Advancements & Alcohol

Yesterday was Day 3 of IIFYM for me since my competition.  I was invited out to a friend's dinner party and had no idea what I might wind up eating.  So I saved a good 900-1000 calories for my time out, with plenty of fat and carbs left. I figured that while I may not be able to keep my macros exactly within 5g of my goals, I should at least be able to keep from going too overboard on the calorie side of things.

Enter beer.

Well, sufficed to say that when I finally entered what I had consumed last night into MyFitnessPal... it was well over what I had anticipated.  And the funny thing is that if I had just stuck to the food and maybe 1-2 beers, I would have probably been pretty close to my target macros.

To be honest, I really needed a night out.  Tracking is great to build an awareness of what you are consuming, but spending time with friends and enjoying life is important.  I probably could have enjoyed life a little less and felt a bit better this morning, though.  But am I overcome with guilt or remorse?  Nope.  I had fun.

IIFYM Day 2

I'm loving IIFYM so far.  I know it's only day 2, but hear me out.

I packed healthy food with me when I went out flying early this morning and was back at the hangar by about 1:30pm.  My office is right next to the coffee room, and guess what was sitting in the coffee room when I headed up to my office?  Two boxes of Tim Horton's donuts.  Of course.  So I whipped out my handy MyFitnessPal app and took a look to see if I could fit one in.  And guess what?  It worked!  I had to adjust my dinner and the meal I had been about to eat, but I was just glad I could fit it in.

Came home from work and had a steak and a beer.  And then I made homemade ice cream (just greek yogurt, cherries, sugar-free vanilla and 1% milk).

What a delicious day.

I have several things planned for this weekend, so I'm not too sure how this is going to go.  I was invited to a friend's place for dinner tomorrow night (which will involve drinks as well), followed by a BBQ (and drinks) on Saturday night, and a toddler's birthday party Sunday afternoon with my girls.  Busy weekend ahead!  Although I'm going to try not to fall back into my binging, I will likely just try to moderate myself a bit and let loose.  Life isn't all about getting ripped ;)

IIFYM Day 1

Today was the first day since my competition that I actually stuck with my new diet plan.

Finally!

Really, this new plan is not all that hard to stick to.  Especially after the contest diet I was previously on.  This was my "diet" dinner tonight:

Not bad for a diet plan, hey?

I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the next year.  While I know I will have days or even weeks that I'm not entirely sticking to my plan (and gaining at least a bit of weight), I'm really more concerned with developing a healthy relationship with food at this point.  Here are my day end stats.  Pretty happy to have fat, carbs and protein within 5g of my goal.  And well over my 20g minimum of fibre.

This could be the start of a great adventure!

Coconut Pineapple Muffins

I made these muffins this morning for Father's Day (my husband always says he wishes I baked more muffins and things), and they are quite delicious.

This is taken from the original recipe I found here: http://nourishedkitchen.com/coconut-flour-cake/

I just added pineapple and made muffins instead of a cake.

12 eggs

2 cups coconut milk (I used light)

4 tbsp honey

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp coconut extract

2 cups coconut flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

2 cups chopped pineapple

Coconut oil for greasing tins

Shredded coconut for muffin tins

Preheat oven to 350c.  Grease muffin tins with coconut oil and sprinkle with coconut.  Scoop the mixture evenly into 12 muffin tins.  Bake at 350c for 35-40 minutes, or until a knife inserted comes out clean.

Approximate macros per muffin:

Calories: 210

Fat: 9.6 grams

Carbs: 23 grams

Fibre: 9.4 grams

Protein: 9.6 grams

Enjoy!

Last Place

Well, the results are in.  I officially took last place in my class.

Funny thing is... I'm fine with that.  I always thought the chance of taking last place would be about the most terrible thing that could happen in a competition.  Especially after all that work.

But there were some ladies up there who obviously worked very hard and probably really deserved to place.  And, to be honest, I didn't really put everything I had into this competition.  I simply had too much else going on between work, kids and household stuff.

I'm happy with where I placed, and am really looking forward to seeing my photos from the photo I did last Sunday.  Looking great in real life doesn't always equate to looking good on stage.

I'm still working on getting my eating back on track... it's been a real struggle this past week to keep from binging all the time.  But it's slowly getting better.  My next goal is to have a good, healthy relationship with food.

The Dreaded Post-Show Binge

After my show yesterday, I decided to take one day to eat whatever I liked, but with one caveat; I had to record every last thing I ate.  I had it in my mind that it wouldn't be too bad.  I'd maybe be a couple hundred calories above my maintenance calories or so.  Really, I could probably get away with eating whatever I wanted for awhile without gaining too much.

Well, it's 8:00pm and I'm already 1200 calories above my maintenance calories (which are substantially higher than what I've been eating the last few weeks).  I had a feeling I'd wind up binging and eating everything in sight, but I have just never recorded an entire binge, honestly.

To put things into perspective, I'm about 130lbs right now.  And 3500 excess calories is supposed to roughly equate to one pound.  So, if I was to continue to allow myself to eat what I wanted, without any kind of tracking system, I'd gain approximately 2.4lbs this week, and 28.8lbs by the end of August.  So back up to basically my post-pregnancy weight in less than 3 short months.

A good experiment.  Interesting to see just how easily weight gain can happen.  And I already have quite recent experience with just how difficult it can be to lose a few pounds, so I'd rather not have to go through that unnecessarily.

So tomorrow I start following maintenance macros.  I'll be shooting for 198g of carbs, 130g of protein, 65g of fat and 20+ grams of fibre.  That puts me at 1900 calories.  Within those boundaries, I can eat what I like.  This actually offers me a lot of flexibility.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the summer, and this is a great time for me to kick back and enjoy life a bit.  Flexible dieting affords me that opportunity.

6 Days Out!

6 days out from my first figure competition!

I guess technically it's not my first competition, but it's my first time trying to walk in heels on stage (I did bodybuilding last time - here's a picture from June 2012):

This competition has got me thinking a lot about mental health and how hard competitions are on a person.  My husband pointed out to me the other day that I'm pretty well in the best shape of my life and am constantly talking about how my butt is still too big and is never going to fit into my suit.  And my (almost) 3 year old has started telling people "Mommy's so hungry".  Not really a healthy mindset to pass on to a toddler.

So what happens if, after all this time and effort put in, I wind up in last place?  I'm still in the best shape of my life, but that's got to be tough on a person's mental state.  Maybe it's self-preservation and maybe it's just me being pessimistic, but I'm not truly expecting to do well in this competition.  If I do, great!  But I'm more in it to get a bunch of super-ripped pictures to look back at 30 years from now and say, "Wow, look at me 30 years ago!".  I'm getting in shape and making memories.

This competition prep has been extremely hard on me for a multitude of reasons.  I'm beginning to think that I was insane to think that I could do a contest prep with two kids under the age of 3 (not to mention a full-time career and all the other things I tend to try to do with my time).  I also believe there is a healthier way to do this contest prep, but I simply don't have the knowledge or experience to do it on my own.

Post competition, I will be immediately switching right into maintenance macros and working at maintaining what I've worked so hard to build for the remainder of the summer.  Come fall, I'm going to devote my time to some serious building.

I'm excited to see what the future holds.  One more week...