8 Weeks Out

A week ago, I tried to incorporate cardio into my regime, and it didn't go well!! My knees were in agony after very simple steady state cardio :( So this week, I only managed to get two 15 minute cardio sessions in! To keep the downward trend going, I figured I had no choice but to lower my calories more which I didn't originally want to do!! The plan was to stick with this till I feel contest ready...hopefully early, and then just maintain till May. So this week I was eating 1200 calories (which is the absolute minimum I will go to) and low carb. I was doing a little bit of a carb cycle you could say! I'm had two high carb days, one for leg day, and one for back day. (These days I basically just added oatmeal in the morning and removed a serving of fat later on to compensate for it) You know you are eating clean when having a bowl of your once upon a time, everyday oatmeal is the best taste you could imagine for your tastebuds!! HAHA

I was originally planning on having a cheat meal or day, but I think I'm just going to put that off till after my photoshoot in a couple of weeks! The monday after my shoot I'll have a good cheat day, I PROMISE! LOL I thought the week was going well, but I'm really not happy with my pics as compared to the last few weeks :(

TOTALLY out of the blue I'm starting to see that my quads and abs have started to show.  I'm SUPER happy to see this happening FINALLY!!!! (this didn't seem to show up in my pics this week? I just look skinnier) My energy level has still be REALLY good considering the cut of calories!

I've REALLY started to focus on posing....10-15 minutes everyday...if I don't get my body where I want it to be, I will at least be ready for stage presence...I HOPE! As far as my body goes, I'm pretty sure I'll have no problem getting lean enough. My worry is, in order to get more defined I'll start to look too skinny because I didn't build enough muscle before starting the lean out process! :( I'm already excited for off season!! I can't wait to start building some beautiful muscles! ;)

I've had a little fun this week putting all my outfits aside for the photoshoot in Toronto. I want to have lots of options to choose from depending on how things go!! :)

Here are my progress pics for the week! Despite the big cut in calories, I didn't really lose anything. Not being able to add any cardio isn't helping any!!! To me, the pics appear to look better last week
 :( Makes me want to RUN back to what I was doing before!!! At least I know there has been a consistent trend of that working. I'm thinking I will stick with what I was doing before, until I'm not seeing any progress anymore. I will experiment with cutting calories and carb cycling after the photoshoot! I don't want to look flat for the pictures ;)

Until Next week my fit friends!