I'm a little concerned about my expectations for myself, as one of my goals was wanting to start seeing some abs definition for the first time in my life. This is a huge one for me, I can't ever remember looking at my stomach and feeling okay with it - there's always been those bulges that I want to shift and firm up more than anything else on my body. As OC initially explained, you can't really 'target' where the fat loss happens - it's been an all over gradual reduction so far.
But now the finishing line is starting to approach, I'm worrying more and more than I won't achieve the results I've been driving myself so hard for. The question also is, will I even be able to see and accept the results I get if they're anything less than the superhuman ripples that Coach OC achieved on his bodycomp? Even though I clearly told myself I needed to be realistic from the very beginning, and OC is in *much* better shape than me and that was on his week 1 - plus I know I can't measure myself up against that. But I'm also aware that part of my mind is still doing it anyway and I'm feeling the pressure of it more and more.
I had a chat to OC at my last weigh in and asked if I could include some more abs work in to my programme on top of the rest of it, which OC said yes that's fine so I've been doing an extra set of crunches after finishing my programme and before doing the cardio. But still there's that part of my brain saying do more... you need more abs exercises or you'll never get rid of those bulges and get the definition you want... you'll fail if you don't do more (this would be my black and white thinking as therapy calls it, it's either all one or all the other). Living up to my own expectations is proving to be so extremely difficult, although it always has been - considering I'm an absolute perfectionist in everything I do and part of the curse is nothing is ever good enough. I also struggle when I see various other 12 week Body Transformations, and see guys who have gone from 'average' to absolutely ripped, and suddenly my head thinks - jesus Rach, now *that* is results... what you're doing is a barely noticeable joke in comparison. But I know OC would say one of his thoughts of the day, I think it was 'Don't compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday.' (But I'm terrible at doing this too I hasten to add). Ah yes - I knew I saved a copy of that thought somewhere, as it's such a significant one for me to remember (see below).
OC also commented during my last photo session, that I still pull the leggings up and hide my stomach quite a bit which makes it less visible for demonstrating my results. Now first let me say I absolutely *hate* leggings, any tight waistband around my stomach and especially when I train (I'll also admit this is probably because I'm too used to training in 4-5 layers of clothes over twice my size, I do like to hide...) So I bought a pair of leggings purely to have photos taken, the second they're done I change straight back in to my huge stuff and then go and train. So wearing them at all is quite a mission, and then the concept of having them not pulled up enough to 'keep all my stomach in' as it feels, well impossible to say the least would feel like a rather accurate description.
So after a shower, I had a small panic when I noticed some new lumpy sort of things appearing on my side (yes I realise this will be some muscle definition starting to appear, but I still translate to lumpy bumps and panic about 'god what is that'). I also felt the frustration strangely enough of why aren't those lumpy things more on the stomach than my side and what am I doing wrong (because my head loves to rush to assuming I'm doing something wrong). I remembered what OC said about lowering the leggings, and I wondered if maybe I've not really noticed before because they're pulled up - so I decided to challenge myself to the extreme and see if I could practice my own little terrifying photo with lower leggings like OC wants me to do. A small step towards perhaps being able to in front of an actual person as opposed to hiding in my room with the camera on a timer. I'm still not sure I'll be able to do such a thing in public (well - OC at the very least) but I think my step 2 is posting the photo here on my blog so I can see that I did actually do it. I still look at my stomach and feel disheartened that there's fat that I still haven't shifted, or not shifted enough, basically everything not enough (unsurprising for me unfortunately). But part of me also wishes I did a self-photo of stomach on the first week, just to demonstrate to myself how much difference there actually is (which is also difficult to notice when my head is in a negative place).
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| End of week 7 |
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