A Fresh Start

The holiday is over and life is settling down to a more normal level. I spent two weeks completely blowing off my nutrition, to a sickening degree. At this point I feel like I totally undid the majority of the last for months of work. I also feel so gross and sickly. Nothing like feeling like total crap to motivate you to want to get back on track. But, life got crazy and stressful, and I was bored. I took the break from obsessing over food so that I had one less thing to worry about, but also because I needed the reminder of how crummy I always felt when I ate poorly. I WAS REMINDED!!!!!!!

My new, fresh start won’t be all that different from what I spent the previous four months doing, but this time I’ll do it with a little more “intention”. I’ll continue my workouts but will swap some of my beloved Metcon workouts for some more heavy lifting. I’ll probably run a little less mileage also since I won’t have a Half Marathon coming up.

As far as nutrition goes I’ll be back eating Paleo foods but I will be cycling caloric intake throughout the week. I am not going to do all out cheat meals, as I will want to keep my calories within the specific ranges for each day. It is called the Zig Zag method and was something I used to do when I followed “Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle“. It has worked very well in the past and the intention of cycling calories is to keep your body from thinking you are starving, yet the calories are high enough to keep your energy up. I may also mix this with intermittent fasting in the way of eating the majority of my calories in the afternoon and evening rather than spreading it throughout the whole day.

There are so many ways to manage your nutrition and its about finding what works for you and can be easily maintained. The one overriding factor in all of the different things I will try is keeping the foods fresh and healthy – Paleo (meat, veggies, some fruit, some nuts). How I eat it will vary – low calorie, low carb, high fat, high calorie, throughout the day, in the afternoon/evening….. those things aren’t really the “important” part. The important part is the healthy foods. The “method” is more about finding what works and what I like best and keeps my energy up, my performance in the gym rockin’, and my body fat down.

Tomorrow is a new day, and a fresh start! My so-called “fun” is over and its time to stop feeling like crap and start feeling AWESOME again!!!!