Boyfriend pounds...

Have you heard the expression boyfriend pounds?

Here is my definition ::

So you have a new boyfriend, you are falling in love, it is a truly wonderful thing. Your alarm goes off each morning at 6am telling you to get up and head to the gym, you reach over and change it to 7am. You want nothing more than to stay cuddled up with this amazing new person you are getting to know. You are spending more time at lovely restaurants eating incredible food and drinking yummy wine. Beautiful rainy evenings spent curled up on the sofa watching a movie and ordering take away. You slowly feel things getting a little bit softer. Your jeans getting a little bit tighter. Maybe your skin gets a little worse. Maybe mentally you start to feel not so good. 

Not only have I heard of the expression, I have suffered first hand the worrying effects of boyfriend pounds.  I have no regrets about putting my training second to spending time enjoying my awesome new honeymoon period but deep down knowing that I wouldn't and couldn't let my training and eating fall by the wayside forever. I knew I would re-focus, knew I would re-prioritise and that a new routine would bed in allowing me enough time for my new man, and his two children and I would no longer compromise the time I spent on me.

I wanted to share with you my experience as a 23 year old who had put on those unwanted but comforting kgs. And also how I lost them. The first eating and training plan I ever followed.

I am not usually one for New Year's Resolutions but this photo was taken on January 1st 2007.  My "before" photo at the start of Body for Life....

 

Seven months after getting together with my ex-boyfriend. Seven months of eating everything and anything and partying way too much. Our favourite evening was getting a DVD from VideoEzy and the Seafood Banquet from the fish and chip shop near my house. I would say the seafood banquet could feed five. We would polish the whole thing off just the two of us followed with either m'n'm's or maltesers...or both.

This is my "after" photo 12 weeks later...

Body for Life is an eating and training plan put together by Bill Phillips. His first book called 12 weeks to Mental and Physical strength was published in 1999 and sat on the New York Times Best Sellers List for seven years!!

Broken down the programme looks like this ::

The food plan ::

Six meals a day
Each meal is consumed every 2 to 3 hours
Each meal consists of a portion of protein and a portion of complex carbohydrates
A portion of protein is the size of your palm
A portion of carbs is the size of your fist
Three meals a day must contain two cups of vegetables
One serving of healthy fats per day (monounsaturated & polyunsaturated)
One free day (cheat, treat, off day etc) per week :: Eat what you like!

With Body for Life there is no cutting out anything. You are still allowed carbs, you are still allowed good fats but the aim of the game is to manage the frequency of your meals, manage your portion sizes and really just stay away from the things we know aren't the best things for us such as sugar, butter, deep fried and processed food. The first three weeks were tough, I was constantly at the supermarket, I was buying way too much and wasting it, I was like a fish out of water but I stuck with it and I got there. I lost 3.8kg in my first four weeks.

Preparation is key, make your shopping list, plan ahead, and you will get your head around it. I have pretty much followed Body for Life since 2007 and have managed to work around the food plan through my years of travelling and living overseas.

The training plan ::

3 days cardio alternating with 3 days strength training
1 rest day

Your cardio work out is 20 minutes. That's it! 20 minutes, three times a week. Body for Life doesn't require you to spend an hour on the treadmill giving 60% effort. It requires you to put in 20 minutes at your maximum capability. The structure of the cardio is set out so you can use it on any of the cardio equipment or even outdoors. Here is a break down of the cardio work out ::

My preference was the treadmill and I would increase the intensity level by moving up 1kph every minute. My level five intensity at the start of Body for Life was 7kph increasing up 11kph at level nine. At the end of body for life I was starting level five at 10kph! I loved that I could track my progress each week by seeing how must faster I could go at my level five starting point.

The weights training is split across three days ::

Day 1 is the upper body muscle groups so chest, shoulders, back, biceps and triceps. Day 2 is the lower body muscle groups so quads, hamstrings, calves and abdominals and then day 3 is the upper body muscle groups again.

You need to carry out two exercises for each muscle group. Each exercise should consist of six sets, starting with 12 reps for the first set, then increasing the weight and doing 10 reps, increase the weight and carry out 8 reps and then one final increase of weights and do 6 reps. Rest for one minute then reduce the weights back to your starting weight and carry out 2 sets of 12 reps.  You now rest for two minutes before starting the second exercise for that muscle group. Your reps will look like this x12, x10, x8, x6, x12, x12. 

For a bit more detail on the strength training programme please visit the Body for Life website.

If I could give you one piece of advice it would be always go in to the gym knowing which exercises you are doing for each muscle group and which weights you are lifting for each set. Keeping notes really helps and is quite commonplace in the gym. I see people all the time making notes after each set and I think this is a really great way to track your progress as well as keep you continually motivated as you see your strength improve.

Mid way through I fell off the wagon big time! I'm talking a big weekend of partying and eating junk followed by two days of beating myself up! I did pick myself up, dust myself off, re-focus and I used that slip up to motivate me even more to succeed at this programme. I realised then that it is ok to make mistakes, that it is ok to still live your life. It is all ok as long as you use those negative slip ups and turn them into something more positive.

I weighed myself at the start and finish as well as have the photos taken at the same time. I lost a total of 8.3kg which I was thrilled about. I also took my hip, waist and chest measurements and took these again at the end of week four, eight and 12. Although I did not keep the measurements, from memory I lost a total of five inches from my hips, 3 inches from my waist and two from my chest. No longer having muffin top was my greatest achievement!

Three words to describe Body for Life ::

Logical. Challenging. Rewarding.

It is logical that if you feed your body all of the things it needs to run effectively and that you exercise consistently, doing both cardio and strength based work-outs, you will see and feel the results of your hard work.

Yes the work outs are challenging and the meal planning and prepping is challenging but I found Body for Life challenging as it made me the only person accountable for my actions. No one is going to do your food shopping, no one is going to plan, prep and cook your five meals. No one is going to get their bum to the gym six days per week. The benefit of this is that the results are all of your making. If you set yourself a challenge, that last person you want to let down in the world is yourself.

Rewarding! The most important part. I felt amazing and I really believe I looked so much better in my after photo than in my before.

There is no better feeling than seeing what you can achieve when you focus and really put your mind and body to work!