Squatting like a Boss

I will be posting a series of these silly work out clips, keep your eye out for them and let me know if you like them. Below is a proper description of how to preform the exercise.

Dumbbell Squats

Proper Alignment

1. Hold a dumbbell in each hand with arms extended down and palms facing your body.
2. Align your body from the bottom up by first taking a shoulder width stance.
3. Slightly bend your knees and avoid locking them during exercise.
4. Contract your abdominal muscles to help support and sustain your posture during the exercise.
5. Stick your chest out and simultaneously bring your shoulder blades back, keeping them there throughout the movement.
6. Keep your head level at al times, making sure your head or your eyes do not drop down, or excessively wander upward.

Technique and Form

1. One your alignment is secured, prepare to inhale as you begin your decent.
2. As you are squatting downward, it is important that at no time throughout your movement do your knees go beyond your toes, this can damage your knees.
3. Make sure you don’t let your thighs go below horizontal as you can injure your lower back.
4. As you reach horizontal or just above it, begin to exhale and press off your feet, distributing the weight through the heel while pressing upward. concentrate on keeping proper alignment throughout the movement.
5. Do not lock you knees when reaching the top of the movement.

Show me the Protein!!!!

After three whole days of watching and recording what I am putting into my mouth I am starting to see some trends! My nutrition goals have been set with weight loss and muscle building in mind so the Protein section is of course slightly higher than a ‘normal dieter’. As you can see from the charts below I am off on all of my goals but the protein is alarmingly on the low side.

A very wise friend once said to me, “Mel, its all about solutions, not problems”

I have since tried to live my life accordingly.

YUMMY PROTEIN OPTIONS (Sourced and purchased from Tesco online)

Just a quickie

I forget how much I enjoy healthy food when I’m on a junk binge

Breakfast 330 cals, Lunch 104 cals, Dinner 149 cals (according to My fitness Pal)

Tuna egg couscous salad

New potato chicken and red pepper salad

Porridge with Pear

Today was cardio day, I got all togged up for a run and insisted that the kids came along on their bikes. A good way to get the kids out of the house and also brilliant way to pace yourself.

I would love to see more running sock selfies, anyone up for it?

My thoughts on day 1 – Exercise & Nutrition

Today has been the first day of the rest of my life….well till September and my 30th birthday.

I think that morning workouts are the way forward. I got up, put my work out gear on, worked out and then I was done! Simple I have had the whole day with exercise under my belt! No need to think about what I have to do in the evening! The evenings are mine to do with what I want! What a feeling!!!

The exercises that I completed were all Compound Supersets.       

2 sets with 12 reps 

(They did take me over an hour to do but it was the first time! I hope to get these in around 30 mins).

Dumbbell One Arm Row

Push ups

Dumbbell Shoulder Press

Standing Calf Raise (one leg)

Dumbbell Curl

Overhead Dumbbell Extension

Dumbbell Squat

Stiff legged Deadlift

E is for Exercise – What I need to know

I have the nutrition side of my new regime just about worked out but I now need to think about the exercise side of life….

Best time to work out?

The Body Sculpting Bible recommends that the best time to work out is first thing in the morning as soon as you wake up. Working out on a empty stomach will allow you to burn 3x the amount of body fat. Your body dosent have as much carbohydrate to burn so will reach your fat store much quicker in order to get the energy necessary to do the work.

Terms that I should know before I start

Reps – The amount of times that an exercise is preformed.

Sets – A collection of reps.

Rest Intervals – The amount of rest time between sets.

A quick thought on Easter Chocolate

I have eaten a whole Lindt Golden Bunny to myself today…I did not share any of it and I do not feel any shame! This is because I know that I am in the correct mindset to start my new regime! I have been psyching myself up all week and this Easter Sunday was just the perfect last blow out! In fact I am so in the right place and ready to make these changes in my life that Im not even going to eat my Mars Easter egg and my Cream egg Easter egg!

So that means that I have two Easter eggs up for grabs…Holler if you want to take them off my hands!

Time for a reality check

I have put together this piccy as a kick up the bloody bum! I just can’t believe that in the 7 months since my wedding I have allowed myself to seriously slack…I mean, why would my new husband want the hot chick that he married?

Well its now that I make the change, its going to be a big one as I have been mostly sitting on the sofa for the last few months!

I have weighed and measured myself and will post below the results, I hope that this public humiliation will do the trick and keep me from reaching for the kids treat tin.

What the hell is calorie cycling?

So the next thing that I need to get my head around is caloric cycling… It sounds quite complicated but after a bit of digging online it’s not really as hard as I first thought!

I will try to explain simply…

1. 14 days low calories.
2. 14 days normal/high calories.
3. This is to trick your body into thinking that you are not dieting or lowering your calories.
4. So that it doesnt slow down its metabolism in order to conserve energy.
5. And so that your body dosent start using your muscles to create energy.

For a more in-depth explanation read on.

First things first – The underpinning theory to my weight loss through nutrition

I am starting this process by looking at my diet as I know that this well be my hardest struggle. As I am taking this seriously, I need to get my head round the nutritional guidelines laid out by ‘The Body Sculpting Bible’

The bsb recommends that I partly control my diet by understanding the Glycemic Index (GI)

The GI is a measure of how quickly your blood sugar rises after ingesting carbohydrates. And then the speed in which it gets turned into glucose. Blood sugar is turned into Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP), the molecule that the body uses to power up all of its functions. ATP can be thought of as the body’s fuel as our organisms can not function without it.

The way that GI work is that each food is assigned a value, typically from 0-100 based on how fast your blood sugar increases in the next two hours after consuming a carbohydrate. A value of 100 would represent a food that increases blood sugar very rapidly, such as a straight glucose drink.

The beginning of the next six months… and beyond

I am a normal woman of average proportions and weight. I am fast approaching 30 and refuse to leave my 20’s feeling old, unhealthy and unfit. I am pledging to stick to the prescribed nutrition and exercise regimes of ‪#‎Thebodysculptingbible‬ until my birthday in September and will post regular updates to document the next 6 month of my ‘Flab to 30’ journey.

My journey starts on Monday 6th April…(haha I get it, the diet starts on Monday) But in this case It really does! I am going to be spending the next few days menu planning, shopping for the correct foods, making sure that my exercise plans are easy to follow…in other words, I’m getting set up to succeed at this!

I will also be updating this diary blog every step of the way with photos of my physical process, my food tips that I pick up as I go along and the exercises that I do…. I will also include my cheat glutton days (nom,nom,nom)