Start of My Cut & 2 Leg Workouts!

Good morning everyone! I'm officially on 3 day of my cut and loving it. It's actually be strangely refreshing to start a small cut, and I'm excited to see how the coming weeks go! For this post, I'm going to break it down over the past 3 days. 

Saturday

I kicked off Saturday morning with a plyo legs workout because it's one of my favorites. I did this circuit 4 times through and each round takes about 12 minutes. For the pulsing split squats and lunges you do 45 seconds for each leg so that's how you get 12 minutes. You don't have to use the slider pads but just do regular lunges with either weights or your bodyweight. I use lighter weights for the goblet squats, pulsing split squats, walking lunges, and the kettle bell swings. 

People have asked me what's the benefit of reversing before doing a cut and my answer is simple: more foooood haha! But really. On Saturday, I had 3 pieces of bread, potatoes, a waffle, and some mini cookies. And that's on my cutting macros! Yeah I probably won't be able to stay on those high of carbs the whole time but it's a pretty great place to start. 

After my workout I had a slice of toast with 1 tablespoon almond butter and cheesy scrambled eggs. Protein tip: to get the most out of your eggs mix egg whites with whole eggs (more protein, less fat). Pictured here is 1 whole egg with 1/4 cup egg whites and 2 tbsp mozzarella cheese. 

My new obsession: BLT! 3 slices of turkey bacon, couple slices of tomato, fresh spinach, and spicy mustard all on 2 pieces of wheat bread. I have one planned in my macros every day this week #noshame. 

Sunday

I made a helping of overnight oats in my almost empty jar of this Jif hazelnut spread. Rachael got me hooked on it and it's delicious. I also mixed in some almond butter and it was quite the tasty breakfast. 

Later on in the day we had a dinner for my mom to celebrate her being home 2 years! It's crazy how fast the time has gone, and I'm amazed at how much God has taken care of our family. You can read more about her story here and this one too!

For dessert, I made a cherry cobbler dump cake which I'll post soon :)

Monday

This morning was none other than leg day! By far my favorite day of the week, I can't get enough. If only every day could be leg day haha! 

I tried out front squats today and let me just say I am IN LOVE. It felt so much more natural to me than a traditional back squat and not to mention zero back pain! I've been looking more into front squats as an alternative to back squats for people who have lower back pain, and some people have recommended I try it out. I finally did, and was so glad I did because I'll be incorporating more of them. I don't know why I was so intimidated by them but I thought holding the bar in the front would be awkward or more difficult but it's surprisingly not at all. I was able to get so much more depth as well, and focus much more on my quads. Whenever I would do back squats I would struggle hitting my quads since my glutes would take over no matter how much I would change around my foot placement or form. 

I kept it on the lighter side, 25 pounds on each side, to really focus on form and get the feel for it. 

I also found this little gem and you should probably go out right now and buy some. If you are a fan of snickerdoodle then this is the coffee creamer for you! 

Later on today, my aunt and I are taking Lola and Layla to volunteer at the nursing home by our house. I'm excited to take Layla because getting her therapy certified is one of my dreams! I think this will be great practice for her, and I know she'll love making some new friends. 

Hope you all have a great Monday! 

Last Increase & Leg Day PR!

I've decided that this past Sunday was my last increase before I do a cut starting this coming Sunday. I definitely have gotten to a level of food where my body is completely happy at, which is great news in terms of finding my maintenance. So once I'm done with my cut, I'll know a good place to reverse back to. It takes a lot of time and patience to figure this stuff out but I can't even stress how much it is worth it!  

I've decided I'll start my cut slow in order to preserve as much of my metabolism as possible. So I'm not gonna go crazy and cut 500-600 calories the first go because then it would be miserable trying to go lower than that when my weight plateaus. I've backed off on HIIT a lot the past several weeks too, which was purposeful because my main focus has been to just really try to build up some muscle. Meanwhile, my running is increasing which is great timing if I need to up my cardio. Let me just add real quick you can totally do HIIT and cardio during a reverse and still build muscle. What I meant by focusing on building muscle was simply a matter of time since my workouts are time-limited I allotted most of it to lifting. 

Basically everything is falling in to place and I'm super excited! I haven't done a cut in a longggg time, and I'm curious to see what's going to happen. I can feel my body being much more muscular compared to last fall at this time so I'd love to be able to see more of my hard work! Arm muscles are finally coming in plus I can see a slight separation starting to form between my hamstrings and glutes which is like all I've ever dreamed of haha! Well that and quads but my hamstrings are the weakest part of my leg so it's exciting to see that progress. I honestly can't wait to keep moving forward towards my goals!

Sunday morning before church, I celebrated increase day with my usual helping of oats! Not sure how that tradition started during this reverse but it's something I look forward to since I'm not able to have a nice sit-down breakfast any other day. I made hot oats with a banana sliced, tablespoon of honey roasted peanut butter, and sweetened with stevia. 

All those extra carbs on Sunday were put to good use for my Monday leg day! I still can't do squats because of my lower back, but honestly I don't miss them. This might be taboo in the #fitchick world but I'm not really about squats. People ask me how I managed to grow my quads so much and honestly squats were never the answer for me! I utilize three machines to really grow my quads: leg press (narrower foot stance to isolate quads), smith machine lunges (keep the weight on the front leg, really sink straight down without leaning forward to keep the quad contracted without bringing in the glutes too much), and leg extensions. 

For the leg extensions I do a whole variety of reps, sets, and mixing it up to make it different every week. This past week I did a set of single leg extensions for each leg then immediately cranked the weight up to do a set with both legs. Talk about a burn! So it was like a tri-set and my legs were jello after that. The same goes with the smith machine and leg press. I'm constantly pushing myself with heavier weights and/or higher reps to make sure I reach failure each time. I keep track so that I know each week how much I need to go up in weight. 

I've gotten some questions about how I know I've reached failure. This is the way I think about it: if you get to a point where another rep makes you want to cry well then you're there! Well, no, you don't actually have to cry haha! Here's a great example of reaching failure in my past workout. I was doing the leg extensions and I was shooting for 10 reps on my last set with both my legs. I actually failed at 9 like my legs dropped mid-rep, I couldn't finish out the rep. When I was at 8 and struggling I said to myself "ehh push through, shoot for 10" but that clearly didn't happen. 

I'm actually thinking about doing a separate post about lifting and muscle failure because there is debate about whether or not it's good for your body to train that way. Let me just say something really quickly but I only train to failure on certain exercises and muscle groups. Like when I used to do squats I didn't train to failure because I wouldn't want to fail mid-rep with 165 pounds chilling on my back. Even if I did have a spotter I still wasn't comfortable training that way, especially with my lower back. 

The same goes for leg press but that's because I still need to be careful with my back. So it all depends people! Listen to your body and figure out what works for you training-wise. 

BUT I was excited this week because I got a new PR! I've been extremely cautious with upping the weight too much on leg press so I've been just adding higher reps a lot rather than higher weight. Well since my back is doing excellent with cutting out squats, I can really focus on going heavy on the leg press. I told myself I would do 4 plates each side for a total of 360 pounds (some people count the weight of the sled but I don't) and I admit I was surprised at how much easier this weight felt. I really thought I would be riding the struggle bus to get out 1 rep but I got 3! And was able to do another set of 3! 

I'm going to give it another couple weeks before I try for 10 plates but in the mean time I'll be slowly adding in more weight on top of 8 to see what I'm capable of. It just goes to show our bodies can be so much stronger than we think! 

Sunday Funday with the Family

On Sunday during the day, all the cousins headed up to my aunt and uncle's camp about an hour and a half north of us. It's nice and secluded which is great for hiking and taking the quads out. We had a blast! The weather was great, and Layla loved running around in all the open fields. Sadly, Lola couldn't come as her front paw is bothering her and needed to rest it. Hopefully she'll be good for the next trip up! 

It was just what I needed to take a break and get away, and relax with my family. It always cheers me up. 

Of course, I had Layla pose for some shots :) my friend said she should be a dog model haha!

As I say all the time, she loves my twin cousins! They're 8 and full of energy so the three of them are like peas in a pod. Kids are her absolute favorite.  

All day long people were going in and out on either the quad or dirt bikes. There were 7 of us so we would take turns, and Layla never tried to follow anyone except once I got on the quad. She took off after me and Hannah and tried running alongside it! We stopped and I tried to get her to go back but she wouldn't budge from my side, not even with everyone back at the camp calling her. Eventually, someone had to come get her haha because she was determined not to let me out of her sight. Anddd that's why no one in the family is ever concerned about her running away. 

At one point, I had to grab something from my car so Layla walked up with me. On our way back, I decided to test her just to see what would happen. There was a bend in the road with some trees to the right so when Layla went around the bend first, I ducked off to the side behind the trees. I was curious to see what she would do if she turned around to check in with me and I wasn't there. Well, she panicked! A couple seconds later she comes running around the bend with her ears up, tail held high and looking around frantically. I couldn't help it but burst out laughing and as soon as she heard me she wheels around and comes running over to me with her tail wagging frantically and started licking me. Then I felt bad for pranking her haha! But at the same time I was pleased that her off-leash training has paid off, and her first instinct is to search for me rather than run off on her own thinking it's a free-for-all if I'm no longer around. 

We also went running through the corn field! 

Hannah and I went hiking with Elise at one point, and we couldn't resist snapping this cute picture! Elise got the crazy dog lady gene like me and Hannah, you can see it in her eyes haha! 

At the end of this video, Amanda's face cracks me up. "Oh, a video?? CHEESE!"

It was a great day to spend with family, and much needed break to get away from the pressure of all my school work! 

What's your favorite way to relax?