Saturday, April 30, 2011

Are we there yet?

Hi everyone,

Week 11 of my 12 week Challenge! OMG!

Once again I have forgotten all about my poor blog! A lot has happened since my last post...

First of all I participated in the 'Mid-way Foxy Challenge' which was a fitness pyramid (aka 2 hours of pain). I was competing against 12 other girls for this, with one person being eliminated per round and then a triple elimination at the quarter final. The rounds were push-ups, step-ups, plank, burpees, sit-ups, another plank!, and a wall squat. After making it through all of this, 4 of us were left. Onto the rowers! First two to row 1km would make it into the final. Proud to say I won this round! Which took me by surprise as I was battling a chest infection at the time and rowing definitely isn't my strong suit. The final round was a hard slog up a hill (gear 8) on the spin bikes. First to reach 2km would be crowned the winner. Unfortunately I came in as runner-up (by 4 seconds!) but was pretty proud of myself nonetheless.

In terms of weight loss, the journey to this point has been varied. I had a couple of small losses, one gain and one big loss. Luckily the gain was only 200 grams. Since my last post I have cracked into the 70s! Still a long way to go, but I haven't been in the 70s since early high school so am enjoying it! Currently I weigh 77kg (9.8kg lost so far!). To reach the goal I set for Foxy I need to lose 2kg in 10 days. Not sure if this is attainable (I've only had one loss that big) but I'm going to give it everything I've got. On the 9th of May we are having 'after' pictures taken and if I'm feeling brave enough I may share them with you ha ha ha ;)

My measurements have been progressing quite nicely. Still haven't figured out how to set up my spreadsheet on here, so will list them again:

14 March

Bust: 97

Under bust: 90.5

Waist: 94

Hips: 104.5

Upper thigh: 62

Lower thigh: 53

Arm: 31.5

11 April

Bust: 95

Under bust: 88

Waist: 83.5

Hips: 104.5

Upper thigh: 58.5

Lower thigh: 49

Arm: 28

So in a month, 23.5cm gone! And never coming back! Yay!

Final lot of Foxy measurements are being done in 3 days. I don't feel smaller though... Hopefully that's just me getting used to the new body and cm's are still dropping. Heaps of lovely girls at the gym have been complimenting me on how I look and it makes me realise that I am making progress. I know the numbers are telling me I am but I just can't see it in myself. Though the Foxy Challenge will be over in a week, I'm going to keep measuring myself once a month to keep track of everything.

So that's it from me for now. I'll try to remember to post again after next measurements and final weigh-in. Fingers crossed I get to 75kg!

Thanks for reading :)

Friday, March 18, 2011

5 down, 7 to go...

Hello my lovely readers!

My poor blog has been somewhat abandoned for the last few weeks - uni got busy and I am on clinical placement at the moment.

Monday will mark the start of week 6 of the Get Foxy Challenge - I can't believe it! I am really enjoying my PT, Slim and the accountability it gives me. My weight loss hasn't been fabulous for the last couple of weeks, I only lost 900g this week and the week before put on 200g. I know why though, I have been a little slack with my nutrition and it's just been from laziness and lack of self-control. I have no excuse for that, I jut need to get my act together! My focus is going to be nutrition from now on since I have the exercise well and truly sorted out. I started the challenge at 86.8kg and am now 83.6kg, so 3.2kg in 5 weeks. Not anywhere near where I wanted to be. My goal is to be 75kg by the end of the Challenge / my birthday. Definitely need to be 100% focused if I'm going to get there!

On a more positive note, I have lost a fair bit off my body fat percentage and measurements. I was 41.6% fat at the launch (gross!) and am down to 36.1%. Unfortunately I'm not tech savvy enough to be able to show you my measurement spreadsheet, so I'll just list the changes:

12 Feb

Bust - 98.5cm
Under bust - 94cm
Waist - 96.5cm
Hips - 112cm
Upper thigh - 67cm
Lower thigh - 54cm
Arm - 31cm

14 Mar

Bust - 97cm
Under bust - 90.5cm
Waist - 94cm
Hips - 104.5 cm
Upper thigh - 62cm
Lower thigh - 53cm
Arm - 31.5cm

In 4 weeks I lost 18.5cm! I'm really pleased with that. I can see certain areas have toned up and I've had to buy some new jeans! In light of passing the 85kg mark, I though I would give myself a reward so I bought some snazzy new LJ gear (a cute red singlet and some shorts). You'd normally see me around the gym wearing an old t-shirt and 3/4 leggings but now I can actually wear a singlet and shorts - go me!

What else have I been up to food and exercise-wise while I've been MIA? Well, I finally got around to trying BodyAttack at the gym. Oh.My.Goodness. The phrase "BodyAttack - everything else is just a warm up" is definitely on the right track. This class is HARD! It involves sports-inspired moves, power and agility. I felt incredibly unco my first class, but the instructor is great and it torches 500 calories in an hour, so I've been back a couple of times. You definitely need to go a few times to get it :P

I also recently hopped on the quinoa bandwagon. After having read about this super-food many times, I thought I would have a crack at making some and you know what? It was delicious! So far I have only had it as an accompaniment to food like spag bol and stir-fry. My brother recently was diagnosed with Coeliac disease, so I'll be using the opportunity to find more ways of cooking this yummy stuff!

So that's it for now. Apparently all the Foxy girls will be participating in a sports carnival in a few weeks, so I'll let you know what happens with that.

Stay happy and healthy :)

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Week 2 Update

Hi everyone,

It's already the end of Week 2 of the Foxy challenge! That just flew by!

I have to admit I forgot about this blog last week. But the point of the blog is to keep track of my progess and share my experience so I thought I had better get back to it (besides, that would be pretty bad if I gave up after 1 post!)

So how has my Challenge been progressing? As you would know from my previous post, there are two main aspects of the Challenge: Slimplicity (food coaching) and personal training. I'm finding it hard to stick to the Slim plan because to me, it seems very strict. Instead of counting calories they use their own system of how many aspects of a food group you should have, for example each day you should have 6 carbs, 3 protein, 2 fruit, etc. So it adds on a level of complexity that I find a tad unneccessary, so I've just been making sure I keep under the recommended calorie intake for each day and making an educated guess about the other things. I do like the fact my diet has become a lot cleaner, and I'm starting to feel the difference. As a 'personal' challenge I've decided to give up soft drink altogether (not that I ever drank a lot, but cutting it out will help my weight loss and I like testing myself to see how long I can go without things) and cut right down on sugary drinks like juice and iced tea (which I LOVE).

As for my personal training, I am really enjoying it so far. It's funny how having some one on one time can make you work that little bit harder. My PT Michelle and I have similar personalities and she knows me from her Combat classes so we get along well. I have her a bit of a surprise in our first session with how much weight I could squat! As well as weight loss, I mentioned I would like to improve my upper body strength so I'm looking forward to having sore arms for the next couple of months (I love DOMS!).

One of the things that's helping me on my way to winning this competition is group fitness classes. For every class you attend, you get 25 points and if it's an allocated Foxy class you get more. I've become quite the class junkie since January. Which is good news for my points card! Pump and Cycle are definitely  my stand out favourites, but since I've been wearing my new HRM I'm looking at other classes in a new light. For instance, did you know a Step class burns 630 calories? And that was just my feeble beginners attempt. Imagine how many I'd burn if I knew what I was doing! Having the HRM is great because now it is so easy to calculate at the end of the day whether I'm in a caloric deficit or surplus. It's also a great motivator since I can say to myself - "well, you managed to burn 550 calories in Pump the other day, so you need to work just as hard or increase you weights to burn some more".

I also had a weigh in this week and for Week 1 I lost .8kg. I have to admit, I was a little disappointed, but it meant I was even more conscious of what went in my mouth this week, and I moved my classes around a bit for a bit of a change. Measurements are being taken in Week 3 (so mine will be tomorrow) and hopefully there will be better results there. I can definitely see that my lower thighs are more defined (probably from all the Pump and Cycle classes!). Once I know the new measurements, I'll post :)

Stay happy and healthy readers!

Friday, February 11, 2011

Challenge launch!

Today was the challenge launch at the gym. It's the biggest event of the year so the place was buzzing! We got given our info packs, our Slimplicity diaries, score card and a little show bag of goodies (health / beauty product samples). We got broken up into teams according to what time we train at the gym. I'm in the 6am group (lets go blue team!) and all the other girls seem nice - I've seen most of them a few times around the gym and in classes so they should be good support. I also had to get my 'before' photos taken, which was a bit strange - just standing there, with 30 people looking at you - but they should be good to look back on in 12 weeks.

There was also a testing portion of the launch to give us a baseline score in a range of areas. I had to do a beep test, a five-lever test (sit-ups), push up test and plank test. This is how I went:

Beep test: level 9.1 (stoked about this as when I did the beep test in high school I could only get up 5 or 6!)
Lever test: level 5
Push ups: 10 on level 2 difficulty (on knees)
Plank: 2min 30sec (straight arms, on knees)

Overall I'm pretty happy with those results, considering I've only been going to the gym for a few months.

I also got measured and weighed in (unfortunately they didn't give me a copy of the measurements and I can't remember any of them!) but I weighed in at 86.8kg. So happy with this! One of my goals was to be under 87kg by 21st February so I've managed to reach that early! Since the challenge is 12 weeks I think I'll make my goal weight 78kg. It's realistic and if I lose more, then that's a bonus. The challenge finishes on my 23rd birthday so I would be ecstatic if I weighed 78kg at that point!

I also have weekly Slimplicity (food coaching) sessions and personal training. My first Slim session is Monday and PT (so so excited for that) is Friday, so I'll blog again to tell you how they both go :)