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Getting Back in Shape






This is where I'm at this moment: I haven't had a workout since October but now this is all about to change! Last Thursday my doctor gave me a permission to start exercise again. Yippee! Thus, from this day forward I will start to train myself. However, I will start slowly because I know that I have lost a lot of my muscle mass and my cardiorespiratory fitness is not that good at the moment 😭 as I can barely manage to walk 5 km. Hence, I will only do cardio below 120 bpm. But this is my starting point and things will only improve. Therefore, I decided to share with you my "path" back to fitness and health. I will be writing about how I train and what I eat. It is basically the same diet I eat everyday, only that I increase the amount of food I eat and perhaps I will eat more protein.It is important to eat enough the right food and not starve yourself! This way your body will recover from your workouts and your fitness level will improve.




Mountain climber
My weekend breakfast: oatmeal porridge & berries, protein pancake with berries

To start with a "comeback" or a project, you need to know where you are at in this very moment. For me this means that I won't be publishing any swimsuit pictures because of my profession as a teacher. But I encourage you to take pictures so you will see your development. I don't think that my future development is that huge in pictures because of my background and my intention is not to gain big muscle masses. Instead I will focus on how I feel. As I mentioned before, right now my body doesn't feel my own and I crave for the energy what exercise gives me! This leads to the fact that I don't think that it is the outside what matters the most (of course how you look will have an impact on how you feel) but the inside how you feel when you are at your best shape and eating healthy. However, I will tell you how I feel at the moment. So, although I am at the lowest of my weight as I have ever been since pre-baby (six years ago) with the weight about 54kg, I don't feel energetic and strong. That is because I love being strong and having muscles and having a good posture which I lack at this moment. In addition, I am deprived of the energy I usually have because of exercising. Especially I miss the morning workouts which are the best! There's nothing like the feeling after a good HIIT workout or a run when you can hear the adrenalin pumping in your body. I an sooo hooked on that feeling! Accordingly, weight doesn't tell you a thing if you workout a lot and especially if you do resistance training like I do. So, when I exercise, my weight is around 56-57. When we lived in Malaysia and I really got into resistance training, my weight was about 60kg because I was gaining more muscle mass. I have to say that in that weight I was in good shape and I  didn't feel "fat" although I gained 5 extra kilos. This just shows you how you shouldn't stare at the scale. 


Recently, I haven't been into resistance training so much. Before I got sick, I started to play football again, so I changed my workout routines so that I would do more cardio. Although our season just ended, I didn't actually have any football practise. Now our new season with its practises has started but I haven't been able to participate yet. My workout routine before I got sick was somewhat following:

Monday       CX workout & bicycling
Tuesday       rest day
Wednesday  BodyCombat
Thursday     a long run/intervals
Friday         whole body workout with weights
Saturday     morning run/yoga
Sunday       yoga/ rest day

For CX and BodyCombat lessons I go to my gym. Those lessons are LesMills lessons and they are really effective and they challenge your whole body! I have to say that my workout schedule is really flexible according to how I feel at that day. I try to have two rest days in a week. That will help me to avoid overtraining. Let me tell you that I have experienced that condition and it can easily come back when you get too excited to exercise and minimize your rest days! In addition because I have a son, I cannot always commit some days if my husband is not at home. But in that case, I just do a workout at my house or in my garden.

My plan to workout now is:

Monday           CX (HIIT workout with weights)
Tuesday           BodyCombat  (cardio)
Wednesday      rest day
Thursday         long run (cardio)
Friday              football practise
Saturday          whole body workout at the gym (resistance training)
Sunday             rest day/yoga

Again, this workout plan is flexible and the days and their exercises can change. However, I try to keep it in a way that I will do 2-3 workouts and then have a rest day. Also, I will vary my schedule so that after a whole body workout, I will do a cardio day and vice versa in order to let my muscles recover. It is OK to do cardio two days in a row if the exercises are different. Like in my example long run is a steady state running and football practise is more interval training.

Whatever your goal is when you workout, you should always include some resistance training because as you get older,  you will lose your muscle mass. It has been said that most adults achieve their peak muscle mass sometime during their late 30s to early 40s. After that point, a gradual loss of muscle mass begins and can continue a steady, downhill course into old age. And how quickly will this happen? People who are physically inactive can lose as much as 3 percent to 5 percent of their muscle mass per 10 years after age 30. So, don't forget to train your muscles at the gym or doing a bodyweight workout at home.


Enjoy your workouts,
Jennikatja


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