WEEK 2 - SICKNESS HITS

Thirty eight training sessions in 14 days is bound to put the body under enormous stress but with the military precision of my nutrient timing, regular meals and abundance of vitamins I am ingesting, I thought I’d be bullet proof...clearly not.

So whats happening? I quickly put it down to two things; sleep deprivation and not enough calories. For those of you that know me, you’ll know Kitty, our spirited 14 month old. Well she’s decided that waking up at 4am is her new favorite thing, she of course unselfishly wants to share her new idea with mum and dad too which is f#cking great. I’m up at 5am normally and run on the edge of sleep deprivation on a normal week but getting up that extra hour has broken me and clearly my immune system. Kids hey, who’d have them? Apart from building a kennel and putting Kitty to sleep outside the only option is to go to bed earlier so that’s what I’ll have to do otherwise I run the risk of regressing and this transformation will be abruptly over, sleep is one of THE most important aspects of maintaining a healthy body and mind and I need all the help I can get especially with the latter.

Kitty the owl below: Butter wouldn't melt right? Wrong!

Food and the amount that you should eat isn’t an exact science and everyone's body is unique. There are ways to calculate calorie consumption but even then tweaks have to be made to get it right for your specific goal. By the end of the second week I was exhausted in and out of the gym. I felt anxious too which is a sign of under eating. Personal Training is an active job and I concluded that my calories must be lacking, even with my 7 meals per day I wasn’t getting enough fuel to maintain 3 workouts per day, 8 clients and a bootcamp! By the time I had reached day 13 I had a banging headache, felt feverish and generally like crap so something had to change! Refeeding is a popular concept and not one I’m going to go to much into detail about now but essentially you are ‘refeeding’ your depleted muscles by overeating by 50%. You are supposed to stick within your macros (protein, carbs etc) but just eat more for 12 to 24 hours. I decided to smash a MASSIVE homemade cottage pie, I’d been dreaming about spuds for 14 days too so that went down like a dream as did the lemon & ricotta pancakes with honey...both plates disappeared like a dust under a dyson and boy did I feel much better.

In conclusion I have added some more protein and carbs to my diet (all measured) and will just have to go to bed an hour earlier to maintain the sleep that I need, at least until Kitty realises she’s a human and not an owl or it becomes socially acceptable to house your children outside. You have to listen to your body and adjust things accordingly, as long as the cm and body fat are coming off I am safe to increase the calories slightly and still keep on track with my goal. Bring on week three.