Review of Week 2 Belly Off

Hi Everyone! For those of you who read my review of Week 1 you will be familiar with the fact that I am planning to produce a weekly review of my experiences and progress on the Belly Off programme over the next 8 weeks.

Why?

Well, firstly I hope that I might be able to pass on some useful information and tips to others who are either on the programme or who are thinking of starting the programme. Secondly, it helps me to focus and to keep on track and finally it may provide some useful feedback to Craig.

So, what was my review of week 2 like?

First thing to mention is that I was actually on a family vacation from Friday to Monday this week, which was a pretty big test for me as it was the first vacation since starting the programme. So I was slightly worried about how I might do and whether I would be able to resist temptation and stick to the plan.

It also meant I had to schedule my workouts differently, which was a challenge! Anyway, here is my review of week 2 looking at the core components of the Eating Plan and Workouts.

Eating Plan

I’m sure many of you will now all about family vacations... holiday camps with fast food outlets on every corner, lot of snacks, big breakfasts, big lunches, dinners, chocolate, sweats, alcahol... the list is endless!

So as you can imagine I was pretty worried about how I would cope and how I was going to stick to the Eating Plan.

Overall, I was really pleased with how I did. The only treat I allowed myself to indulge in throughout the weekend was a fairly healthy homemade Pizza on Saturday night. Apart from that, I pretty much stuck to the eating plan with bran flakes or eggs for breakfast with Actimel and glass of OJ.

For lunch it was a turkey or chicken sandwich with handful of almonds and some fruit and for dinner it was either chicken breast with vegetables or another bowl of bran flakes and more fruit. What I really think helped was the support of my family who all know that I am on a fairly strict eating plan so they pretty much ate what I did.

We also avoided eating out in restaurants in the evening and chose to cook in the villa so I was far more in control of what I was eating. We did eat out for lunch a couple of days but we chose restaurants that had more chicken type dishes on the menu. Nando’s was great!

Chicken breast in pita with salad was a very healthy choice and tasty as well. Not to mention that the Peri peri marinade is quite spicy and helps boost your metabolism! So I guess the trick for me was to avoid temptation. If you are going to surround yourself with a whole load of junk food then sooner or later you are going to give in!

Workouts

As mentioned above, I had to schedule my workouts differently this week. So on Monday and Wednesday I did the normal workouts and I did the Week 2 Bodyweight 100x2 on the Thursday as opposed to Saturday. Not ideal, but I wanted to make sure that I stick to the programme the best I can.

After successfully completing the first week and loosing 2 lbs I was feeling pretty good and my stiffness from the previous workouts was gone. The first thing I noticed was how much quicker I was able to complete the workouts as I was far more familiar with the warm up and supersets.

So I think as the programme progresses I think it will continue to get quicker and quicker the stronger you get and the more familiar you become with the workouts. The warm up is also becoming easier and less of a workout!

Overall, I am pretty happy with the progress I am making on the Workouts and find most of the supersets OK. On workout A I am still struggling with the 1 Leg RDL’s. I just do not have the balance or technique to do this justice and am really struggling (not too mention I look pretty stupid when I do it)!

On Workout B the only one I struggle with is the Stability Ball Jacknife with rotations. Without the rotations are fine but with the rotations I keep falling off the ball! I am getting better at it and maybe as I get more strength in my abs etc then it will help further.

The other thing I have started to notice is the number of reps I can do on the Inverted Rows. In week 1 the maximum number of reps I could do in one go was 8. By the end of week 2 I was able to do 12 reps in one go on the first superset and 10 in the second superset. So not bad progress for 2 weeks of effort! I was also able to do 4 chin ups in a row as opposed to the 2 I managed in the first week! So I can definitely see the strength gains starting to come through already.

I had to do the Bodyweight 100x2 on the Thursday which was pretty tough considering I did Workout B the day before. I can definitely see why you need a couple of days rest in between. I was fine for the first 100 but the second 100 was a bit of a killer!

At the end of the session I was really feeling it and it took me a good day to recover! So would definitely not recommend trying to cram in the workouts to close together. I did actually manage to do the Bodyweight 100x2 in 13 mins which was well within the time specified by Craig so I was very happy with that.

I also did a 13 min interval session at the end to finish off. In addition to the workouts I also did a 20min interval session on the Saturday.

Overall

The bottom line is I lost another 2lbs in Week 2, so that’s a total of 4lbs in 2 weeks which means I am still on track to hit my 15lbs belly off target in 8 weeks! This week I am actually planning to incorporate some additional interval sessions for Tuesday and Thursday to help burn off more fat.

I must admit that I am really surprised by how quickly I am starting to see improvements in both my strength and upper body. I can definitely feel the difference in my chest and arms and I am feeling much stronger than when I started 2 weeks ago.

Already when I look in a mirror I can see the differences so I can only imagine what improvement I will see after 8 weeks! I am planning to take some pics after week 4 to show the half way improvements.

So that’s it for Week 2! Another good week and it was a great personal achievement for me to loose 2 lbs even when I had a 4 day family vacation! So bring on Week 3!

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