Countdown to ‘Class of 2012’ (1)

For the past few weeks M has been completing the Bloggers Unite to Lose Weight Challenge on a Thursday so I’ve decided the start my own thing related to fitness on a Thursday as well.

This post is quite long so I hope you’re sitting comfortably, it is worth it if you want to lose weight though!

I joined an expensive gym at the beginning of the year determined to lose weight, tone up and generally get fit. I’ve done a few posts related to my Gym Rat status i.e. working my ass off in the gym like a slave and attending a variety of classes.

I’ve really been enjoying it, and although I’m 10 times healthier and fitter than I was before, I still feel like it’s not enough!

I’ve managed to lose 10lbs through a healthy diet and exercise since February which isn’t a lot over 8 months, but I wasn’t overweight to begin with, just carrying a few more pounds than I’d like.

With both me and M being taller than your average female (I’m 5ft 9, she’s 5ft 10) we both find it hard to compare ourselves to others weights when everyone else is normally a lot shorter than us and therefore weighs a lot less.

So we’ve had to come to terms with the fact that we’ll never be 9 stone, because we’d be underweight and probably look silly!

Because of this I rarely weigh myself as I don’t want to get too obsessed by it, it will probably never say the number I’d associate with being ‘skinny’ and therefore I don’t look at it much.

Luckily for me as part of my membership I can have 6 week fitness programs tailored to my needs.

I took advantage of this at the beginning of the year but haven’t since as I was just enjoying going to classes and doing my own thing.

So I went for my fitness assessment on Saturday and she compared my results to my February ones and confirmed that I had indeed lost 10lbs.

I’d also reduced my fat levels and a number of other things all in the right direction – woohoo!

However, half of the weight I’d lost was muscle and not fat, which as I haven’t been doing crazy amounts of weight training means that I haven’t been eating enough protein.

This is bad firstly as it meant I hadn’t lost as much fat as first thought, but also you never want to lose muscle.

Muscle burns calories whilst you sit there and do nothing, which means the more you have, the more calories you burn whilst doing nothing and the more fat you lose.

Image from PredatorNutrition.com

The other bad thing was that my water weight was reeeeeeeeeally low and should be huge amounts higher, and means I’m not drinking enough water.

This was a big shock to me as I drink water and tea only, with the occasional cocktail/hot chocolate/diet coke thrown in at social events (which happens once/twice a week!)

So basically even though in my opinion I live off chicken and water, I am eating/drinking nowhere near enough of either!

Image from DestinationRipped.com

She went on to explain that the easiest way to make sure you’re eating enough protein is to use an app such as ‘my fitness pal’ which most people are already familiar with and take note of how much protein you are getting each day.

The level on mine is set to 60g of protein per day.

To calculate how much protein you need depending on your weight, use the calculations below:

• To maintain your current muscle mass you need to eat a minimum of your weight in kg, multiplied by 1.2.

So 60kg person needs 72g of protein a day.

• If you’re lightly active and wish to keep your muscle tone you need to multiply your weight by 1.5.

So 60kg person needs 90g of protein a day

• Lastly, if you’d really like to increase your muscle mass (like I will be doing!) you need to multiply using 1.7.

So a 60kg person then needs 102g per day.

This is a rough guide that my trainer told me to use which I thought was pretty helpful, all of which work out higher than the 60g stated by the app.

She knows exactly what she’s doing being a fitness instructor and having studied nutritional management so I’ll be sticking to this for a few weeks/months to see how it goes.

She personally has been trying to put on muscle mass and has been living off protein for ages and hasn’t ‘bulked up’ so if you’re worried about getting muscly like a man I wouldn’t worry!

Another way you can keep track of this is by looking at the pie chart of your day’s food:

 

You can see that the general shape is that of a peace sign, with fat being the smallest segment on the right, and protein and carbs being more equal and this is what it should be like to maintain/increase your muscle mass.

I’ve already made huge changes to my diet:

1) I’ve swapped my caffeinated tea for herbal teas aside from 1/2 a day as I really do need one in the morning!

2) I drink so much water I really don’t believe it, and the funny thing is the more I drink the more I need!

3) And you wouldn’t believe the amount of protein I’ve been eating.

The day that I had my personal trainer session this was what I ate:

So much meat/fish/eggs!

The thing was though that even after all of that, I was still under my calorie allowance for the day without having added my PT session in aside from the cycling and I was so full.

Definitely worth trying.

I was thinking of putting up my gym program so that you can see the kind of fat burning exercises that I’ll be doing so look out for that next week.

I always find an aim helps so I will be writing these posts over the next 8 weeks as it’s when my graduation will be.

It’s not like I want to lose a load of weight for it, but I’d like to tone up and look the bee’s knees when I strut across that stage FINALLY completing my education.

It’s been a long hard slog and I deserve my moment of glory!

What do you think about protein? Do you find it hard to eat a lot of it?

Did you find it interesting to learn about the protein levels etc?

L xxx