Monday 16 February 2009

First Post

Well, an imaginative title as any I suppose!

Me

I guess I should start by telling you a little about myself. Well, it will just be that, a little...

I live and work in London, am aged between 26 and 35, have a good job, great family and friends and am pretty active - I run, cycle, swim (when it's a little warmer!), climb, trek and, most importantly, love weight training.

However, despite my relatively active lifestyle, over the last couple of years I've gone from a slim size 8-10 at around the 9 stone mark, to an uncomfortable squeezed-into-jeans-and-only-those-with-lycra 12-14... well, 14 plus if I'm honest. This is pretty heartbreaking, not to mention damn annoying for someone with such an extensive collection of (too small) clothing as myself!! I do recognise however that I've totally done this to myself, I've watched the weight creep on at a steady pace, and not done anything noteworthy to halt its advance.

I probably fall into the same category as a large percentage of the population of women who find it very difficult to lose weight without resorting to something drastic, like crash dieting, daft eating plans that promise speedy results etc... my problem is that I'm a victim of my environment and lifestyle (oh poor me)... I expect everything to be delivered now, right now, right this minute... immediately! and that extends to my (somewhat warped) ideas of how long it should take to lose weight... i.e. not long at all!

Of course, I know that that's not going to happen unless I get a big tube to suck all the fat out of me, so I guess I've got to work at it.

Previously, if a slimming method didn't deliver results within a week I'd give up, and then just continue to gradually increase in weight and size. The hilarious thing is that if I'd just persevered with whatever method I was using, I'd have lost *all* the weight by now.

So, I'm going to adopt a method and stick to it, and this will be tied in with a goal other than the obvious losing-weight and looking great (like it!) outcome I'm hoping to achieve.

I want to enter the Maximuscle Woman Body of 2009, and win it too! I realise that this might be more challenging for me than a lot of other women as mother nature pretty much overlooked my chest department and instead decided to liberally apply all fatty tissue to my butt and thighs, oh yes, I am the typical pear.

I am aware that last year's winner (who looks absolutely fantastic now, have seen her before and after pics on the tube and she's done amazingly well!) has the typical pin-up look (e.g. tan, blonde hair and big boobs), and quite a lot less muscle tone than some of the other Body hopefuls, but I'm willing to dispense with my cynicism and give this a bloody good try! After all, I shape up pretty well if I put my mind to it, I find that I can put muscle on pretty easily (*far* more easily than I burn fat, grr), and I'm not bad looking to boot ;-)

The Products

I'm going to be using various Maximuscle products, not because I want to be a walking advert for the brand (as this won't help my pocket unfortunately!), but because I'm a bit of a nutrition geek. I've done a fair bit of research on the slimming tools available to me and I think that the nutritional quality of the Maximuscle range is far superior to that of others I've found. Plus, as I intend to be training pretty damn hard between now and September, I need a protein and vitamin rich product which will sustain me physically and support muscle generation as well as recovery.

I was rather alarmed to discover just how much of Slim Fast's carbohydrate volume was made up of sugars!

I will also be using the Weight Loss Resources website as it has an absolutely amazingly comprehensive database of foods. The online food and exercise diary is superb and enables you to really analyse every food item you consume. You can customize your target ratio of protein, fat and carbs, and see how well you're doing in attaining that target.

Anyway, that's enough background on me and the tools I will be using to hopefully reach my goal. I will be posting regular updates and pictures detailing how well (or not!) I am doing.

BFN

No comments:

Post a Comment