The end of cycle one. Finally!

I've finally finished cycle one of the 90 day SSS plan! Hurrah. It was a looooong road as I had to pretty much start it all over again because of injury then illness but I'm so pleased I finished it. I could have done better but the second time round I was beginning to get bored with eating the same stuff, it would have been fine for 30 days but not after 50 odd. I'll admit that the week before I was thinking of jacking it all in until after my holiday which is in 6 weeks, I wasn't feeling any different, why wasn't I a size 8 yet? I was due to submit on Friday but having come down with another virus (I've ordered some vitamins!!) I decided to submit a couple of days early in case I was still ill come Friday, it's Saturday now and I'm actually feeling worse, so good job really. I went down and got on the scales. I weigh in stones & pounds but you submit in Kg, I originally thought I had only lost 1 pound but when I converted it was actually 3 pounds, then I measured,  4 inches off all over. Bring on the tears! I'm not sure what I was expecting given I was still drinking a lot at weekends and had had a fair few takeaways, I think I was more disappointed with myself than the results as I know I could have done better and had I not got an injury & had to start over my results would most certainly been better. I asked my boyfriend to take pictures, I felt really self-conscious, even though he sees me naked all the time, after seeing my weight & inches it just made me feel horrible. Obviously I hated the pictures, you submit your front, side & back, looking at them I could just see fat me. Then something amazing happened, I looked at the two pictures together, before & after cycle 1. I had a waist again! I could see some actual significant change in my body shape. Hooray! Then I had another thought, if that change could happen in that time when I was really only giving it 70%, imagine what can happen on Cycles 2 & 3 if I put more effort in!! At last I have my mojo back! I've missed this feeling so much. Cycle 2 arrived on Thursday morning so I spent a while reading it. It's so different to cycle 1 & there is much more freedom when it comes to food and more carbs! You exercise 4 times a week it's HIIT & weights so the exercise is longer but not by much and you get to have 3 carb meals per day on training days YESSSSSS! Rest days are the same as on cycle one. For food you are given some recipes for both training & rest days but you are encouraged to create your own & are given a guide of how much of which foods to have, on training days it's meat, veg, spices, sauces & carbs, on rest days carbs are replaced by fats. The snacks differ from training & rest days too. Luckily being holed up on my sofa gave me plenty of time to work out some recipes, I found the best way was to use joes cook books, there's also a page on Facebook called mydietburble that gives recipe ideas which is really useful. I am really excited to start, I'm going to start with a rest day tomorrow, just in case I'm still ill and do my first training day on Monday. Here are my tips for cycle one. Plan ahead for each week, I found that working out my training days and my meals for the week ahead helped keep me focused. Batch cook if you can, I was doubling up on dinners so I could have them for lunch or dinner later in the week, it saves lots of time. Join groups on social media. The support there is amazing, everyone is going through the same struggles and even just reading some people's success stories can keep you going when you need it. Buy Carb killas for snacks if you have a sweet tooth, they're amazing and you're allowed 2 per week. If like me you hate plain yoghurt, buy some flavour drops from my protein, I saved my yoghurt from some recipes and had as a dessert with toffee flavour drops or added a strawberry flavour drop to my protein shake was a game changer!  Don't weigh or measure yourself until the end of each 30 days. This is one thing I did actually stick to but I see so many people on the groups becoming anxious as they're not seeing the change that they want, someone in one of the groups posted this which helps explain why this happens And finally, trust in the plan. It isn't this successful for no reason you may want to give up at times, but stick with it. I am yet to come across someone who has finished the 90 days and said they've seen no change. Bring on cycle two!!!