Final Results of My Cutting Diet

Well, it's over. Twelve weeks of a cutting diet, done. As someone who has been a habitual non-finisher of things started I can honestly say that I am extremely proud of myself.

I wanted to try a cutting diet for several reasons, the biggest one being I desired my body fat as low as possible while maintaining as much of my hard-earned muscle as I could for a corrective surgery scheduled May 6th (tomorrow). The second big reason was because I have in mind to compete in figure down the road and was simply curious as to whether I could hack a cutting diet.

I can.

Ruben Sandoval (you can find him on my friends on FaceBook or here: http://www.sparkpeople.com/mypage.asp?id=FLEXCHEF ) started out as my nutritionist for the diet, and wound up as my trainer also, all the way in California (I'm in Texas), when my in-person trainer and I here broke up for completely amicable reasons. (Still appreciate you, Ross!) It's been a really good arrangement for me, and I hope it's been beneficial to him, as well.

I shared about the experience of having Ruben for a distance trainer in my blog "The Advantages of a Long-Distance Trainer" on SparkPeople.com here: http://www.sparkpeople.com/mypage_public_journal_individual.asp?blog_id=2906050

Anyhow, the point is that Ruben has been my guru on everything having to do with my body and it's changes over the past 12 weeks. Normally he likes to take a full 16 weeks to cut a competitor in, but he sped up the process with me to accommodate my surgery date.

Let me put in a little aside here: A cutting diet is something you do NOT want to go off and try willy-nilly by yourself. I am glad I had professional help and would not recommend that anyone try something like this the first time around, at least, on their own. It's a balancing act that he has experience in and I don't. I needed his help. (And Ruben, brace yourself: Your inbox is about to explode again, my friend!) Ruben was worth every dime I paid him to help me.

It also might be good to note that because he was trying to keep me in peak health for my surgery, Ruben was more liberal with my calories and didn't have me do as big a reduction in water intake at the tail end as he does with most competitors. Had he been able to do my cutting diet his usual way, I'm sure my results would have been more dramatic than they already are.

I ate weird combinations of foods that would have never occurred to me, but a lot of them I wound up liking. I have eaten so much fish over the course of this thing that I've wondered if I'd grow gills and start making funny kissy motions with my mouth. And I don't even like fish! But one thing I've always believed is that if you are going to do something, you might as well do it right, so I pretty much did what Ruben asked me to almost the whole time. I realized that in order to gain the results we were after it was critical I follow his program in it's entirety. Imagine that! (Remember what I said above about typically not finishing things?)

This isn't to say I didn't ask questions, because I did, but I did what he said, even when I wondered if it was really going to work or not. I didn't want to screw up the grand plan by testing some uneducated hypothesis of my own.

He started my diet out a little more loose and then tightened it up as time went on. At the end, there was almost no wiggle room. I ate EXACTLY what he told me to- No deviation! As a matter of fact, save one big binge on peanut butter and Wheat Thins about 1/3 of the way through the process (which I called and confessed to him, crying- a memory I'd just as soon lose), I did a pretty darned good job of sticking with the plan the entire time, if I do say so myself.

I learned more about how the body breaks down food than I had ever known before. (This stuff fascinates me, so when Ruben was explaining it I was listening with rapt attention- I wanted to know what was going on in there after I swallowed!) I will never look at food the same again.

There are so many other things I took home from this that I am sure I will blog about in the future. But one thing is for sure: It was a valuable experience that I will always be grateful I had the honor to endure. :-)

The hardest part of the whole diet were the third-to-last and second-to-last days of it, which was just day-before-yesterday and the day before that. He had pumped me full of protein and brought my carbs way down for several days in a row, then increased my carbs dramatically while reducing my fats and proteins for the very last 3 days. The lowered fats and proteins combined with the increased carbs left me less satiated, so for those first two days of the 3-day higher-carb-lower-calorie round I was wanting to eat the furniture! Wow! I hadn't felt that hungry in weeks! By the 3rd day and final day of the cutting diet, which was yesterday as of this posting, I was a little more adjusted to it. Either that, or I was so freaked out because we were taking final pics the next day (this morning) and I had surgery the next day (tomorrow), that my nervousness overrode any hunger I was feeling.

And here are the results:

February 11 2010, I started out here, 5'8.5" at 159.4 pounds and 18.42% body fat:



















And on May 5th, 2010, I was 147.8 pounds, and 10.89% body fat:




















I'm down 11.6 pounds, but more importantly, we hit all of our goals: Ruben's goal of getting me to 11% body fat and mine of getting to 148. Additionally, we both had the collective goals of getting rid of body fat, as opposed to muscle, and keep me extremely healthy in the process.

I've lost 13.3 pounds of body fat, which means that over the past 12 weeks I have gained 1.7 pounds of muscle. For an idea of how hard it is to gain muscle while you lose fat, take a look at my blog titled "Lift! Even if you are overweight!" here: http://www.sparkpeople.com/mypage_public_journal_individual.asp?blog_id=3183771

AND my complexion is the clearest it's been in my life!

Massive success, IMHO!

Ruben, you done beyond good! :-)

While most people who have lost 11 or 12 pounds would be down one clothing size, I am down two. As a matter of fact, at my height and weight I am a solid size 6 (a 4 in some cases), something that almost seems impossible to the rational mind. I attribute this to not only the fat loss, which takes more space than muscle, but also to Ruben's exercise training plan. The man really does understand the human body and how to manipulate it through natural means.

Speaking of which, Ruben does NOT promote the use of steroids for either muscle gain or fat loss. So if you are thinking we employed some unethical means to get me where I am, think again. He never even asked me to so much as take a diuretic. The supplements I took were things that I was already getting in my diet, just in smaller amounts. They have no ill side effects, and are all as safe and natural as a multivitamin. I know: After he asked me to add something new, I researched it. (I trusted, but not blindly- I felt a responsibility to be educated about what was going on in my own body.)

My advice to anyone working with a nutritionist on a cutting diet? First of all, make sure he or she does not promote the use of steroids or other drugs, and secondly, simply to follow their plan in it's entirety. Don't have days where you go off and take a "break". Don't abandon the parts you don't like. Do ALL of it. Stick with it not matter what. The results are worth it.

I am blessed to have found Ruben.

If you like, you can view more pictures of my progression, as well as more final pics, here: http://www.sparkpeople.com/mypage_photo_gallery.asp?id=NANCYANNE55

My reason for making my weight loss journey so public, complete with photos, is that I deeply desire to encourage you that you really CAN make a huge difference in your body through diet and exercise, no matter what your age or condition. I want you to seize your own health by the horns and lay claim to it: Don't sit back passively and act the victim to fat and inactivity! If you put the work in, change will have no choice but to come. But you have to go beyond wanting to change and actually DO something about it.

To very loosely paraphrase my brother-in-law, Charlie: Don't let life happen to you, YOU be the thing that is happening to life!

Next goals? To recover from surgery, then reach 9% body fat while getting these legs and glutes nice and firm.... Just watch me!