WEEK 1 - REVIEW

So a summary of the main things I've learned from week 1 of 12...

• Bulk cooking - Coach OC isn't kidding, it really is so important to make the whole food schedule more manageable. I think this would have perhaps been helpful to advise with a few specifics and some guidance a week in advance to the course starting. I'm still struggling with getting my head around bulk cooking, as well as the fact that my fridge isn't really big enough for the amount I want to cook and prep and organise - but I'm trying to improve at buying more and cooking it together and also make the best of what I have available.
• More Tupperware - I thought I had plenty. I really don't.
• Slow cookers (and shopping in Lidl) are an absolute godsend.
• Sleep is awesome - I've always had serious trouble with my sleep, during the worst years of my illness I relied entirely on Zopiclone for my sleep, but part of my treatment and going through therapy meant I had to stop taking it and ever since my sleep has been a huge struggle as my head is often at it's worst at night. I'm generally lucky if I get any more than 3 hours sleep a night on average. However this first week of body composition I have literally been out within 5-10 mins of laying down in bed, I cannot emphasise enough how huge this is for me... it's actually never happened before. This isn't even training specific, because I was training 5 times a week before I started the body composition, I feel it must be something about the extreme amount of dedication and focus every stage of the day requires, every meal, every cooking session, pushing yourself to the absolute limits in the training sessions and not holding back - the combination is absolutely exhausting.  
• Bathroom trips not so awesome - seriously, I've never been to the loo this much in my life and it's actually been quite disruptive for the first week. Although I don't drink past 8pm and have a new bed time of 10:30, I haven't had a night yet where the bladder hasn't woken me up at some ungodly hour.
• Weighing food - the sooner I started doing it the better really, rather than staying terrified of how complicated it was going to be, simply easier to get on with weighing asap so I can allow myself more time to get it wrong and ask questions. After all, that's what the first couple of weeks really are all about according to Coach OC.