fluteangel’s BodyBlog

So I’m up in TN for drill with the Army national guard this weekend.  Tried to workout as best I could yesterday and today but both were cut short.  Met mom in Nashville for lunch and shopping and man, it was great.  We went to a sushi restaurant I have been dying to go to forever!  It was certainly yummy, but even after my rainbow roll and 2 pieces of eel nigiri and miso soup I was still hungry.  Mom got me 3 or 4 more pieces from the sushi buffet, bad, I know, but it was sooo good!  I had a Gladiator Smoothie from Smoothie King with Pineapple and Goji berry and extra fiber and a shot of wheatgrass, and when I got home I had 6 silces of deli turkey breast.  So we’ll see how this is all affected by the scale tomorrow.

On top of that I took a sample of Atrophex, yesterday and today and will up the dosage tomorrow to see how it works.  I like it so far, but I think it makes me crash  at the end of the day.  I also started a 15 day detox and I’m hoping for really good things from that.  I love sushi, why does it have to be a cheat food?!?!

Wow, I am so grateful for this whole bodyspace thing.  Why did I never do it before?  I thank you to all you wonderful people who read this and gave me feedback - you are invaluable!

I woke up this morning determined.  I ate 1/2 c. fiber one cereal with 1/4 cup of my homemade granola (pumpkin seeds, sliced almonds, oats, flax seeds, dried cranberries, cinnamon) and 3/4 c. soymilk and then headed over to The Vitamin Shoppe and bought some RedLine RTDs.  I remember drinking them last year and how they really seemed to help my workouts, so I was pumped!  I drank half the can and went to the gym.

My goal was simple: blast my three weakest body parts: abs, shoulders and legs, in that order.  As you can see from my workout log, it was a killer workout, one I don’t want to replicate frequently!  However, I am going out of town on Thursday and my gym time will be limited, so I wanted to get in some killer workouts before I sit for 10+ hours in the car!

I’m having trouble fatiguing my abs - I think I need to up the reps, considerably.  Quit worrying about doing so many exercises and focus on more reps.  My shoulders are another matter.  I want that rounded cap with enviable side delts and they have come a long way since I started training them, but getting the correct muscle to "wear out" is so difficult, especially on my left side.  As stated in a previous post (I think) my left shoulder is slightly double jointed due to the tendons being "too long", thereby any overhead pressing movements are precarious as my shoulder just wants to fall out of socket.  Side lat raises are not so great either because due to said issue, my traps and rear delts really take over to stabilize (I guess) my shoulder and then my left medial delts are near impossible to fatigue.  It drives me crazy, especially since I try it from every angle, and it makes pressing heavy weight overhead extremely dangerous.  I hate the machines, I feel the right arm taking over, and I usually don’t have a spotter, so what to do?
Legs, another weak area.  Definitely want to tighten up my hams and glutes.  My quads have a lot of good size and shape to them I think, so I’m focusing more on higher reps with all my leg exercises.  I love the feeling of total fatigue and not being able to walk well when i get out of the gym on leg day.   I am genetically blessed with calves that grow by my looking at them, so I don’t do much there.  Definition is in order with them I’m sure, but that might show up with bodyfat % dropping.
I’m hoping to see good things when I step on the scale in the morning!

Darn it, I don’t understand.  I am so frustrated!  I was good yesterday, doubled up on my greens, ate no starches for dinner and drank lots of water and STILL gained weight!  4 days ago I hit the lowest weight I’ve ever hit and I cannot for the life of me figure out why.  I’ve gone over my fitday journal again and again and I don’t see anything there that’s really substantial as to why.  The day before I got 140g of protein in  (I strive for 120 since that’s my bodyweight) and I got 179g of carbs and 35g fats, making my ratios almost40/40/20.  They’ve stuck pretty close to that all week and this still happens every time.  Seems that everytime I hit a new weight loss goal, the next day and for the next few days my weight will go back up instead of continuing to drop, even if I think I"m doing the same thing.

The only thing I can think of is that this past weekend I didn’t record what I ate, still ate mostly clean, but probably went up to around 2000 calories or more for each day on the weekend, trying out this whole "refeed" thing since I’ve stuck my calories inbetween 1300-1500 for so long.  It shot me up 4 lbs, but then the weight came off in a few days, very steadily, like two pounds a day till I was at 119.8, and now I’ve gone back up.  For crying out loud, I even went to bed hungry last night!

If anyone has any suggestions, I would really love to hear them and thank you to those who did comment yesterday.  I’ve just taken a scoop of protein and I’m off to the gym to just do cardio for 45 minutes.  Haven’t done that in awhile.

So I have two problems right now: I want to lose fat and be in a competition, problem being, I’ve never done a competition before and have no idea how to enter or even find one I’m allowed to compete in, so I don’t have a date to strive for.  Last year, I had a date, my wedding date, and made my goal.  I could do so much better with a date in mind!

My other problem is wanting to lose fat without doing a ton of cardio.  My legs simply can’t take it.  I developed bursitis in my left leg this past fall from doing hours of cardio every day and even though I took time off to let it heal, it still doesn’t feel quite right when I do extended amounts of cardio.  I’d rather lift heavy weights and tweak my diet.  I’ve noticed that I’m a person who does not do well on low carb diets.  I tend to lose weights when I eat tons of vegetables, salads and fish, but not sure as for starchy carbs.  Trying to go without them is murder for me, though.  I have no energy whatsoever and turn into a total grouch.  So I’m toying with the idea of carb or calorie cycling, problem is, I don’t have enough info on the subject to figure out what to do.

Doing all this on my own and figuring it out is so hard.  I wish I had the money to hire a personal trainer to devise my training and diet for me and tell me exactly what I need to do for just awhile!  Any and all help is highly appreciated!

Also, I wonder, I don’t know what judges will look for, especially when it comes to my body: should I lean out or bulk up my legs?  What about my upper body?  My guess is that I need to build up my glutes and hams, keep my leg exercises mainly in the higher rep range (especially for quads) as my legs seem to respond better to that and keep my upper body exercises in the heavy range?  Then again, I don’t know…

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