Accountability Check

So I know this cannot seem like a big deal, but today is the third day of ‘eating clean’ I have succeeded (so far) in a row.

Now the Dukan Diet is strict enough, this whole ‘eating clean’ business is killer. It’s especially difficult because I know that according to Dukan I could totally eat non fat dairy for instance, but this whole bodybuilding diet doesn’t allow me to… but I am still allowed to on Dukan… See how my brain is working?

It’s very difficult and before St. Louis I was really struggling with some things, I was eating steaks and pork chops, I had yogurt, was eating way too big portions, and eating fruit in the afternoon sometimes, and was eating more than a single portion of fruit, etc.

During St Louis I barely even tried, I ate Dukan-friendly but because food was such a stress for me, and I didn’t want to starve, I just dropped the bodybuilding diet completely.

First day back my ‘new, stricter diet’ was also dropped.

But for two days now, and today, I have been doing well. Eating tuna, mustard, boiled chicken, green beans, egg whites broccoli, cauliflower…

No carbs after my breakfast gallette, no fruit in the afternoons, I have been rocking it!

Oh, and I totally motivated myself to do 2 days of gym straight, an hour of weight lifting each time!

I’m on the ball!

This diet is very strict. My goal is to do 2 weeks of this ‘modified cruise phase’ and hopefully (apparently) then it will be easier. Fingers crossed.

I am still allowed one cheat meal a week, although I have seen a few people indulge and eat steak and baked potato for these meals I plan on having whatever I want/ am craving, same rules as Dukan.
Today marks 5 weeks of working out consistently actually, which is pretty huge for me, the girl who 5 weeks ago hadn’t gone two days straight at the gym in… ever.

I have been taking an underwear shot, in the same sports bra and zebra print boxers, front and back every Friday since starting this. I think this week I will see some actual results finally and am pumped to get home and get the picture taken.

After my after-work-workout of course.

Tonight for supper, boiled basa fish with egg whites and green beans. Woohoo, no cheating no matter what! I will keep working hard to get my bodybuilding body!

Hope this motivation keeps for my 2 weeks. This is hard you guys.

Do you need to be kept accountable for anything? Let me know, and I'll be sure to be incredibly dissapointed in you if you don't stick with it, as you should all be if I don't keep up this clean eating thing. ;)

xoxo

How to Get Back On Track - Reader Question

I got an absolutely great question from a reader, a question I have received a few times:

"Did you have days that you had completely failed? How to get back on track? PP days for a while? Or just keep going normally? Thank you so much for your blog and sharing your story. It's truly an inspiration to me. XO."

I would like to start by saying: ‘D’aaaawwwwww’ :3

I love receiving questions, and I love love loooove hearing about your stories, your lives, and all the wonderful compliments. The best thing anyone can ever say to me is that I’m an inspiration, I just get so proud and so joyful. Thank you.

So, to I’ll try my best to answer this once and for all with an analogy.

If you were to take a class at your gym, like Body Pump (my fav class at Goodlife… even though I no longer have a membership there.) Or just a barbell weight lifting class, they are super popular right now…
So you are at this class and you ask the instructor, well what do I do? How much should I lift?

The instructor could answer a number of things, but what determines how much weight you put on those barbells is you. What level of fitness are you at? How long have you been lifting? How determined are you and how motivated are you to see results? What are you comfortable with?

Well what do you do if you cheat, you fall off the wagon for a day, a week, for years. What then?
It depends on you my dear reader. How long did your binge-cheating-thing last? How strictly did you follow the diet prior to cheating? Do you think you could handle a 4-5 day attack phase to pick yourself back up again?

I could tell you what I would do, but that doesn’t really help you, does it? If your weight lifting instructor told you how much he or she lifted, that is completely off of what you should probably do in most cases, they have been doing it longer and have had a completely different experience weight lifting than you.

You could easily go back to one PV day one PP day, alternating rhythm with no ‘punishment’ to yourself, because that’s what it would be, giving yourself a few PP days in a row seems like a punishment to me, when you could easily get back on regular Cruise and lose the weight without having to do an Attack phase.

The reason my situation would be different than most of yours is because I never alternated days, I didn’t do a single PP day all throughout my Cruise Phase. So what I would do, is a mini-attack as a reminder to myself to not to cheat, kindof like a punishment really.

I did cheat, on day 2 of the diet a friend I didn’t know at the time would bully me the entirety of my weight loss journey, pressured me into drinking because she didn’t want to feel left out.

So I drank 5 shots of tequila… and felt super guilty afterwards. I just continued on with the diet like normal, finished my 10 days of attack and the rest is history ;)

Have not cheated since, but I have cheated in the way that I have eaten over my daily limit of yogurt or oat bran, consistently throughout the diet. When I did a binge-yogurt day, week, month as it would happen, I never did any attack phases, just calmed myself down, cut out my temptation (stopped buying yogurt) and tried to use my willpower to do better the next day.

If you cheat at the beginning of the day, your day isn’t lost. If you spend over budget, 50,000$ on your wedding day, does that justify buying another 10-15,000$ thing, because hey, you are over budget anyway. Snap yourself out of it and don’t make it worse. It’s hard to get out of that mentality but you can do it.
Hope this helps.

Above all just don’t give up, right? The weight does come off, everybody has moments of weakness, you are only weak if you let those moments defeat you.

Good luck, and thanks for all the comments and questions.

xoxo

Motivation

Please tell me it’s the weather. I just don’t understand this, I feel a complete lack of motivation. My body feels as exhausted as it did all throughout Cruise, my life feels so busy and hectic. I know I’m not the only one. So, I’m thinking we could all use a little kick in the butt, some motivation.

I’m having a hard time writing this, considering my lack of motivation myself, I don’t even know where to start.

Ok, well how about this:

It feels so great to be skinny.

I weighed 264.8 lbs when I started this journey, a teensy bit over 11 months ago. When I went out, I wouldn’t get danced with. I felt trapped in a relationship because I didn’t think I could ever do any better, because I was simply put, hideous (or so I felt).

I hated my body, every bit of it, other than my chest, which I was in love with and desperate to never lose because I was afraid (since it was the ‘only attractive part of me’) that no one could find me good looking without it.

Well, my morning weigh in was 159.0 lbs.

I went from an E cup to a B cup.

I feel super SEXY today. Prawn told me I have a good looking butt this morning.

Last time I went out I danced and had a great time, I kept up with my friends Irish dancing all weekend and never felt tired or like I couldn’t keep up, even though I had just hit the gym for 30 days straight prior.
When I run up the stairs at my work I don’t run out of breath anymore.

I am not constantly afraid of spraining my ankles, getting diabetes, or being judged by other people because of my weight.

I don’t hide my body anymore, I wear tight fitting clothes and I know I look good in them.

I have been called ‘stunning’ recently by almost a total stranger.

Stunning.

I have been maintaining my weight loss for 89 days now (I think) and I feel confident that it is off for life, as long as I continue on with the GREAT eating habits I picked up over my several months of following Dukan.
When I was fat I would eat frozen dinners, Kraft Dinner, candy, chocolate, ice cream, McDonalds… everything and anything bad for you. I could sit down and eat an entire thing of muffins, an entire box of Ah Caramel, all sorts of terrible junk.

Tonight I’m going home and BBQ-ing boneless skinless chicken breasts with yellow, orange, and red peppers and you know what, I would prefer to eat this way then the crap I was eating before! I don't feel deprived, I feel empowered and I LOVE chicken and peppers on the BBQ, I really love it! A lot more than Kraft Dinner anyway. I'm choosing to eat this way.

I feel amazing, and want to keep it up and get even better looking, and even healthier by continuing on with my fitness, improving myself. I know I can do it.

YOU CAN TOO!

I was a lazy, unmotivated 19 year old when I started this journey. I am now a healthy, attractive 20 year old who added YEARS to my life and completely erased all health issues I was bound to have in future years.

Surely you, a successful woman or man, who is not NEARLY as lazy and unmotivated as me can succeed with this easy diet, or any other diet you stick your mind to.

I started Dukan as a joke to prove my grandmother wrong, and instead completely changed my life.

So no excuses, I will go have an AMAZING leg workout after work and you will keep going strong or start over. You will see, the weight comes off when you follow the diet properly, work hard and see results fast!

Be healthy! You can do it!

xoxo

Getting Back Into Routines – The Most Frustrating Part About Going On Vacation

Ugh, this is the part of vacations that I absolutely loathe, getting back into the routine of your day to day life. It’s difficult and sometimes impossible to pick back up all the good habits you had formed before leaving, and getting back into the swing of things.

For instance, before leaving for Florida I was taking my vitamins every morning with 2-3 large glasses of water, this habit has never been picked back up. I haven’t taken a vitamin or drank my morning water since.
Who knows what good habit I have dropped because of this St Louis trip!

I did manage to workout every day for a month. I hit the gym every day except day 30/30 I did not actually hit a gym, but I did some serious Irish Dancing (over 3 hours) and I’m sorry, but that is a serious cardio session, sweating up a storm. So I’m counting it.

Yesterday was my first full day back and I’m moving and frankly still exhausted from the trip, so I took a rest day. Did not hit the gym or do anything physical.

I’m feeling incredibly guilty, as well as feeling scared that I’m falling out of love with working out and bodybuilding! Nooooo! So I have asked Prawn to force me to hit the gym today, I want to workout for an hour and I wont let myself slack off! I have a competition to train for. I can do it!

This is not a habit I’m willing to let go of.

I’m having a rough time with my water, have not been drinking enough, and for the past 2 days I have gotten back in the habit of eating dairy and too much fruit. What has gotten into me!?

So today, clean eating, working out. I can do it.

Oh all that and did I mention? I have to move. Great. -.- Busy busy, that’s my life right now and It’s stressing me out and I’m not getting nearly enough sleep… ugh.

Do you have any tricks or tips to getting back in your old routines after leaving for a bit? Because I’m having a rough time.

I guess it takes a few days but if you put the effort in you can do it.

Starting full on training today, looking at 1 hour of weight training 4-5 days a week as well as serious clean eating as outlined in my bodybuilding post a few posts back (in April). I want to do this right, I don’t need the sweet foods I have been indulging in, even if they are ‘Dukan Friendly’ or allowed. I can do this, I just need to focus and be determined!

Oh Lord, I really need some motivation, I feel so gross and disappointed in myself.

xoxo

Snacking & Grazing

So I have found out that what I do between the hours of 1:30pm and 4pm (generally) on workdays is called ‘grazing’ and not ‘snacking’ as I have been calling it.

Okay, that makes me feel like a total cow.

Who comes up with these terms?!

When you sit down with bag of chips and finish the entire thing during a movie, that’s grazing. The constant munch, without really thinking about what you are doing, grazing. A snack is more like a baggie of chips or a conscious mini-meal.

When they say eat 6 meals a day, they really mean 6 snacks.

Snacks in between meals? That’s cool, keeps you full. They say keep your snacks at 150 calories or all of a sudden it’s no longer a snack, or at least, not a healthy choice.

I have large Tupperware containers full of broccoli, baby carrots (sometimes), and cauliflower which I graze on (there is that ‘omg I’m a cow’ feeling again…) all afternoon. Which isn’t as bad as it could be, if I was grazing on something more high calorie… but still probably not a good habit to keep.

Now I remember reading this in ‘Eat This Not That’ but apparently if you are not hungry, snacking in between meals isn’t a good idea, since snacking in between meals is not proven to cut down on the amount of food you eat during your actual meal.

Would you believe, I’m writing this post while snacking on cauliflower? What can I say, I need my inspiration!

Now to help me with snacking while I am at home or on the go I always have pre-cut veggies in the fridge. I’m sorry but it makes it sooo much easier to make good decisions if you can just open the fridge pick up a baggie and snack.

If I didn’t have these prepped what do you think I would prefer? You know how lazy I am, if I hungry and had to eat something I would much rather make myself an omelette or Dukan muffins (going over my daily oat bran allowance) than to prep a green pepper. But if it’s cut up already, the decision is made for me, I don’t have to do anything so I’d might as well just go with the veggies.

I don’t ever buy pre-cut veggies though, too expensive. So I prep all my veggies early in the week all at once. I also prep my chicken breasts for the week all at the same time. Just makes it so much easier to make those good decisions.

I also eat a LOT of raw veggies, so I know they wont be going bad in the back of the fridge.
When I was eating extra lean ground turkey I would also make that, season, add veggies, in big batches and Prawn and I would just add it to our eggs, our grilled veggies, anything as a little added oomf.

It’s all about being more efficient with your time and making things easier for yourself.

Still hungry after that cauliflower, now moved onto celery and orange pepper. Would you look at that, all of a sudden I’m grazing.

Moo.

xoxo

Top 5 Reasons People Don’t Want To Get Healthy

1. I love food too much

I don’t understand this one. I know, you love food. I think the problem here is that you either don’t consider healthy food ‘food’ or that you associate dieting with starving yourself. I have said it 100 times and will say it again, I eat SO MUCH. Too much, but you can still eat really reasonable portions and lose weight, in fact you should never be hungry while dieting, ever. You don’t lose weight on an empty stomach, you lose weight by eating a lot of healthy foods.

Also, healthy food is food. Some of the best meals I have ever had I have made for myself while following Dukan. Stir fries, mini quiches, butternut squash soups, my mustard chickens on the bbq… mmmmm. I have never eaten better in my life, and I have lost 110 lbs! You can eat delicious meals while dieting and being healthy. You don’t even need to be that creative about it.

2. I don’t have the time

Now this would be more for hitting the gym, prepping meals, that kind of thing.
I was one of you, for the longest time when it came to hitting the gym. I know you have heard it before, but seriously, there are so many websites just filled with instructional videos on home workouts, and they are free. Buy a wii for you and your kids and do that, go for a half hour walk, hit the gym. You don’t need to spend an hour in there, just get a run out of the way and there you go. You don’t need to spend a ridiculous amount of time at the gym every day to be active or healthy.

Now, I understand that prepping meals, as well as cooking, it’s difficult. I can imagine it is even more difficult if you have to also make your families meals, clean up after them, workout, work, as many of my gorgeous readers have to do.

I’ll suggest to you to make your lunches the night before, prep meals in bulk, and use the slow cooker to it’s full advantage.

Also, how much time does it take to season chicken breasts and throw them on the bbq or in the oven? You do have options, even with your busy lives.

3. I don’t want to diet, I want a lifestyle change

Oh yes this one, I have ranted about this before. Especially with regards to the Dukan Diet.

I think the problem is that people need immediate results. Well I’m sorry honey, but they don’t always come and if all you are looking for is immediate results without the want to keep some of your newly developed good habits for the rest of your life, stop. You will just gain all the weight back.

With something like the Dukan Diet, you are looking at a lifestyle change. You can’t just eat an entire pizza for dinner every night and assume you wont gain any weight, even if you are on Phase 4 of the Dukan Diet. I really feel that this diet especially has taught me the life skills I need to go on with my life making healthy choices throughout, do you know what that is… a lifestyle change.

& Although I am an advocate for Dukan, you should treat any diet this way, as a way to boost your life back on the healthy track and not as instant results that you can not learn anything from and go back to eating McDonalds every night once the weight is off without any consequences.

4. I have tried so many diets before, none of them work

Another peeve of mine. DON’T GIVE UP! Try again, and then try again! If I had said, oh boy, I tried all these diets and none of them worked, I wont bother trying the Dukan Diet, I would have never lost 110 lbs! Are you kidding me?

It’s so ridiculous, people that give up like that. You always have to keep trying, as long as you make sure every time you are trying a little bit of a different approach, then you are guaranteed to eventually find something that works!

If Dukan had not worked for me I would have tried something else, and eventually something would have clicked and worked for me.

I was thinking about this with regards to working out. There is no way that if I try something new every few months for the rest of my life and don’t give up that within my lifetime I would not find a way to get myself to stick with the gym. No way.

Then guess what I did, found something that worked for me. Yes!

5. Too expensive

If you want to follow a diet, and the diet is too expensive to follow… don’t follow that diet.

There are so many different diets out there, you will never be stuck with an option that is out of a comfortable price range, in fact, there are SO many diets that don’t have a registration fee or weekly food costs, you just have to get the book so you can be informed on the diet, or you could look it up online.

You will never be forced to pay money into a diet, and if you can’t afford it, then just walk away and find something that works for you in every aspect.

Food costs is another expensive part of any diet, because you always have to eat, right? If you are looking at a diet that has imported seafood as mandatory breakfast, lunch, and supper courses… maybe you are looking at the wrong diet.

In my mind Dukan, or any other healthy diet revolved around eating natural wholesome foods that don’t need to be organic, is an inexpensive diet. Just because how terribly I was eating prior, the restaurant costs, the late night snacking. I mean, a bag of chips every day ontop of dinner, dessert… what does that add up to in a year? Much more expensive than my chicken breasts with broccoli, eggs, steaks, any Dukan food really.

xoxo

St Louis - Dieting On Vacation

Now I wrote out a few posts throughout my trip in March to Florida about traveling while on the Dukan Diet. This trip to St Louis has opened my eyes to how easy I had it traveling with my grandparents and how difficult following a strict diet while on vacation can really be.

Now I am following a "modified phase 2" since I am training to compete in a Fitness Competition (just beginning to train, barely any results, definitely not bikini ready... but I digress.) In this modified version of phase 2 I eat fruit, no dairy, no bread, but still eat my celebration meal.

Anyways, this is hard! The most difficult part I think is that I don't have someone that is following Dukan on my side this entire trip, but you know what, seriously, the women I have traveled here with are so amazing and supportive <3 I'm very happy.

So there was the issue of the 13 hour trip here... We drove to Syracuse and then flew through Washington to make it to St. Louis. Number one, I am exhausted. We all are. Number 2... I didn't pack nearly enough food for myself this time. I don't know what I was thinking.

During the 2 hour drive to Syracuse (at 3am) I ate cauliflower, broccoli and baby carrots (while my friends at croissants and muffins... ugh. We have all been there.)

Then once at the airport in Syracuse (waiting, waiting, waiting...) my friends gave me the fruit cups that came with their sandwiches.

Once in Washington (3-4 hour layover) I became really hungry, and then so hungry I was not really hungry. We looked all over the place for something Dukan friendly and after walking all over the airport and me giving up, my friends forced me to continue searching and we found a Subway where I bought an oven roasted chicken breast salad and DEVOURED it.

I had boiled chicken breasts for the trip, really underestimating how many I would eat during the 4 days in St Louis, they were, however, checked in the plane.

Once we finally metro-ed down to our Hotel, which is quite lovely, checked in and found our hotel room, I basically ripped through 1/3 of the chicken breasts I brought because I was so hungry. Terrible.

WE DID END UP GETTING A FRIDGE! Lovely. Generally they are available on request and might cost extra depending. But if you are traveling I strongly recommend doing the fridge thing or bringing a small cooler to fill with ice from the hotel. We went out and did some groceries, I had brought a can opener so I got green beans, tuna. I bought veggies to snack on as well as fruit for breakfast.

I think I will make it and have enough food for the trip. Will be having my celebration meal tonight since we are going out for dinner. I think we are going to a burger and shake place. Yummm.

I feel kindof left out of their food, they all did their groceries together and will be eating all the same meals, not me. We will probably go out to dinner again on Sunday, if I can't have anything where we go I might just end up eating once we get home, but you know, my friends have been super welcoming and not going to places where I can't eat. I love them, this is awesome.

I'll let you know if anything exciting happens.

xoxo