my goal is to do Anti-March where I had a bunch of mediocre workouts.... it showed in my March results where I lost 8 pounds but more importantly didnt lose much in the way of inches....basically 1 of my hips, NADA from waist and a half inch off my already too small boobs Goals: Swim 3-4 times a week before work Strong Lifts or Body Pump Class 3 Evenings Lose 10 pounds Get into size 10 jeans (current size 12) Stick to Saturday morning ONLY weigh-ins

so Im off work Monday & Tuesday.... gonna get my swimming in hopefully very early, like 6am, if I ever get back to sleep (its 2am and Im WIDE AWAKE)

been lifting & moving 50+ pound cinder blocks all weekend for home improvement project... Im considering that a workout since Day 1 of projct (Friday) left me with DOMs....

Tomorrow afternoon/evening I will do StrongLifts workout A, though because I deloaded from 75 to 65 on my squats and stayed there for 2 weeks in March m not sure where to start

Wow....April already. This year is flying by way faster than I expected.

Goal: Hmmm....right now, I've been hovering at 140 for squats forever, so this month's goal is to get my squats to 150 WITH good form.

I think I am going to try eating at maintenance and keeping up my regular workouts for April. I got sort of fed up with cutting in March, and this week I've been very up and down emotionally with regards to my body and food. Yesterday I ate WAY too much, for example. And I was still eating even when I wasn't hungry, and I could tell I was doing it for emotional reasons, but I have yet to pinpoint exactly what those emotions were. In the meantime, while I try to figure out what my brain is doing and why I think it is trying to sabotage me, I'll eat maintenance-ish. I hope. I'm guessing at my maintenance, so, you know. Plus it seems to change. You'd think from all the data I have from over a year on here that I would have at least figured out my maintenance, but no. Not so much.

Ugh. Crappy workout today. I slept horribly, so I was kind of expecting it.

Squats I was a little wobbly on. I was still at 95, so not sure exactly why they were sucking so much, but they were. I was having some serious balance issues.

OHP, I actually threw up 5 5 5 5 3 at 60lbs. I was kind of surprised since I just went up in weight and that was my first attempt at 60.

DL. I killed myself. They weren't feeling wonderful during warmups, but of course I needed to push myself, so I tried 180 again (I had some form breakdown last time). I did 1x2 then 1x1. I tried to get it up again and got it about an inch off the ground. Decided to take a bit of a rest then try again. Walked up to the bar, got into starting position, and my right knee completely gave out before I even tried to lift it. I'm mostly happy I completely didn't fall over into the bar. I had problems supporting my weight let alone walking.

It was one of those things that you think you might be able to walk off, so I hobbled around putting the smaller weights away. When I got down to the bar and the 2 45s, I figured I had enough in me to get it back to the squat rack to deload. Still having problems walking, and I'm not sure exactly what I did. Apparently I broke myself. Hopefully it will be better by Wednesday so that I can squat, but I guess we'll just have to see how I do. :grumble:

This month is going to suck since I'll be traveling a lot, and I don't know if I just injured myself this morning, so we'll see how that goes.

As for goals:
1) Not miss more than 3 SL workouts this month. It'll be a little difficult with the traveling, but I think I can manage it. I will be missing a lot of my cardio, so that's going to kind of suck. And I know when I travel I don't eat well. :grumble:
2) Fit into the next size down for work pants. I can get some of them on, but they're way too tight still. I'd like to work on dropping some inches so I can get them on.
3) Diet break!! Looking forward to this. I'm planning on starting April 21. The hard part will be going to Scotland and not eating above maintenance. Especially since I know I'll be drinking a lot. However, this will make goal #2 more difficult...
4) Lifting goals:
Current.........Goal
Squats 95....110
Bench 80......92.5
Rows 65.......75
OHP 60.........67.5
DL 180..........190 (I'm going to have to deload, and even 190 might be too ambitious of a goal)

Hope you aren't broken!! But I must say awesome DL. I thought I was going to pop a vein last night pulling 145. I can only dream about pulling 180.
I am also jealous of your Scotland trip. It is so on my bucket list!! Have a great time!! I think it is an excellent idea to do maintenance on the trip so you wont have to miss out on goodies.

Audii: I hope you aren't broken!

Julie: Fingers crossed that you get the "all clear" from your doctor.

I'm just sticking my nose in the thread. Haven't worked out since Thursday and I don't like the way I feel right now. Proud of all of you!

::Sending healing vibes to audii & julie::

Just tagging the new thread... rest day for me today. I made some goals for the month and now I'm all nervous about making them LOL.

Goals for April:
- Complete cycle 1 of my routine and complete 2 weeks of cycle 2. Tweak along the way. Definitely stick with power cleans and work on overhead squats. At some point take a look at jerks and snatches and find out what those are all about.
- Find that elusive nutritional balance of getting enough protein, a moderate amount of fat, and not going crazy with carbses while maintaining enough of a calorie deficit to drop roughly a pound of fat a month (ish) over the next couple years (that'll bring me to within 5 or so pounds of my weight goal).
- Wean myself *somewhat* off my MFP OCD and learn to just make better choices that work for me without having to track every.single.calorie.
- Applying what I've learned from logging/tracking over the past 2 months and staying consistent with it.
- Going for a 2-week diet break to eat at maintenance, and going down to a deficit after that again for about a month or two (apparently somewhat regular cycling of maintenance/deficit is not only good for the body but also the psyche and helps with stick-to-it-ness).
- Find a way to do a bit more cardio this month than last month (take the dogs for walks regularly and/or get on my bike more or something, we shall see).

I know that sounds kind of generic (we need numbers, dammit! numberrrrssss!! ) but that's all I've got right now, honestly. The overlying theme for April will be "reasonable intake/output." That's actually a challenge for me, but I think I've learned enough by now to make it happen.

Also, speaking of reasonable (:laugh:), I ate an entire bag (yep!) of BBQ mesquite chips of the kettle variety to the tune of about 1200 calories along with drinking a bottle of homebrew on Saturday night. OMG was it ever so good. BBQ chips are my kryptonite and I can never just eat one (or less than an entire bag, apparently). The goal was to eat half of the bag one day and the other half the next but yanno, it's been a couple months since I had a chip, so before I knew it ... oops. :drinker:

It's a lot easier to eat a bag of chips if you a) give yourself permission and b) fit it into your overall plan. That way you can enjoy every bite without the guilt.

Sorry for all the rambling. Thanks for reading the whole thing. I've been up to my neck in Lyle McDonald and he's very wordy (but also super informative once you get past the wordy part). :flowerforyou:

I wish you all a month full of awesomely progressive lifting. Thanks for accepting me so well. Appreciate all you gals more than you know.

Goals:

Get 7 hours of sleep at a minimum per night. (usually okay with it, but I know it hasn't been great lately)
Leave the scale in the closet.
Eat over TDEE for a one month trial "bulk". Would like to see how much muscle +5-10 lbs overall gives me.

As for weights:

Squat: 150 (currently @ 125)
Bench: 115 (currently @ 95)
Row: 125 (currently @ 100)
OHP: 75 (currently @ 65/70)
Deadlift: 175 (currently @ 135)

I'm going to keep up with moderate cardio at least twice a week, but no more than 20-30 min per day.

We will see how things go this month.

I'm just jumping in to tag. My goals are to make the move to 5/3/1 without killing myself. :laugh:

I was sick all weekend, and I got sent home from work today because I'm still sick, so my goals aren't too lofty. I'm not feeling overly ambitious at the moment.

I've been trying to up my cardio because I'm pretty sedentary in my day to day life, and I love food! I'm also trying to work in some yoga and mobility work, but it bores me to death. Basically if I could lift everyday I'd be happy, but I can't so I'm still trying to find out what will work in the other areas that I can stick to.

I just started stronglifts Saturday. I've been lifting again for 6 months (NROL4W), but I still decided to go back to the empty bar to practice form, and to give myself a little rest. So I don't have any concrete weight goals at the moment because this month should be pretty easy in that respect.

Hey everyone! Ahhh April 1st here and cold and snowy. I need some warmth and sunshine in my life.

Hmmm goals for the month. I really want to get my deadlift form down. I'm having a hard time not curling my back as I come up.. would also love to stop getting bruises on my shins but.. I think that is asking too much hehe

Also want to get a little more cardio in. I was running outside a lot in the fall and gave up on that in the winter months. Hopefully nicer weather is on the way.

Also not really enjoying squatting and deadlifting in the same day anymore. Stronglifts has my legs TIRED.

Happy April Everyone

I have no numbers either. I don't like expectations lol. I would like to go up on all my lifts this month though. I am still working on form. It seems every time I add weight I have a little form breakdown especially with my squats. So still working on that. Going to continue with my 3x8 with added accessory exercises. I am really liking that for the moment and when I get bored or the ADD kicks in I will find something else or change up accessory.

So my goals:
1) No binging. Did well with this last month until the last few days when hubby drug home a cookie cake from the grocery. My kyrptonite!! Yeah I ate half the damn thing, was sick as a dog and had some crazy blood sugar spikes which turned me into a t-total biotch the next day. Those things are forever banned in my house.

2) Clean up the friends list. Did this today. There were people on there who frankly just got on my nerves with their 43 workouts a day and eating enough to feed a mouse.

3) Add back in my cardio. I kind of miss it, maybe. But on my rest days I just feel so lazy and feel like I should be doing something.

4) Cut back on diet sodas. Again. I did well with cutting back on my Clif/Powerbars last month. No longer eating 1-2/day. Usually only at work, or when I am on the go and need a quick meal. Sodas are making me crave sweets and I find I dont drink near as much water.

5) More sleep!!!!

6) Try my calorie cycling for 6 weeks. This worked really well for me last year when I tried it but when I fell off the wagon around Nov and got back on in Jan I just went straight cals. Calories look like this Day1(work day)- 1750, Day2- 1850-1925(dependant on activity) Day 3(lift day) 2000. Still above BMR and still plenty enough yummy foodles to be had.

7) Try a new food. Forgot to add this on my goal post. So far I have tried kale, avocados, and greek yogurt. Love them all now. Still trying to decide what to try this month. Maybe quinoa (did I spell that right??). May revisit chickpeas. Tried them once but not enough to appreciate them I dont think.

Great looking goals ladies. Hope everyone has survived April Fools Day with minimal damage lol.

Hey everyone! This is my first time here (pretty much) since I wanted to be sure I could commit to SL before I started posting (don't like to post and run). So! Here's a little background information on myself.

I joined MFP about 18 months ago, dropped 20lbs doing the usual C25k and low-calorie plan but stalled when I went back to uni because I didn't have the room in my head to count calories (seriously, thinking about this stuff takes up a helluva lot of time!). I lost another 14lbs by doing two six-week no-sugar challenges and they are HARD. Last year I did a month of Turbo Jam, gave Insanity a go, then did the first stage of NROLFW at the same time as C25k (I go running occasionally since finishing it, but not regularly). I wasn't happy with my results from that so switched to You Are Your Own Gym, which I thought was pretty awesome for the six weeks I did it. I can't remember why I stopped - I think I had holidays and then got ill and then was in a bit of a bad place mentally. I have also done Zuzka Light's workouts pretty sporadically, but normally averaging 2-3 a week.

Where I am now: I've done two weeks of SL, paid for the gym until the end of August (so I HAVE to go) and I've been trying to keep on top of doing my ZCUT workouts as well (not very successfully). I try to do ZCUT most days and lift three times a week. I've had to wait for the rack a couple of times but mostly I've been okay. It's still a challenge to me to walk in and do my workout - partly because I have to drive there (leaving the house, blech - I've always worked out at home where possible) and partly because NO OTHER LADIES. But I've managed it six times and I can manage it more than that. I'm currently trying a cyclical keto diet, but I'm not sure how it's working so far. I can be a bit obsessed with my scale weight but I do have measurements to fall back on (I know that I lost an inch off my chest somehow). I'm trying to only weigh in once a week.

My goals for April: continue CKD for at least another three weeks. Add weight to all my lifts. I'm 4 deadlift workouts away from my bodyweight, so that'll be a cool target if I get past it. Do ZCUT five days a week and beat my times. Drink more water and less alcohol, and definitely eat more food because I think my calories are lagging a little (this doesn't translate into weight loss for me though.)

Also worth mentioning: my scale weight is frustrating as hell. Apart from the two times I did no-sugar last year, it didn't change a bit. I tried high-calorie and I tried low-calorie. My measurements tend to only change when my scale weight has, too. So I can eat a buttload and not put on weight at the moment (yay) but it means that I have to make SO MUCH EFFORT to lose it. This is why it is a Good Thing for me to have focus on getting stronger, especially since in September I'm going back to uni and I won't have the headspace for weight loss for at least six months.

Happy April, sending you all wishes of good health and being injury free!

April goals:
1) Add at least 1/2 hr cardio 2x week (honestly because it's hard to eat enough protein on a calorie deficit, i want to eat more!)
2) No Pop. No pop!!
3) Cook healthy food for my folks 1x/week (including getting on the quinoa train)
4) Lifting Current/Goal
Bench 70/85
PRows 70/90
Squat 110/130
OP 55/65
Deadlift 110/120

Also it's my one monthiversaryish! Since I had a few screwy weeks, it's been slightly over a month but I just did workout 13.
Lifts start...current
Bench 50...70
PRows 45...70
OP 50...55 (hahah lame, also i couldn't find the 2.5 lbs weights for a while at the new gym so...)
Squat 85...110
DL 75...110

Inches lost: Waist .5, abdomen 2, muffin top 1
Inches gained: Forearm .5, calf .25

pics or it didn't happen? if this works?


EDIT - figured out how to host the picture, but it's giant and seeing myself that giant is scary. >.<

Welcome to macy and lady, glad to have you both. :flowerforyou: