So I brought up my diet in my personal journal and jordanread asked me share here too, which makes sense. :)
Background: I was supposed to take a yoga teacher training course starting next week, I cancelled with my (crazy expensive) personal trainer from my NPC competition prep so I could do this training instead. Unfortunately I got the news two days ago that the training has been cancelled, which leaves me with no personal trainer or yoga training goal to work toward.
I'm fighting with taking a diet break, see I've been eating mostly at home and tracking my macronutrient intake for well over a year now. It was for very specific purposes, first to increase intake and gain muscle, then to decrease intake to lose fat and get insanely lean(~10% body fat) for an NPC bikini competition and then to slowly increase intake back to "normal" so maintain some leanness. Well I'm pretty much burnt out. I just need a break, my "aesthetic goals" need to take a back seat while I get my head straight. I'm going to keep weight lifting and doing yoga, but I want to kill the diet thing. This hasn't been an option since I've been working with a trainer who checks my food diary weekly to see how things are going. That alone has been increasing my anxiety (and I mean like, I went to the hospital and was diagnosed with anxiety and panic attacks in Nov). So with no trainer now, I think I need to take a period of time with no rules and no restrictions (I spent 2 years paleo, and now 2 years tracking macros) and no one to judge me.
After talking more with my DH we realized that my path to being healthy led to almost an obsession, first it was eating clean, then it was eating paleo, then it was tracking macronutrients for getting lean enough to compete in a bikini competition. Now I'm feeling wore out, burnt out, done with it all and I think the bikini prep is mostly to blame. I ended up really low calorie to get lean for this last competition and it wrecked me. I'm doing okay on the bounce back body composition wise (about 22% body fat now vs. the first time I did a show I rebounded to 30% body fat), I'm healthy but I have a bit of a warped view, I loved looking lean, but at the same time it was miserable to maintain.
So, I'm refocusing, the diet break could last a few months. I put my scale away and I'm avoiding any form of body composition measurements. I need to revive a healthy relationship with food first and foremost, no more associating any foods as good or bad for any reason(like being unhealthy/healthy, will make me gain/lose weight, etc). We'll still eat at home mostly because it's honestly what we like, I'm going to dust off some cookbooks that haven't been used in a long time and just enjoy the process.
I also put together a new training plan for myself, it incorporates a variation of "daily undulating periodization" but still on a body part split so I can get enough recovery days in.
week 1
M-legs strength
T-chest/tris hypertrophy
W-yoga class
Tr-back/bis power
F-shoulders strength
week 2
M-legs hypertrophy
T-chest/tris power
W-yoga class
Tr-back/bis strength
F-shoulders hypertrophy
week 3
M-legs power
T-chest/tris strength
W-yoga class
Tr-back/bis hypertrophy
F-shoulders power
Rep ranges are 10-12 on hypertrophy, 8-10 on power, and 6-8 on strength days, it's pretty straight forward otherwise. There is usually one exercise variation on the power days to work on explosiveness like jumps on leg day and ground up push ups on chest day. It's be a 3 week rotation, so week 4 will look like week 1 but with an increase in weight. This also means I can take Saturday and Sunday as rest days.
Thanks for listening everyone! :)