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Certified CrossFit personal trainer Naomi Bazeley

The magic!! Second Trimester CrossFit

I had been told. It seemed like it would never happen, but along came week no. 10 and it really was like a switch had been flicked!

Gone was the chronic nausea.

Gone was the chronic fatigue.

Gone was the urge to fill my face every half hour with some horrifically stodgy carb.

Hello energy!

Hello training!

Hello strawberries, grapes, melon, avocados, raw broccoli, peppers, tomatoes, beloved nutribullet!!

Hello extra 6kg bodyweight, uncoverable bump, outie belly button and diastatis recti! Already!?!

I am back! And loving it! THIS is what my friends meant about loving pregnancy!!

So what have a noticed with training?

I get hot, VERY hot, VERY quickly! I am ensuring I drink a lot and am now the gym fan hogger. I am now one of those girls that takes their top off every workout, showing off a bloated bulge rather than the abs I had (on a good day).

I make sure I can still hold a bit of a conversation throughout WODs (much to the joy of my patient coaches 😉 ) Not too slow, probably an RPE (rate of perceived exertion) between 6-8 rather than 8-10 depending in how I feel each day.

I try not to worry about what the leaderboard says. Not that I was overly competitive before but it was a good guide of where I should be/what I should be lifting. Although our box is friendly and supportive, and I’m sure no one actually gives a shit, the feeling of being judged for only completing 7 rounds when others are on 10 still lingers in the back of your mind. I will be glad when everyone knows.

I have found days vary. Sometimes overhead pressing/jerks feel fine, other times they make me lightheaded. The days they feel good I do them, the days they don’t I stop.

Handstand push-ups made me feel really light headed between the 8-10 week mark, maybe where I now have double the blood volume. Although editing this post at 12 weeks I completed a 21-15-9 of HSPU, dips and push-ups the other day and the HSPU were the nicest part!

Bodyweight – pull-ups, dips, push-ups, HSPU got harder as I got heavier. Doing every WOD with and extra 4-6kg does make a difference!! Although bar work is slightly easier with more weight under the bar.

Our bodies really are wonderful creations! It actually is a lot easier to read my bodies signals as to what is good and what isn’t than I thought . So as much as the ‘listen to your body’ advice sounded vague, it all makes sense when you’re there.

First scan is 6th July. I’m so excited and can’t wait to enjoy the 2nd trimester.

The first can kiss my now even larger arse! Second trimester CrossFit is FUN!

First trimester CrossFit – when will this end??

I’ve decided to put the first trimester all in one blog as it really wasn’t very exciting.

I could sum it up in a few words:

  • Nause
  • Fatigue
  • Napping
  • Tears
  • Fatigue
  • Napping
  • Nausea
  • Stodgy food

Honestly, when I told my mummy friends I was pregnant most said ‘aw I wish I could be pregnant again’ and for 8 weeks I felt clueless as to why anyone would want to feel like this!

I went from energetic, excitable, on the go for 12-14 hours a day (then crashing on the sofa about 10pm), to constantly exhausted, constantly feeling nauseous, napping 2 hours a day instead of training, weepy and irritable. All of which made me down right miserable. It honestly felt like it would never end! The only thing that gave me comfort was the fact the the rougher I felt, supposedly, the healthier the pregnancy. Thank god for my long suffering boyfriend who was amazing and did pretty much all the cooking and cleaning while I slept, ate and gave him abuse.

So yes, my fear of whether I would be able to listen to my body in the first trimester were unnecessary as I barely trained. My body was saying do nothing! When I did manage to get to the box I did usually feel a lot better for it, but it was few and far between for a good four weeks.

Nutrition also went out the window, which I was initially really worried about but after speaking to other mums they have assured me stodgy carbs was all they wanted first trimester too. Chips, cake, pasta, cereal and anything else I wouldn’t usually eat (with the exception of cake!) was all I could stomach. My once daily nutribullet would make be gag at the thought of it and every attempt at spinach or anything else green would end in failure.

Not surprisingly I put on half a stone!

First trimester CrossFit is NOT FUN!!

Then came magic week no. 10 😀

Read about the magic in my next post!

Why blog about my CrossFit pregnancy?

As a personal trainer, knowing baby was on the cards at some point (sooner rather than later) I decided to do my pre and post natal training a few months back. Great for me when I did fall and great for potential clients.

From a PT perspective, to train the average pre/postnatal gym goer, the training was great. As a 2+ years CrossFit athlete, honestly I found the training pretty useless for training myself and other pregnant women through their CrossFit pregnancy! It was very much based on government guidelines; slow steady cardio and globo gym classes with a little bit of weight training thrown in.

When asked about high intensity training like CrossFit, Olympic lifting or powerlifting the trainer looked lost. Nothing against her, she knew her stuff otherwise and I didn’t really expect her to have an indepth knowledge of CrossFit, but I came away with no real knowledge of how I would train myself when the time came.

I started doing some research of my own and found a few women who kept training while pregnant. Lea-Ann Ellison and local Katja Harjanne made the news for CrossFitting while heavily pregnant, and have both since given birth to very healthy babies and look fantastic themselves! Body builder Jessie Hilgenberg has a great instagram account and Birthfit is full of pictures and videos of heavily pregnant women doing incredible things. CrossFitMom.com used to be fantastic help but has since been replaced by a page not hugely insightful.

The main comment I read while researching was ‘listen to your body’ which was all well and good.. But would I be able to translate what my body was saying? How do I tell the difference between a workout just being tough and my body saying you shouldn’t be doing this? Advice says not to overheat, but our box is a tin building and like a sauna the second the sun comes out.. Is that safe?

I understood the concept of working around a bump and scaling as the bump got in the way in the second and third trimester. But what about the first? The most dangerous trimester!? When one person says to take it easy and the other says keep going as normal until 20 weeks!?

My first doctors appointment was far from useful training wise. When I explained what CrossFit was (a combination of weightlifting, cardio and gymnastics – in a nutshell) her exact words were “well you’ll want to stop that and just do a bit of this” raising her arms over her head and out to the side in some 1970’s aerobic step class manner! Helpful!

So here I am, with the knowledge I have from training myself, PTing, self study and my pre and post natal course, but otherwise generally  winging it and hoping I learn along the way, enough to actually provide some helpful information to ease the minds of fellow CrossFit Mum’s to be. I also hope blogging about my CrossFit pregnancy will help me with any further pregnancies of my own.

 

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Pre-pregnancy check list:

Time crossfitting: 2 years

Bodyweight: 52-54kg

Sessions per week: 4-6 sessions, 1-2 hours.

1RMs:

  • Deadlift – 127.5kg
  • Back squat – 95kg (ish)
  • Front squat – 82.5kg
  • Strict press – 45kg
  • Push-press – 57.5
  • Clean and jerk – 70kg
  • Snatch – 42.5kg – Power 45kg
  • Overhead squat – 52.5kg
  • Weighted pull-up – bw + 24kg
  • Weighted dip – bw + 20kg
  • Fran time – 5.31
  • Grace time –
  • Isabel time – (shocking – but first time being able to RX it, at 42.5kg, my 1RM squat snatch!)

 

CrossFit Open 2015: top 6% in UK, top 8% in Europe, top 9% worldwide. CrossFit open 2016 will be approx 1 month postpartum.. We shall see!
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Strengths: bodyweight, pistols, pull-ups, HSPU, clean and jerk.

Weaknesses: engine needs work, overhead squats, snatch, running and rowing, doubles.

The Yoyo Trap

Truth bomb: the clients I find most challenging are the serial yoyo dieters. That’s not to say it affects how I get on with them as a person, but they are harder work. A negative set of measurements, when I know my nutrition support has been ignored and traded for a shake, is as infuriating as it is upsetting. The same applies to those who refuse to change a thing nutritionally or do any training outside of our sessions but still expect the results.

– Yoyo dieters will take on extreme eating habits for relatively short periods of time, either repeating one diet over and over or working through a variety. –

Without going too deep into my dislike of ‘diets’ as a whole, most meal replacement diets work by dramatically reducing calories while pumping you full of diuretics, a substance that promoted the production of urine. This leads firstly to a large loss in water weight, followed (if you can stick it out long enough) by muscle mass and a little fat.

Serial yoyo dieters will start a diet, usually severely cutting calories, surviving off shakes or cutting out whole *vital food groups (protein or fats). Due to the nature of the diet the number on the scales drops dramatically. “This is amazing! It sucks, I’m tired, I can’t concentrate, and I’m starving, but look at the scales!!”

Once the bodies will to survive overrides the persons willpower they give up and binge, feeling horribly guilty, digested with themselves and miserable. How can you live a happy life weighed down like that?

If a yoyo dieter tries eating **whole nutritious food for a week or two they usually find the scales don’t budge, they may even go up a bit if also exercising! This doesn’t mean fat loss isn’t occurring, but the body is adjusting and will take time to start showing on the scales. Muscle is growing stronger and can balance out the fat loss on the scales to start with.

Examples..

Miss Client has lost 7lb over 2 months by training 3-5 times a week and changing her eating habits to whole nutritious food. She has dropped two dress sizes. Consistently, over a year, Miss Client would lose 3 stone of body fat.

Mr Client has been training hard for a year or so. He had grown a good amount of strong muscle but kept hold of a good amount of stored fat. He changed his diet to whole nutritious foods and over 5 months has dropped nearly 10% body fat and had to buy a new suit.. Twice.

Miss/Mr Yoyo Dieter eats whole nutritious food for a week, exercises like mad, steps on the scales and hasn’t lost a pound. Gives up, grabs the chocolate and googles the next fad to try.

Focusing on the number on the scales is setting yourself up for failure. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I have heard “my clothes are feeling looser but the scales haven’t gone down so I’ve; gone back on the X diet/stopped eating as many calories/cut out the healthy fat.”

Quite honestly, sometimes I feel that banging my head against a brick wall would be more productive.

So when someone says to you “I’ve lost 7lb in a week!”
Instead of thinking “Wow, I need to try this!”

You should be thinking “How many dress sizes have you dropped? And would doing it the right way be less painful in the long run.” – It can be fun once you start making progress and realise how strong your really are!

Be patient, put in the work and trust the process. If you hired a trainer, listen and act on their advice. And for god sake eat some dietary fats!!

You WILL see results!

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* vital macronurients – protein and dietary fat. Carbohydrates are not vital. Our bodies can survive without/with very little carbohydrates, although advice should be taken  from a trained professionalif doing so.

** whole nutritious foods – meat, fish and poultry, some dairy, veggies and fruit, nuts seeds and oils. Limited grains, alcohol, processed foods and sugar.

To Diet Or Not To Diet?

I wanted to write a quick post on a topic I am asked about on a regular basis.

Second to the ‘Big Carb Lie’ I feel this is the biggest misconception in the ‘diet’ world. Of course I am talking about artificial sweeteners and fats. You know yourself if you are a marketing sheep. I apologise for calling you sheep, I honestly do not blame you for getting suckered in to the ‘low-fat’ ‘low-calorie’ ‘sugar-free’ tornado that is tearing through our society. Everywhere you look there is Light this, Low that and Fat Free butter. Guess what Einstein..BUTTER IS FAT!! And a healthy source of fat also (clarified and grass-fed preferably). Now I know it is hard to believe that the media could lie so outright. Like Beyonce’s Booty really doesn’t have any cellulite, or Cheryl Cole really uses L’oreal home hair dye kit.. of course the media doesn’t lie.

Now I’ve got that off my chest let’s get into the comment I hear most frequently on this subject.. “If these artificial additives are so bad, why are they on our shelves and promoted as good for you?’ The answer to that is simple, and the same for every single fad diet pill, drop, shake, sugar alternative. They have paid out a lot of money to be there! These chemical formulas have been created by the manufacturer and tested rigorously by doctors and food standard bodies, all of which are paid for by… the manufacturer! Every single experiment will have been picked away at to find the part which suit them and will sell the products. We will look into the main offender, but just remember that are all as bad as each other and should never be a part of our diet. So, Aspartame. It took 16 years to get aspartame approved for production. The data provided by the manufacturers of aspartame was so flawed that there was a criminal prosecution against them by the FDA. It is the most studied product on the market in history and the only reason, I believe, it is still on the market today is due to lack of time, in 20-30 years when the long term effects of a lifetime of aspartame poisoning is evident I am positive it will be illegal. Listen to this.. a 74 body study carried out by the manufacturers of aspartame found 100% showed no side effects from consuming aspartame. A study from an independent body tested 90 people and a massive 90% showed negative side effects to aspartame poisoning from headaches to migraines to seizures and more.

I could go on forever about how while testing on rats the manufacturers would feed little bits of aspartame to the control group of rats to try and cover up the dramatic seizures and cancers these rats were growing, or how rats were reported as alive with no side effects when they were actually dead, or how when liquid aspartame is stored in temperatures above 85 degrees Fahrenheit, it breaks down into DKP and formaldehyde, both of which are known toxins. But the real topic I want to cover in this post is the psychological effects of eating fat free sugar free foods and drinks.

Aspartame is 180 times sweeter than sugar and yet has NO calories.Now, my guess is that if you do buy these diet products, you are probably conscious about your weight and want to do what you can to stay/get into shape, so you would think these products are great. WRONG! All they will achieve is making your weight loss/maintenance a million times harder for a few reasons;

As aspartame (and similar products) are so much sweeter than sugar they produce a seriously unnatural hormone response. Firstly the suppression of serotonin. Once consumed aspartame heads straight for the brain and the phenylalanine disrupts serotonin levels, thus suppressing/blocking the feeling of fullness and stimulating the hunger and food cravings. Secondly the massive release of insulin and leptin hormones (similar to any sugar consumption) then tell your body to store more fat. So not only are you ready to store whatever goes in, you are starting a huge bitch fight between your brain and another 20 cupcakes, which, lets be honest, the cake will probably win, because even if you have 100 sugar free cakes, as far as your brain is concerned, you have still not satisfied its sugar craving.
Not only does aspartame make the cravings even more irresistible, they make even healthy choices taste bland. If your taste buds are used to 180x the sweetness of sugar you will never be able to appreciate the delicious sweetness from a strawberry or apple, the real sweet food we should be treating ourselves to.
The same goes for full fat or low fat dairy, butter over margarine (aka spreadable plastic) and anything else under the ‘diet food’ umbrella.You need to address your issues with sugar and break the ties you have. Opting for the low calorie alternative is not going to make your life easier. See my previous post about carbohydrates to delve deeper into the sugar demons.

Please share questions or comments below

Naomi Bazeley

Naomi is a Level 3 Personal Trainer, CrossFit Level 2 Trainer and Level 1 British Weightlifting Instructor. If you are looking for one on one coaching, nutritional advice or you are interested in getting in to CrossFit or Olympic Weightlifting, Naomi can work with you to help you to achieve your goals. I take huge pride in taking people from complete beginner, terrified to step foot into a gym, to athletic warrior who can't wait to beat their next challenge. Every journey has to begin somewhere.

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