Recovery

The problem with society is that thin has become a synonym for beautiful. 

The moment it hit me that I was sick was the day I realised I was categorically petrified of drinking water. I had become so addicted to weighing myself and so frightened of weight gain that I refused to drink a thing in the complete fear that I would step on the scales and see a higher number. Water is essential for life... yet I would risk dehydrating myself to the point of danger rather than momentarily weigh a tiny bit more. Because weighing less would mean perfection. Weighing less would mean acceptance. Weighing less would mean that even if I struggled at university, pushed all my friends away and lived the sheltered, sad and lonely existence that I was living, at least society may accept me as beautiful.

A few nights ago, I decided that the dictionary definition of recovery is unbelievably ill-defined.
'Recovery (noun): The action or process of regaining possession or control of something.'

Shorty after this, I had a second revelation. A revelation that recovery is not what I thought it was. Recently I've been struggling with my weight, but not in the same disordered way I used to. Struggling because I always assumed that 'post-recovery' I would look, weigh and feel exactly how I did 'pre-illness'. So learning to accept that my body is so far removed from anything it has ever resembled is a pretty hard thing to comprehend.

After (wrongly) feeling quite down for a while about these changes, I had a third revelation: I realised I needed to stop trying to be the person I was before. I am not the before- I've lived through the during and now I am the after. Recovery does not mean going back to the way things were. I am not regaining anything, I am not recreating the old me. I am not recovering something old, I am discovering something new. A new braver, stronger person who I am proud to be.

I have poured my heart, soul, sweat and tears into the gym over the past nine months and I am proud of the muscle my body has gained, I am proud of the inches added to my thighs and the additional weight I carry with me. I have worked hard for this healthy, strong, functional body and I am so appreciative that my mind allowed me to have a second shot at creating this body.

I may still be far from where I want to be (I WILL deadlift that failed 87.5kg bar one of these days), but that doesn't mean I am not proud of the journey.
'When you do what you fear most, you can do anything'.

Thinner means just that... thinner. Not happier, not healthier. Just thinner.

GIVEAWAY- Win Two Tickets to the Clothes Show Live*


'Welcome to a new era of The Clothes Show, where the line up of brands, boutiques, celebrities and inspirational stage features are more glittering than ever before.'


Amy Elizabeth has teamed up with the clothes show to give you a chance to win two tickets to attend the clothes show on Friday 4th December 2015. The tickets include a dedicated seat in the ALCATEL ONETOUCH Fashion Theatre in association with Capital FM, along with the opportunity to shop at over 350 fashion and beauty pop ups, watch non-stop runway shows, attend seminars with fashion experts and receive exclusive style advice. Treat yourself at one of the many bars and cafes and enjoy a luxury beauty treatment in the Pamper Lounge.

To win all you need to do is fill in the rafflecopter form below and vote for Amy Elizabeth to win Best for Fitness in the 2015 Cosmo Blog Awards.

Holiday Workouts for When you Can't get to the Gym

I recently got back from a four night holiday. A lot of people would see that as a chance for relaxation, a chance to take some time off from the gym. But if you're anything like me, you'll hate knowing that for those days you won't be able to make it to the gym and know that you'll feel much more confident in yourself if you can squeeze in even the tiniest of holiday workouts. 

With the help of my personal trainer, (@ADMfitness1 on instagram, @ADMartin810 on twitter), we put together some great home workouts for when you're on holiday, have a spare 20 minutes at home or simply just can't make it to the gym.

Once you have a set daily routine, fitting in your training becomes easy. You develop a schedule which allows you to fit that all important 'gym time' in. However, when this routine is disrupted it can send your mind and your training plan into orbit, and finding the time to workout becomes an additional stress. For many people, when life gets tough or stressful, or you don't have access to a gym, this becomes an excuse for having days off or giving up, but the most important thing to remember is that although time off is necessary, for your training plan to really work you have to make it an absolute priority, meaning no matter what else is going on in your life you will find the time to fit in your workout.

Below are some little hints and tips for how you can find that extra time when on holiday or busy, and some quick workout ideas to try at home:

1. Wake up an hour earlier - Once you get into the habit of rolling out of bed and rushing straight to work/uni/school it can be hard to see how you could possibly get through the day without that extra hours sleep, but if you get all your workout gear ready the night before you can get out of bed and complete your workout, still have time for a healthy breakfast and I can guarantee you will actually start your day feeling much more refreshed

2. Split your workout into 3 ten minute sessions - first thing in the morning, just after lunch and just before bed. When you only need ten minutes to complete three quick but effective circuits there really is no excuse. 

3. Plan - if you plan your workouts before you go away it will be so much easier to actually complete them and stick to your targets. Don't be over ambitious, you are on holiday to enjoy yourself, but completing some short bursts of exercise will keep you on track until you get home and settled back in to your routine.

Templates to try:

1. As many rounds as possible - pick a time: 10, 15, 20 minutes. Pick three exercises. Pick a rep number for each. Complete as many rounds as possible in your allocated time. 
e.g. 20 minutes: 21 squats, 15 press ups, 9 burpees. How many rounds can you complete?

2. 5 Rounds for time: similar to the above, but this time you stick to five rounds and try and complete it in the quickest time possible.
e.g. 40 lunges, 30 squat jumps, 20 mountain climbers. Five times through. How long does it take you to complete?

3. Tabatas: Only 4 minutes long, but absolute killers. Pick an exercise, work for 20 seconds, rest for 10 seconds. Repeat 8 times. Try and complete four different tabatas
e.g. sprints, get ups, burpees, press ups. Each for 4 minutes = 16 minute workout.

 ***I'd really appreciate it if you'd nominate my blog for 'Best For Fitness' in the Cosmo Blog Awards… click here!


Why Women Should Lift Weights

There is a common misconception amongst women, particularly young girls when it comes to fitness. Instagram is full of girls striving to get a perfect 'bikini body' or to fit into a certain dress size... we have come to live in a generation where the physical aesthetics are prioritised over health. I was once guilty of this very thing myself. Countless girls wrongly think that the way to go about achieving the body that they want is hours and hours on the treadmill. I truly wish that for once the emphasis wasn't on girls looking a certain way, but living a certain way. Train hard and what happens to your body naturally as a result will be out of your control, but you should feel comfortable in the knowledge that you worked hard for that muscle and should be proud of your body for being healthy and functional.

Weight training has quite literally saved my life, (read more about this here). I want to break the misconception of girls being afraid to lift weights, afraid to be strong and powerful and dominant. Below are my list of reasons for why it is important to fight this stereotype and fight to be strong:

1. The dictionary definition of strength is 'the quality or state of being physically strong.' Personally, I don't believe this definition is sufficient for explaining what strength truly is. Yes, physical strength may be the most obvious reason to train with weights: the heavier you lift, the stronger you become. But for me, with every rep, with every additional weight, with every lift I became mentally stronger too. Resilient to life, confident in the knowledge that I was strong, powerful and independent. The mind is not a muscle, but a goal without a plan is just a wish, so the stronger your mind, the stronger your body. Weight training will allow you to strengthen both.

2. A lot of people fail to realise that a high intensity weight training session can actually burn more calories than a standard mid-intensity cardio session. Lifting heavy combined with plyometric high intensity interval training actually requires a much higher energy output, meaning more calories burnt and more fat lost. Fat loss however will not necessarily lead to weight loss, but will make a dramatic change in your physical appearance. I actually lost 11% body fat over 7 months, but gained 11kg at the same time, however despite this gain still wear the exact same pair of jeans and my waist measurement has not changed at all. The weight gained is muscle, and this muscle was created not through hours of cardio but through lifting weights. Weights will help you to develop shape, tone and definition.

3. Most importantly for me, with strength comes growth - not in the traditional '#GrowMusclesGrow #Gains' sense that floods our instagram feeds daily, (although this is a pretty great result of weight training too), but in the sense of personal growth. Weight training taught me that it's OK to fail, in fact that failing is a good thing. Failing to hit the weight or reps that you intended provides the motivation to walk back into that gym with even more determination to succeed the next time. When you fail, let this fear be your motivation to succeed. I appreciate that not every girl will share my fitness goals to become as strong and healthy as physically possible, but whatever your goal the great thing about weight training (no matter how heavy/ light your weights may be), you will see progress, you will see progression, you will see growth.

Training for yourself, by yourself will lead to a sense of independence and with this will come confidence. Confidence in your strength in the gym will translate into confidence in yourself

'The myth that women shouldn't lift heavy is only perpetuated by women who fear work and men who fear women'

*Just a quick favour too! I would absolutely love it if you would nominate my blog to win best for fitness in the 2015 cosmo blog awards by clicking here*

How The Gym Saved my Life

 
4p.m. on the 2nd of January 2015: A shadow of a girl walked into the gym for her first ever personal training session. She weighed just over 7st, having already gained about 6 pounds. She was wearing UK size 4 gym leggings, couldn't do a single press up and had never really lifted a weight in her life. Constantly on the brink of tears, she was severely anaemic, a habitual insomniac, fighting generalised anxiety disorder, body dysmorphia and trying to overcome many years of disordered eating. That girl was me. Yet I now feel so far removed from her that if I were to pass her in the street I don't think I'd even recognise her to stop and say hello.

9a.m. on the 29th August 2015: Just shy of eight months later, I am 10kg heavier, immeasurably stronger and unbelievably healthier than I have ever been.


Although at this point it is easy to look back and remember a journey of strength, determination and hard work, at the time the story was very different indeed. Countless people have told me recently that they admire what I've done, that they wish they had the determination to spend the amount of time in the gym as I do, that they would love to train with me. And what it is extremely hard for those people to understand is that they are looking at the product of 238 days of hell. The journey has not been easy. Unbelievable amounts of tears have been shed, frustration has reached peaks and I have gone through periods where I have felt more down about my own body than I ever have in my life. It took me about three months before I managed something that even came close to a press up, so even though I can now deadlift 82.5kg, not one part of this came easily to me. I wanted to give up on more than one occasion, I felt defeatist, angry, heart broken every time I scrolled though instagram and saw a picture or video of someone training in the gym who could do more than me. How could I be spending two hours in the gym every day and still be unable to do a press up?!

But in reality, the answer to this question was simple. I had spent years of my life mistreating my body, disregarding my health and paying absolutely no attention towards my nutrition. I had knowingly and willingly continually made myself weaker and more ill for the sake of fitting into a smaller dress size. The bottom line was my happiness solely depended on the weight shown on the scale, and years of treating my body like this meant that I wasn't just training as someone who had never trained before, I was training as someone who at one point could not walk up the stairs without needing a lie down, had periods where I lost my sight completely due to malnutrition, would wake up in the morning with clumps of hair on my pillow from where it had begun to fall out. Did I really think that a few more pounds lost would bring me happiness? That a few pounds gained would make me even more miserable? My life was just a continuous cycle of trying to make my mental happiness equate to the number on the scale. I felt like I wasn't good enough, I felt disappointed in everything I did. I looked in the mirror and wished with all my might that I would see something different, to not feel the shame I felt every single day. I became an addict. Addicted to weighing myself, addicted to hunger, addicted to weight loss, addicted to seeing how much smaller I had gotten. I became my own worst enemy. It was a miracle I could even walk for an hour, let alone spend an hour in the gym. 

But I had made my decision. I no longer wanted to be that anxious, heart broken shell of a girl. I wanted to be brave and strong and healthy, and I was finally willing to accept recovery. The thing people don't understand about recovery is that you don't just choose it once, you choose it again and again and again, every morning, every night you choose to recover. Every relapse, every failure you have to choose to recover. And choosing recovery is not easy. Those first few sessions were hard. Harder than I could have ever dreamed. Hours filled with exercises that I could now do in my sleep, but at the time seemed like the most difficult things in the world. Squats with 2kg dumbbells in each hand slowly become back squats with 55kg. Planks become press ups. Reps became supersets. And finally I was seeing progress.

I never in a million years thought I would revolutionise my life through fitness, but that statement only scratches the surface about what fitness has done for me. I gained 10kg. ten. whole. kilograms. Eight months ago I couldn't even pick 10 kilograms UP let alone dream of adding that weight to my body and carrying it with me wherever I went. But despite this massive (and equally massively scary) weight gain, the most dramatic change came not in my body, but in my mind. In my confidence and in my determination. Training became a form of therapy for me, a time where I was alone with my mind and had nothing to distract my thoughts from telling myself how strong I could eventually become. I could push myself mentally and physically to my limits, to the point where I wanted to cry and scream and give up, but afterwards feel so proud of the power I was developing. This strength and determination started to shine out of me in my day to day life, I became focused: determined to be the best version of myself I could possibly be.

Fitness has not only changed my life, it has saved my life. This blog post has not been an easy thing for me to write, and there is still so much of the story that has been removed and left out as there are dark times that I am still not completely at peace with. I am not writing this blog post for sympathy, or for praise. I believe I am strong and brave and for me that is enough justification. The reason I am writing this blog post is because I would love nothing more than if I could use my blog and my passion for fitness to help other people change their lives too.

My training became the foundation of my strength, upon which I was able to rebuild myself a better, happier, healthier life. Remember: 'the struggle you are in today is developing the strength you need for tomorrow'

Learning to Appreciate the Little Things in Life

This year, my New Year's Resolution was to find one thing at the end of each day to be grateful for, something to be happy about, an achievement to be proud of. My aim was to find even the smallest little shred of appreciation in every single day, and to document them to serve as a reminder that even when times seem hard or bad days arrive, there is always a silver lining to the cloud. When it's rainy look for rainbows, when it's dark look for stars.


As far as presents go, I'm a sentimental girl. Nothing puts a bigger smile on my face than when someone finds a gift that is thoughtful, relevant or special to me and/or my relationship with that person… so when this little 'one line a day' book was given to me, complete with the most amazing personalised motivational message written inside I experienced one of those little moments of appreciation I'd been documenting. A moment of joy that someone took the time to really think about something that would make me smile.

The idea of the book is to form a condensed diary filled with five years worth of happy thoughts/ special memories all documented in just one line per entry… a way to reflect on the good times instead of dwelling on the negatives as we so easily do. Life tends to pass by at lightning speed, days merge into weeks and weeks merge into months and before we know it another year is over and we can't really pinpoint the little day to day events and happenings that made you laugh or smile, yet with this book you will always be able to.

So my new 8-month-into-the-year's resolution is to write in this book every single day, to form a special keepsake filled with 1,825days worth of smiles… and who knows maybe every once in a while I will share some of those entries with you :)

Skinny Mint Teatox*

Drink. Feel. Believe.

Recently, my instagram feed seems to be full of girls who are constantly looking for the latest quick fix to get them the dream body they want. The truth of the matter? No such thing exists. Hard work, intense training, healthy eating. Being a huge advocate of natural ingredients and an avid green tea drinker (bordering on fully fledged addict), when approached by Skinny Mint I was incredibly excited to try it out. Skinny Mint involves drinking their 'morning boost' tea every morning, and their 'night time cleanse' tea every other night in order to assist you to detox your body with the simple and original two Step Natural Tea Detox Program.

The teas are formulated with natural high-performing ingredients designed to increase energy and naturally cleanse the body. Step one: morning boost consists of a blend of guarana, Green Tea & Yerba Mate to create a fruity and fresh tea blend, intended to maximise naturally occurring vitality boosting ingredients. Step two: night time cleanse is a formulation of Ginger root, Lemongrass, Senna leaves, and Psyllium husk, combined to purify and detox the body.

Consisting of completely natural antioxidant rich ingredients which not only help to rid the body of toxins but also improve energy levels, the combination of ingredients promotes a healthy heart and will improve the appearance of your skin. The green tea will help to burn fat, whilst the lemongrass will assist in you achieving a good nights sleep. For me, an absolute winning combination. 

Try yours now: https://www.skinnymint.com

Hello August: Apologies, New Ventures and the Future

Firstly, an apology. The past few weeks and months have been a hectic blur of change, and somewhere along the way my blog took a little bit of a back seat in order to give my mind a bit of breathing space. New job, new training plan, new diet plan, new relationship status. Pretty much every aspect of my life has been turned upside down recently, and it's just taking me a little bit longer than expected to get my organisation back on track while my head adjusts to life. But a new month marks a new start and many exciting new ventures.

For those of you that have read some of my more personal blog posts, you will be aware of little bits of my story and my battle to better myself and return myself not only to full health, but to become the strongest woman that I can possibly be. I have fought my mind and my body for many years, and over the past 6 months we have finally been working together as a team and as a result I have become stronger and fitter than I ever dreamed I would be. The journey is far from over, but I have decided to let you in on my progress with me, and without giving too much away, I am planning a few HUGELY exciting changes/developments for Amy Elizabeth... venturing into the world of fitness and nutrition to share with you my story and give you the opportunity to partake too. Follow me and my personal trainer/ new business partner [eeeee how exciting] on twitter (@amyylyons, @ADMartin810) and instagram (@amyylyons, @admfitness1) to stay in the loop as new developments occur. 


The future used to be something that terrified me. Even thinking about where I would be in a years time could send me into orbit and spark panic attacks. The fear of failure or not sticking to my so carefully collated 'life plan' terrified me and I worked myself into a severe state of illness in refusal to allow myself to live and enjoy my present. Now the future excites me, the fact that I am currently working in a job I love, still considering completing a PhD, starting writing a book and working on this new venture along with keeping Amy Elizabeth ticking over has made me realise that change isn't always a bad thing. 

Start fresh. Eat well. Train hard. Live healthy. Be proud.