scouter99 transformed

I haven’t been in the gym since last Tuesday.  That is almost 1 week of pure hell.  My back has been hurting so bad that I felt I needed to take some extended time off and give it a really good break.  Tonight I break my vow of celibacy on the iron and am going to get back in there and work chest.  I am still going to take it easy because I am still in pain, but damn if I am going to take anymore time away.  I cannot WAIT to hit that iron tonight!  This day is just dragging by because that’s all I can think about!

Having this injury has certainly been a HUGELY depressing challenge for me, but I am seeing a silver lining as well.  First of all- I appreciate myself when I am healthy SO MUCH MORE now that I can’t do everything I want to do.  Being able to lift heavy, work out hard, and do all the physical daily activities I want is a HUGE blessing!  You never really see that until you lose it, huh?  I promise when I feel better I will appreciate my body so much more!!  

The other good thing to come of this is that I am going to be changing things up a bit and am so excited about that!!  I am going to add some cardio back into the mix.  I stopped all cardio about a month ago to really focus on bulking and adding quality muscle.  I think that was a good thing- but I am ready to move this body in new ways again.  I feel thick and not in a good way.  I’ve avoided weighing myself because I knew that would send me over the edge.  I’m sure I’m up a few pounds due to eating more calories and adding creatine into my routine…. Don’t need to see it on the scale!  I’d like to drop a little fat and see what this new muscle I’ve added actually looks like!  Just in time for shorts and short sleeve weather to find its way back to Minnesota!!  I also started a round of Animal Cuts to help with that.  I love Cuts!  I always feel so awesome when I take it.  I kicked off the addition of cardio with 30 minutes on the Elliptical at 5:30am this morning.  Even though I really hate when that alarm goes off when it is still dark and way too early I do love the way I feel after doing cardio in the morning.  I hate leaving cardio for the evening.  Lifting- now that’s a different story.  I really hate lifting in the morning and love doing it at night!  I guess that means I was MADE for 2-a-days, right!?!  Cardio in the morning, iron in the evening, ain’t life just grand?!?!

So- with that update on me I’ll leave you to the rest of your day, with just a small request to wrap things up.  If you are so inclined please send me positive vibes that my back will get better soon.  I am still in a fair amount of pain when I bend forward or twist to the right.  I am going with the thought that it is just a muscle strain and am trying to be gentle with myself.  There may have to be a doctor visit in my future but since it has only been not quite 2 weeks I’ll wait and see if it heals on it’s own for a bit yet.  I didn’t really take care of myself the 1st week of this injury (because I didn’t really realize I was injured) but now that I am taking care of myself hopefully I’ll see things get better day by day.  

Train hard everyone!  Extra hard for the girl who wishes more than anything she could too!

Yesterday I went and got my body fat tested for the first time in my life.  Let me just say that based on what I THOUGHT my bf would be and what it actually is shows how very little I understand about body composition.  For those of you who didn’t read my post announcing I was getting this test, let me catch you up.  I was certain that my bodyfat would be somewhere in the range of 35%.  CERTAIN I tell you!

My actual bodyfat???  17.9%!  YES!  I am under 20%!  I could not believe it.  Seriously- I still can’t.  Part of me feels that the trainer who tested me must not have known what she was doing.  Yes I do have a lot of muscle- but I also have ROLLS of fat in my mid-section.  That’s primarily where I carry it.  It was done with the calipers at the U of MN and hopefully she did it correctly- but even with a 2-3% margin of error this is still INCREDIBLE NEWS!  Holy shit (pardon my french)!  I plan to get it tested again in 12 weeks to see what progress I’m making.  I was floating on the clouds last night afterward and if bb.com hadn’t been having so darn many problems last night I would have posted it here right away!

Now I have a baseline and something to work with!

Today is weigh in and measurement day.  I picked Friday because it should be my best day after a week of clean eating and kick ass workouts.  I’ll post what my plan is in another post.

Drumroll please……… I am down 1.6lbs!  YAY ME!!  I’m not sure what is up with my measurements and think I am going to have to get Chad to help me with them because my waist measurement was down (my biggest problem area so this ROCKS) but my thigh and chest measurements were up.  Don’t get that.  They weren’t up by much so it is probably user error.

Anyway- I feel really good about this and definitely needed this boost to keep up the momentum.  Now if I can just stay off the scale until next Friday…..

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