~Michele~’s BodyBlog

I have been doing a lot of reflecting lately - thinking about where I have been and where I am headed. My fitness journey has not been as glamorous as it may seem from the outside, looking at a few photos posted on a website. It has been about five years since I first started lifting weights, and although I am not proud of every moment along the way, the things I have learned in the process are extremely valuable to me, and I would not change anything that I have gone through.

I want to talk a little about the beginning. I hope my story can help others that might be going through something similar, or who have a friend that is. I am so proud that I was able to overcome this obstacle and turn it into something positive in my life, and it hurts to see others who are experiencing and feeling the same things I went through five years ago.

I started lifting weights because I needed to strengthen my arm after a snowboarding injury. The more I learned about training, the more I wanted to learn about everything involved in fitness. I read books and magazines that said protein was good for you, but carbs and fats were bad. So my solution? Eat nothing but protein. I ate tons of tuna and cottage cheese, getting really lean in the process. It started as simply not knowing enough about nutrition, but it turned into a genuine eating disorder. The big problem was that I wasn’t fueling myself for my lifestyle, let alone my workouts. It was to the point where I became afraid of calories and all I could think about all day long was training and trying to avoid food, unless it was tuna or cottage cheese, of course. I hit a low of 104 pounds, and although I had muscle from training, it looked like muscle on a skeleton.

I knew I had taken it too far, but was so caught up in seeing changes that I couldn’t stop. It wasn’t until a guy at the gym took me aside and said, "Michele, I know what you are trying to achieve and you won’t be able to get there if you don’t eat more." I needed someone to say something, and it was the right time to hear it. I remember he made me a weight gainer shake and I drank it without feeling like I did something bad. That was a huge turning point for me and I am so thankful.

I set a new goal to add muscle to my physique, and to not be afraid of gaining weight back. It took about a year for me to fully change my attitude about food, and it was a tough fight, but I am so thankful that I made the committment to do it. This year my goal is to get on stage at 128-130 pounds. That will be about the same or lower body fat pecentage than I was at 104. Anyone can lose fat, that is the easy part, but this kind of progress is what you KNOW you had to work your ass off for! Oh, and remember the guy who made me the weight gainer shake? Well, he saw me at the Emerald Cup in 2006 where I was 122 pounds on stage, and he said he almost cried he was so proud of me!

In another blog I will talk about rebounding post-contest. I owe a lot of my muscle gain to it, but it sure isn’t fun feeling thick in the off-season!

There are a lot of diets out there, but I think that this is one that we are all familiar with. "Tomorrow I will quick eating sweets", "tomorrow I will stop drinking beer", "tomorrow I will make sure I eat six small meals throughout the day". I think this is some way of justifying the bad choices that we make today. At least that is what I do, if I know that tomorrow I am starting my program, then what does one more day matter?

The problem is that the Tomorrow Diet doesn’t always mean that tomorrow is going to be a fresh new start. One small trigger and the whole process starts over again. What happens when you get to work tomorrow morning and someone had brought fresh bagels from your favorite bakery? You think to yourself, "tomorrow I will start my diet." It is a vicious cycle, allowing us to justify the fact that we know we aren’t doing what we know we can be doing, today.

I am very familiar with the Tomorrow Diet, because I have been on it plenty of times myself. To anyone who has a goal, to anyone who doesn’t yet have the body of their dreams, I challenge you to ditch the Tomorrow Diet and try out the Today Diet. Don’t wait any longer, it is only going to delay the feeling of accomplishment that is long overdue. Don’t start tomorrow, start right now. Start with your next meal. You have the power to make those decisions, so what are you going to choose?

If I won the lottery, the first thing I would do is hire a personal chef. Now, I don’t expect this to happen anytime soon, considering I don’t buy lottery tickets, but it’s fun to think about. The most time consuming part about getting ready for shows and shoots is cooking! It would be great to just hand someone my diet plan and not have to worry about it.

I think that contest prep, or just eating well in general, would be so much easier with a personal chef. When I come home after a long day, running from the gym to work to the gym again, all I want to do is relax. But wait, I have that cooler that I need to unpack. I don’t dare leave it until tomorrow because I remember how nasty those containers smelled last time I let them sit too long. And don’t forget about the meals that I need to get ready for tomorrow. After washing out my gladware, weighing out my chicken, and repacking all of those meals, NOW I can relax.

And for some reason, food always looks better when someone else cooks it. My chicken and broccoli never looks quite as tasty as the chicken and broccoli that someone else prepared. It’s the same food! Mine just doesn’t look as tasty.

It seems that everyone has their own recipe for protein pancakes, but mine are the guaranteed fluffiest and most delicious. I have tried tons of different ways to make them, but after eating enough runny, dense, gummy "pancakes" (if you can even call them that), I finally figured out what was missing. The Magic Bullet.

They aren’t kidding in those cheesy informercials, the Magic Bullet is SWEET! I use it for everything from protein shakes to chopping almonds, but the protein pancakes that come out of this thing are the best by far. If you don’t have one, you could try my recipe in a regular blender but I imagine it would be a little messier and not quite as thrilling. Like I said, the thing is sweet.

Ingredients:

• Oats
• Egg whites
• Protein powder (I use AllMax IsoFlex in Vanilla)
• Xanthan gum
• Water
• Splenda
• Cinnamon

The amounts that you use of each are not too important, you can vary them based on your own dietary needs. Personally, I use 1/4 cup of oats, 1 cup of egg whites, and 1/3 scoop IsoFlex, but that is just for my own caloric requirements. The only thing that you need to pay attention to the amount of is the Xanthan gum. Only use a little tiny sprinkle! This is what creates the airiness in the batter, but it will get all thick if you use too much. Only add just a little drizzle of water, too much will make it runny.

Directions:

Put all of the ingredients except for the water in the Magic Bullet cup and blend a little bit. It should look like real pancake batter once it is blended. Not a watery sludge with pieces of oats in the bottom (I am sure you have had this happen with other recipes). Spray Pam in a pan, cook one side until it starts to bubble. Spray the top with Pam before you flip to make sure it doesn’t stick on the other side.

These are awesome with a little Fabio Butter Spray and sugar-free maple syrup. If you want to eat them at night and you don’t eat carbs in the evenings, leave out the oats and they are still delicious!