New to the game – an introduction.

As someone that had always been fairly active and healthy (in my own mind) I was surprised to find how easy it was to put on weight as opposed to losing it; after having my son in 2012 I learned that lesson very quickly.

In the year following his birth I went from being a size 8-10 (pre-pregnancy) to a size 18-20, I experienced overwhelming postnatal depression -feeling trapped within my home, alone with this tiny demanding human- and my eating habits went from bad to worse. The more weight I put on, the more horrid I felt, the more negatively it impacted my diet.

Once my son started nursery around 2 years of age, I decided I was going to shift the extra chub. This change was kickstarted with the purchase of an elliptical and rowing machine (the latter of which I loved) and saw me shedding weight. I’m not entirely of the opinion that this was a healthy weight loss however, as I was also working 12-15 hour shifts that were very physically demanding and eating hardly anything throughout the days and for long periods the closest thing I’d have to a meal would be a bowl of cereal after my shift.

I became quite gaunt, felt really strung out and unhappy. Within 6 months I gave up on the machines, started snacking throughout the days as I was famished and once again piled the weight back on.

My weight has always gone up and down with stress, environment, work etc factored in and despite joining the gym again two years ago and leaning heavily on cardio exercises I was still unhappy with my body and the way I felt/looked. This was until I met Ashley, who encouraged me to pursue powerlifting; he has been powerlifting for around two years and loves it, and honestly once I gave it a try I fell in love with it too!

I tried the StrongLifts 5×5 program for a 6 week cycle and the progression felt great! Adding more weight on every session, getting stronger and stronger was something I had never experienced before. Enjoying physical exercise and looking forward to the gym was totally new to me, this was great! Until my progress slowed down; I had plateaued with this program and decided to move on to another program.

That’s where Massthetics Full Power 3.0 has come into play. I’ve just finished my first week and am looking forward to the next 5 weeks that will lead me up to the beginning of my competition prep.

So, this is where I’m upto now, size 12. 180lbs. I’ll write more as there’s more to talk about, but take this post as an in-depth about me.

Thanks for reading!

(PS; For anyone interested, you can follow my Instagram here!)

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