So it's been a while...
4 weeks, to be exact, since I last gave you an update on what I've been up to! The excitement of my show has come and gone and now I'm living 'normal' life. I'm not prepping for a figure competition any time soon, nor am I cutting weight to fit into a weight class for a lifting meet. Instead, I'm following my nutrition plan simply to perform and feel my best. At the time of my show I spent 17 weeks straight slowly eating less and less, continually eating at a deficit, especially during those last 4 weeks. Right after my show, over course I wanted to go back to eating MORE food (hellooo, wouldn't you?) but that would have been the absolute WORST thing for me to do immediately following. Instead, I had decided many weeks ago that I would Reverse Diet out of my show.
Reverse Dieting
If you've never heard of Reverse Dieting, I highly recommend reading this eBook written by Sohee Lee. She does a fantastic job explaining metabolic adaptation and how our bodies respond to caloric decreases and then increases. When we eat at a continuous calorie deficit, our bodies begin to adapt and become more efficient at burning those calories. This is great for weight loss, but when we reach our "goal weight" we can't simply go back to eating the amount of food we were at the beginning of the diet. Our bodies don't know what to do with all those excess calories! We must restore our metabolisms slowly, which is exactly what I've been doing these last 4 weeks since my show.
My goal for the coming weeks and months is to increase my caloric intake around 5% every 1-2 weeks, with the goal of maintaining my weight and body measurements through out. It takes patience, but so far I've had fantastic results! The graph below shows my weight and abdomen measurement (around my belly button) on the left axis and my daily calories, for both high carb and low carb days, on the right axis.
You see my weight and abdomen measurements have stayed virtually unchanged...exactly what I'm looking for! Much different from my show prep, where I was always hoping for reduced weight and measurements. Now, I'm slowly eating more and striving for consistency.
Progress Photos
The graph shows that I've stayed consistent over the past 4 weeks...but photos show a different story. I can see so much progress in my legs. In fact, I think I look better now than at the time of my show, ha!
Training
My training has been so fun this last month. I've been diligent in sticking to my track workouts which include a mixture of agility drills, plyometrics and sprints. The proof is in the photos that this is definitely benefiting me. I've also been Olympic weightlifting 2-3 times per week. I may be competing at the end of March in a weightlifting meet and if I do, I don't want to disrupt my Reverse Dieting progress. Usually I'd try to compete in the 63 kg weight class (138.9 lb), but I've been sitting consistently around 143 lb (64.7 kg) which would kick me up to the 69 kg weight class. I'm OK with this.
If you want to follow along with my training, I've been posting videos on my Instagram more frequently to give you a peak what I've been doing during my workouts!
Nutrition
It has been such a welcomed change to not be so precise about every little thing I eat. While I'll be the first to admit I haven't followed my macros exactly every single day, I try my best to not go over. I've been posting sooo many food photos over on my Instagram account, too many to share here on the page! Here are just a few of my favorites.
That's all for now! I'll be back in April for my next update. In the mean time stay tuned for all the exciting new recipes I'll be posting!
