30-Day Consistency Challenge

As most of you know, I've just recently finished a 12-week bootcamp. I lost 17 lb of fat and a whole lot of inches. I gained some muscle and strength, too. I'm at a plateau with my weight right now, and have been thinking about my intake, activity levels, and how to tweak things to continue with my cut.

Almost like she was reading my mind, Jenn from Fierce Fit Fearless devised a "30-Day FFF Consistency Counts Challenge" (FFF=Fierce Fit Fearless) that will run from April 26 to May 25. Can you say "perfect timing" or what?!

This is one of my "after" photos, taken April 13, 2012

Basically, she laid out the groundwork of nutrition and training. We'll eat at maintenance on training days and approximately 20% below maintenance on rest days. She suggests a macro division as well:

Training Day – 40% carbs, 45% protein, 15% fat

Rest Day – 20% carbs, 55% protein, 25% fat

That's fine for "regular" people (ha I don't mean to offend) but I'm grooving on this low-carb Paleo thing so I need to adjust this a bit to better suit me. And I want to do slightly more of a cut, so I'm going to start out with eating at 25% of TDEE on rest days (still an increase from what I'm used to). So here's what I'll be doing for macros:

Training Day (1700 cals) - 30% carbs, 45% protein, 25% fat

Rest Day (1300 cals) - 10% carbs, 45% protein, 45% fat

Please take note that this is significantly more calories per day than I've been eating, and more carbs on training days. It's a little less fat, but that's what you get when you eat at maintenance and need to get in a certain amount of protein and carbs - you lose some fat. Anyway, we'll see how it goes. I'm willing to give it 2 weeks for sure, to see if I lose, stay the same, or gain. I can twiddle with it at that point if I see something I don't like.

This challenge also requires weighing myself and measuring before and after. I'll also take before and after photos, just for funsies.

In the meantime, I decided that I'm not going to count, weigh, measure, or even look at the nutritional labels on foods between now and the 26th. If I want to eat a couple of potato chips, I will. I had a piece of pizza for lunch (and now I regret it, I really should stay away from grains) and I had some gluten-free cheesecake (a very small piece) for dessert. The capper: I had a great big glass of raw milk with that cheesecake. It was delicious. It's totally a nutrient-dense, high-calorie/carb/fat food item (the milk, not the cheesecake!), so it's not something I usually indulge in during a cut. I'm looking forward to hitting my goal weight (and therefore maintenance calories) so that I can add fresh milk back into my daily intake. The point of me not restricting calories right now is to give my body a break before I head back into an extended cut. This will give my hormones a chance to normalize if they have started to go a bit whacky, and will also let me eat the cheesecake I wanted for so long. :)

I have between 8 and 10 pounds left to go before I hit the top end of my goal weight range. I'm looking forward to fitting into my "skinny" jeans again, although I'm not sure they'll fit my new curvy booty. (Thank you squats!)

I will post before and after photos at the end of the challenge.

So, who's in? You can sign up HERE. The link at the top of the post takes you to the info page for the challenge.

By the way, if you're trying to figure out exactly how many grams of carbs/protein/fat those macros require, use THIS awesome online nutrient calculator.