fluteangel’s BodyBlog

So I ended the carb cycling thing.  The body fat didn’t drop drastically if at all, neither did the weight, in the month that I did it.  So, my figure friend told me that this far out from my tentative show I need to be eating and training like a bodybuilder and piling on the muscle.  What do y’all think?  I think that I’m afraid to get big, right now I feel fat (gained 5 lbs. after Saturday and it hasn’t gone away yet!) and I know I have a lot of muscle in certain areas, namely my arms.  My legs have a good start, I never train my calves because they grow if I look at them, same with my arms.   I definitely need more size in my shoulders and she mentioned more width in my back and to work on my legs.  My legs have a good foundation and I’m not sure how fast they grow but I think I pack on muscle pretty easily, but my body LOVES to hold on to fat, so I’ve seen so far.

I guess I’m ok with adding mass, I’m just unsure of how to do it and don’t want to end up with a lot of fat instead.  I want to be cut, ripped and STRONG and when people see me, I want them to say "wow, I want to look like that". I want that definition where I can count my abs, see the three different heads of my shoulders and have the prefectly lifted butt with no cellu-lo on the legs.  I want my love handles gone!

I just don’t have the money for a trainer when I don’t have a date set for a show, and no money for shoes, entry fee or suit.  *sigh*  I work so much better with a goal and a plan…and I don’t have either, I hate it!

I did take the first step in gaining mass though, and started a supplement routine that now includes BCAA’s, Arginine, Lysine, Glutamine and Creatine on top of my whole food multi, CLA and Omega supplement.  Hopefully this will show me some muscle gains!

I’ve been talking to a great figure girl on Facebook (recently featured in Muscle and Fitness Hers, go girl!) and she’s been ever so nice and helpful…and has told me the low carb thing is crap and not to believe it.  I WANT to believe her, and I might.  Reasons being

It’s been three weeks and my measurements haven’t changed

My weight has not gone down… it is taking longer and longer to get my weight back down after my high carb weekends.

but I also am skeptical, because things LOOK like they’re working.  Yesterday and today I looked the trimmest and leanest I have ever looked.  I took a bunch of pictures and as soon as I can I’ll post them.  Course, I overdid it tonight and ate movie theater popcorn…so I know I’ll be holding onto about 6 lbs. of water tomorrow, including the Reece’s peanut butter cups I ate for Easter today!

But here are some neat observations I made today:

I haven’t been craving sugar, carbs, fat or anything, in fact, no cravings at all!  Just really looking forward to the weekend so that I can have my oatmeal and carbs with every meal again.  On day one of high carbs, I got full a LOT faster, and stayed full well over two hours.  Those carbs really make up the difference, whereas during the week, with low carbs it takes a lot more to make me full and keep me that way!  Funny thing is, when I eat a TON of protein, I feel like crap.  When I eat a moderate amount of protein (1g per pound and maybe only up to 20g more) and higher fats, I feel ok.  When I eat a TON of veggies I feel awesome and my body feels like it’s burning through everything.
The other thing I noticed today is that after I ate breakfast (1/2 c. oatmeal with 1 TB ground flax, wheat germ, 1 tsp. bee pollen, strawberries - 8 or so? - 1/2 scoop lean dessert protein and 4 oz. lowfat soy milk espresso) in two hours I was definitely hungry again.  I ate half of a banana and 2 bites of a cinnamon roll that someone had made and cut up into bite size pieces (snacks in Bible class!) and when we went to Carrabba’s for lunch, I wasn’t hungry really (it was only an hour to 1.5 hours later), but I ATE like a horse!  I had two small slices of bread (I thought, hey, it’s high carb weekend, I need to fill my glycogen stores for that killer leg workout I’m going to bust out tomorrow) then ate a romaine salad, dry with tomatoes, and had my entree: chicken breast basted and grilled with olive oil, sauteed spinach and garlic, pasta with tomato sauce (sooooooo good!) and a slice of my husband’s pizza.  I felt moderately full, but thought I’d nab another slice of bread….and ended up eating 4 more!  I really think I could have eaten the rest of the loaf and not had a problem.  I wasn’t stuffed and I felt really good after that meal!  How strange is that?

Course, I wasn’t hungry later and haven’t really been for the rest of the day, which is where I blew it because I thought "I need to eat every few hours" and had Reece’s cups, a cup and a half of Kashi cereal mixed with granola cereal and soymilk, then 4 hours later a pb and j on Ezekial bread and movie popcorn and I will probably NOT be hungry in the morning.

So what I think I’ve figured out is that when I go all out on my high carb days on carbs, slow digesting in the morning, make sure I have a good amount of protein with main meals, but maybe my carbs need to be from fast digesting carb sources instead of complex.  That explains all the bread and pasta I ate, because i ate it with chicken breast and lots of olive oil.

See, during my low carb 5 days in a row, my starchy carbs are really limited to as much under 100g as I can make it.  I have fruit first thing, fast digesting carbs after workout, and then one more starch about 1 or 2 PM.  That’s it.  Unfortunately, that cuts out a lot of fiber.  So I’m thinking that this week, I’ll still try to do low carb, but say it’s ok to add in my oatmeal, or GNU Fiber bar for afternoon snack (with protein shake?) or Fiber One cereal or even the turkey chili I’m going to make with red and black beans.  Fiber doesn’t count in my carb count and if I can’t get enough fiber through my veggies (we can only afford so much) I can get it through these sources and then I won’t want to pig out on high fiber carbs on the weekend and screw up my system.

So getting back to things, I’m going to try this low carb thing for one more week and if still no results (come on now, the bodyfat percentage and weight should have gone down by now!) then I’ll take this girl’s advice and happily go back to my higher carb lifestyle, but still try to keep in monstrous amounts of veggies.

I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on this!

Oh yeah, and my other frustration at the moment is that I really want to find a figure contest to enter.  I feel like I’m in good enough shape to be in a contest right now, amateur of course, based on the local photos I’ve seen, but I’m not finding much close by and if my hubby and I are taking a cruise for our vacation May 24th, the chances of my sticking to a contest diet on a cruise are pretty slim to none….so I want to do one before then.  I also have to travel with the Army to Bulgaria for a week or two at the end of June, so that throws a monkey wrench in things.

Help?  Suggestions?

So I have to tell you…

 I detest this whole low carb through the week thing and then high carbs on the weekend.  It’s not even so much that I crave fruits, milk, breads, etc. through the day, I just REALLY miss having those as choices, because I know I"m leaving out healthy foods in the name of "too many carbs".  I never though I’d be one of "those people" who would say "I can’t eat that; too many carbs", but I passed up sweet potato fries and grilled pineapple with dinner tonight for that very same reason.  Stupid….

However, having said that, I have noticed some interesting things.  I really do enjoy eating a LOT of greens, but they don’t fill me up as much.  After eating them, almost every meal I"ve started to get that warm feeling, that my body’s metabolism is really revving up.  I feel slimmer, I look trimmer and I really do think this thing is working so far - on the low carb end of it.  I have no idea what this whole weekend "refeed" will do to me and I have to tell you that I hate the feeling of tiredness that I have all day because of the low amounts of carbs.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow and dreading it at the same time.  I know I need to 1) plan what I’m going to eat 2) refer to it not as a high carb day, but as a "normal" day (reminding myself that I"m going back to how I used to eat, with complex carbs at every meal) and reminding myself that 3) I get one cheat meal.  I’m at my mother in law’s this weekend for a wedding shower so I think my cheat meal will be the piece of cake I eat at lunch.  But maybe not, because I don’t really care about cake.  I am sooo looking forward to eating strawberries all day long, and eating my Vitalicious muffins!  Cereal with milk, or a latte in the afternoon!  I miss that so much.

I’m interested to see how this all plays out.  I wish wish wish I had my scale with me to tell me what I weigh, I’m so curious!  I’m hot right now because my metabolism is running high after eating (felt this way since yesterday afternoon after every veggie meal!) and I’m excited.  I hope it does that this weekend as well, when I up the carbs, and Monday when I go back.  I’ve gotten my mother-in-law on the Clean Eating bandwagon and she wants me to help cook so for tomorrow’s lunch I"m doing oven-roasted green beans with olive oil and salt and pepper and grilled pineapple.  I’m also cooking breakfast burritos for everyone tomorrow morning.

So in doing this low-carb cycling thing, unfortunately, as with all things, I’ve had to learn how my body and my mind handle things through trial and error.  This weekend I was planning on having two high carb days with one of those days being a cheat meal.  I’ve been wanting that DQ Blizzard forever!  What I found out is that when my mind knew that these two days were going to be "high carb" it translated that into "eat whatever you want for two days" and "make sure you get in as much food as possible with as many carbs as possible because you’re going to be depriving yourself all week".  Not good.  So yesterday things started out bad with a cup and a half of cereal and milk = 100 carbs on the spot.  That was just breakfast!  The rest of the day I ended up structuring my meals around carbs (because I could have them) instead of protein and just adding them back in.  I had my blizzard (and I took my BSN Cheater’s Relief before and after) but then, even though I got a LARGE (I know, I know) I went home and had another cup full of ice cream and a cookie.  Total sugar binge, thought I was going to be sick.  I tell you, after not having sugar for so long and then eating so much simple carbs and fat, I can FEEL my body reacting to it.  At least that’s what eating clean will do to you.

Today started out well, but we went to a buffet for lunch and I overdid it (I always manage too, somehow, beause I want to try everything!) and tonight was Italian themed potluck night at church.  Over did it again, even though I took cheater’s relief again.

So here’s what I’ve found out:

1) I do much better when I plan a menu out of what I"m going to eat for the day.  I do better with a plan.

2) High carb days from here on out are referred to as "normal" eating days, where I would eat how I used to clean eat before the low carb plan.  So instead of low carb snacks, I’ll actually have my piece of fruit, etc. but not an excuse to binge on as many carbs as possible.

3) I HAVE to find a goal to set my eyes upon so I can keep my determination in mind!  Otherwise I think "why bother with discipline?  I don’t have a goal date, specifically".

The good news is that tomorrow I’m going to try to drop my carbs to under 100, close to 50 as possible (not counting veggies, we’ll see about fruit, I might just phase that out or only do it in the morning) for the whole week, and then do "normal clean eating" on the weekend again and see how we are.  I’m fully expecting to have gained 6 lbs. this weekend and have lost it all by Wednesday morning, because I’ll be doing heavy lifting, and HIIT.  Wish me luck, and give me guidance if you can!
I have it in my mind that when I get to the gym, I can see all my full glycogen stores being burned for fuel in the next few days and that lithe body is going to show up really fast, once I lose the excess weight from this weekend of binge eating.  I hate doing this.  I hate overeating and feeling way too full.  I need a fitness coach to ride me!!!

So I’ve heard all about Tom Venuto and the theory of carb cycling and the Anabolic Diet from Jen Heath and I’m willing to give it a go.  This past week, I did my best to keep my starchy carbs under 100g a day, which was really difficult, and I cut them out completely after lunch, so that made it easier.  I forgot to up my fats instead and the result was that I felt really tired and my legs felt totally weak, like they’d give out at any time, all week.  This weekend I’m doing two high carb days in a row and yesterday was my cheat meal day….but I went overboard like I knew I would.  It’s terrible, my cheats seem to turn into binges!  I hate that.  Today I woke up not hungry at all, almost 3 pounds heavier and definitely craving carbs.  I just ate a really healthy breakfast, my favorite, and didn’t enjoy it that much: Oatmeal with LDP, berries, flax and a little wheat germ with a FF soy latte.  Huh.
I’ve been talking to a few others and reading some more and the anabolic diet says to only have 30g starchy carbs each day for 5 days.  Holy cow!  That’s all the carbs I eat right after I workout!  What about fruit first thing in the morning (as was suggested) or a small sweet potato at 1 PM as was also suggested?

I workout first thing, so trying to time these carbs and figure out which ones to count and which ones not to count is next to impossible because I can’t find any information on the net yet to read to tell me what to do, and I have to do this on my own right now because I don’t have money to hire a nutritionist!  I certainly don’t want to screw up my metabolism though, so if anyone has suggestions, point them my way!

Oh yeah, and I need to find a show to do that’s close to Panama City.  Then I have to buy everything: shoes, suit, tanner, entry fee…*sigh*  I’d like to step on stage once this year, possibly as many as three times, but it’s so darn expensive!  Help??