There comes a time when staring your goal down day after day, week after week, year after year wears on you. It seems every year I have the same fitness goal. Vain as it may be, I want to be lean enough to wear whatever I want and not feel self conscious or hate the pictures taken of me during a crossfit workout. I always have other fitness goals. For example, place in the top 10 for the open in our gym, run a sub 21 minute 5K , and get my butterfly pull ups back. However, this one goal haunts me yearly because it seems to always take extreme measures like a fitness show to reach. That’s ok once or twice, but I don’t want to have to do a fitness show every year to reach my end product. Years of fitness shows and dieting incorrectly has taken its toll on my metabolism. I always used a nutrition coach in the past and his sub 1000 calorie diets reset my metabolism to meet it. Therefor, to get to the lean body type I need to for a show (and like personally), I have to dip back down to those dangerous numbers. Its the only way my body responds. It cuts into my social life and alienates me from friends.
This year I am trying something different. I am not restricting anymore. I am not meeting my metabolisms at its 1080 cal per day resting metabolic rate number. I am saying screw restricting and gradually increasing my macros! I am infusing my body with what I feel it needs. Now I am doing this based on years of counting macros. I would not recommend this unless you have had over a year’s experience tracking your macros. My old macros to lean out prior to the new year were 94.2 grams carbs average (80 on low carb day 2x per week, 100 on workout days 5x per week), 155 grams protein, and 30 grams fat…not too fun!
Since the new year, I have been weighing out all food but giving my body a little more what I feel like it needs. I have not weighed myself until one week ago and then again today. The results: the same restrictive diet got me to 137lbs before I left for vacation December 28th as my current diet now that I have been following since the beginning of January. I have not been tracking my food because I was too scared to see the macros. (yes I am a girl and still have mental problems like the rest of you!) I just now entered in my current daily routine into fitclick and have been consuming 120g carbs, 153 g pro and 35 g fat. To those of you who do not track now; this may seem insignificant. However, those of you who do track understand what a 27% carb increase (25.7 grams) and 16% fat (5 grams) increase is per day. This is extremely significant! Not to mention going out to eat 3x per week: 1x Friday, 1x Saturday, and 1x Sunday and enjoying a few cocktails on Saturday night. I always make healthy choices when eating out but the fat content and overall macros for my day will be higher 3x per week.
What does this all mean?!?! Never track your macros cause it makes you crazy? No. Eat what you want when you want? No.
#1 This means there is more than one way to increase your metabolism. You can also “pull” it up through moderate increases in your macros.
#2 This means that everyone of you that has worked with me and tracked for over 6 months should get to the point that you can go on vacation and not track your macros on Fitclick. You should be able to come back the same weight if you exercise self discipline with what you have learned about what your body needs and listen to your body.
THIS IS REAL LIFE…going off the grid sometimes and listening to your body. It takes scientific dietary programming and months of discipline to get there. This is the end product we all want. To be able to enjoy a rich social life and also a nice lean physique.
