I completed it! I'm pretty proud of my progress and I've made some really great habits and broke some bad ones along the way.
The first week or 10 days were really tough. I probably cut my calories by 1000 to 1500 cold turkey and my body was hungry. My stomach was growling, I was tired when I went to the gym, it just didn't feel like it was going to work. My brother, who has done a major 12 week transformation in the past told me that was normal, but told me to drink water and snack on something healthy if I absolutely HAD to eat for the first two weeks. It worked out and from then on out it was pretty smooth sailing. I had a couple of times where I really wanted to eat something I shouldn't but I managed to suppress the urges. I had events happening throughout the competition (birthdays, concerts, sporting events) so I planned those to be my small cheat meals during the competition. I'd usually drink with meals when I went out like that, but I abstained from alcohol and just made "better" choices when I ordered my food. The rest of those days was healthy and I never let myself have entire days that were cheating days. Tried to keep the calories to my ~2500 even with that cheat meal, and always made sure that there was a good protein source and I wasn't just chowing down some pasta with cream sauce.
I did Stoppani's Shortcut to Shred for the entire 12 weeks. It worked for me and I really enjoyed the HIIT cardio between each set of weights. The first few weeks I felt dumb stopping between sets to jump rope or do step ups, but I got over it pretty quickly and just went for it. My jump rope skills are pretty awesome now. Can do a minute of pretty quick jumps no problem and have moved on to working on single leg hops. Not very good at those yet... My weights went down by the end of the program. Eating 2500 calories for me was either not enough, or I wasn't getting enough protein or something, but my overall heavy days probably dropped by 5% or so in the 12 weeks. I'm not super concerned as it's easy to get my weights back up and if I want to do a bulk, I can. I'm 36 and do martial arts and play soccer so putting up huge numbers and being a beast isn't super important to me.
My Fitness Pal was instrumental. I've used in the past for weight loss/calorie managment and it's worked great, but I always did it solo. Having the community on there and seeing everyone post stuff everyday and keep their diaries up to date was great for accountability. You can check out my diet on there and also add me as a friend. Nicksoapdish is my mfp name and here's my page: http://ift.tt/1Qc0b2t
Some of my new/old habits: I used to hate grocery shopping and trying to keep things in the refrigerator that always seemed to go bad, but I figured out a way to make sure I had the stuff I need and always buy enough, but not too much. Hardly any food was wasted in the making of this transformation.
I also learned to prepare meals ahead of time and not be stuck somewhere and HAVE to eat fast food. I found myself not really craving fast food or junk food more or less and looked forward to my meals that I had prepared. (Salsa is the key to baked chicken and brown rice by the way. Find some good salsa and get down on it.) I made these meatballs that I posted a recipe for that were pretty awesome. Here's the link to my previous post if anyone is interested in some good food to make ahead of time and is even pretty decent cold: http://ift.tt/1Qc0dr6
Today is the last day of my diet. I'm going to chomp on some pizza from my favorite place tomorrow night, and I'm definitely going to get some pancakes and/or biscuits and gravy at some point in the near future. I went to the store today to get some more rice and some vegetables because I'm going to continue with healthy eating. I thought "maybe I'll grab some snacks or cookies while I'm here since I can cheat tomorrow" I walked through the bakery and the snack aisles and really didn't want anything. I think some of my snacking instincts are gone. I don't really want to eat a bunch of garbage. It was a good feeling.
My plan for the future is to try to do a 5 day strict and 2 day loose kind of thing. Stick to my diet more or less and to the calorie goals of whatever I'm working toward and then twice a week for one meal and maybe a dessert, go eat something good. No contest until BTFC 9 and I'll see about doing a cut or bulk at that point.
This was an amazing experience. The reddit BTFC community and the mfp community both helped keep me accountable and seeing everyone else that I started this with finish up and have such great results has been inspiring and satisfying. I'm glad I stumbled across this contest. It's been great!
Photos to come in the morning!
Submitted May 28, 2015 at 12:34PM by skippingnickels http://ift.tt/1Qc0dr8 BTFC
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