Thursday, February 27, 2014

Shifting into full gear

Sh*t is getting real.

-Suit is ordered
-Base tan is getting developed
-Tanning/Hair/Make up is scheduled (for both competitions)
-Hotels are booked

We had our clinic this past Saturday, which wasn't as informative as we were hoping, but we did get to work on posing. The "model" walk and quarter turns are really important to understand and perform well at because it is a large part of your score. It is something that we are working on continuously throughout the week, as often as possible. We definitely don't want to get on stage and look like a lost puppy!!! However, I feel perfectly comfortable walking in our heels at the gym and posing in the mirrors while members give us blank looks of confusion. Well if they didn't know we were training for a show before, they know now!

The clinic wasn't as informative as far as nutrition and diet in the last few weeks leading up to the competition. Now, I do have a plan all made up for diet and exercise, that I have developed based on research, for the next 36 days (Yea, that's all we have left until showtime!). I was hoping to get some reassurance as to whether or not what I had planned was sufficient. One of the main reasons I wanted to go to the clinic was to get some of that information since we don't have a coach guiding us through this. I guess I will just trust myself and trust the process.

So last time I left you I was just finishing up the last round of carb cycling, aaannnddd to be completely honest, I totally busted up the last 4 days. There was no carb cycling happening, what was experienced was more of a calorie loading. I was so mentally drained and over this process that I decided to eat a few extra things while I had the chance. The first low carb day of the last cycle was pretty true, however into days 2 and 3 I tried to stay high with protein and lower in carbs but I ate a few extra of my homemade protein bars with peanut butter on them and THEY WERE DELICIOUS. I had no guilt about this, which I'm not sure if that was a good thing or not. My last "high carb" day was damn straight a high carb day. Some of which I had was planned, like the peanut butter and jelly and protein bar, but I ended up adding 2 bowls of cereal and some chocolate. And you know what, I think that was exactly what my body needed. I didn't lose as much on the carb cycle as I had hoped (I did all my re-measurements before I went on this little binge) but after I finished that part of the diet we started the next phase and within the last 6 days I have lost about a pound and a half and feel completely rejuvenated. Not only did I lose a little bit of weight, but I can totally feel the loss of body fat, especially in my core. You know what is an awesome feeling, when you bend over, either to the side or forward, and your belly rolls don't eat each other. I am enjoying this part of our diet 100% more than that carb cycle, I'm not as irritable or negative when my body has sufficient carbs each day. If I decide to do another competition I will leave the carb cycle section out of my diet. It was definitely not worth the mental strain.

Here's the plan going into the last 5 weeks of prep:

Continue this part of the diet until next Saturday (1400 calories, 170ish grams of protein, 100is grams of carbs and 30ish grams of fat. I say "ish" because I might switch out certain vegetables at meals and they run slightly different in carbs and proteins)

Weeks 10-12 go down to 1250ish calories with about 50% coming from protein, 30% from carbs and 20% from fat.

Week pre-competition is depletion. Still working on the whole process of depletion, but essentially you lower your carbs for 4 days, then go to normal carbs on Thursday and finish with higher carbs on Friday before the show. Its suppose to give your muscles a fuller look for competition day.

Workouts are staying pretty consistent. Lifting pretty heavy for 8-12 reps, keeping intensity high with plyometrics between sets and exercises. Cardio is getting accomplished, I might have said it before, but I loathe cardio. Most of it is in the form of sprints or HIIT which is a little bit more fun, but I'm doing a few days of longer duration. The one thing getting me through the cardio: Pandora. There is something so amazing about listening to music to keep you motivated and inspired during monotonous cardio. I do have a wide variety of interests when it comes to my music choice, and some people might chuckle as I lip sing to myself on the treadmill or ellilptical. I'm sure they would chuckle a little bit more if they knew what I was listening to. Not going to lie, sometimes there is the occasional Disney showtune....it gets me through.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

The glass is half empty

Our glass is half empty. In a good way. We are officially more than half way through our competition prep, today is day 46 of 90.

Today is also the last low carb day of our 5th round of carb cycling. I have to say that the fourth cycle was much easier than the first three. It know it was helpful that my dad came to visit for the weekend so I wasn't as focused so much on food all day. The fifth cycle hasn't really existed. I ate different foods, didn't actually count my macros, just ball-parked them in my head to keep the high protein, low carb goal. I had venison sausage, protein shakes with almond milk and homemade protein bars. I'm ok with it though. I think I did ok for the most part and I actually think it did wonders for my mental state. This whole process is such a mental game, it plays tricks with your mind. My mother has always said "Its all in your head", you are in control of what you think, you just have to learn to keep the positive motors on and the negative ones off. Although I haven't really stuck to the diet this last cycle, tomorrow is our last high carb day before we move to something different and I already made out the plans so I'm going to do it anyway! Tomorrow's diet will include a peanut butter and jelly sandwich AND a chocolate protein bar. I will, however, be doing a high intensity plyometric workout and loads of burpees to make up for it, but it will totally be worth it!

As promised, I have redone some measurements and pictures now that we are basically finished with the carb cycling. The first set of pictures were taken on February 1st, the first day of our carb cycle.

 


The next set of pictures was taken today, February 19th, the last low carb day of our last round of carb cycling.


 
Not going to lie, I'm slightly disappointed. I do see some changes, and I know I'm getting there, but I still see so much more that I need to work on. We retook some of the measurements. I lost 1.5 pounds in the last 3 weeks and an inch off of my hips. All the other measurements stayed about the same. I forgot to bring my skinfold caliper home last night so we weren't able to measure body fat, I will retake that this weekend. I'm hoping to see the changes there.

I'm also hoping that the diet change, happening on Friday, will rejuvenate me. Half way through and its getting harder to hold onto this goal. I'm starting to burn out and like I said before, its a complete mental challenge. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy all my clean eating and the food that we are eating is good, but I miss baking, "clean" baking. Protein muffins, protein cookies, protein bars.....I miss variety and being able to eat what I'm in the mood for, not just what the schedule dictates. After the diet change this Friday we have one more diet change before we get to the last week prior to competition.

Saturday we have a clinic in Buffalo where they will explain to us what we need to know and do for the days leading up to and the day of the competition. I'm really excited to learn everything they have to teach us. They will explain to us a little bit more on what they expect for posing, physique, hair and makeup and overall presentation. We will be ordering our suits shortly after the clinic on Saturday since they will be giving us more information on what they expect from our suits and we want to start practicing our posing in them. Saturday also is the 6 week mark to competition #1. Six weeks to go balls-to-the-wall. Six weeks to see what I have within myself mentally, physically and emotionally.....wish us luck!

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Undesirable No. 1

I make no reference to any movies with the title of this post, but myself am becoming "Undesirable No. 1"  I was going to wait until the we were finished with our carb cycle to post again, but I wanted to give some updates. We are just finishing our 3rd of 5 cycles with this plan and there are several undesirable aspects that I have discovered.

1. High Carb day really actually sucks. You would think that after 3 days of low carbohydrate intake, the replenish of glycogen stores into your body would feel amazing. Welp, no. The rush of insulin makes for shaky sensations within the muscles and mind. Not very welcoming when you also must put your heavier lifting/workout day on high carb day.

2. The first low carb day after high carb day there is an incurable hunger that takes over, resulting in "hanger" (anger due to hunger).

3. By the 3rd low day brain function is essentially seized. The formation of complete sentences within the brain are a struggle and then to actually expel them from your mouth to make sense takes too much effort, thus speaking properly does not take place.

So why then does this make me undesirable no. 1? I cannot function properly within society during carb cycle. Withdrawal from social obligations is inevitable, it is too much work to mentally converse with people and therefore I seem to be this "undesirable" person. I try to make sure I am not coming across as this miserable person, especially to new people, but what you see is what you get until we are finished with this section of our competition prep.

I have not taken any progress pictures or done any measurements since the first day of our first carb cycle, I wanted to leave all of that for the end which will be a week from tomorrow. I have, however, checked the scale a few times. During this part of our competition prep I have lost 1.5 pounds. Again, weight has no value as a measurement to what we are trying to accomplish. We are aiming to lose body fat, but it is always nice to see something changing to stay motivated.

On another note, we have had 2 of our 3 posing classes and feel so accomplished in what we have done in the last 5.5 weeks and am looking forward to what the next 7.5 weeks has in store for us.