Week 1 down✔️

Yesterday I completed my first full week of my 8 Week Transformation by Ryan Spiteri. I had 5 lifting sessions to do this week plus three 30 minute low intensity steady state cardio (LISS) sessions to do. The lifting was great! Cardio? Normally I hate it but this week it was fantastic. The best thing is to make it fun! On my first day of the program, I used the treadmill for LISS. I got quite bored of walking, so I did run most of it, which only made it more of a workout. My other two cardio sessions were in the form of hiking, which I love! Saturday I hiked up to the local fire tower which was great, although it was pretty hot out. Yesterday though! Yikes! A group of friends and I decided to the trip to New Hampshire to hike Mount Monadnock. Little did I know it was going to end up being 5 hours of hiking 7 miles (7 treacherous miles at that) in 90+ degree weather. We decided to make it harder by taking the Spellman Trail which was pretty much scaling the side of a mountain at times.

Now, Let's talk about food. The eating plan is actually really good. I feel better. My stomach doesn't hurt after I eat, probably because I'm not eating greasy restaurant food. I love how my body feels when I treat it right, and give it nutritions food rather than all the crap i've been used to eating. Don't get me wrong, although I'm loving the food that I do get to eat on this plan, I do 100% miss alcohol and pizza. That's what cheat days are for! Which now brings me to what "cheat days" are in this plan. It's not really a cheat day, rather than allowing myself to have something, one time per week, that the meal plan doesn't otherwise let me have. This weeks cheat? A margarita. And boy was it delicious.
The meal plan has been consisting of high protein and a decent amount of carbs. I love chicken and broccoli anyway so having that for a huge portion of my meals hasn't been all that bad.
The whole meal prep thing, I could definitely be better about. As i've said previously, I used to really only eat dinner, so having to plan for my food for the day ahead of time has taken some practice.


I'm putting my heart into this. This experience has taught me a lot. It's taught me a lot about portion control, how carbs are actually a good thing, how much of a difference getting enough protein can make and to not be scared of food. Exercise should not be used as a punishment for what you ate, but rather, it should be seen as fuel to help your body do amazing things. Fuel to help you see just how hard you can push yourself. The body is truly amazing when you treat it right.

Below i've added some pictures of our Monadnock hike. I highly recommend it for anyone who may be in the New Hampshire area. It was a blast and definitely quite the workout!

The Spellmen Trail of Mt Monadnock

Getting closer to the summit

The fantastic group of friends I hiked with. Love you all so much!
<3

**Picture credit to the fantastic Beth Adams**

Day 1: How well did it really go?

How was my first day doing my customized meal and workout plan from Ryan Spiteri? Overall, I thought today went great! Let me just start by saying that waking up at 4:30am to make sure that I could get my full workout in was rough. I am not a morning person. But I managed to get myself out of bed, drank my protein shake and ate my hard boiled egg (according to the meal plan) before I headed out the door, making my way to my local YMCA.
Once I got to the Y,  figured I would start by doing my shoulder routine as well as some cardio. My cardio, according to my plan, is a 30 minute walk (3-4mph) 3X per week, for the first week. I hopped on a treadmill and started my walk at 3.8mph and quickly found myself getting bored, even while watching Law & Order:SVU (which my my favorite show ever!). To put my boredom to rest, I decided to kick up the speed to 6mph and run my remaining 20 minutes.
Following my cardio session, I headed to weight room to kill my shoulder routine. I have never ever ever had a day designated to shoulders, mainly because I felt like it was such a small muscle group, that I had to work out another body part to make my lifting session worthwhile. Today, I learned that my mentality was totally wrong about that. It started with smith machine shoulder presses, then throw in some cable upright rows, lat raises and some plate front raises, and I could definitely feel the burn.

After the gym, I came home and ate my banana along with my rice cake and 15g of peanut butter. I have never been a breakfast person. I rarely eat before 2pm (unless it's a protein shake) so I was not the least bit hungry after the gym. I forced myself to eat it, because that's what the plan said to do. By 10am, I was starving so I had my cheese stick however that didn't hold me over for very long. I could not wait to come home and eat lunch. My lunch was filling enough to hold me over until my 3:30 snack which consisted of a 5.3oz container of plain greek yogurt with blueberries mixed it.

Around 5, I could hear my stomach rumblin' again. For me, this is such a strange feeling. Normally, if I do eat breakfast or lunch, I'm not hungry for the rest of the day. Dinner was 100g of chicken, 100g of broccoli and 100g of white potato. Now I'm sitting here, filling you in, and I could not be more stuffed. Every time I ate today, I was incredibly full, but it seemed like hunger was held off for only an hour, and my next meal time could not come soon enough.

Even though I dreaded waking up as early as I did, it felt amazing once I got there. Hopefully tomorrow I can remember how good it felt, and I won't have to coax myself into going.

That's today's update. I won't be blogging and updating every day, as I'm sure most days are going to be pretty much the same, just different workouts. I am extremely excited to see where this next 8 weeks takes me, and to see what my body is capable of. I am also eager to see how much of a difference this eating plan will make not only for my workouts, but also how it will make my body feel, as compared to my usual habit of eating out.

8 Week Transformation

Tomorrow starts my '8 Week Transformation' through Ryan Spiteri. Tomorrow I begin a rigorous training and meal plan. I'm going from working out before food, having a protein shake for brunch, and a large meal for dinner, which was almost always accompanied by alcohol. My dinner wasn't always healthy, either. Eating out quite often just because I was too lazy after work. What am I doing now? Eating before AND after gym sesh. Eating a morning snack. Lunch. An afternoon snack and dinner! This doesn't include alcohol (which I'm kind of excited about, to be honest.) 
My training plan will be updated in one month based on my results.
What are my first impressions? 
There's quite a bit of smith machine exercises in my plan, which honestly seems weird to me, mostly because your squatting form isn't going to be entirely correct. However, from what I've heard/read, it's a great way to add more weight which will help you build muscle.
There is also a lot of exercises that used to refer to as "stupid girl exercises" (mostly exercises that focus solely on the glutes I.e. Cable glute kickbacks). They've always come across as pointless exercises that only work the booty, which is what girls tend to focus on. Maybe I'll learn to like them, and appreciate their use. Who knows?
What are my hopes for this program?
I honestly signed up for a body coach because I had been considering it for a long time, but I figured it would be great for me to get the experience and knowledge since personal training and body coaching is something I would love to do. Fitness is my passion and I would love to help motivate others, and help them live better lives. I also want this blog to hold me accountable. I figure the more people who know I am taking on challenge, the more likely I am to actually follow through with it until the end.

It'll be nice to see a Transformation, gain the knowledge and experience and challenge myself. Here's to an exciting, but scary, 8 weeks!