Funky Fortnight from Flippin Hell

So where did it go? My mojo? My zest, zap and zip? My usually unfaltering and unwavering enthusiasm? My burning desire to run out to the gym, slap on my 80’s Power Ballads and knock myself around some? Where did the burning desire to work towards showing off the best physique I’ve ever had disappear to?

Not sure but it played the game very well. Almost too well.

I’m tirelessly predictable. I’m feeling better so that’s why I write this. I honestly couldn’t have written anything about me in the past two weeks. I was too … what’s the word …. Oh yes, here it is – pathetic. Capital P.

No big event occurred; I didn’t suffer a loss, move house, lose a child, muck up at work, binge on kilo of sultanas and almonds..nothing like that at all. It was more a feeling of complete and utter lethargy. Not even exhaustion. Just a bundle of pathetic-ness.

I would hit the gym and begin the self-doubt before I even un-racked the bar. I talked myself into feeling weak to excuse how hard I found the workout.

This perceived feeling of mental weakness triggered a little feeling of self-loathing, and wondering why I had let this much weight creep on - making it so damn hard to claw my way back to competition weight. I could feel those thoughts creeping in, attacking me in weak and tired moments.

Rob bore the brunt of it and supported me through the whole way. Along with my closest girlfriends. They listened and didn’t laugh or roll their eyes. They urged me to do the best workouts I could and propped me up. They cared to ask how the workouts went and congratulated the wins. That’s a support team right there. Right there!

In case you don’t realise, when the going gets tough, you really don’t need people to convince you it’s ok to gorge on cake because “you deserve it” in the hard times. Also not helpful to encourage someone doing it tough to miss out their gym sessions (unless they need to). So much better to push through the mental barrier and do something anyway.

Through the fortnight I didn’t miss a gym session. I didn’t eat a morsel more or less than prescribed. My deep knowledge is that the process works just the way Ingrid designs it. That while the head is going astray, the body need not follow.

And then I realised the real excitement lay in that fact. Holy crap!!! I just realised what I did over this fortnight!!!! I DID NOT LET MY BODY PHYSICALLY GIVE IN TO THE FUNKY HEAD SPACE!!!! And that, my friends, is the evidence of just how far I have come over the years.

So I find myself 11.5 weeks away from competition #1. I still have 9kg to lose. I have lost a total of 6.5 kilos.

My prep diet still includes; oats, strawberries, sunflower seeds, oils, berries, chicken, tuna, Greek yoghurt and copious amounts of vegies and salad.

I am doing full-on cardio now. Just 25min blocks but they are the hardest thing for my mind to tackle. I give it everything I’ve got and left yesterday with the taste of aluminium foil in my mouth – and a persistent little cardio-cough…. You know what I mean? That evidence that I really did give it all I had. Yuck and Great all in one.

Weight training is going great guns. To be honest, I actually increased all of my lifts during my funky fortnight. The last couple of days I lowered the weight slightly and decided to really make that mind-to-muscle connection to ensure that I’m triggering the right muscle to make the lift. It worked.

So here’s to the next fortnight and the belief that it will be an absolute cracker.