New Sensation

~ INXS ~

I'm not a natural cook. I'm the person that makes an eatable flop, and by the 3rd or 4th time, has that flop down to a T. I'm pretty sure I get my baking abilities from my mom. Whenever I need to defend my kitchen skills I bring up the birthday cake event of 1987:  the middle fell flat & instead of ditching the cake she filled the hole with icing & caramel. All the 7 year olds loved it; I'm sure the adults that had to deal with the plummeting sugar levels didn't. Boyfriend's mom is one of those women who can glance at a recipe, throw stuff in a mixing bowl & put forth a plate of perfection. I forsee that this might become a daughter-in-law / mom-in-law issue at some point...

But at least I'm willing to try.  And I love trying new things, which this new lifestyle has brought plenty of. I do not know how I ever lived without coconut oil. The taste is amazing & anyone who buys the unflavoured version needs their mind read. My favourite is sauteing green beans in coconut oil & salt - yumm.

Since ditching bad carbs I also had to improvise on starch substitutes. Whoever knew that cauliflower can make a crunchy pizza base, or rice for that matter.  

A lot has been said about bulletproof coffee - you either love it or hate it. Good coffee is a must. Grass-fed butter is a must. A blender or stick is a must.  If you just throw everything in a cup you are gonna have a bad time.  You need to wizz it to hell & back & then top it off with a bit of cinnamon. And it makes your lips nice soft.

Quinoa we'll get back to.  It's supposed to look like the pic on the left, mine not so much. 

Protein Mug Cakes where have you been all my life!  If you are craving something sweet at 10pm on a Friday night, and your significant other has refused to go the store despite all your charms & threats, this is the thing to make. Mix protein, coconut milk, vanilla essence & an egg in a cup & micro. I am sure I am not the only one who has a macadamia nut butter addiction - I can eat half a tub in one go - not my proudest moment. But OMG, it's like sex on a teaspoon.

There has also been the bad ones... Liquorice is my sad, happy, grumpy, cramps food - I love the taste & the smell, and thought "hey, I will then probably love this tea". No. No, no, no...

Exercise wize I'm still out for the rest of the week. At least I'm feeling better & have caught up on at least 3 show's. Now to find out who Red John really is...

[Bi]cycle Race

~ Queen ~

I couldn't find any cool photos about calorie cycling, so opted for the next best thing...

There are so many methods of dieting to loose fat without losing muscle and calorie cycling is just one of them. Instead of just eating less constantly every day, you have a mix of high calorie days (normally in conjunction with exercise) and low calorie (or rest) days.

It is said to speed up fat loss, helps reset your hunger hormones, improves insulin sensitivity and gives you a mental boost.  However, this requires a fair amount of self-discipline, as well as a willingness to measure food and count calories with a great deal of precision. 

An example that is used is the following.  Let's take 1500 calories per day, 7 days a week. So a sample week will look like this:

M - 1400  / T - 1400  / W - 1650  / TH - 1450  / F - 1450  / S - 1650  / S - 1500

That equals 10 500 calories for the week.  10 500 / 7 days = 1500 calories. So effectively you are still getting the same amount of calories in for the week, you're just shaking things up a bit.

Normally you'd have your high calorie days when you need more energy for your workout and recovery & you're lower calorie days on “rest” days. It's a pain in the ass to keep track of everything you eat, but it forces you to take a hard look at what you put into your body.

If you want to lose fat you basically have to force your body into tapping your stores of energy and the only way to do this is to put yourself in a calorie-deficit. If you reduce your calories enough you’ll start losing fat, eat more calories than your body needs, and it will start to store the excess energy as fat. There are two challenges tho, when you reduce your calories below your maintenance level for any extended period of time:

Catabolism:  The body doesn't always just burn fat, it also burns carbs & sometimes lean tissue. So you might be losing weight, but it may be muscle along with the fat.  

Homeostatis: Eventually your body will catch on that you’re eating less food than you need, and it will interpret this as a sign that it might be in for an extended period of food scarcity.  So it will start to slow down your metabolism in order to conserve energy, since it interprets your calorie deficit as a sign of “famine.”

Calorie cycling tries to trick the body into thinking that you are not actually dieting.  And because you are alternating between higher calorie days and lower calorie days, you may be less likely to lose lean tissue and less prone to developing fat loss plateaus. 

That's the theory anyway. Apparently most of the evidence around the effectiveness of calorie cycling is anecdotal, although calorie cycling devotees often swear by the results. You can have a further read here.

It's still early days, and a hell of a lot of food, but I'm sure in a couple of days I'll be back into the swing of things.

Food good, water bad.

Double Unders are getting easier - my new record is 22! And handstands away from wall is up to 4 seconds...whoo, yeah...small steps. I still suck at the overhead squat press.

Remember to follow K&C on Google+ | Facebook | Pinterest | Bloglovin. Night all!

Everything Counts

~ Depeche Mode ~

Tonight's post is gonna be a short one, because I still have to go do homework on macro's & calorie cycling. And like any change in your lifestyle it takes a bit of getting use too...

I've been following IF for the last 4 months & apart from really suiting my lifestyle (I'm lazy as f*ck in the morning & not at all hungry) it's really helped with my strength performance in the gym.  And it was not IF alone - I've also been on a high protein, high fat, low carbs (only veggies) eating plan.  

Recently (i.e. Friday) I had a bit of a feedback session with David/Evo Fitness & it was suggested that I re-introduce carbs into my diet, before & after workouts & at night, as well as cycle calories between rest days & work days.

Now, looking at the amount of calories that I have to consume on a work day is quite frankly terrifying. But David said it is "over the allotted calories for extra lean mass growth, recovery and keeping the metabolism firing". So I will give it a try.

Calorie cycling is but it’s pretty much what it sounds like - adjusting your caloric intake per day while maintaining a desired weekly caloric intake average. I.e. it's the daily adjustment of total calories (one day higher the other lower).  It is supposedly good for losing weight, but it is especially good for busting through weight-loss plateaus.  

Friday night we got our anniversary tattoo - love it, love it, love it :)

Steampunk Minions :)

I started introducing carbs in the form of dextrose in my PWO shake, as well as some wild rice. The world didn't come to an end.

Crossfit was super amazing tonight.  Full squat cleans with split jerks for sets, then a round for as many as you can unbroken - this girl did 30 on 27kg's...quite chuffed. Then we did a Tabata that came straight from hell. 20 seconds on 10 seconds rest. 8 Rounds Double Unders, 8 Rounds Burpees, 8 Rounds Sumo Squat High Pulls, 8 Rounds Double Unders.  It was a sweaty, heaving, gasping for breath mess of fun.

 

For the ladies who follow a couple of blogs - do yourself a favor and create a Bloglovin profile.  You can add the blogs you want to follow and you'll get all of their new posts in a feed or via email! And yes, you can add any blog, since there are quite a number of SleekGirls blogging about at the moment. You create a profile, and then just copy the link of the blog that you read into "Search Blogs", and follow. Easy peasy.