Motivation

Here is some motivation about changing your plans, being flexible and getting the results you always wanted!

Flexibility

A key in being successful is to be flexible.

Yesterday I got a text from a friend offering me a job so clearly I took it, because I'm a poor ass college student. This summer was supposed to be dedicated to traveling, getting tan, and getting into shape. Hence the traveling to Italy and Rhode Island and finding a new gym where I have 12 personal appointments and unlimited group sessions. I was planning to have plenty of time to dedicate myself to my fitness. Of course, the whole working thing makes things a little harder seeing as I always have sessions at 10am and that's when I'll be at work.

Enter flexibility.

I moved my training sessions to 7am. I know that if I made them at night I would never wanna go, so mornings it was. This summer is still going to be dedicated to my fitness and I won't let anything stop that. I just have to allow myself to be more flexible.

It's the key, so be flexible and don't let anything completely mess up your plans. Readjust!

Rest Day

It's safe to say that my new gym is kicking my butt. I did two days in a row after my first day with a small workout. Both days made me sweat and pushed me farther than I could on my own. The second day though, I don't know the last time I did a workout that hard...

And I am paying for it. I have never been so sore in my entire life. Any kind of movement is a struggle, so instead of going for a run today like I originally planned I decided to take a rest day. It's important to listen to your body and do what feels right. Compared to the laziness that my body has been used to this last month and a half, these workouts are crazy, and I need to save up my energy for next week because I have four days in a row there. 

As painful as being this sore is these quotes make it just a little easier to bear. Keep pushing lovelies!

LivenUp

Welp had my first day at the new gym. The main purpose of today's meeting was to figure out my body composition and to check if I had any injuries. But tomorrow starts the real work.

I feel like honesty in the best policy so here is what my body is made up of...

• Weight: 134 pounds
• Skeletal muscle mass: 49.4 pounds
• Body fat mass: 43.9 pounds [little embarassing, but hey I was just in Italy for a month]

This means that my body fat percentage is a whopping 32.8% which is a little bit high. The nifty little machine that figures all this out also give you an estimate of what you should aim to lose body fat wise, and gain lean body mass wise to achieve the average percentages. Here's what mine said...

• Lose 16.5 pounds of fat
• Gain 1.8 pounds of lean body mass

Now I plan on trying to follow this, kind of. I wanna gain more lean body mass because I wanna get more muscles. This will help me lose fat quicker and make my body fat percentage go down even more with losing the same amount of body fat. 

So on the bright side, that's fifteen pounds (about) that I wanna lose in total. I am giving myself six months to achieve this, which is a very healthy amount of time. That means losing between a half pound and one pound every week, which is a healthy target. 

I'll be training the next three days straight, then a get a day break, then back at it for four more days in a row. Now that my workouts will begin I can start posting tips and updates about how they are going. I'm also gonna try and clean up my diet and am planning on posting some recipes too. 

Get ready guys! 

Taking on this attitude towards my fitness. Today I decided to look on Groupon and see if there were any deals in my area and I found a great looking gym near me. It's small and family owned and they had a deal for 65 dollars that includes 12 small training session, unlimited group training sessions, nutrition strategy training, body composition and more. I could have just taken my fitness into my own hands for the rest of the summer before returning to my beloved gym up in Connecticut, but I decided that I needed more. Like the quote says if you change nothing, nothing will change. So I'm changing so that my body changes as well. 

I go in Wednesday for a beginning session to get tested for my composition and such, until then I'll just keep running! 

Remember this quote! If you want to see change, then you need to change! 

First thing I did today was recalculate my BMR to help determine my caloric needs to lose some of the weight that I gained over in Italia. 


Here is the formula that I used:
655 + (4.3 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)
**This is specific for women**
This just tells you your basil metabolic rate, which is the amount of calories that your body needs to function properly. This does not take into account the amount of exercise you do each day. So in order to determine your caloric intake with exercise you can use this as a guide (found this online: it's just a guideline). 

• If you are sedentary : BMR x 20 percent

• If you are lightly active: BMR x 30 percent

• If you are moderately active (You exercise most days a week.): BMR x 40 percent

• If you are very active (You exercise intensely on a daily basis or for prolonged periods.): BMR x 50 percent

• If you are extra active (You do hard labor or are in athletic training.): BMR x 60 percent

Next step is deciding if you want to lose weight, gain weight, or maintain weight. If you want to maintain weight then you leave that previous number as what your caloric intake should be. If you want to lose weight (one pound a week) then subtract 500 calories from the previous number. If you want to gain weight (one pound a week) then add 500 calories from the previous number.
This is get your final caloric intake number. Yay! But it's not over yet! 
REMEMBER: this is the number before working out at all. So if you burn 250 calories a day, than perhaps you should only cut 250 calories from your diet each day to lose one pound a week. You should always take into account how much you are working out and add that back into this formula! 
 I decided to calculate my macros as well. I mean I've came this far! This is easy.

• Proteins: This should make up about 15% of your diet. So multiply your final caloric number by .15 to determine the amount of calories that should come from proteins. To get this down to grams divide the numbers of calories from proteins required by 4.

• Fats: This should make up about 30% of your diet. Multiply your caloric intake by .30 to determine the number of calories that should come from fats. To get grams you should divide the number of calories from fat needed by 9.

• Carbohydrates: This should make up 55% of your diet. Multiply your caloric intake by .55 to determine the number of calories that should come from carbohydrates. To get the grams you should divide that number by 4. 

For my personal use I said that I was moderately active, because that is how much I plan on exercising. So once you find that number you add it back onto your BMR. 

It seems like a lot of work to get these numbers, but you only need to do it once. Although I don't plan on counting calories and macros religiously it is always good to know where you stand. Also this is better than counting on those weight loss/calorie tracking apps, since they almost always underestimate the amount of calories you should be eating which can be detrimental. Those apps are great though if you like them, so just determine the numbers yourself and enter them into the app instead of letting it determine the numbers for you! It is possible to go into the settings and enter your own data, promise! 

Much love all! Good luck with the formulas! 

Back at it

Well after a very very long break from my fitness journey I am back at it and back blogging.

Here's what happened while I was gone...

• finals that kicked my butt
• a month in Italy that was amazing
• gaining a solid ten pounds
• beach trip

So there has been a lot going on that has distracted me. I cannot blame all of these things on me being lazy, but the trip to Italy really made it hard to stay in shape.

However, now I am back and ready to get right back where I was previously.

Much love!