k8*s BodyBlog

i just figured out that i’ve been using a bf calculator geared towards men!!! arrrg! this screws up all of my results and is a little bit of a blow to my self esteem. i’ve had to go back and re-plug in all my numbers since last january and it turns out I never dropped below 15%. its frustrating. i never really felt 12-13% like i wanted to be though so i guess i shouldn’t really be surprised. i guess it doesn’t matter now that its winter and i will be eating more and adding more muscle any way.

i seem to have a great deal of trouble sticking to one goal for any length of time. one month i want to eat more and build muscle the next month i’m sick of eating so much, feeling so full i’m going to puke and want to cut calories to lean out. lately i’ve been eating close to 2000 calories a day and haven’t put on any fat…just a couple pounds of muscle. eating that much is really really hard for me and my guts always feel overfull all day long and its uncomfortable. i would like to continue to add muscle but i just don’t know how much longer i can eat this much…..

there’s nothing worse for me than the dreaded AB DAY. i’ve even come to not mind doing cardio (HIIT) so much anymore but abs….BLAGH. so uncomfortable, hate feeling like i can’t fully get a breath, so futile (at my current bodyfat at least:P). now i fully realize the importance of having a strong core. however as far as training abs for maximum hypertrophy…i could care less! as long as there’s no jiggling matter when i run or jump rope ect, i’m happy. everyone has "nice abs" (not a hardcore six pack, of course) as long as they drops their body fat to the appropriate level. how can any one possibly enjoy this form of torture:P

I seem to be having this moment of extreme impatience. I really really really want to gain mass and reach my goal but I’m getting so frustrated that I’m not there yet (having started in March of this year). The more I browse all the totally fabulously ripped women on bodyspace the more frustrated I become especially because I’ve been kicking my a$$ in the gym 6 days a week (with appropriate rest to avoid overtraining, of course) and my eating habits (used to be 60% clean) are now at least 85 if not 90% consistently. The hardest part has been giving sugar the boot but I’ve done it! I haven’t had any sugary, candy-like substance at all since Easter! I can’t say I haven’t had any results…it just seems like they’ve been miniscule. But on the other hand looking around at all those pictures doesn’t really give me a time frame that other women have done it in either. *SSSSSIIIIIIIIGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH*

i can’t for the life of me understand why this happens. it seems like i’m so committed to my goal and then all of a sudden i just break down and eat CRAP. i don’t like the way it makes me feel after i’ve eaten it or the fact that i KNOW its keeping me from being where i want to be. my body is physically rejecting it because its not used to it anymore but i STILL eat it! even if there are healthier, cleaner options available i’ll still go for the crap! i just want to let it go…..and be done with it forever.

i’ve hit the three week mark for my carb cycling and clean eating efforts and I must say I’ve done alright but I wish I had done better. this last week i broke into my boyfriends stash of whole wheat goldfish and gram crackers on two seperate occassions. now i didn’t go totally overboard, mind you, but i still feel like a jerk for doing that to myself. but sometimes i just feel like rebelling against myself which always ends in some kind of dietary sabotage. i can’t understand why i would rebel against myself when i know perfectly well where eating processed food gets me…bloated and unhappy. i’ve always been able to eat a lot of crap and get away with it so maybe its just that mindset that i’m still unable to get over all the way. i am a mesomorph and i was just reading a book awhile ago and it said something interesting: "most mesomorphs are one ice cream cone away from being fat." i try to use this as inspiration as its really true. most people who have been blessed with good genetics never think a thing about using that to their advantage and being the best that they can be rather than just getting by with being average. I DON"T WANT TO BE AVERAGE ANY MORE!!!!!!!!!!

Today I had no clients so aside from being outside and enjoying the middle-of-winter 70 degree day……I had a lot of time to browse the forums here for answers to my various questions. In particular I was searching nutrition/diet threads because I think, (think being the operative word) that is where I’ve always tended to fail in the past. I’m just so uncertain as to HOW to manipulate my diet to get the exact results I want. I’m tired of playing around with things and not getting results. So any way, here I am noodling around in the diet section when I see a post that brings a new question to mind. In the post she was asking whether or not she should be cutting or bulking in order to achieve a much leaner state. I hadn’t even thought of it that way. Maybe I should be bulking instead? I am 22%BF…and she or someone who answered her post said something about if your around 20% BF you should bulk and if your more you should cut. I’ve absolutely NEVER heard of this before. So now I’m more confused than ever and feeling a little hopeless…..

Clean eating……check.

Carb cycling……check.

But what about calorie counting? If I am trying to lose body fat should I be doing this as well? I’m hoping the general consensus is NO because its such a pain in the butt. Then I start getting all paranoid about it and spend all my time thinking and worrying about it and it ends up ruining my day. I don’t even know how many calories I should be getting anyways. Before I started this whole project I was averaging 2000 a day. Now I’m keeping an eye on things and averaging about 1500-1600 a day. Is that low enough to lose body fat? I do a ton of exercise and my job involves hefting things around several hours a day so I want to make sure I’m getting enough not to feel run down, sick and tired all the time. Any one want to put in their two cents?

to use creatine or not to use creatine….that is the question! i’ve thought about it on and off for awhile but now that i’m a more active member of bodyspace i’ve seen quite a few ripped women who do use it. i’ve always been afraid of the "bloating" factor since i have many food allergies which cause gastrointestinal bloating (and its VERY UNCOMFORTABLE) but does creatine do that or is it a different bloat? i would like to start using something to give me that extra pump during workout and help speed up the recovery process. some ones i’m looking at include gaspari SizeOn and BSN NO Explode…any one else have experiences with these? or just anything to say about creatine supps at all? I don’t really know anything about the cycles or how far in advance you need to get off it to drop the water weight if you have some sort of a lean down deadline….so many many many questions:)
THANKS!!!!!!!!

So we’re less than 10 days away from my project start date and I’m still riddled with questions on clean eating. I know that at restaurants you can order clean but what about if you’re invited over for dinner at someone’s house? How do you eat clean when you don’t even know what food is going to be there? In addition I have many food allergies that aren’t deadly but do make for a miserable feeling evening. You can always bank on salad being available but how do you get by without being rude and refusing the nice meal they have slaved over JUST FOR YOU? Is it rude to suggest to them that you have dietary restrictions or food allergies?