Where'd my abs go? Friday's are for pizza and ice cream, duh.

I had Papa John’s and two pints office cream yesterday, and we’re going to talk about I can stay on track while making crazy decision like that and still getting in plenty of veggies!

I broke down and weighed myself, haha. I took about a week off from it, and it felt good! I’m not going to jump back in to my daily weigh ins, but I am going to keep an eye on the scale a few days a week in an effort to keep things from getting too far out of control. Because even though this is improvement season, I’m still a crazy control freak!

So, I was 134 yesterday. The last time I weighed myself was right before my parents visited, and I was 132. A few days before that I was 128 lbs. Moral of the story here, is that the second I stop cutting super hard, my body puts weight back on. That is what it should do! I kept an inconsistent period throughout this last cut, so my hormones aren’t nearly as out of whack as they could be, but my body needs to get back to normal and putting fat back on will get me there. Would it be nice to walk around with super visible abs all the time? Hell yea! Does my body do that while also allowing me to enjoy life (because food+enjoyment go hand in hand here, I love food)? Nope. In the past, I would let myself get heartbroken about this. But, my Coach said something in one of his recent podcasts that has been helping me out, in comparison to people who aren’t so focused on shredded abs and aesthetics, I have strong, visible abs, I have definition, I’m athletic and it’s crazy that I need to see each bit of my lower abs to feel accomplished. That might sound vain, but it’s the truth. I still look good, even if it’s not the best I’ve looked. That’s the hard part about the stage and prep, you see your body at its peak abilities and then have to let it go until next time.

But, I digress. The point of this post is that I had pizza and ice cream yesterday and I want to tell you how to balance it out. So, I hit my macros like a boss yesterday, but I also finished my macros by about 2 pm. This is normal for me, and I like to not be bloated at bedtime so this is my normal routine. Those macros included a pint of Cookie Shake Arctic Zero, which I truly love, the key is to let it melt for about 15 minutes which happened to be how long it took me to get home from Wal-Mart. #winning

My post workout meal was that pint of Arctic Zero and this bowl of cauliflower-oats topped with whit chocolate chips and peanut butter, and fat free Reddi -whip because its AMAZING. 

Then, Vic got home from a long day of work and was craving Papa John’s. We never order Papa John’s and I had a crazy AMRAP squat and bench day, so I was pretty hungry. I had one slice of his sausage pizza, and for good measure, I also had a pint of Oatmeal Halo Top because it’s delicious, haha.  Saturdays are my refeed day, so I logged all of that on my Saturday My Fitness Pal entry. Papa John’s pizza comes to roughly 330 calories, 37 C, 15 F and 15 P for one slice from a large pizza. That Halo Top was 280 calories, 48 C, 8 F, and 24 P. I add a little trick in though, since I want to maximize muscle growth during this season of my training.

If you go in to My Fitness Pal and go to add a food, you’ll see there is a section for “my foods”, and then “create a food”. I have created two foods that I unfortunately use often, haha, they are titled Carb Overage and Fat Overage. Each gram of carb is 4 calories and each gram of fat is 9 calories. I just enter that in when creating the food, the serving size is set to 1 gram, but when I log it I can adjust the number of servings as needed.

So, there is a way to balance out wanting yummy foods, even on days where they may not fit your macros. Normally, Saturday is my refeed day, but I adjusted it to Friday. With everything I had, I managed to go over even those numbers by about 35 F (my refeed days have lower fats to account for the higher carbs) and 25 C. So, I will log those as overages for today's normal training day. No beating myself up, no starvation, just being accountable for the overage and moving forward. My day today won't be miserable and I don't feel guilty. 

We’ve got Ryker’s football practice this morning and then we might go to the Pumpkin Patch! This afternoon, a woman from our neighborhood is bringing her puppy over to introduce to our family because I may be dog sitting in early November. I figure if I’m home, I might as well do stuff like that for some extra cash! She offered $35 a day for 12 days, so that’s a pretty easy YES to me! Have a happy Saturday and feel free to ask any questions for macro help, just head to the Contact Me button for the best way to reach me!