Rest Day – 2/10

REST DAY :):):) – 20min of stretching

TIP OF THE DAY: I’ve been trying to incorporate a complete rest day into my split (when I say trying, I mean really, truly, trying to force myself to feel good about not hitting the gym). I do take 2 active rest days per split, but those are typically cardio days, which can leave me feeling just as exhausted as a lifting day. It wasn’t until the my favorite IFBB bikini pro, Skye Taylor who is always sweet, honest, and encouraging shared her personal struggle with overtraining, leading to health consequences, which opened my eyes to this problem. IFBB bikini pro, Amanda Latona just recently blogged about this topic in her BSN blog as well, which I will share below; it is long, but for those of you who are serious about your health and fitness, as well as those of your who frequent the gym, rarely resting, I HIGHLY recommend reading this!

Happy Sunday dolls… I hope yours was just as resting and relaxing as mine 🙂 I had an afternoon full of spring shopping with my mom and an evening of lounging <3

FitnessBarbie Style: Start with a fitted jacket (mine is a cropped, military jacket), pair with a black tank (mine is a front tie bow blouse for a little added flare), favorite pair of skinnies, and leather boots (mine are my absolute favorite leather Via Spiga boots, which can be worn over the knee when I’m feeling sassy). With dressier jeans/shoes, this look could be taken from day to night!

Amanda Latona’s BSN blog post:
“Happy February everyone! Ok, looks like we’re starting all of the
2013 blogs the same as the 2012 ones, with “February, can you believe
it?!” I think I said that on almost every blog. Next will be Valentine’s
Day, then the Arnold, then summer, then the Olympia, then Christmas.
Anyway, we’re now at our 2nd month of 2013. Have you guys set any
fitness goals and are you achieving them? Are you all on track? I
basically started off the year with just a clean eating and heavy
lifting plan. I just recently am adding in more cardio, like as recent
as this week. Not too much though, like 3 days I am starting things off
with, then next week I’ll go to 4 days. I have been working on building
back whatever I lost from being on a competition diet 9 months of the
year last year, and doing it without eating a bunch of crap ya know? So,
I’m feeling good, and my New Year’s goal wasn’t to start off at 7 days a
week, 5 days of cardio and totally overtrain, it was just to train hard
and smart.

Speaking of overtraining, I would like to talk a
bit about that. Basically when you’re in a competition prep, you’re
training a ton. You basically start off with a good amount of training,
then it increases as you get closer to the show and you’re ending up
sometimes with 7 days a week and most days 2 times a day. That being
said, you are definitely overtrained. It can at times throw your
hormones off and that’s pretty much exactly what happened to me.

I’ve
been doing fitness for, oh, say 10 years now, even though I made myself
known in ’09. It definitely got more demanding when I turned pro and
got contracts because it then became for me a full-time job. Through all
of the diet and training but mostly competing, I never got my blood
work done, until this December after a very long year of dieting. I say
long year because I started dieting in January for a shoot in February,
then stayed on from there. I had a few days off here and there but not
weeks at a time. Between every show prep was a shoot where I stayed on
my diet until November after my last competition. I decided to get blood
work to check my levels and see if I was deficient anywhere, in
hormones or vitamins, and make sure my liver was good with the years of
very high protein eating and stuff, you get it. Anyway, I was thrilled
to find out that my health is “textbook” as the dr. said, and I am one
of the healthiest people he’s seen. Everything was better than good, and
I am a “cardiac horse” as he said. Awesome. Then we get down to my
hormones…or should I say, lack thereof. I pretty much…don’t have any.
Weeeeeee. Not awesome.

So, as you see, my gut instinct was
right. And this is why I preach about balance so much. It’s not just an
excuse to take time off, or be lazy, or eat, or eat more, or sleep in,
or relax, have fun, plan a vacation. It’s pretty much necessary. For me,
now it’s a priority. Mandatory. I’m working to get everything back in
line where it should be for my optimal health and fitness. I was
wondering why I felt different. Like I was working 20 times harder than I
ever had to. Why I felt my moods, energy and sex drive all were
affected. Heck, just being honest, because you guys need to know. I get
girls all the time that talk to me about these things, and I tell them,
you can have a healthy, fit body; you can also become obsessed and go
overboard where you’re the opposite of healthy. I know what it’s like to
get so motivated the thought of skipping a gym session makes you
anxious. I know, I’ve been there, especially because I love training
soooo much. Just love it.

I now have to tell myself to not
overtrain, not under-eat. And stay in balance with everything.
Especially as women, don’t be afraid to eat a meal with your man. Have
some carbs when prepping; yes, some girls come up and brag to me that
they haven’t had carbs in weeks, and I actually get scared for them.
Remember what health and fitness is. It’s making your body the best it
can be. Taking away fat for months? Um, not the best it can be when
pretty much every organ in your body functions with fat. So, don’t get
obsessed. Enjoy your workouts, and don’t overtrain; it’s a very real
thing. And listen, LISTEN to your body; heck, listen to me! Being in
competition shape all of the time is not realistic. Being in shape all
of the time? Absolutely! You can even look better I think; that’s very
realistic. I’m not even a big fan of on-season, offseason. I use the
term for where I’m at in the year, but I don’t like the fluctuation of
weight where you’re either in competition shape, or just out of shape. I
personally don’t feel comfortable with that. But that’s me. So, that’s
where I am at in my physique. I want to always look like an athlete. I
want to look like I train and eat clean all year long, with some times
to indulge on occasion.

So, just trying to encourage someone
to not go for the “more is more” mentality. Less is more. Keep your diet
clean, your training smart and rest when you can. And don’t try to do
competition after competition. You don’t want to throw your hormones
off. And it can happen very easily. So, love and accept your body now.
Change for the better of course, just don’t beat yourself up along the
way. Set goals of course, but keep them realistic. I find a lot of girls
deal with body image issues after doing a few shows. You start to think
that unless you’re in competition shape, you’re out of shape. Heck,
that’s a whole blog on its own.

Let me know what you guys
think and I will talk about it. Send me a comment on my Facebook page,
not a message, there are too many in there, just post it in a comment.
Hope this helps someone. Just know we all deal with things. You’re not
weird or alone. You’re 100% normal. Just learn from the people that have
been there and save yourself some time, money and heartache. And save
yourself some hormones 😉 And heck, what I learned was that my fitness
lifestyle of training and clean eating has given me a “textbook”
functioning, insanely healthy body. YAY! Then what I also learned was
the overtraining and over-dieting was taking away from my optimal health
in my hormone department. Boo. And when I say my hormones were low…I
mean like they weren’t there. Shocking. Seriously. So once
again…BALANCE. I now proceed ahead in my fitness lifestyle/journey
better prepared and equipped with the knowledge of just how important
not overtraining and not over-dieting is. In the meantime, I’m working
on getting things back to normal.

Hope you guys have a wonderful week. Thanks for listening.

Until next time. Hope someone is encouraged and blessed from this.

Amanda Latona xo”