following up: the whats of carb cycling.

Since I published my post about my recent post-baby weight loss I have chatted with so many awesome people about their health, my health, what works, what doesn't... and so on. I have LOVED these conversations and I seriously wish I could sit down and talk with each of you about your health-woes and how to overcome them. I really do. I did weight management counseling for a year during my undergrad and it was thee highlight of my internship. Since I'm not actually able to coach each of you for an hour a week for 6 weeks I thought I'd share a little bit more about my post-baby weight loss in hopes of answering some questions and/or giving you some ideas of what you could try out. I say a little because a lot goes into weight loss and/or living a healthy lifestyle... what I've got for you today is just a few specifics for my current situation.

Before I start though I have to give you a disclaimer. A big reason why I had so much success with what I was doing was because my body was prepped to lose the weight. For a few reasons... 1) I had started to ween Calvin from breastfeeding and I had all of this pregnancy fat that was seriously just waiting around to be burned. And 2) Before I got pregnant I was active and eating well. I continued these habits throughout my pregnancy so by the time I started to wean (because I actually don't lose weight when I nurse... some do... I don't) the weight was sitting on the edge begging to come off. I also feel like I have different identities of fat on my body. There's the fat that is "pregnancy fat" that comes and goes as I build humans and then there's the "permanent fat" that is much harder to lose and it just sticks around. Right now I'm trying to burn that permanent fat and it's being pretty darn stubborn.

Anyhow... there's my disclaimer.

Here's more details about what I did and am still doing (although moving and traveling has made it a challenge).

It can be split up pretty well into two categories... diet and exercise.

1. Diet: I hate using the word diet because the world thinks "diet" means being on a diet and restricting yourself. Technically it just means "the food that you are eating." So when I say "diet" I just mean what I ate. Got it? Great. K... so I based my diet off of Chris and Heidi Powell's carb cycling that you can read about in their newest book "Extreme Transformations." Carb cycling is pretty straightforward once you've done it for a few weeks. Basically Monday-Thursday you eat lots of carbs. The idea is that your metabolism is like a furnace and you need to eat carbs so that your "furnace" will burn really hot. So you eat carbs for those four days and on days 5-6 (Friday-Saturday) you switch to low carb. Your furnace (metabolism) is burning super hot from those four days of high carbs but now that you've cut the carbs out it has nothing to burn but fat for two days. You'll notice in the book that they literally plan out everything for you. Meals, grocery lists, etc. While this is an awesome feature of their program I found that we didn't have the budget for the "fancier" clean food on their lists. I also didn't have the desire to make a separate meal for myself after feeding my boys. So instead of feeding everyone the super clean food I just based our meals off of their macronutrient categories. For example they tell you to eat a carb, fat, and protein for breakfast. Instead of following their recipes I would just throw together an easy breakfast of my own with those three things. Toast (carb), egg (fat/protein), milk (fat/protein). Piece of cake. Yummm.
2. Exercise: The exercise for this "program" is so extremely do-able. Basically first thing you do every morning (Monday-Friday) is get your furnace burning by doing a quick 10-15 minute workout. Lunges, squats, push-ups, burpees, sit-ups... all things that you need no equipment for. The workouts are planned out in the book and you just do what they have lined out for the morning then you eat breakfast as soon as you're done. Your furnace gets nice and hot right off the bat. If you want this program to really work for you they recommend doing your normal workout after that at any time during the day. I usually go for a run, bike, or do an exercise class with friends sometime in the morning so that I have time to recover before the next day.

Outside of "the program" I also had some personal "rules" you could say. I've learned that if I want to lose weight I have to do the following things...

• Only eat a single serving of a treat every other day.
• Only have one serving (outside of vegetables) at meal time.
• Brush my teeth after dinner so I'm not tempted to keep snacking.

If you want to learn more details about the Powell's program I would highly recommend checking their book out from the library. They don't just address diet and exercise... they talk about the deeper issues that lead to weight gain and how to overcome them. I loved the book and will definitely own it someday soon.

What does this picture have to do with this post? Nothing. But look at the size of that globe! Haha good luck with your healthy lifestyle endeavors! I'd love to hear about your journey!