Hello everyone! I’ve been feeling great lately, and super duper in control, and Sylvia and I just started Beta round two this week with a couple of modifications:
- We’re going to run a mile on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and go as long as we can run sometime over the weekend.
- We’re going to substitute the Core Cardios on Monday for the Insanity Fit Test. This way we can track our progress!
- We’re going to try to up our calories a bit (or at least I am). Our metabolisms are speeding up rapidly, and we need to eat more to match, or our bodies are going to start burning muscle for fuel.
- I’m going to focus on doing more reps on the difficult moves so I don’t plateau and stay safe.
So, first I want to talk about something that’s kind of gross, but really important to talk about for other people in the same situation. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been smelling that my body odor smells a bit like onions gone wrong, either rotting or with something else nasty mixed in. I didn’t know what was causing it, either something that was stored in my fat being released or what. All I knew was that it smelled bad and WRONG. I have never smelled after working out; in fact, I could often go for a few weeks without washing my workout clothes if need be (I’ve since gotten better about washing them, I promise!). So, I knew something was wrong.
I did some research, and found that it could be caused by detoxing, eating too many onions (I eat onions most days because they’re a low sodium way to flavor things, but not in excessive amounts), eating too much spicy food (same as onions), or even drinking carbonated beverages (just weird…). None of them seemed to fit, and I eventually posted about it on Beachbody.
A trainer at Beachbody, Steve Edwards, responded to my post and expressed that he thinks my body is starting to go catabolic. When your body goes catabolic, you don’t allow enough time between working out for your glycogen stores (your fast energy cells, like rechargeable batteries) to recharge. When you work out like this, your body starts burning your muscle for energy (NOT GOOD), and the chemicals that result from the burning often are sweat from your pores. They can smell like onions, alcohol, or ammonia.
He explained that this is really common for people who work out extremely and don’t eat enough. This made perfect sense to me, since whenever I calculate what calories I should be eating a day, they always peg me at around 1950 to LOSE weight (2700 to maintain because I’m so muscular!!), and I’ve been eating between 1600 and 1700 a day. Also, right around the time that this started, I was entering Beta phase and working out harder, all while adding running into the equation. I’m going to try to eat lots of food between workouts to try to fix this problem, and up my calories a bit and hopefully that will help! I just wanted to mention it in case someone else was experiencing the same thing!
Now on to the title! On Monday, Sylvia and I did the Fit Test from Insanity, and it was just as brutal as I remember. That being said, I improved dramatically, even from the results I had 4 weeks into Insanity! Not only was doing two more suicide drills (burpees with a jump at the top) not a problem at all, my form was way better! I improved in pretty much everything, and even went from doing 20 push ups on my knees to 10 legitimate push up jacks! I do think my heart rate monitor results are hilarious. Can you guess then I was resting and when I was working?? (hint, there is a warm up, then 8 moves where you push yourself to the limit, then a cool down)
Sylvia also really improved for the Fit Test, and hopefully her knee will get stronger over the next couple of weeks so she can do the moves even more!
Yesterday, I started the day with a jog (which was actually kind of nice to do in the morning!), and then did Core Speed later in the afternoon. I FREAKING LOVE THAT DVD. Not only did I do about 10 one arm burpees (say WHAAT?), but I vastly improved my heart since the last time I did it, and I was able to keep up much better! Also, at the very end, you do two quick run throughs of the 16 moves from the top, and after the second one, we had a jog recovery, and I was hit with this huge energy surge! It felt so great!
So, that’s everything for the past few days! I hope everyone is doing great! Remember to stay healthy my friends!
Hokie Doke Fitness 