Getting back on track at the gym

I do take a lot of selfies according to some friends 🙂 Yes I am proud of myself lately.

I’ve been busy with so many things lately. Work, holiday, working out, learning Mule, writing articles for a big Dutch Windows Phone blog and getting that blog redesigned as well. I neglected writing articles on my own blog, so I think it’s time for an update!

Apart from not writing articles for my own blog, or maybe due to that fact, I also struggled with my workouts. For months I didn’t really have what you’d call gains. Well, I had some gains: I added a few pounds of body fat! At least according to the machine, I put on a mere 2% of body fat, putting me at 17%. This put me down and I was already on the sloppy side. It hit me quite hard I must say and had a hard time getting my mind set to train hard again.

This measurement was probably a few weeks before we left to Wales for a fantastic Holiday. Getting away for a couple of weeks really helped me getting focussed again! I haven’t had a measurement since, I want to wait until  I am really sure I am back on track! Don’t want to put myself down again if the measurement isn’t like what I’d hoped to. Until then I will train my ass off. I am planning on a new measurements probably in two weeks.

So what helped me to get back on track and see results again?

Setting a goal

I keep saying this to everyone! Set a goal! That’s the key part. If you don’t know what you are training for, why even bother? Whether it’s training for a perfect body or strong man competitions. Maybe even endurance. Without goals you miss the motivation to reach that goal. How do you plan your training without a goal?

I had a goal last year when I started out. Getting from 24% body fat to 18%. I overachieved by almost 2%. That made me feel good and made me want to train even harder! By then I sprained my wrist with a soccer game, but I was persistent and kept going. But after two more months I also started to struggle. I wanted to gain muscle, without really setting a goal and even worse, without making a plan on how to reach that goal (the goal I didn’t really set in the first place).

 

Stay focussed and stick to the plan

I lost focus and really didn’t have a plan. I just went to the gym and did my workouts. I started skipping interval training, forgetting supplements and the worst I could’ve done: not thinking my diet through! I was eating way too much. Too much of everything. I tried to eat clean, but meanwhile was adding too much rice to the chicken meals I was eating. I didn’t count any calories, something I should have done when changing diets.

The result of all this was summed up in April, when I gained a couple of pounds body fat and at the end of May I went over 17%-mark and worse, lost muscle mass (?!). That hit me hard. I really didn’t feel like working out at all. It also made me realize something had to change.

I decided that I would start to hit the gym hard again after our holiday in July and so I did! After returning from a short break in Wales I ordered some supplements (Whey, CLA, creatine and also some pre-workout), went to the gym nearly every day and started to get focussed again. I didn’t skip any supplements, not even during the weekend and I don’t skip interval training anymore.

Now – a couple of weeks later –  I am starting to see results again and I am pretty certain I’ve dropped below 15% body fat now – just because I can see it (veins, six pack and the whole rambam 😉 ). But I don’t want to get it measured until I am really certain I achieved dropping below the 15%-mark, so I will train hard for another two weeks and will do the measurement then! And my goal? Get to 10-12% body fat and don’t focus on muscle mass.

Be proud of yourself

I do take a lot of selfies according to some friends 🙂 Yes I am proud of myself lately. I wasn’t before. Before I really started working out, I wasn’t confident. Not confident with my body, not confident with how I looked. I didn’t even like to see myself on most photos. Just thought I would look silly. And maybe I do, but I just don’t care anymore. And that’s called confidence I guess. I also recommend you read Heidi Powell’s blog post: I am Perfect…. It so sums it up!

You won’t notice your own gains, until you can compare them. I really didn’t realize I changed that much until people kept asking me whether I lost weight or it was my “Movember” mustache. I started comparing my progress shots and realized I changed a lot since I first started at the end of August. I lost my big head! 🙂 Making myself more and more confident of myself and the way I looked.  I became proud of myself and my achievements.

I even decided to open an Instagram account and put my (progress) selfies up there. I didn’t want to annoy my facebook friends with a constant stream of selfies. On Instagram it’s daily business and no one complains about it 🙂 But there’s what you call a 180. From totally unconfident to putting myself out there on Instagram.

It’s up to you!

I can’t really do more than share my passion and ideas with you guys. If you want to see results, these are the key factors. Well, at least they were for me! Set those goals, stay focussed and be confident, be proud of who you are. And yes, working out helped me a lot on that last subject.