Lifestyle Change

Couple weeks ago I talked about how I hated the word diet. I prefer lifestyle change and I am hell bent on staying with it forever. So what will keep me motivated? Results of course.

So now I would like to share my first before and after result picture. The one on the left was taking fed 5th and the right one was this morning. I still have a long ways to go but I can't be happier with Amber and my progress. 

Plank

I'm always looking to add exercises to my workouts and especially to my ab workouts. I have been hearing the buzz about planking or plank. No not the dumb ass fad of just laying around. Plank is a set position where your abs are put to some serious work. check this out...

Now it looks simple but try it. You really start feeling the burn. I am going to start off in 3 sets holding the max I possible can each set with about a minute rest in between. If you add this or have been doing this let me know how its going either here or twitter.

Be Inspired!

Cardio after Lifting

For the past 2 months I have been going to the gym and in my mind I have been absolutely killing it. Well in my reading and learning I have come to find out it’s been backwards as hell. I would go in and hit the treadmill for at least 20-30 minutes and then get into my weight training. Now we all know I am huge on C4 so my fatigue never really set in, or so I thought. The “way” to work out is weight train first and then cardio. Take a look at this article I found…

To achieve "shreddedness," your body needs to use your stored fat as fuel for exercise. In order to do this, you must burn off your glycogen stores first. When you weight-train, you typically use glycogen as fuel. By doing weight-training first, you can burn the majority of your glycogen stores. Knocking out your cardio after you crush the weights will burn more fat!

Simple enough but I still wanted to know more. Maybe it’s the nerd in me but I wanted to know why I had to lift first even when I felt I had plenty of energy to  keep going the way I was going. Then I stumbled across EPOC.

After a workout, your body continues to burn additional calories up to 48 hours. This is known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. EPOC occurs because your body needs energy to repair your muscles after you've challenged them. It occurs at a much higher rate after intense weight-training than after low-intensity, steady-state cardiovascular training; that's why it's important to put as much energy into your lifting sessions. If you do steady-state cardio before you lift, you won't have the energy to work as hard as you can. A less productive

Now it makes sense to me and I have no problem at all with this. In fact I am kind of excited to start off lifting and see how much more energy I have since it wasn’t wasted in cardio. I will have more on this by Friday in kind of a recap but I am so ready to get back in there.

Shout Out!!!

It's been a great week working out and I'm taking the weekend off to get caught up on school and Amber time. I couldn't be more happier than I am right now with my life. 3 months till Captiva so it's still game face but for now I give you this....