Hi all! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Alyssa and I’m the Office Manager at CNU Fit in Dover. I started working here a little over three months ago, and it’s been a blast. One of the best parts of my job is getting to know more about health and fitness, but also the support and accountability I get from all of my wonderful CNU Fit Family members. And I definitely need it as I embark on a new adventure: marriage. My wedding is in a little under 6 months and like any bride I want to look my best. In the past year I’ve gained about 25 pounds, so I really want to be fit and trim for my wedding, but I’m not entirely sure how to do that. I know how to work out, but like a lot of people I’ve followed the fads of the fitness world: only doing cardio-based workouts and eating all the weird elimination diets that are super unsustainable. It doesn’t help that I’m what they call skinny fat: I don’t look particularly out of shape, but my body fat percentage is way above the “normal” range for a 22 year old, 5’4” female. So I’m a girl on a mission: get down to about 12-14% body fat in the next six months. Last Monday I weighed in at 147.8 lbs and about 20% body fat using the caliper method (or the claws of doom as I like to call it), and began my journey. Last week was my first week in “cutting season” as we at CNU Fit label it, and I definitely ran into some problems. Since I know I’m not alone, I’m going to share exactly what I’m going through every week with some tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way to help anyone else who may find themselves facing similar difficulties! So without further ado, here we go! Meal Prepping So how does a busy professional find the time to meal prep? The answer is tricky: you have to make time. Last week a put myself in a rut because I didn’t take the time to plan out and make my meals on Sunday. The beauty about making your meals ahead of time is you don’t have to think during the week (or cook and make a mess every night), you can just pop your food in the microwave and SHABAM: a well balanced, perfectly fits in my meal plan, meal. Luckily I work at a personal fitness studio and get trained every day by my team members, but I don’t have someone cooking my meals for me at home or monitoring every bite I put in my mouth. That would be too easy of course -- if you have goals, you have to work for them, right? Right. Because I didn’t prep, I ended up barely eating during the day when I was at work and then probably eating too much at night. But the thing is, I wasn’t logging my food so I don’t even know! We’ll see when I step on the scale tomorrow how it went, but I have a feeling it didn’t go too well. Tips for meal prepping (that I need to follow): Don’t make it too fancy - Check (I definitely don’t have the time or the patience to make five days worth of meals a five star delicacy three- course). When meal prepping, make the meals easy to cook in bulk. Bake, crock-pot it, put it in and forget it, this is how it’s going to get done in an easy manner. Always meal prep on a day you have time - Sunday is the best day to get the cooking done for the week. It makes the food somewhat fresh, and gives you time to get it all done instead of having to prep every night. If Sunday is family day, make meal prepping a family affair! Put some music on, don the aprons, and get to it! Make sure you plan out how much food you need for the week - Cooking too little can provide the same problem as not cooking at all, you have to spend your weeknights making up for it. Finding time to get in cardio Ugh...Cardio. You’d think I’d be used to it because that’s pretty much all I used to do, but alas it is proving to be a big chink in my armor. To get in enough cardio, say 20 to 30 minutes, that takes a lot of time! When you work a full time job and have a ton of work to do (admittedly, time management with this mission is going to be something I have to improve upon), you can definitely find yourself skipping the cardio part. But you see, I kind of have to do cardio in order to get where I want to get. I don’t want to bulk up, I want to slim down and get toned, and that means making sure I get my cardio in -- at least a little bit on a daily basis. So this means making it happen - NO MATTER WHAT. I didn’t do that well this week, but I’m determined to do some sort of cardio every day. Goals are meant to be reached, not forgotten about. Tips for getting in cardio: Read a book- I tried this for the first time on Saturday. I hopped on the treadmill (intending 15 minutes, but was told I should do 30 minutes instead :P) and dreaded walking for thirty minutes staring at a wall. Sure, there was music, but music can only take you so far. Then Mr. Evans handed me a book and BAM, 30 minutes went by in a flash Drinking enough water During my Body Comp, the caliper showed I was retaining water. It certainly wasn’t because I was drinking enough of it. Quite the contrary: I was probably only drinking around 30 oz a day, if that. During the weekends, I tend not to drink but a few sips which is a problem because by the time Monday comes, I’ve snacked all weekend thinking I was hungry and now the scale is starting to show it. A healthy amount of water is about half of your body weight, though more is better, and I wasn’t even drinking that. As the week progressed I started drinking more and the pounds started to drop. By Thursday morning I was 143.8, but as Friday and the weekend came my water intake began to lessen and I began to bloat. My clothes didn’t fit as well and my confidence dropped, even though I worked out hard all week. Moving forward, this is how I plan to get my water in: Use a big bottle - this way, even if you only get one bottle in you’re getting more than you would with a traditional 16 oz bottle Drink when you’re hungry - who knows? You’re body is probably just telling you it’s dehydrated Weigh in is tomorrow, so here’s keeping my fingers crossed that the scale will go in the right direction! #gettingreadyforthewedding #cnufitstyle
