more muscle

After about 6 months of plateau, I decided to take four weeks to challenge myself to build more muscle to burn more fat.  I'm 5'5" and weighed 118 lbs and was a size 4 pre-pregnancies, many years ago.  After the births of my 3 great children and an autism diagnosis for my middle son, with all my energies toward that for the past recent years, I found myself at 170 pounds and, unfortunately, no taller.  hahaha!  I began Body for Life in September of 2006.  I went from a size tight 14 to a 4!  I'd gone from 170 pounds to 140!  I know that I don't care to reach 118 pounds because I have built more muscle than I had when I weighed that amount, but I also know I don't need to weigh 140 either.  Staying at about 19% body fat with a little muffin top above my jeans...I thought, "I can do better than this!"  So, a few weeks ago, I changed up my routine according to "Maximum Growth" which I downloaded from realsolutions.com.  Now, I've reached the end of my four week challenge (with a Christmas interruption!) and took my post challenge strength test and measurements before doing another 4 weeks!

Here are the results:

No more plateau!  I'm at 134.5 pounds now and am down 2.5 inches in my waist, up a half inch in my shoulders (which will make my waist LOOK smaller!), down a half inch in my thigh, and I'm much stronger!  Look at this!

I chose 4 lifts to test myself.  The idea is to choose a weight to lift that I can ONLY manage 5 reps and no more.

Pretest results are in blue, post test results are in red:

Bench press--60 pounds; 70 pounds

Squats--80 pounds; 160 pounds

bicep curls--20 pounds; 22.5 pounds

shoulder press--20 pounds; 22.5 pounds

Body fat percentage looks the same...go figure!  I can tell a difference in the mirror and in my clothes, etc.  Maybe I misread it before the challenge.  I dunno!  At any rate, I'm no longer standing on my plateau scratching my head!  :)  And I have discovered that I like to change my routine and have no fear of making more changes along the way.  I will begin another 4 week Blitz tomorrow!  And the free day idea will be limited to free treats or meals, not an entire day.  You may have noticed that I removed my water ticker a while back...I just couldn't remember to update it!  I'm still drinking my water though!  And I'm excited to try for 14 cups a day beginning Feb 1st until Feb 14!  Pictures!  I forgot pictures!  Sara and I will have to try to get that done and post.  Have a great Sunday!  (Monday, Tea!)