eating to build muscle

Hello friends!! You have no idea how happy I am to be typing this post! We moved my blog to a new server and the past 2-3 weeks, yes weeks, I could not post! But it’s all good now, these are things you have to do if you have big plans – and we have big plans for the blog this year and beyond! It’s been a tough start this year (that will be covered in another blog post– dealing with PTSD, a new puppy, getting COVID not once but 2x, having another bout of migraines come back — just like 6 months of speed months in the neighborhood of life!) but I am feeling GREAT about this Fall and Holiday season and 2023 and beyond! Like…SUPER EXCITED!! SO GET READY! I thought I’d use this first post to update you on where I’m at with my weight loss situation.

What Happens When You Reach Your Goal Weight??

Boy that was a sentence I never thought I’d type…but once I saw my goal weight of 138 and then- I even surpassed that and hit 135 and then 134~~~ GULP– I was somewhat in shock. I actually don’t even remember the exact date when I hit my goal weight– either way, it’s been a while since I was regularly weighing myself and worrying about LOSING weight. The truth was, I had gotten to the point where I didn’t really want to lose much more- my primary goal was to start working out again. You see– I’ve referenced this before in most of my posts about my keto journey, but during this transformation (and it was not my plan to do it that way by any. means) — I was not working out! I was dealing with migraines and migraine aftermath and so very intimidated to work out…..and I’d also gotten used to not working out. Amazing, coming from me, the workout fanatic right?? But– the one thing I did know was this: I DEFINITELY felt, when I was naked, staring at my body– I felt MUSHY. I felt “skinny fat”. I missed my muscle. I missed feeling ripped. Or at least more ripped. So– the past couple of months I found myself starting to think about working out and eating– and — getting confused. I had at that point been doing OMAD (one meal a day, it’s pretty much a variation of intermittent fasting where instead of what I was doing – 2 meals a day, lunch and dinner– you do ONE meal a day– dinner– but you eat all your calories in that dinner you aren’t supposed to diet and just eat like 500 calories for dinner or anything). Well…..I was finding myself having some issues with OMAD: at first I liked it but then I found I was not eating enough– and I KNEW that if I was going to start training/working out again- I could not NOT EAT ENOUGH and TRAIN HARD. I started to freak out and overanalyze. I’ve been here before. Y’all……ugh. This mind game stuff with dieting and losing weight no matter where you are….it’s rough. I decided to consult with my doctor. 

What My Functional Medicine Doctor Told Me About Eating For Building Muscle and Maintenance.

When I spoke with my doctor about where I was– she (I am paraphrasing) said I needed to be comfortable testing things out. She reinforced what we talked about last time, which is that I definitely should be incorporating some higher carb days and that we should NOT be 100% hard core keto all the time forever– that it’s not ideal for our mitochondria. She encouraged me to at least once a month have a good “cheat meal” (like get real cheat foods if you will) to let the body reset vs. just doing more rice and veggies. I’m like ok boss! No problem. Then she had said let’s add more carbs/calories. Well over the next month or so — I did. In the form of: acai bowls (edited to have far less honey than I used to make them with– now I make them with allulose and only 1 TBS honey) and I let myself have oatmeal with eggs and was a bit more liberal with my rice intake and was allowing myself some apples. I didn’t necessarily increase my calories/amount of food, but I was not recording every morsel of food in My Fitness Pal. Well– Steve and I then decide — because we are both committed to upping our game with working out/getting leaner/more buff etc. – to start weighing daily again and getting our diets back on track with more salads and more veggies etc. So we get a new scale (our last one wasn’t working well so we got an updated Greater Goods scale, I highly recommend them) and I finally step on after probably 6 months of not weighing myself and GULP– the scale says— 144!!!!! That’s 6lbs higher than my goal weight and 10lbs higher than my lowest weight I’d hit previously! I OF COURSE freaked out. Then I remembered what my doctor had said to me- she said “You have to be ready for the scale to show weight gain of 5-7lbs right away and remember this will be water weight, you have to be ready for that.”– and I also have been reading this in my research, that when you start eating more carbs, carbs will attract water to be retained into the body vs. when you are more strict keto, you don’t retain the water. (Think about a bikini competitor on stage, they have eaten no carbs or water prior to getting on stage so that their muscles pop just right, and when they go off stage and eat– they can literally gain 10lbs overnight). It was NOT easy to see that scale number– but I also had noticed for sure that 1) my boobs had definitely gotten bigger again and were filling up my 36D bras again– which I LIKE vs. 2) before- they were kind of shrinking and getting so much smaller I was concerned I’d be going down to a 36 C so I think a lot of my weight gain is there. 3) I took my measurements and most all are the same with the exception of a 1/2 inch gain on my hips. So– what am I doing now??

What is my PLAN NOW?

So here is the thing. I’m ready to be working out again and building muscle. At first when I got on the scale, I flipped out and the MENTAL SIDE OF IT derailed me. It made me solely focus on “I must go back to strict keto to get back to 134 at all costs”. But what is so magical about 134lbs?? Nothing. I’m more concerned with getting MUSCLE and not being mushy and I’m starting to follow some fabulously ripped 50+ women online who are like “you gotta eat to fuel your workouts” and “why let the number on the scale define you”– then just today I saw my friend Heidi Powell post what she eats in a day and it was 2400 calories. Here I am obsessing about staying at 1600. SILLY. Heidi is tiny and ripped and I’m trying to diet still. Time to change the mindset and that is what I am working on and will share with you all as I do it. Watch me. and learn. 😉 

Lifting Heavy

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