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Gym Training • Brain Training • Cut - 6 days out

As I said in my previous post, I’m just finishing up my first reverse diet and I’m going to be honest here, it wasn’t the easiest thing to do….mentally I mean, the eating part was a DREAM (#ilovecarbs). I’ve always been very conscious of my feelings towards food, I think it’s very easy to slip into a restricted state of mind and sometimes no matter how hard you try to stay in control, you lose it. It’s so, so important you make sure you don’t let it get the better of you. It doesn’t matter how well you know the facts, it’s all about brain training and gaining perception. It’s all very well training your body to adapt but can you train your brain to evolve and keep up?

It happened to me earlier this year – I got silly, I got restricted and I admittedly lost some control. I mean, it wasn’t tragic. I wasn’t starving myself or anything but I stupidly ignored my macros and kindaaaa massively under ate. I was going on holiday and I wanted to look the best I could as quick as I could.

Reality check: DOESN’T HAPPEN.

Short Term Goals = Short Term Progress, fact. Sure, I started losing weight but I definitely didn’t look as good as I did before. I was depleted and my muscles looked flat and sad.

And seriously, as soon as I started to try and eat normally again and reintroduce more carbs (okay admittedly by “reintroducing carbs” I literally mean eating the entire all-inclusive buffet and all of the all-inclusive desserts which as a result ended on more than one occasion in a carb coma (aka happy place)) my metabolism was like NOPE. I gained water weight, I was majorly bloated and the lbs were going up and up. Not good. This in turn was just making it even harder to get back in the driver’s seat of the brain train. Vicious circle!

So here’s where the reverse diet came in. I came back from my holiday with a sweet suntan and a not so sweet amount of self-confidence, something needed to change. I needed to love food again but more importantly I needed to love myself.

Slowly we brought carbs back into my life and it is the best thing that’s happened to me since I’ve started this whole process….I mean literally. Not only am I happy, energised, smashing out more work outs and filling out (in all the good ways!), but I am back in control baby!! I’m loving food, carbs and most of all the way my body has adapted to the reverse! I’m so proud of my metabolism, it has been such a good team player and now we’re sitting real good for a successful cut!

I’ve learned how to be patient, persistent and optimistic. I’ve re-learned the facts and I am NEVER slipping back down that slippery slope of no control. Right now, honestly, I’m the happiest I’ve been and I am so excited to start my cut and see my progress! I always feared the word “bulk” but essentially my macros right now are sitting at about that and it’s great.

More food =** GOOD. More shape = GOOD.** More Strength = GOOD. More happiness = GOOD. Baby ab progress = **GOOD. **The cookie I just ate = REAL GOOD.

**Long Term Goals = Long Term Progress. **

My Macros for the last week of my reverse are sitting at 360c|110p|55f – and I’m going to thoroughly enjoy my last week of high carbs.

A Blog Was Born • How I Got Here • Cut - 7 Days Out

I figured it was about time I started my own fitness blog, so here it is….welcome to RBeFit. Yup, great name – I know (open to suggestions).

I’m currently studying to be a Personal Trainer and I’ll hold both hands up and admit the fact I am one of those super annoying gym people…. I eat, sleep (rave, repeat) and breathe fitness, and I love it. Well, I say fitness – I HATE CARDIO. CARDIO SUX. I love training, I love weights and I love that post work out buzz. I never used to be like this though, you’d more than likely find me at the bottom of a (multi pack) of biscuits rather than at the gym but a few years ago I jumped on this train and I haven’t looked back since.

Let’s take this back a few years to an unhealthy, unmotivated, lazy version of myself, meet my first ever progress pic :

(Warning: Mild nudezZzZzz!)

I drank copious amounts of full sugar carbonated drinks (Irn Bru - Scotland strong!), I ate a lot of junk and I would never step foot in a gym. Oh, and I was unhappy. Very unhappy. I’d look in the mirror and it would suck. I think I just got really good at convincing myself I didn’t care. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve never been even remotely overweight; I was just unhealthy and had quite a few extra tyres to show for it.

I don’t really know what happened or what made me decide to change my lifestyle, maybe it’s the fact I had a couple of trips to America booked, or maybe it’s because I trained in music theatre for a while (not even a full year – guuuurl can’t dance) and got forced to exercise….a lot, or maybe it was as simple as waking up one day and realising enough was enough. Who knows? It’s not important – what’s important is that it happened and I couldn’t be more thankful that it did…and y’know the best part about it? I get to thank myself because NO ONE started this journey but me. Sure, I had people pushing me and I certainly had a lot of help from friends (Hi Grant!) but they didn’t do this, I did – and that’s pretty cool.

So let’s bring this back to the ‘now’ - 10th of August 2015. I’m just finishing up a reverse diet and I am one week out from my next cut:

“Reverse Dieting is quite simply a period in which calories are increased to maintenance levels or above after extended periods of caloric restriction, essentially you are ‘reversing’ out of your diet, however weight gain is not a goal of reverse dieting. The goal of reverse dieting is to increase calorie intake as high as possible whilst limiting weight gain. It is most likely that an increase in calorie intake along with carbohydrates will cause added water retention and likely weight gain however the gradual nature of the increases prevents significant fat gain. This increase in calorie intake shall serve to maximize your metabolic capacity, making subsequent fat loss efforts much easier after a reverse diet.” – Macrofit.com

I’m an IIFYM (If It Fits Your Macros) girl. I think I tried clean eating for the first couple of months but that just wasn’t for me – BORING – I much prefer flexible dieting. It’s pretty simple: hit your macros, and hit your work outs. How you hit your macros doesn’t matter, well….don’t be stupid, if you hit all your fats with chocolate and burgers you’re probably not going to feel nutritionally great – but it’s all about balance. Macro-nutrients and Micro-nutrients. Peanut Butter and Jelly. Ying and Yang. Wayne and Garth.