nice/useful conversation.  I realized afterward that over the last few weeks the dynamic in the gym has changed:  Over the last few weeks two other guys had introduced themselves to me while working out and were really nice/helpful in a collegial way - suggesting alternate approaches when they noticed I was struggling with something or were just encouraging or supportive of my efforts. What I guess I am so excited about is that somehow I have finally become "one of the guys."   I don’t know what happened but somehow the switch got flipped for me and for them.  I don’t know if it is because I have been lifting heavy, that I look like I know what I am doing (still don’t LOL but I am learning:)) or if my appearance has changed significantly enough that everyone feels I merit being taken seriously.  At any rate, I feel really encouraged by this experience/reflection enough to actually post and acknowledge it.  OK now girl get back to work!

As some of you may recall I posted several weeks ago sharing the sad news that a) my competition suits had been mailed to the wrong recipient; b) that the invoice assessed me $100 more than the original price; and c) the one-piece didn’t fit when I finally got it the Monday of the week of my show.  Well, goody-goody, my suit finally arrived.  Yep! sarcasm.  Doesn’t fit much better now than it did when I got it the first time.  Am I sending it back again?  Are you kidding.  No.  I am simply going to order a nice suit from a good suit  maker for the spring which is where my energy and focus are now.

I have made a mini-goal of putting on the red 2 piece Xmas and taking photos which I will then use to decide how to prep/where best to invest my energy for the spring.  If I don’t turn into a Thanksgiving turkey for Xmas then I will post them here - agh!  Now that’s pressure

I am also going to give CrossTrainer another go.  I used it for a while to log my nutrition and workouts and got frustrated with the bugginess of the software and the less than helpful or friendly customer support.  I have used FitDay and ProTrack in the interim and neither really does it for me.  ProTrack is kludgy and FitDay doesn’t log workouts so you can’t really track your fitness progress.  So, here goes Ziggy again.