Getting lean has a cost

My mood was much better after increasing my calories.

This past weekend I had a hard reality check of calorie cutting. Training for a competition is hard work. You have to hit the gym, get in cardio and play macro tetris with your food. Training increases while calories decrease and this weekend it caught up to me.

Over the past few weeks my calories have been dropping. It’s been a gradual cut by 100-200 calories a week. Last week my coach cut me down to 1200cals. I was doing well the first 2 days but it caught up to me fast.

Saturday morning I woke up and went about my normal day, however by 10am I was shaking. You know that gross feeling you get when you know you have no food in you or the shakes you get from low blood sugar? That was me!

I immediately texted my coach and let her know what was happening. She told me to eat something, seeing I was running around I ate a stashed granola bar from in my car. I came home and had lunch, however I continued to shake every so often after I would eat. My coach told me to increase my calories for the day ,take a rest day, no gym, no steps, no nothing and we would reassess the next day.

Sunday the same thing started to happen around the same time. My brain was super foggy and it took everything in me to be able to do anything. I contacted my coach once again and told her we needed to reassess.

I know with trying to get lean there is a cost. However, I was (and am not) willing to sacrifice my health over it. So my coach and I talked a lot and we decided to increase my calories to 1300-1400cals a day but I need to add 2 AMRAP workouts a week.

For me adding the extra workouts to get more food is worth it!