Like I mentioned in my previous entry, I officially started my real "fitness journey", you know, tracking my nutrition and all that, in April of last year, despite having been involved and interested in fitness prior to then. I started my Journey in a cut... probably not the greatest idea given my body type at the time. I didn't have much fat to lose; I weighed around 135 pounds, and was built with a muscular lower half from all the years I played soccer. My thought process, however, was that I didn't want to add fat by bulking, but I also didn't want to maintain the same weight, because I thought that that would mean my physique would stay the same (wrong). I thought, well, how about I cut as much fat off as I can, so that way I can start bulking and trying to build muscle, without having to worry about any more excess fat being piled on? While not a terrible way of thinking, starting with maintenance calories would have helped in the sense that I would have been able to prep my body a bit better and let it distinguish maintenance calories from dieting calories, lose a bit more fat when I actually started cutting, and be able to know what foods would fill me up, and what would leave me hungry.
I'm not going to lie, the 12 weeks that I was in a cut were the worst 12 weeks ever. I was fatigued, grumpy, and hungry all the time. I suffered from hunger headaches and light-headedness constantly. All I could ever think about was what I could fit in my macros and when I could eat next. I was jealous of what other people ate because I missed the freedom I had to eat freely before deciding to change. Additionally, when I did eat, I weighed out my food to the gram; if a serving was 53 grams, you could bet that that scale would read exactly 53, no more, no less. I was eating around 1400-1500 calories a day, while exercising 6 days a week with weight training, cardio, and then any extra exercise from soccer practices and preseason preparation work. I let myself have a cheat meal once a week, and it was by far the only thing I looked forward to. One time in particular, I remember eating so much that I felt like I was going to vomit it all right back up... but can you blame me? I was starving. (that particular cheat meal consisted of a 2 pound burrito, a DQ blizzard, and two whoopie pies, so I probably ended up eating more than my deficit anyway) I was miserable, to say the least, and on top of that, I had no idea when I was supposed to stop my cut/how long to be in my deficit. I didn't have a specific weight I was trying to hit, and I wasn't sure how long a normal cutting cycle even was. After doing research, I made up my mind and decided to cut for 12 weeks, despite wanting to end it, for my own sanity and health, multiple times before than point. By the time the diet was over, I still wasn't exactly where I wanted to be, but I had dropped 15 pounds, and was more than ready to eat.
After doing research post-cut, I discovered just how little I was eating as compared to what I actually should have been eating to lose weight. I had used the wrong macro/TDEE calculator to come up with my daily goals, so I had been drastically undereating (obviously).With my activity level, along with weight, I should have been eating around 300-400 more calories a day than what I had been allowing myself. No wonder I was so miserable; but hey, just another thing I learned along the way!
From then, I moved to maintained for a week, and then slowly upped my calories to bulking calories to try out reverse dieting and minimize sudden fat gain from the caloric leap. From August 2016, until about 4/5 weeks ago, I had been bulking, trying to add on as much muscle as I could in that time.
Bulking was super easy at first; I had so much room for fun foods, I could eat out and not get anxiety as to whether or not I could actually order food and eat it, I had so much more energy for my lifts, and I was just happier. Although I was still very precise and avid on weighing my food, I learned to ease up throughout the year, and enjoy food again. I still weighed what I ate, and tracked everything on My Fitness Pal, but It didn't matter to me if that 53 gram serving was 60 grams instead.
During soccer season, I continued to try to keep a lifting schedule. I wasn't doing any heavy, compound movements in my lifts, but I was doing enough! With my activity level in season, my bulking calories were around 3200 calories... I know. I didn't have a huge problem reaching that goal, besides the lack of money I had for food. Bulking was easy for me, until the start of my spring semester. I was out of season, so my calories dropped. I also began to lift heavier, and add in more compound movements. My strength was drastically increasing, and I was so amazed by smashing weights I never thought I'd be able to hit. The problem with the eating part of bulking, was that it became that I wasn't hungry when I woke up, and I wouldn't eat my first meal until about 2 pm. I'd try to fit 2600 calories in within a 9 hour period, which isn't easy. I began slacking on hitting my goals, and eating started to feel like a job rather than anything else. My goal was to hit about 150lbs before I cut, but due to the inability to consume accurate calories, I only got to about 145 before I decided that it was time to cut again.
Since beginning my cut, I had dropped from 145 to about 138. I'm now on week 5, and I don't have a set number of weeks planned out for this cut; my goal is to reach between 130-135lbs, or stop when I feel as if I look how I want to! Currently, the diet isn't bad. I decided to try out carb cycling, and so far its working pretty well, despite the current plateau I seem to in. I'm eating around 1700 calories on low carb days, and 2300 on high carbs days. I plan on giving it another week or two to see if I continue to lose weight, however, if I'm stuck at my current weight (which I think I am... fat loss stalls, man) by that time, I'm going to go on a "diet break" which essentially, is just eating around maintenance calories for 7-14 days in order to kind of reset your metabolism and hormone levels. (I can write another entry all about diet breaks and carb cycling at a later date if requested!)
So yeah! that's my fitness journey this past year. I've learned so much about fitness in general through research, as well as trial and error, as well as about myself and just how hard I can actually push myself in my journey. I'm excited to continue on with the process, and share it with you all as I do so!
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