clean eating

Ok everyone, here it is! The launch of something new on my sight. As I have mentioned in the last post, I want to feature a “Fit Gal” every so often so we can learn about others journeys and feel motivated in that sense. She will totally inspire you, as she has even gotten me more motivated to really commit to a healthy lifestyle. She happens to be one of my very best friends, whose friendship means the world to me. When I saw these pictures of her, I was in awe of how amazing she looks! Check her out for yourself, find inspiration, and learn about how others work towards their goals. So here she is!

Fit Gal: Chelsea

1. Tell us about yourself and your fitness lifestyle and journey.

I have always loved being active and have played sports, and have generally ate a healthy balanced diet. However, drinking and a social lifestyle has always kept me from being lean and having my “dream” body. Drinking leads to additional calories you don’t notice, and late night pizza that you definitely don’t need. Also, it makes it hard to stay motivated in the gym. So to jump start my fitness kick, I cut out drinking.  This made me feel fresh when going to the gym to ensure I had a good workout, and it nixed late night bad food binges. I immediately leaned down, roughly about 7lbs of fat. I was back down to my body size that I had before moving to San Francisco and discovering that there is something social going on every night of the week. However, I wanted to have the body of my “dreams”, so I decided to make a few more drastic changes and some hard work to make sure I could get there. My diet changed to included no more sugars, a lot less carbs and living off of mainly veggies and lean protein. My workouts are different every day to make sure I do not get accustomed to any exercise and plateau (I think of it as always trying to “surprise” my body to keep seeing results). But most importantly, I started a food diary. I use the iPhone app MyFitnessPal. It is so simple and quick to use, and has every food under the sun. I started making sure I put everything in there all the way down to the tablespoon of soy milk in my coffee. It was a HUGE surprise how many calories you eat in a day. Since it gets harder to trim that last little bit of fat off you once you are lean, it becomes 100% important to track your diet. Losing weight (fat weight) is simply math/science, so I needed to figure out exactly how many calories my body needs in a day (basal metabolic rate – BMR) you can look up calculators online for the equation. I aim for about 1400 calories a day on the days that I am working out. On the days that I take off (I am only doing one day a week of rest right now) I eat around 1200-1400 calories. Once I do not want to lose anymore fat, I will up my caloric intake to around 1800 on the days I work out to maintain my weight. This was the best information that I picked up – your diet is what is going to give you the canvas to paint your hard work with your workouts – drop the fat and your abs, shoulders, etc will easily and beautifully show through and display your hard work and discipline.

2. What are your goals and how are you working for them?

I am pretty darn close to all my goals right now, so my new goal is to maintain. However, initially, I wanted to get down to a certain weight because that was my ‘skinny’ goal weight. I reached that goal early on, however what I didn’t realize is muscle SERIOUSLY does weigh more than fat. I had to get rid of the scale and start judging how I look and feel in the mirror and with my clothes. Right now I have been consistently about 5lbs heavier than my lightest weight, but am thinner, have very little fat and have crazy ab definition (that’s what I’m most proud of). This has been hard for me, because I think girls are very reliant on the scale to justify “skinniness” and “fitness”. Absolutely untrue. I have never been more fit and I weigh more now than I did about 2 months ago. That’s because of the awesome lean muscle I’ve built an toned. Right now my fitness goals are to tone down my last little “problem” areas and still maintain this level of fitness. The only way I can keep up a high level of fitness is by not being black and white with anything. I can let myself have a night of drinking and eat what I want, but I make sure the gym and my diet the next few days is better than usual. Going cold turkey will probably end badly with getting burnt out. I still wanna go to weddings and parties and have champagne and cake, but need to balance that with my new fit lifestyle… And champagne and cake doesn’t need to happen every night. I’ll save it for special occasions.

3. Do you “eat clean”?

I have always eaten rather “clean”, meaning I was never a big fan of processes foods. So in a way, yes I do eat clean. I eat more strictly clean now, meaning no more diet Cokes and I’m more focused on making sure the food I’m refueling with is balanced and healthy. But again, moderation and balance is the key… But when you are working out, and working out hard, your body craves healthier food so it’s pretty easy to choose veggies and chicken over processed foods. Additionally, I’ve always chosen to eat clean because a lot of processed foods freak me out and gross me out with how they are made (or what we don’t know of how they are made) and the potential health risks with regards to cancer etc. of eating them.

4. In what ways do you stay active?

The gym is my main form of fitness. However I do pepper in walking and stairs whenever I can (and count that as working out). At the gym I always do some form of cardio and mix it up every day. Erging, stairs, running, elliptical… I like intervals more than a steady long cardio sesh. I can get a better workout in with 15 mins of intense intervals on the erg than 45 mins at a level 7 on the treadmill. Again, you need to “surprise” your body to keep seeing results. Your body will quickly get used to the same cardio day in day out and will plateau. If I can’t get in the gym, totally fine – I can go for a run anywhere, do lunges, push ups, dips, crunches, plank etc anywhere.

5. What inspires you to live this lifestyle?

I like the way I feel. I love the way I look. Going shopping is so much fun, everything looks good on a fit body. I love how strong I am. And the compliments are awesome. I like seeing how I can push myself. The type of discipline it takes to keep a fit body takes a lot of dedication, which we all owe ourselves a healthy body, it does everything for us. Also, I know I am still very young (25), but I want to develop good habits now while it’s still easy, so I can potentially help and prevent issues when I’m older.

Isn’t she amazing? I just love her to death and find her so inspiring. Thank you so much Chels for taking part in my blog!

If you would like to join me here on my page as a Fit Gal, please email me, I would love to have you!  jenna.pardini@gmail.com 🙂