And so it starts

I'm not really a morning person. I find that it takes me a long time to wake up and I never have the amount of energy first thing in the morning as I do a little later in the day. But I've committed myself to getting up and going to the gym with Brad before work for a three day split weights program and we started today. Before the gym i'll either have half a cup of oats or 5 egg whites scrambled and it still doesn't seem to kick my energy systems into gear. Its such a struggle!

Today we did back, abs and biceps and this afternoon i'm heading back to the gym for 1 hour of RPM and 1 hour of body pump so i'll get a mighty good calorie burn in this afternoon.

So far, the thing i'm finding the hardest is eating healthy snacks between meals. I'm trying not to overdo it on the fruit but i'm finding myself at a loss for snacks unless I do. I generally have oats or eggs for breakfast (as previously mentioned) then if I go to the gym in the morning i'll have a protein shake straight after and probably a piece of fruit too. I then try and hold out till 12 - 12.30ish for lunch and have half a cup of brown rice with a tin of 180g tuna (drained and mixed into the rice) and a non fat yoghurt tub. You can bet your bottom dollar that within two hours though i'll be hungry again and scrounging around for things to eat. This is when I find myself heading back to the fruit bowl for more apples or banana's. I limit myself to two pieces of fruit per day (except on sunday's when at the moment i'm having a mango for desert in addition to my other fruit). I dont really want to have another protein shake because I like having a small cut of meat at my evening meal so I don't want to over do the protein. But by the time I reach this point i've used my fruit quota and my protein shake up so what the hell am I supposed to eat! I NEED to eat something mid-afternoon, especially if i'm heading back to the gym for a cardio workout. Lately if I have oats for breakfast and i'm at home, mid afternoon i'll have five egg whites scrambled - but again i'm worried that I might be overdoing the protein. I find the diet thing the hardest of all.

The portion sizes is something I contstantly struggle with. Because i'm an aerobics instructor, i'm incredibly active and I need to eat to stay strong and alert. I find the reccommended portion sizes for weight loss are really quite small and i'm always walking around hungry. I'm eating every two hours at the moment in attempt to try and stay satiated. I know that's what you're supposed to do and I know that you're supposed to feel that niggle before you eat but its an incredibly difficult feeling to deal with. Whenever I feel hungry like this I get the urge to eat far more than I should. The types of foods I eat has never really been the problem, I guess the portion control side of things is really my biggest fault. Even though in recent months I have eaten more fatty/processed foods than I would ordinarily, as a general rule of thumb I eat very well. The only thing I can put it down to is the fact that I was eating 2/3 - 3/4 cup of oats and brown rice (and things like that). So I'm cutting that stuff down but goddamit, its so hard!

Then i looked at my exercise regiment and wonder if i'm eating enough to sustain energy levels in my body. Because i'm fairly fit already i've decided that I need to up the ante and throw a few more really high intesity sessions in there, to shock my body. I know I need to create a calorie deficit but I'm torn between feeding my poor muscles the food they crave to recover or letting the calories burn off.

I'm doing RPM training this weekend which means my class load is going to increase even further. And, i'm doing Body Pump soon after, so my class load will increase again. I'll be interested to see if I can maintain this diet while i'm teaching so many classes. I'm definitely going to try but I feel like I have an obligation to my body to reward it with nutrients after it works so hard for me. I have these battles with myself inside. I'm torn between eating as much fruit as I want (because I really love my fruit) because i'm so freaking active or really limiting it because I want to lose weight.

All my fitness idols would work out as much, maybe even more than I do. I would love to know what they eat because they all have absolutely amazing bodies. The body is supposed to know no limits, only what you impose upon it - but I feel like i'm running on empty all the time. Where am I supposed to get the fuel I need to perform at my best ability and constantly workout at a high intensity?

All good questions which I think loads of women all around the world ask themselves regularly.