Insanity Challenge Week 3

Week 3 of Insanity is done... It was good, again :)

The week started off with another fit test. I was very nervous, but curious to see how I progress and boy did I progress!! I did really well on the fit test and could totally tell my stamina has gone up like crazy. Here are my results (including the results from the first fit test, so you can see how much I improved):

Switch Kicks: 87 - 110
Power Jacks: 39 - 74 (this is crazy!!)
Power Knees: 87 - 97
Power Jumps: 20 - 27 (these are killer, but I am getting better!)
Globe Jumps: 7 - 8 (hate these...)
Suicide Jumps: 14 - 15 (another one of my - ahem - favorites)
Push-Up Jacks: 15 - 21
Low Plank Oblique: 39 - 51

Some crazy improvements there!

The rest of the week went very well also. I loved noticing that my stamina went up so much. But it certainly doesn't get easier. That is the beauty of this program: you get better but because you have to push your limits with every single workout, it simply doesn't get easier.

The only downside of this program is the Cardio Recovery workout. It is meant to give you a little break from the high intensity of the program, but I find it quite boring. The reason why I am in love with Insanity, is that it is so intense and fast-paced. But I guess they put in this workout for a reason, right? To give my muscles and lungs a little break.

The past 2 weeks were a little rocky when it comes to my weight because I had a few "off-days" where I had a lot of starchy foods, I also had my monthly problems, but I am still down 2,2 kg since the start of this program, so I am not complaining!

Anyways, I am looking forward to week 4 - the last week of the lower intensity (what now???) part of the program. After that is a week of recovery and then we go into 4 weeks of Max workouts... Ouch.

My daily nutrition

I get asked a lot what I eat on a regular day to lose weight/get healthier. And truth be told, it is nothing too crazy. Not some secret pill or anything. I will tell you what my meals usually look like and what "rules" I go by, daily. Please keep in mind that this might not work for everyone, but this works for me!

My eating habits are actually quite simple and come down to these basic things: make healthier choices, eat smaller portions and eat on a regular basis so you don't get hungry and binge. I try to stick to these rules for optimized success:

• +/- 1,500 kcal daily
• 5 to 6 small meals or: breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, (snack), diner
• breakfast is the biggest and most important meal of the day
• keep diners small and simple (based on veggies and some lean meat)
• no more food after diner (diner not after 7.30pm)
• at least 1,5 - 2L water daily
• at least 1 or 2 cups of green tea daily
• if I want a cookie or some chocolate, I will have 1 or 2 pieces, max (I do not believe in deprivation!)
• if I want to have a bigger diner, I will lower my calories for lunch
• plan my meals every day in the morning

BREAKFAST: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I make sure to always have a good breakfast with proteine and fruit. Especially because I exercise 6 days a week, having a good start of the day is so important. I have a protein shake every single morning, around 8 or 9 am. "But, protein shakes are nasty?!" Yeah, only if you do not know how to make them taste good. Add anything to the shake you like: a banana, berries, a pear, whatever! As long as it is healthy. You have it with water or with skim milk. My breakfast shake contains around 400kcal. It should be the biggest meal of the day. This will keep you from getting hungry throughout the day! I also have other breakfast foods on occassion, maybe 2 times a month. This will be something like oven buns with a cheese omelet or something.

MORNING SNACK: Around 11am I will have a snack. Anything I want, I just try and stay within the 200kcal range. This can be either some fruit (banana, pear, plums, oranges), a handful of nuts (almonds, walnuts, peanuts), some dark chocolate, granola bar, hard-boiled egg. If I want a snack that is high in fat and/or carbs, I will have it right now, with my afternoon snack I try to stay on the low end of this.

LUNCH: Lunch time is around 1 or 2 pm. I either eat a big bowl of veggies (spinach with sauteed onions and garlic is my favorite!) with some tofu. Or I will have an english muffin with an omelet, cheese, some ketchup, cucumber or whatever. Or an omelet with onions and paprika. I try to be creative here. Most of the time I will have a piece of fruit with it also.

AFTERNOON SNACK: Whenever I get hungry after lunch (which is usually around 3 or 4 pm) I will grab a snack (again, staying within the 200kcal range) low in fat and/or carbs. This is usually some sort of fruit or a mix of fruit and 1/2 handful of nuts.

DINER: I keep my diners as simple as possible. I will have a piece of meat (mostly turkey breast, chicken breast, shrimp or any type of fish, but I also like to have steak, pork, beef - again: I eat anything I want!) with vegetables. I will make enough veggies to fill me up.

I do count my calories, because I tend to undereat, which leads to water/fat retention and thus will cause me to gain weight. I don't go crazy though, I try to stay around 1,400kcal without counting condiments and butters/oils, etc.

Snacks, snacks, snacks!

Snacks are just as important to me as meals are. Snacks are what get my mind through the day. Breakfast wakes up my body and starts my metabolism, lunch will refuel my body and diner gets my body ready for bed, but I couldn't stay sane without my snacks!

As you all might know, I eat 3 meals and 2 to 3, sometimes 4 snacks a day. When I snack, I try to stay in the 150 - 200 caloric range. You have to be really creative with snacks, I think. Step awap from the cucumber, carrots, but try to think more along the lines of satisfying your sweet tooth or filling you up so you won't think about being hungry anymore. Cucumber will not do this for you.

I have listed a few of my favorite snacks to eat throughout the day:

Source

• 30g salted peanuts (187 kcal)
• 30g roasted almonds (177 kcal)
• 2 hard-boiled eggs (140 kcal)
• granola bar banana-chocolate (107 kcal)
• 1/2 avocado with salt & pepper (119 kcal)
• 1 Apple (88 kcal)
• Medium banana (116 kcal)
• 2 oranges (96 kcal)
• 100g greek yoghurt (124 kcal)
• 150g raspberries (64 kcal)
• 2 squares Lindt 85% dark chocolate (105 kcal)
• 1 tablespoon peanutbutter (84 kcal)
• 30g chunk parmesan cheese (123 kcal)
• 1 pear (98 kcal)

Keep in mind, you can really mix and match here. There are so many different things you can try. I am always looking for new snacks. What do you like to snack on?

23 and 1/2 hours: Exercise as medicine

I love YouTube. It is a healthy addiction of mine to which I will not pay attention on this blog (at least, not today). But what I love about YouTube is that it will recommend videos to me based on what I have been watching. I love watching videos about health and fitness and gain new perspectives as well as learn more about this topic.

I came across this amazing video the other day. The title of this video is:

"23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health?" The message is simple: people need to get off their asses for at least 150 minutes a week, preferably for 30 minutes a day. This alone decreases health risks tremendously.

I love the way this message is portrayed and of course I like the scientific nature of the video. I thought I'd share this video with you as I really enjoyed it.

Insanity Challenge Week 2

Week 2 of Insanity went by really fast, and I wanted to give you guys an update on how it has been going. Also because I have been getting more questions about this workout.

First of all: I do not think this workout is for everyone, I absolutely don't. I do however believe that anyone who is in moderate shape and likes to challenge themselves to a new leven of fitness could try it. When your stamina is low, you get out of breath easily, you don't usually workout, you haven't worked out on a consistent basis for the last 3 months, your muscles aren't trained to a certain level or you don't like bootcamp style workouts, Insanity might not be for you.

That being said, I do think that if you've been working out for a while and your stamina and willpower are strong enough, you could absolutely give it a shot. I am not in perfect shape, I am overweight, but my stamina is quite good and my willpower is through the roof, so I love this workout. Insanity is designed in a way that you can push your limits and take breaks whenever you need to. You don't need to keep up with the people in the video. In fact, you will see them taking water breaks in the background as well.

Back to week 2. This week was great. Even though I was sick the majority of the week, I pushed through and didn't miss a day. I feel like working out does not affect my physical health negatively, whatsoever. Even if after the workouts I'd feel dizzy and/or nauseous, I felt better afterwards and I would have regretted skipping a workout. I also don't think me being sick affected my workouts. If anything, I feel like it gave me more energy.

I noticed my stamina increased a lot already. I could push myself more than in week 1 and I wasn't as exhausted as the week before. Power jumps are becoming easier, Level 1 Drills are becoming easier (burpees with pushups and floor sprints), globe jumps are still incredibly hard, I get really exhausted doing them, but I can do more of them! The only problem I came across is that my arch sometimes hurts after a crazy high energy workout. But if I do some foot exercises right after, the pain disappears.

I also definitely notice that I need to workout after breakfast instead of right after I wake up, like I did with previous workouts, because I really need the energy to get through the Insanity workouts! But that has not been a problem so far. If I have school, I will just workout when I get home, and make sure that I had a snack about an hour before.

This week consisted of the same workouts as week 1, but no fit test. The next fit test will be tomorrow (Monday). I am really curious to see my results because I feel I got better. One new workout is Cardio Abs, which is (duh) an ab workout without crunches or situps. This workout is the worst one, for me, because when I do situps or anything on the floor, I get lower back pains, so I couldn't really do more than half of the exercises. But I think burning 550 calories with Pure Cardio is enough for a day. I will enjoy my well-deserved rest day!

Lunch: Paprika-onion cheese omelet

I love eggs. I try eating them every single day, but eggs can get really boring. It is easy for me to get sick of eggs. But I found that experimenting with them, will help you find amazing recipes. Here is one of my current favorite omelets that I love making:

You'll need:

2 eggs

1/4 paprika (doesn't matter which color, yellow is the sweetest)

1/8 onion

olive oil

grated cheese (I love Emmental cheese)

salt & pepper to taste

First you heat up the olive oil in a small pan. In the meantime you dice the onion and paprika, I like my dices to be a bit big, so they have a bite to them. When you're done, you throw the onion and paprika into the pan and let them brown a little. You then crack and beat the 2 eggs. When the onion and paprika are a bit browned, you stir it and divide the dices all over the pan. Evenly distribute the egg mixture over the onion and paprika. Put the heat on medium and let it sit for a minute. I lift the sides to help the mixture run from the center to the sides, which allows the omelet to cook evenly. After 1 minute I throw some cheese on it. I let it sit for a bit mroe until the omelet is cooked completely. Season with salt and pepper, flip half over the other side and enjoy!

This is very simple, and you can basically throw in anything you like. I've used spinach and garlic, but you can also use broccoli, tomatoes, etc.

Beating the scale addiction

"My name is Noelle, I am 27 years old... And I am addicted... to my scale."

Yeah, not anymore. I started this journey to healthy with one main goal: getting healthy. The fact that weight loss would be a part of that, was ay-ok with me, of course! I took a before picture, for myself, because I did not want to solely rely on the scale.

I started eating healthy, working out and weighing myself daily. Bad. Really bad. I educated myself a lot throughout the years about this topic - I know that the scale does not reflect fat loss. And it doesn't reflect how well you did the day before. It reflects how much you ate, water weight, muscle, fat. Everything! I would step on the scale and see a loss of one ounce, but I'd be disappointed, because I ate 100% clean and worked out the day before. The stupid thing is that, rationally, I knew very well that I built muscle, and that that extra glass of water also reflects back on the scale. So shouldn't I have had that glass of water? Uh, duh...

I wasn't losing weight as fast as I wanted to, but Jesus Christ, I was burning fat and building muscle like a mofo. What's not to like about that? My clothes became so loose, my body was changing (I had the pictures to prove it), I had so much energy, but still I would step on the scale every single morning and be disappointed to see the number (a lot of times I was also very happy!).

I had to change my way of thinking. I had to realize that losing 2 ounces, didn't mean losing 2 ounces of fat. Society is so incredibly hooked on weight and weight loss instead of fat loss. Isn't it more important to track weight loss over a few week's time, and as long as the number is going time, isn't that great?

My goals have shifted - I am now more interested to see how my body has changed, how I can't wear those jeans anymore because they are way too big for me (and I could barely get them past my hips 3 months ago!) and even better: when I started, I couldn't do a single pushup on my toes, and now? I can do 6 - 10. It is nuts, but this really showed me more important developments rather than weight.

My BMI? Fuck that shit, seriously. BMI is the most retarded invention of the 20th century. Because it does not take into consideration your muscle mass, your bone structure or your overall health. A "healthy weight"? Fuck you. According to your stupid calculator, 90% of the top athletes in the world are obese. Oh no, it's an epidemic!!!

I still weigh myself a few times a week, because I feel like overall it does reflect how you are doing (when you take muscle into consideration!) and it keeps me accountable and will tell me when to switch up my diet and/or workout but I don't focus on my goal weight anymore, but more on other changes: I still take pictures to see the change, I notice my endurance increasing more than I could have ever dreamed of. I do still have a goal weight in mind, and according to the BMI calculator, that is still considered "overweight". And if I feel like I am completely happy with where I am earlier on, I will stay at that weight. Do I care? No, not at all, because I know I will be healthy as shit :)