Another swing at bat....

So I gotta get back in the game again. Get back up on the horse as it were and start getting more social again. It's not like I had cooled down all that much but towards the end of my preseason dieting I was starting to get pretty tired most of the time. It limits what you can do rather than what you want to do, sleep becomes a very scarce commodity and a high priority which you will grab whenever you can. There's that and of course the breakup didn't do too much for my overall motivation to get out. So I pulled back and took a bit of a rest. Enough of that, time to go and have some fun again.

As for the diet this year, my last week, when the end was so close, I ended up getting sick. I never get sick, once a year at most which is a bonus. The timing just sucked this time around really. So my diet was cut by one week, oh well no biggie I guess. It's not like I was going to drop another 10lbs in that last week or anything. I also wasn't competing this year either so there wasn't a dire need to get absolutely shredded. I decided to take the week off work and the gym and start getting carbs back in the diet again. Getting as much sleep as I could and recovering from the previous 15 weeks of hard work and bland chicken, mmmmm beef.

All in all the diet was good this year. I accomplished my goals and found out that I can go harder and deeper than I ever had gone before. I started out at 215lbs and ended up at 173lbs. Each year getting leaner and leaner while also gaining more mass, shape and overall balance. Win win no matter how you look at it.

So now I find that I am getting back to my normal self again. The off-season has already started and so far, just 3 weeks in, I am seeing the rebound kick in big time and I am so pumped about this years potential. I'm already back up to 315lbs on my bench and 405lbs on the squat! As it was last year, it's going to be a conservative off-season. Just like the pre-season diet everything gets measured so that I can keep from getting too big too fast. Putting on too much in the off-season simply makes the following pre-season all that much harder. I've learnt that you can only drop so much in a pre-season before your body pushes back and says enough! It's best to be smart about it and play the long game. Build your goal over a long time and the results will be all the more sweeter.

Another goal of mine was to take control of my finances and get myself out from under this bullshit credit card debt that I have. I've lied to myself for quite a while saying that I was working hard to pay it off but I see how full of shit I was. Low and behold the universe seems to hear these honest cries for help and provides it just when you need it most. I've heard over and over again about budgeting but I never did get into the habit of it, until now. I came across a program called YNAB which is short for You Need A Budget. It's fairly basic but powerful in that it puts you in control of your spending. It has totally changed my life and it's only been two months since I started using it. I can't begin to describe how much more empowering it feels to finally be in control and know that I won't ever be caught short again. I highly recommend checking it out.


There's more to chat about but I think I'll close this one off for now.


A.

“You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.”—Jim Rohn

http://www.positivelypositive.com/2011/11/06/the-single-most-important-mindset-shift/