My Fitness Gameplan

Welcome back!

As a trainer I am constantly keeping my clients' goals in mind when I create a workout. Want to work primarily on upper body strength for a sport, check! Lose weight during a contest, check!

I've really come to the conclusion that I can train other people no problems, but apparently I can't train myself.

How does that make any sense??

My biggest flaw has been consistency. I've lifted here and there over the years, but never anything consistent. After I lost a good portion of my muscle back in 2012 from my eating disorder I've struggled with gaining muscle back. I've tried all manner of exercise routines to gain muscle and in the end I haven't seen much change. A lot of that has to do with consistency, but I didn't know if maybe I was doing something wrong.

Recently I reached out to my personal training boss here at the gym I workout for some advice and direction. She has thankfully taken me under her wing and put together a routine for me. One of the biggest problems we encountered with my training has been my shoulder position. Over the years I've worked desk jobs and my shoulders have started rolling forward, even though I've worked hard on having better posture.

I'm limited to the kind of lifts I can do; in essence we're starting from the basics to set a solid foundation. I won't lie, it's frustrating. I'm learning patience which I haven't been blessed with a lot of.

My other biggest challenge has been eating. I don't eat nearly enough for my activity level and so my body doesn't function the way it should. It's difficult for my body to put muscle on when I'm not fueling it enough to do so. I've been working on eating more protein throughout the day besides just more food in general. Out of nowhere my body just woke up and seemed to want to finally eat a normal amount of food. I attribute it to my body realizing it wasn't supposed to survive on 800-1000 calories a day and finally decided to make up for lost calories.
I seem to have found my spirit animal

I'm being smart about what I eat so I'm not just shoveling junk food into my mouth.

It'll be interesting to see where this journey takes me, but I plan to keep this little page updated more often so you can follow along too.

Don't forget to like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, Bloglovin, and Instagram as well as share with people you know!

A Little Check-In

Hello hello everyone!

Sorry I've been so absent practically all over social media! It's been crazy trying to sort out my schedule and I've had a little medical problem pop up again.

Normally I try to keep this blog pretty upbeat, but it's also a blog about my life so I wanted to include you all in what is going on. 

Back when I was 15 I was diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety. It really popped up after a traumatic experience and I was harming myself and considering suicide. My doctor put me on medication and counseling and things got better. Throughout the years since then things have been up and down. I've had times when I stopped taking the pills because I felt better and just ended spiraling back down into my depression.

This last round in 2012 I was put back on my antidepressant for good. I was underweight and eventually everything evened itself out and I got better and was back to normal. However, sometime last year I noticed that my depression and anxiety would creep up on me for no reason. I was having panic attacks regularly and would cry at the drop of a hat at absolutely nothing. 

I knew something wasn't right and my doctor agreed that something else was wrong that was fueling my depression and anxiety to pop back up in a cycle.

I go through times when I'm perfectly fine and then others when I can barely drag myself out of bed and have panic attacks just lying in bed.

Currently I just finished going through a downswing and am slowly climbing my way back to normal. I understood that while working out and eating healthy are good for my body and would help somewhat with my depression, it also just wasn't happening. I didn't want to guilt myself or negative-talk myself into making it in for a workout. So I just didn't. I let myself hermit and be quiet when I had the time and then focused on the obligations I had with other people; work, training clients, and therapy with my grandma.

Now that I'm feeling better I plan to get back into the swing of things.

Thanks to all of you who stick around during this lulls when I drop off the face of the earth.
I'll be back soon with some new things!

Our Engagement Photoshoot

Hello everyone!

I wanted to share with you all the amazing photography skills of our wedding photographers who did our engagement photos. 

When I first saw them on Facebook I was absolutely blown away by how stunning they look.

Without further adeu, here are the pictures!
Word of warning: Very picture heavy!

 

 

We had to hold poses for a long time so they could get every angle just right and we ended up cracking up too much that they had to keep reminding us to stop talking and laughing haha! It was so much fun and everything is just stunning!

WIAW: Food Struggles

Hello hello everyone!

I finally finally took pictures of everything I ate in one day. I can't tell you how long it's been since I've done a What I Ate Wednesday post with the always lovely Jenn

Pre-workout Snack

1/2 nanner shared with Michael & coffee

Breakfast

2% Greek yogurt with jam & granola

Protein shake 

Lunch

Broccoli, cauliflower & ground turkey patties/nuggets with barbecue sauce

(Recipe coming soon!)

Afternoon Snack

Protein shake & apple with honey roasted peanut butter

Dinner

Michael made some delicious tilapia with this adobo seasoning his parents got us from New Orleans

Homemade black beans & a whole wheat naan

I also had a small glass of pomegranate wine that's unpictured

Dessert

Raspberry sorbet

Something I've been struggling with a lot is eating healthy. I do well for one day and then the next I'm a huge carb monster that wants pasta and cake and all other manners of bad stuff for you. I'm thankful I have Michael around to keep me straight, but it's difficult when your brain is telling your body the only thing it wants is not on your list of foods to eat. I'm slowly working on retraining my brain to crave healthy food rather than junk (I have a post about that coming up).

I've got some great ideas for posts coming up so stay tuned!

Resolutions

Hello hello everyone!

Today I wanted to talk about resolutions.

No no, not mine (I haven't actually made any); I'm talking about the #1 resolution made year after year.

Losing Weight

I think losing weight is an amazing goal considering about 69% of the United States adult population is overweight! What I want to do here is help you create a game plan to get there. And not just any game plan, an attainable game plan!

A healthy weight loss is about 1-2 pounds per week. 

That's 1-2 of these!

Still think 1 pound is just one pound?

At the beginning of your weight loss you'll probably lose more than 1-2 pounds per week, that's normal, but please please for the love of Batman don't try and aim for 5-10 pounds per week, it's not attainable through healthy methods.

So, Brittany, how do I lose weight in a healthy way?

It all comes down to mathematics (no no! Don't run away!)

One pound equals 3,500 calories.

To make that attainable during the week you can break it down daily and then break it down to exercise and diet

Taking 250 calories out of your day doesn't seem so hard now huh?

A good plan to take control over your daily calorie intake is to use a food tracker like MyFitness Pal (I'm on there, find me!). It makes you aware of not only what you are eating, but how much.

I hope this helps you in your goal to create a healthy lifestyle and lose weight this year!

Starting The New Year

Happy 2015 everyone!

In one word it's been chaos.

It's barely over 2 weeks in and I'm running around like a bat out of hell trying to do everything.

Lemme try and get this rundown done:

December

Michael came home after 2 months of being out of state for work

I cried.

Michael got knee surgery, he ended up having a torn meniscus

 Ouch!!

They got it all fixed and the poor man was stuck in a straight leg brace for a month. He was quite cranky but very determined to get back. Currently he's able to move around without the brace on, but is still limited to the kind of movements his knee can handle.

We spent our 1st Christmas in our own apartment waking up at 3am like little kids.

Michael's family came over later that day and mine came over on Saturday. Unfortunately I was so busy that I didn't get any pictures.

I went wedding dress shopping and picked my dress

I, however, did not pick this dress.

We spent New Year's Eve at home and going to bed at 9:30

Real party animals here.

Eventually Michael was able to get back to the gym, albeit having to skip leg day and modifying any cardio

And working, lots of working.
That's about it! Hopefully I'll be back really soon with some new posts!

Oh Look, A Blog!

Holy cow Batman, could I go any longer without blogging?!

Oh you mean I have to actually write to make it work? Good god I'm horrible at this ha!

 

Anyway, I'm here to tell you I won't be here for a few weeks (ironic right? Probably could have gone without and no one would have noticed).

Things are chaotic now, but boy will they get even more chaotic! chaotic-er?

Michael has been gone out of state for work for the past 2 months and comes home Monday (yay!) however, he's getting knee surgery (boo) 2 days afterwards. So I will be helping him recover, then it's Christmas time, and before you know it it's New Year's!

 

So the poor little blog here is going to take a hit for a few weeks while I juggle everything at once while standing on one foot. We'll see how it goes.

 

But! I will be back starting in the new year with some new stuff, recipes, and more babbling!

 

Have a wonderful holiday and a safe New Year!