Progress Journal: Completion of the 6 week Fat Loss Cycle October 1- November 24

Goals

My goal for this 6 weeks was to lose body fat and also getting back to my holistic approach to eating and merging it with bodybuilding.

Nutrition

My food scale broke.  This was a blessing in disguise.  I felt like I was becoming a slave to my food scale, so when it broke I made a point to portion out my food and I ate that way.  I noticed I wasn't overeating or thinking that wasn't enough.  I simply ate what I served myself and left it at that.  I think that for this offseason I will go by this.

I needed to do this because I feel that otherwise I will feel that I have to measure every single thing that goes into my mouth and I think that will lead to an unhealthy relationship with food.  I noticed that my anxiety about food is starting to disappear and I feel much healthier in my mental approach towards food.

Training

After about 4 weeks of the cycle, Roxie decided to increase my deficit through cardio. I'm doing more cardio but it is still less than 45 minutes a day. It is certainly less than when I was a chubby Group Fitness Instructor I do cardio in seperate sessions and that has given me a new habit: Early am Cardio!  I love it.  It gives me so much energy throughout the day and I feel so amazing.  I love starting the day like this.  In college I would get up early to do my workouts and I think it's a great habit.

Progress Photos

I thought it would be cool to do photos from 2013 vs. 2014.  Overall I am very pleased with the way my training is going.  I may not be stage ready but I am making strides to get there.  Sometimes I think this was a stupid goal to try and undertake and I should just give up, but something inside won't let me quit.  I think I will lose respect for myself if I give up and quit.  I have invested too much time and effort into this endeavor to quit now.

In these shots you can see that my overall body fat has gone down and there is more width to my lats and my butt looks better (ALWAYS a good thing)

Goals for the Rest of 2014

• Keep my body fat going down and not going in the opposite direction
• Continue to have a healthy approach towards food
• Enjoy the holidays without making it a big deal
• Continue to Lift Heavy
• Get my sights set on getting naked in high heels in 2015