This post is also available in: Bulgarian

Hello friends! If you follow us on the social networks – Facebook and Instagram, probably you already know that Kalo and I started a challenge that aims to transform completely our bodies. This transformation will be for 90 days (July, August and September) and it plans to change our way and culture of diet, our health and physical endurance too. Our motivation for this challenge is due to the fact that we always want to provide the best vision. Being a woman of only 23 years and blogger of Mint Stories, it is very important to look in the best possible way and feel really good in my own body. Kalo has a personal reason which is very motivating. Before little over three years Kalo was injured severely in the shoulder. As a result of this, some problems appeared – limited mobility, loss of strength and muscle mass, low mobility and thus rise in overweight. With this challenge, we aim to reduce subcutaneous fat to a % that meets our characteristics. Each month you will follow us with the results that we have achieved, the difficulties we have encountered and of course we will share with you some interesting and helpful tips that you may find useful. So let’s get started!

1. Start:

The most difficult thing is to set the beginning, to decide, to change. You know the sayings “I will start from Monday” or “from New Year I’ll be a new person”. Still delays and excuses. So we thought we should end this. We chose the gym that is convenient as a location, also has a pool that we use to dissolve the muscles after hard workouts, have different specialists in the areas that we need and they prepare us individual dietary and training regimes. It is important to let these people know your intentions for the final results, previous way of life, what food you prefer, what you dislike and whether you have had any health problems. So we chose Pulse Fitness & Spa, which happened to have the only FIT3D proscanner, which I honestly should admit that had never heard before. This device scans a 3D, 360° image of the human body and extracts hundreds of the most commonly used measurements tracked for fitness progress (body fat % and mass, bone density, % hydration of the body, height, weight, circumference of the hands, forearms, hips, knees, ankles, hips, waist, chest, neck, etc.). All of these things you will see a little further down in this post. Before these measurements we had made a registration with email and password. After 5 to 10 minutes later we received an email with a report from our original scan. You know what’s best? The Fit3D Web Platform securely stores scan measurements and data which users can track and see where they have started from and what they have achieved on the way to their goal. We believe that everyone starts from somewhere and there is nothing shameful about how you look like in the beginning, on the contrary, it deserves a respect. Here are our initial measurements before we began the challenge:

2. Nutrition:

The food – this is the key to everything and our most important and valuable fuel. To have strength and endurance during workouts we need quality and balanced food, well distributed as meals throughout the day. I’ll admit that for us this was the biggest problem because we ate very scatteredly, especially when traveling or being on the move. Often the breakfast was in a single meal with the lunch or something quickly or even worse – one meal for the day. Familiar story, right? Тhat’s why we are very keen on dealing with this problem and wanted to have a comfortable diet that was prepared for us. As I mentioned above, it is very important to share everything with your personal fitness trainer and with the man who will take care of your nutritional programs. Often, most of us are not able to eat every few hours or to come up with boxes of food outside, to cook like mad and to accept food for granted. We carefully explained the whole situation with the man who prepared our diets, because Kalo and I are connoisseurs of food and people with little free time and constantly in motion. We wanted something that was completely healthy, comfortable, practical and diverse, but we didn’t want to become slaves of the food we eat. This task was taken by the fitness director of Pulse Fitness & Spa Bulgaria – Martin Dimitrov. He offered us an interesting general scheme which would show and prove that man and woman can be fed equally and achieve the same good results, but with different caloric balance. For our aims several meals are absolutely enough. We have breakfast, which is one hour and a half – two before training, lunch – one hour after our workout and dinner at the normal time. Our menu consists of eggs, fruits, vegetables, cottage cheese, meat – various fillets (chicken, beef, pork, fish, etc.). We need quality and clean food. Food supplements don’t present in our menu. Often they increase your budget very drastically. Do not forget the water! At least 2.5 liters per day. Everything is weighed according our height, weight, body fat and is calculated down to the last calorie that we must take during the day. Nothing more, nothing less.

3. Workouts:

The time has come for the hardest part – the workouts. This is just the begining of many stories in greater details about the workouts themselves. We will even show you some exercises that you can do at home, very soon. Initially for me it was very important to train exactly with a trainer because until now I hadn’t had one and knew that many of the exercises that I did were executed in a wrong way. Furthermore, when the exercises became more difficult or severe I immediately found a way to make it more easy and therefore didn’t achieve quite as good results by myself. At the moment I work out 3 times a week with Militsa Georgieva – fitness instructor in Pulse Fitness & Spa Bulgaria, which despite being much younger than me, knows every time how to cause me sore muscles with a smile on her face.  Every week she prepares for me a personal program of mandatory 3 kinds of workouts – Monday – more intense exercises with many repetitions, Wednesday – exercises with fitness equipment and Friday – exercises only with my own weight. On the days that we do not work out together (Tuesday and Thursday) I rotate some group classes (Zumba, Tabata, Kangoo Jumps, Body Pump, etc.), swim (I’m trying really hard to get better) and obligatorily a steam bath or sauna for relax. The weekend is time for a rest.

The workouts of Kalo are relatively heavy for the results he wants to achieve. His fitness trainer is Vladislav Terziev and they work out together four times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday). He alternated heavy weight, super series (seconds rest, different exercises performed one after another without rest) with a large number of repetitions. Briefly: intensity within 45 min. + 20 min cardio after training. On the day which they do not work out together (Tuesday) – a little swimming or 45 min. cardio

Stay tuned, guys, because the first results of the last one month are coming soon. I’m so excited! Until then you can ask us everything you are excited about the challenge?

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Vest – LOTTO

Leggings – LOTTO

Shoes –  SKECHERS