A week ago, I finally decided to switch into full gear and get started with taking my fitness journey to a new level. I’m a few days away from hitting a year since starting this blog and I am sadly disappointed with my progress. I’m facing the reality that I haven’t been taking my goals seriously and see very minimal progress with my skinny fat physique on my body recomposition journey.
Instead of dipping my toes into the water, I finally made the decision to jump into the deep end and start a fitness and nutrition program I found online. The one mistake I have learned over the last year is that there are so many sources of information available online; because I am no expert into putting it all together, it was time to throw in the towel and put my faith into an educated professional who has gone through my exact same journey. I started with going through all the course material and was able to finish reading through all the literature and videos within a day. The easy part was learning all the content, but the hardest part is putting everything into action.
As instructed by the program, I took my first progress photo to track my current physique and noted my current weight and body fat percentage (which was very different to what my scale was telling me). My weight was recorded first thing in the morning (after going to the bathroom and before eating or drinking anything). My body fat percentage was calculated using my height, waist, and neck measurements.
The next step was taking my current body fat percentage and determining my Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). After adding in my daily caloric deficit, I came up with my total daily consumption target in calories and macronutrients. Throughout the week, I proceeded to track both my weight and calories consumed on a daily basis.
Following this practice, I quickly learned that I have been consistently eating too many calories than I should have consumed. No wonder regardless of what rules I was originally following, didn’t result in losing barely any body fat. Within the first 5 days of tracking, I consistently consumed a higher number of calories, with one day eating over 1000 calories extra. This made me adjust quickly for the last 2 remaining days of my first week to get my diet in order.
To balance off the week, I did a huge grocery shop at Costco and stocked my fridge and pantry up with tons of fresh fruits and vegetables, various lean protein sources, and healthy grains. I prepared myself very high protein and low calorie meals throughout the day and focused on hitting my daily macronutrient targets. Here are some of the meals I prepared:
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Oatmeal & Berries -
Vegan Salad -
Chicken, Vegetables & Quinoa
As for the workout portion of the program, I experimented with determining my starting weights for each exercise within two of the alternating full body workouts, both focusing on compound movements. During my rest days, I began going through and familiarizing myself with the ab and prehab workouts outlined in the program.
Being a week into the program, I am feeling highly motivated and excited to keep the consistent workouts going, having fun preparing healthy low calorie meals, and continuing to track my progress along the way.
