My Fitness Journey: One month on…

I can’t believe it’s been a month since I started my journey to a fitter, stronger and leaner me. 🙂 I joined the gym at the end of July and a couple of weeks before that I took up mother and baby pilates. I started off going to the gym for the fitness classes. I was taking up yoga and tried total body conditioning, ballet fit and functional classes and decided functional and yoga were my favourites.

So now my typical week of fitness classes looks like this:

• Monday – yoga / gym (strength training or light cardio) / functional
• Tuesday – rest day
• Wednesday – mum & baby pilates or yoga or functional and gym (strength training or light cardio)
• Thursday – total body conditioning or rest day if I’m too tired
• Friday – general pilates
• Saturday and Sunday – rest

It’s been pretty much trial and error with the classes I choose but I have come up with a fitness class plan for myself now and will be changing this routine pretty soon to incorporate a water workout class.

Even though this looks like a lot of classes, I can handle it as the yoga and pilates are more low impact whereas functional and total body conditioning are more intense so it’s a good balance. I sometimes get tired so will adapt my week according to my body – it’s very important to listen to your body. It’s good to push yourself but there’s a difference between pushing boundaries and over-working your body so make sure if you start picking up more fitness classes to listen to your body.

What I do in the gym

I spend around 60 mins in the gym’s free weights area improving my balance and strength training. I do squats and stand on one leg on the bosu ball to improve balance and stability because I sprained my ankle a couple of weeks before I gave birth and at my 6-week checkup, I was told that the ligament is loose so I wanted to strengthen it up to prevent further sprains. I use 3-4kg dumbbells for lunges, bicep curls and triceps. I use a 6kg kettle bell for goblet squats. I have just started incorporating barbell dead lifts and hip thrusts with a 7.5-10kg barbell and do glute bridges with a 5kg or 10kg weight plate. As you can see, I don’t lift heavy but as a complete newbie, I think that it’s okay for a starting weight.

Here’s an image of me before I started my training:

Body progress: August 2016 (4 months postpartum)

I will start a Transformation Tuesday series to document my body progress and will update monthly so I can look back on my progress shots and see how I’ve done. I know it can be a slow process before seeing any real results but I am fine with that. Rome wasn’t built in a day so I don’t expect building lean muscle to be any faster.

What I eat

I try my best to eat healthy now. I’m no saint so I still have cheat days and off-days where I resort to the junk or the fat processed foods. *hides face in shame* I am glad I have reduced it but seriously need to cut it out completely if I really want to see results. I don’t follow any diet fads and focus on just eating healthy – that means following the eatwell plate and getting a good balance of protein, carbohydrates, fibre, fats and sugars. As I had Gestational Diabetes in both of my pregnancies, I do try to eat less carbs and more (healthy) fats to maintain the balance. Simply because carbs turn into sugars so for me and to help me avoid diabetes in my later life, I watch it. I also try to opt for low-GI carbs as these don’t spike the blood sugar levels.

I also take supplements – soya protein powder, fat metaboliser tablets and Bioglan super foods powder which helps me with my fruit/veg intake. Once I start burning more fat and produce some lean muscle, I will stop the fat burning tablets. With the Bioglan powder, I mix it with water to turn it into a ‘juice’ and have this once every morning. I really feel it helps with keeping my energy levels up during the day. I do plan to purchase a Nutribullet soon so I can stop the powder and start juicing actual fruit and veg instead for more fibre intake.

What I wear

Lululemon clothing will forever be on my wishlist but I can’t afford to spend £100 on a pair of fancy leggings. So instead, I prefer to get my yoga and gym gear from the high street. I have some sportswear I bought from New Look and Matalan which I love. I also wrote a wishlist post recently of all the wonderful gear I’ve seen and wanted to buy. Unfortunately the majority of that stuff had sold out in my size recently so I will have to make different purchases. I will write a haul post on this once I’ve bought them. 🙂

My New Look sportswear haul 🙂

What I read

As a fitness newbie, I try to do my research on how to maintain my form during lifting, what to eat, how to do certain yoga poses, etc.

Here are the sites that have helped me massively so far:

• YogaJournal – for everything to do with yoga poses
• BodyBuilding – to learn how to properly lift and research which exercises are best for ‘x’ muscles
• Livestrong – for info and advice on weight loss, burning fat, building lean muscle, protein powder supplements, anything to do with health and fitness

I also use Instagram A LOT and love finding all my fitness inspo on there. I also have a health and fitness Pinterest board which I’ve just recently set up containing all useful and inspirational stuff I’ve come across during my fitness journey – follow my board if you’re into fitness too. 🙂

I hope this post hasn’t bored you and instead has inspired you to take up a new fitness class or try something different. Let me know what you like to do to keep fit!