Time to get FOCUSED

Hey Everyone,

To anyone that has seen me over the last few weeks, will have witnessed that I haven't been at my best. I have been rather run down and I have been extremely tired. This is mostly down to work, I will admit, I have had to work away from home for a few weeks. Staying in a hotel, working long hours, not being able to eat what I normally do, not training as much as normal and not sleeping well - all of this combined has not had a good effect on my body.

I have felt very deflated and warn down, I haven't been able to train as effectively as possible. So I have scaled back the amount of training sessions, which I was trying to do in the week. This has helped a lot and made me able to cope with everything else (sleep, eating, etc).

There is light at the end of the tunnel!!

I have helped launch the team I was working so hard to put in place. It has been live for 2 weeks, which means I don't need to be away from home, can scale back my hours to normal levels and focus on my actual day to day job (which I haven't actually been able to do, since I started it in January!).

Needs must, the above happens sometimes, yes maybe I over did it, maybe I should have said I can't work away from home, to focus on myself. BUT....it doesn't happen every day and I don't have to do that again for a while.

I haven't felt like me in the last few weeks, I have struggled with energy levels and being able to hit the gym. Which isn't like me. I push myself all the time and I started to feel like I wasn't me, by the fluffiness in my gut and feel like I'm further away from my goal.

I need to re-focus, get my drive and determination back!!

Thankfully for me.......yesterday that happened! On the train on the way back from Halifax, I was sitting there, trying to snooze and not succeeding. So I started to think 'what can I do, to get back to how I was?' and I started to make notes. Why I do, what I do? How have I done it before? How am I going to do it this time? I then started to watch some vlogs from my favourite fitness guru 'Nikki Blackketter', she really inspires me. I'm not sure exactly why or how, but whenever I watch her videos, it makes me want to train, eat well and achieve a similar physique to her.

Link to Nikki's youtube (vlog) page: https://www.youtube.com/user/nikkiblackketter

So I'm starting small, next week I will do the follow:

1. I will drink 4 litres of water a day (I will struggle with this!!)
2. I will eat at least one bag of broccoli, carrot and cauliflower mix a day, to get my veg in and my fibre.
3. I will get my carbs from veg, not wraps or bread
4. I will train 5 times this week, 4 training and 1 conditional
5. I will get at least 7 hours good quality sleep a night

I think I'll leave it there.... I'm only focusing on one week at a time, for now. I have my longer terms goals, but at the moment, I only want to think about the above.

I want to go back to regularly losing weight and my body fat percentage reducing, I want to get to the leanest I've ever been and really push my body to it's maximum. You must never forget where you have come from, but equally you should push yourself to the next thing, whether that be learning, fitness or health.

Wish me luck for this week.

Thanks for reading
Holly :) x

Set Back

Hello,

This post is about set backs, those things in life that come along and stop you being able to achieve what you want.

In the last week or two I have been under a lot of stress, through work, through training, through part time course, through diet, through pushing myself. This has resulted in a number of things not going to plan.

Work:

I have been very stressed this week with work, we are coming close to the live date for a project and this means that my workstream has a lot to deliver in the next 2 weeks. I am not an outwardly stressed person (most don't realise that I am stressed, sometimes not even me), I tend to filter this and it comes through in my skin (spots / eczema), not being able to sleep and generally just looking tired.

Water:

Because work has been busy, I haven't ben able to drink as much water. Yes this is an excuse for me and I hate excuses, but this is the case. I have been travelling a lot, which makes it difficult to drink, you don't want to be stuck in a traffic jam for 15 miles and no toilet, when you are drinking a lot. At work with meetings and training, this leaves little time for me to get up and go to the toilet, so I subconsciously stop drinking.

Getting to 7pm and realising you haven't drunk enough is horrible and I tend to gorge on water at this point and make myself feel awful.

Training:

I found a gym across the road from my hotel, ideal I hear you cry - no not exactly. It was an extremely busy gym and machines were rarely free, meaning waiting longer than I should between training sets. This also meant that any exercises, which I should have done straight after the other (super sets), were broken up, therefore meaning I wasn't training as I should have been.

I made the most of it and trained hard, but wasn't quite the effective programme I have set.

Also, the gym was very warm and when I was de-hydrated anyway, this didn't bode well. To the point, where I was feeling very dizzy and sick.

Sleeping:

I'm struggling to sleep big time, with all of the above in my head, it isn't surprising to be honest. But on some days I've been getting between 3-4 hours - this is not enough for everything I'm doing at the moment.

Overview:

I have (above), 4 stresses on my body, on top of that I have course work, dieting and generally trying to stay awake.

6 (at least) stresses, my body is trying to work through and deal with. My brain doesn't help matters sometimes and this can make me feel worse. Suffice to say the 2kg I have put on this week (that is right, put on), was a massive shock to me. I have trained, I have ate well and my body has changed, for the better. I am leaner than I was last week, so this is a mystery.

Explained by my PT, that I am in a deficit with my eating at the moment (as part of my diet to get leaner), but this has taken into account the eating, the training and the extra cycle sprints I have been doing. This has not taken into account the work stress, the no sleeping or the course work - therefore, my body is in a bigger deficit that we would have liked. Therefore my body holds on to everything it is given.

This is no ones fault, but it is a combination of not sleeping and stress that can majorly effect your body and your mind. When I'm stress (like many others), I put on weight, my cortisol levels are higher than they should and this results in no weight lose or even a gain.

I am only human and we all go through difficult times, for very different reasons.

I have to remember to relax, chill out and have some me time. I have to remember to drink my water, it is so important (I'm going to push this week, from 3 litres average a day to 4 litres). I'm going to commit to training 4 days, instead of 5-6, with an additional 1 day for stretching, flexibility and using the foam roller - to help me relax.

I wanted to show in this post, that I am human, I am on a journey and sometimes you hit a stumbling block. I won't pretend that right now I'm feeling very positive, I'm not at my happiest. I'm trying my hardest to put it behind me and look forward. It is and will be tough, but the next two weeks will show me what I'm capable of........

Thanks for reading

Holly

Progress

Hello,

It is February, a lot of people have started to join gyms to achieve their New Years Resolutions - it is often the case that people join now, rather than January, due to funds not being available. You will notice an influx of members at your local gym, including yourself if you are new to going.

I haven't actually got anything to rant about this week, although I wouldn't consider my previous posts a rant at all.

The last two weeks for me have been of opposite contrasts (sorry for my lack of post last week, it has been a bit mental). Week starting 26th January, I was away for half of the week with my job, travelling to Birmingham with very little around me to be able to make the right choices food wise. I was also unable to train to the quantity I do usually (I was only able to train 4 times that week, rather than normal 6 times). 

My results weren't bad, but I did consider that they should have been better.

This week has been very different, I took 3 days off work to do a workshop for my PT course (which was based in Harlow, 1.5 hours drive away from me). The course was to prepare me for my practical assessment, so a lot of practical learning how to teach different aspect of exercise. It was interesting and actually made me realise how much I have learnt myself through being personal trained.

So the results, table below shows how I have progressed:

	24th Jan	31st Jan	7th Feb
Weight	70	70	70
Body Fat %	21.94	21.68	20.41
Body Fat KG	15.35	15.2	14.3
Lean LG	54.7	54.8	55.7

As you can see my physical weight has actually stayed the same, but my body fat has reduced massively. In two weeks I have dropped 1.53% body fat, the average (healthy) drop should be about 1% a month. I have felt quite a change in the way I look and feel, my stomach has reduced in size and getting leaner. My arms have changed in definition and my legs seem to change on a daily basis.

This just shows that it actually doesn't matter how much you weigh on the scales, what matters is your body fat percentage. This morning when I weighed myself, I was concerned and worried that all my hard work from this week was for nothing. I've been eating precisely what I should and training hard at the gym and I'm so pleased by body is seeing and feeling those efforts.

Please don't be disheartened by how much you weigh on the scales, it is just a number and is your total body weight, not how fat you are. Measurements with a tape measure and body fat % are clear indicators of how well you are doing.

I'm so excited about training to be a Personal Trainer, I can't wait to get my certificate and be able to help people - it motivates me to have that as a goal and I can't wait to start helping people like I have been helped.  It's hard work having a more than full time job, training 6 times a week and doing a qualification, let alone having friends and a social life - but it is going to be worth it!!

Thanks for reading my blog, please share with your friends and family, any questions please let me know :)

Holly 

The Right Diet for You

I watched  a programme recently on the BBC called 'The Right Diet for You', supposedly the experts in diet and nutrition had come together to test and establish the best diets for individuals.

The majority of the programme was defined by putting people into 3 groups, 'constant cravers', 'feasters' and 'emotional eaters'. At this point I realised that they weren't actually doing individual diets for people. Yes they figured a pattern out for people, with regards to why they eat the way they do, but we don't all fit into one of these groups. Personally I think I fit into all of them at some point during year...!

Picking the right diet for you, is really really really tricky. Trust me I have tried most of the diets out there, most of them cookie cutter diets that people follow and think because it worked for some people it could work for me!

We can all agree, that we are all individual, we aren't all the same - if we all tried on the same t-shirt, we would not look the same and actually some wouldn't even bother trying on the t-shirt, because they know it wouldn't suit them. So in my head, why do we do that with diets....? In fact with diets, shouldn't it be even more individually than what we wear!?

How your body reacts to food is completely different from the person next to you. You need to have a diet that you follow, it may be similar to someone else's, but it can't and shouldn't be the same. I follow a flexible eating dieting, which is specifically programmed for me and what I am personally trying to do - if I gave you my diet and told you to follow it, I guarantee that you wouldn't see the same results that I do.

In the UK there are 11 million people on a diet, 80% of which fail........speaks for itself.

Often people say that they couldn't do what I do, they aren't me and there isn't any way they could do it. I agree it takes a lot to train as much as I do at the gym, 6 times a week is a struggle and I have to dig deep to get there. But and that is a big BUT, that doesn't mean that you can't do something similar to me diet wise. The way my diet is devised is worked out on the activities that I do, so if I wasn't do any training, then my diet would be changed/adjusted to reflect this.

I know that what I have achieved is immense, but I truly believe that if you put your mind to it, you can do it!!

This Week Results

So this week, results time - I have plugged this weeks figures into my table (below)...

	8th Jan	17th Jan	24th Jan
Weight	70.5	70.5	70
Body Fat %	23.85	23.62	21.94
Body Fat KG	16.8	16.6	15.35
Lean LG	53.7	53.8	54.7

I am really happy with this weeks results, when I weighed myself this morning I thought, 'only 0.5kg's, pitiful results and I was really struggling to get my head round it. More than likely it is to do with my water intake. Today I'm experimenting, drinking as much water today as I possibly can, I will weigh myself tomorrow and hopefully will reflect my body fat percentage result this week.

I've dropped 1.68% of body fat, so actually I'm very happy and it is helping me focus!!!

It has been a relatively easy week, no travelling for my job, my sisters birthday meant one day I struggled a tad, but all in all, it was a normal week. Next week will be tricky, I'm travelling a lot for work, got a lot of work to do and fitting in my training is going to take some doing. So right now I'm going to look at next week, what I'm going to eat each day and when & what I'm going to train and when :)

Thanks for reading, please share with your friends and families, any questions please let me know :)

Thanks

Holly

She Believed She Could and So She Did

It is 2015, most people are thinking about (or already decided), what they are going to try and achieve this year. Often goals aren't fully thought through, aren't measurable, unachievable and not with reliable timescales. 

People refer to SMART when setting their goals, I must admit I don't do that myself and mostly just look at what I want to achieve, when and how. But for me writing them down is the best thing to do, it somehow in my brain solidifies the goal, makes it more real.

Christmas Aftermath

It has been 3 weeks since Christmas Day as I write this (15th Jan), I weighed myself on Sat 3rd Jan to see what damage I had done over the Christmas period. I had relaxed over Christmas, been a bit more human (so to speak) and ate nearly constantly on high fats and high carb foods, I also replaced water with alcohol. I put on 3kg, which suffice to say I struggled to get my head round this, but I had to draw a line under it. I clearly needed it and I'm actually feeling more motivated now to achieve my next goals.

I decided the best thing to do, was to focus initially on the first week and getting a good start to the year, to prove that Christmas was a blip and not going to continue.

Getting back to this first week was tough, but I was so determined, I really wanted to get back to losing weight, as I was sure improving my water intake alone would get me back on track. So I really pushed myself, going back to the foods I know help me lose fat, but mainly drank so much water - which yes had the not so nice after effect of seeing my bathroom more often! Here are my first three weekly results since the New Year:

RESULTS

	3rd Jan	8th Jan	17th Jan
Weight	73	70.5	70.5
Body Fat %	24.3	23.85	23.62
Body Fat KG	17.7	16.8	16.6
Lean LG	55.3	53.7	53.8

So pleased with my results so far, I'm not so please with this weeks, but that is due to being away for work, restricting my ability to stick rigidly to my macros. Although doing flexible dieting certainly helped massively.

My personal trainer and I have agreed to put me on a 12 week cutting programme - we will reduce my macros for 12 week, adjusting it each week depending on my results. I will then have a 3 week 'break', where we bring my foods up, to maintain my metabolism. Along side this my training programme is harder than I've had in a long time, if not the hardest I have had to date. The two combined are and will push my body and brain to the limits!!

Because of this programme I have decided to enter myself in Body Power Transformation Challenge, to solidify my goals and enforce what I'm working towards :) It is not about winning the competition at all, for me it is literally the taking part and see how much I can push myself.
http://bodypowerexpo.co.uk/transformation-challenge

Getting Back to Work

I just wanted to talk briefly about the last 2 weeks. Safe to say I have struggled with my energy levels on the floor to say the least. I was worried, especially on Saturday last week when I slept hard and worked feeling even more tried. But I needed to get real, this is what I did in the last two weeks (all in one go), after 2 weeks of no work, reduced training and eating no foods which fuel my body correctly.

• Back to work at LBG, full time (and more hours to catch up following the holidays and project gaining speed).
• 16 hours working at the gym; as part of my Personal Trainer course
• Back to eating against my macros, and actually having a reduction in macros as start of the cut.
• 2 Personal Training sessions and 4 other days of training
• Week of anti-biotics to try and kill an infection

When I write it down like that, no wonder I was shattered. I still am, but my body needs time to adjust back and adjust to the harder training programme I am on. Plus being ill and needing anti-biotics is not helping. I considered having a day or two off sick, but refused, my body and head need to get used to this, my training is only going to get harder.

My brain needs to keep telling my body to keep going and push harder and harder, I'm very determined this year and I will commit to keeping my blog up dated with my progress each week.

This made me think about how, a lot of people will be rushing to the gym after Christmas, to shed the weight they put on, or to start a new years resolution. I've been training for over a year and I have struggled to get back into it, so I can remember back to starting a new years resolution, when I was big and wanted to lose weight.

Heading to the gym is fine, committing yourself to going every day or the week, will ultimately lead to failure (if you haven't done it before). Your body is not used to it and over Christmas has been made worse, by lack of movement and eating lots. Therefore, I can only recommend that you take it slow, I started my journey in July 2013, by doing one training session a week and wasn't focusing on my food.

One Step at a Time!! Let your body adjust and then increase your gym sessions or try and look at your eating. Don't do everything at once.

Hope you are having a great start to the year, get in touch if you have any questions, by commenting on here, tweet my @Berry1284 or Instagram: Gym_Berry.

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Thanks for Reading

CHRISTMAS!!!

We are just under a week from Christmas and I couldn't be more excited... I have spoken to a fair few people who have said 'oh you've done so well, but are you going to have a break over christmas?' This comment is coming more and more, especially since recent progression shots have been published of me on facebook. 

I'm so proud of myself for how well I have done so far, but I'm not at my goal and even if I was, would I want to ruin it by having time 'off' my lifestyle...? The key word is lifestyle, not diet or programme.

My first thought, is how long is the Christmas period? Some people think It is a day, week or month. For me, it tends to be almost all of December! If I decided to eat whatever during that month, my god I would be the size of a house! Even if I decided to do it for a couple of weeks, I could do so much damage, it could basically render the last few months useless.

I currently have a 'flexible diet' way of living, gradually over the last month we have increased my carb and fat levels to get my metabolism as high as possible. Not only to make christmas easier, but also to ensure that from January I can really focus and return to working towards my goals...!

I am in no way going to sit there on Christmas Day and not eat what I want, please don't get me wrong. I will relax, I don't want to think about food all day. But I'm going to train every other day of the week and contain my eating on the other days.

The trick is, don't deny yourself, you will only crave it more... Then when/if you cave, you more than likely will binge on that item of food & more. The best thing to do is except you haven't eaten the best thing, move on, and get back to eating well. I've said it before and I'll say it again, don't let a bad meal, turn into a bad day, turn into a bad week, etc, etc.

My next blog is going to be a reflection on the year and what I'm looking forward to next year, so stay tuned and follow to have my new blogs flagged to you when I post them :)

Enjoy your Christmas, spend time with your family and relax. It is time to rest and enjoy yourself!

Happy Christmas (random picture of my dog Betsy, dressed as a Christmas pudding) x

Water

Last week I was spot on with my food, hitting my carbs, protein and fat levels to the number. I was feeling lean and actually pretty good, but something was missing. I wasn't quite as energetic as I would have liked and the feeling of lean was fleeting from one hour to the next.

On Saturday, I had my regular weekly weigh in and body fat % results, which are part of my personal training package. I weighed myself first thing, before eating or drinking and after going to the toilet (I know you don't need to know that, but it is my routine). I was shocked at the result, putting half a kilo on (1 pound on). 

1 kilo doesn't sound like much and it isn't, but for me I was then wracking my brain to see where I had gone wrong. My food had been great, my training was going very well and I felt leaner (thinner!). So why the increase, I should in theory have lost weight this week.

The only thing I could attribute it to, was water. I had been awful with my water intake that week. Despite eating well, I had probably hardly drunk 1 litre a day, where I should be hitting 3 litres (not including tea/coffee).

My next surprise was at my body fat percentage result, I had dropped about 0.40% body fat, which again doesn't sound like much, but is a fair bit. This was pointing more and more into my water intake not being right and my body was holding/storing the water.

In my naivety in the past (before I started this journey), I was never familiar with the effects water had on the body. Yep maybe I was thick. I was told it was important, but never felt it made me feel any differently. Because in those days, I didn't listen to my body ever, I didn't realise the benefits of water.

I also never really realised that our bodies store and retain water like they do. This week was a prime example of this and let's just say I've been drinking a hell of a lot more water since then. 

For me water is boring, I'd much rather drink a coffee or glass of wine. But I have to change my thoughts about it, drinking water gives you energy, keeps your skin clear, clears your body of toxins and when you drink a sufficient about, you can lose weight!!

Having that week of no water, has really made me realise how much our bodies need it and that most people (including myself), do not drink anywhere near enough! I've never been perfect with my water intake, but I am striving every day to put the effort in and drink enough.

Challenge yourself to drink more water, have a litre bottle of water and see how many you can drink in a day. If you drink glasses of water, every day try and drink a little bit more. Myself I will be setting myself timescales: 7-11; 1 litre 11-4; 1 litre 5-9; 1 litre 

I often tell myself 'you can do this', I can and I will!!

Thanks for reading, please share with your friends and family, comment/like and follow me :)