Why You Should Lift. . .

    So I stopped posting because I've been focusing my time/energies else where and I'm really happy with the personal/physical/ mental development I've made over the past 6 months.   Right now I'm 11 days out  (aka freak out time!) from my first bikini competition and wanted to share the progress I've made the past year with heavy lifting/ proper nutrition to support body composition change. "Running for the bikini" did not get me very far in terms of achieving the results I was looking for (as you will note from the first picture which was taken about 9 months after starting my blog), but once I started lifting and eating clean I got rapid results.

Picture evidence:

Little over a year ago

 (Mid-May, and a little blurry cause I used photo booth)  

End of October 

After about 2 months of lifting and cleaning up my diet.

Tanner but also less stomach fat.

2 weeks ago

 After 10 months of heavy lifting and high protein, clean diet :)

Note: There is about a 10 lb change between these pictures (from 122-ish to 112) and 10+% bf loss (from approx over 25% to 15%).  And this was for the most part while actively trying to keep my calories up, often aiming for 2000-2200 (while in the past I was always trying to keep them low [1200-1300ish] which often led to bingeing, as well as not making the best food choices as long as it fit my calorie budget).  

     And as mentioned in a previous post I dropped my 5k time from 20:XX to 19:00 (even while reducing the amount of running I was doing) during this time so lifting has had a positive impact on my running as well :)

Now I'm running late for morning cardio (stairs!), hopefully I will find time to start posting again but if you are interested I do post fitness related and competition progress stuff on my Facebook page ~ http://www.facebook.com/KatieMcGrathCPT because it is easier time wise to make quick updates.