Fitness Case Study - Week Nine Recap

Circuits and cardio and a calorie drop, OH MY!  

The best way I can describe week nine is to say that I got my arse handed to me on a platter! I've started the "leaning out" phase and suffice it to say, "It ain't no joke!". I've been doing circuits thru the whole study, but these seem to be harder.  You see, Tab, aka the World's Greatest Trainer, knows just what order to put exercises in so that something that would ordinarily be easy as pie becomes nearly impossible.  Notice the "nearly" in that sentence? Everything required can always be done, you just have to have your head in the game.

I also got to start doing cardio this last week.  It felt great to do it again.  I hadn't realized how much I'd missed it.  Right now, I have two days of HIIT and three days of Steady State cardio.  I think I might even be seeing some results already!  I seem to be getting a waist where there was none before!  For a while now, I've been shaped like a brick!  Just straight up and down. It's really exciting to see a curve!

Calories, smalories...  uh, yeah, WHATEVER!!!  They're important little things, those calories! Remember in a previous post, when I said I'm running on racing fuel?  Well, I'm still running on racing fuel, it just feels more like fumes than actual fuel!  LOL!  Basically, I still eat mostly the same foods I was eating before but in a little bit smaller portions.  My caloric drop, on average, seems to be only about 200 calories per day but man, am I feelin' it!  So that teaches us something:  it is so important to know just how many calories you require in order to meet your fitness goal.  Otherwise, you won't be functioning at optimum levels.  Your training will suffer and you will not meet your goal!  It really is very scientific, there's not a lot of guess work.  Of course, everyone's body is different and tweaks will have to be made here and there for every individual.  But the basic mathematical formulas lay great ground work for figuring out just how many calories you need to consume in accordance with your training style to meet your goal. 

To wrap it up, I'm a little tired but SUPER MOTIVATED!  I feel like my body is responding to the training and meal plan.  I can't wait to see what changes are coming in the next few weeks!

Borrowed from Pinetrest.com

Happy Monday, dear reader!