I’m grateful to all of the new friends and people I have met…and also those who have gone.  I truly believe everything happens for a reason….happy or sad, I will never forget each and every one of the people who have stepped into my life, good times and bad, I appreciate and am grateful for all of the lessons everyone and every experience has taught me.  I have tried to become a better and more thoughtful person because of you.

This year I have learned that to be a perfectionist, sometimes you must accept failure.  To be happy, I need to be at peace with not always getting exactly what I want. I realized that sometimes what I want doesnt’ come exactly as I imagined it to be.

When I decided to compete this year, I never imagined the amount of personal growth I would accomplish!  I’ve learned to truly look at life through the eyes of someone who appreciates life, and all of the wonderful gifts and lessons that are there.  It really didn’t matter to me if I won 1st or dead last.  I approached each contest with training the best I could to win.  Sometimes this meant bringing in a physique that I personally didn’t like, but my goal was to win, not to please myself.  When I acheived that goal, I was elated! I managed to set aside my personal differences and beliefs to reach my goal. As long as I succeeded in doing that, it really didn’t matter my placing–I knew that somewhere, out there, hundreds of girls had the same goals, the same commitment, and the same passion as me. Who am I to begrudge them of their dreams, and think that I am better than them? All of this years’ winners recieves my heartfelt congratulations and joy to be in the winners circle! I know that with continued hard work and dedication, I’ll get there someday, too…it really doesn’t matter if it’s one show earlier or later. If it were meant to happen, it will…and if not, I am having a blast in the mean time!

Can’t wait till next year!

I’ve also been able to meet and also reach out to many people and share my experiences, thoughts, and feelings with them.  Every person has touched or changed my life in some way, and led to some aspect of self-awareness.  I am deeply appreciative for these experiences!

Although I have yet to master keeping family, work, training, competing, and friends in balance, I feel like this time around I have gained a better understanding of myself. My friends have my deepest apologies for shutting a few of them out during this time, but I have such an overwhelming sense of joy and relief in finally reconnecting with who I am, and what direction I am going in…once again, the focus and dedication I put into training also helped me find….me.

As you focus on the good and brighter side of things, good things will begin to appear! Then more good things, and more….\

"The thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit. And the habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care. And let it spring from love, born out of concern for all beings." - BUDDHA

If you find fault with another, then you just brought others finding fault with you.  If you judge another, then you just brought judgment to you.

So remember..appreciating others will bring appreciation to you. You have to make the quality dominant in YOU first, before you can attract it in your outside world.

The weather out here in San Francisco has been so extraordinarly beautiful lately!  I’ve been incorporating a lot of outdoor running in my training routine.  I have been running between 5-7 miles outdoors, either on dirt trails or on pavement.  My favorite running routes right now are the Baylands trail behind our Corporate Offices at Yahoo!, or along the Embarcadero in San Francisco.  There is a staircase that goes up Telegraph Hill that is accessible from the Embarcadero–this route is killer!  When I run the Embarcadero, I’ll start at AT&T Staduim, and run down to the Municipal Pier and back.  It’s a really nice run–nice wide sidewalk, and I feel safe.  Mornings are a lot less crowded, and there are lots of little cafes to have breakfast at afterwards.  Saturdays in the summertime is the farmer’s market at the Ferry Building.  I haven’t run Seacliff or the Great Highway in years–I used to run it almost daily in high school.  Those are also a good 7-mile or so runs.  Another favorite is Lake Merced, which can get foggy, but is a nice 5-mile loop.  I’ve also wanted to run the sandy trails of Fort Funston while the weather is still nice.  Lots of doggies there on Saturdays!!!

In the gym, I’ve been training legs twice a week with Master Trainer Travis Amorim at the 24-Hour Fitness in Sunnyvale off of Arques.  Travis is great and always pushes me to failure!  He also trains me on shoulders and upper lats once a week, and I train them on my own on a different day.

My goal for Team Universe was to bring in a softer, well-conditioned, better balanced package.  I love to train my back and shoulders, and it showed–I came in a bit too hard, and my back was definitely more defined than my legs and glutes.  I have stopped training chest and arms to soften them out, and continued to train my shoulders to build size and keep their shape, and my outer lats to add width to give the illusion of a smaller waist.  I stopped training mid and lower back, since I have too much density in these areas.  I train abs every day after my cardio sessions.  I’m really happy with my results so far, and can’t wait to see what I look like when I drop my water.

I’ve been keeping my diet relatively clean since my last show, the USA’s in Vegas 6 weeks ago. "Relatively"….I love food, and it’s really hard for me to not overeat!  I have a weakness for nuts and nut butters.  I’ve been struggling to minimize / mitigate my nut addiction damage.  I also enjoy snacking on dried anchovies, octopus, cuttlefish and roasted seaweed.  My other weakness is kabocha pumpkin.  I like to slice it and bake it at 350 for 40 minutes in the oven.  I either season it with kosher salt and pepper, or stevia and cinnamon.  BUT…I will eat an entire pumpkin in one sitting if it’s in front of me, so I am quick to portion it out and stick it in the fridge.  Butternut squash, heirloom and cherry tomatoes, and eggplant are also my favorites!!!!  Right now, I’m eating about 1/4 cup of steel cooked oats (measured dry) in the mornings with 5 egg whites.  I’ll eat about 5 oz tilapia 3x a day, a scoop of whey 2x a day, and another meal of egg whites at nite.  I love chipotle salsa on my eggs, though sometimes I’ll make an omelette.  I’ll have a cup of veggies with lunch, in the afternoon, dinner, and before bed.  The veggies will vary, but I’ll keep it around 40 calories.  I’ll also have a salad with lunch and dinner.  Arugula is my FAVORITE salad, but romaine lettuce keeps me full.  I like to put in a little tomato, cucumber, celery, jicama, bell pepper, artichoke heart, palm heart, fennel, ginger, zuchinni, yellow squash, or any other veggie that might be fresh, organic, and in season.

Q&A: The Limits of Willpower - By MARILYNN LARKIN
http://health.nytimes.com/ref/health/healthguide/esn-obesity-qa.html

Q. What drives people to overeat?

A. Balancing food intake and energy expenditure is a complex process that involves two systems in the brain: a need-based system that triggers hunger when the body requires energy, and a reward-based system that triggers the desire to eat. The two sites are close to each other anatomically and work like parts of a machine.

The need-based system involves metabolism. It’s the part that monitors calories and receives signals from the body — for example, shifting levels of glucose or the hormones insulin and leptin — that tell you you’ve eaten enough and it’s time to stop. If you’re genetically prone to becoming obese, you may not be very sensitive to those signals, and you’ll eat more before stopping than someone who is not obesity-prone.

Everyone’s system strives to maintain a constant weight, or set point. The set point can be shifted upward, but only over time. If you overeat during a single meal — say, a big Thanksgiving dinner — your body goes into overdrive to try to get rid of those excess calories. But if you gain weight gradually, your body eventually will become accustomed to a higher weight and work to maintain it.

Q. What about the brain’s reward system?

A. The reward-based system, the part that responds to the tastes and textures of your favorite foods, and the joys of dining out with family and friends, is linked to many of the same metabolic pathways as the need-based system. But it plays by a different set of rules. We saw an example of its power in a series of experiments with obesity-prone animals who love a particular chocolate liquid supplement.

When the supplement was available, the animals ignored the high-fat food that would normally have attracted them and ate almost all their calories from the supplement. But when the supplement was taken away — that is, the palatability of their diet changed — they cut their food intake by 50 percent. Within two to three weeks, their weight was back where it would have been if they had never eaten the supplement.

When the supplement was reintroduced, however, the animals again ate with abandon, and their weight went right back to where it would have been if they’d never been off it. So this reward system seems to override everything, even normal signals of hunger and satiety. It drives many people to overeat and probably is responsible for much of the increase in obesity we’ve seen over the past few decades.

Q. What role do genes play in obesity?

A. Genes are responsible for 60 to 70 percent of obesity, in that they can program you to be obesity-prone. Your set point is genotype-specific, meaning it’s tied to your genetic template, and it’s very difficult to change. In fact, once an obesity-prone individual actually becomes obese, it’s nearly impossible to return to a normal weight. So although many people believe that individuals who are overweight simply lack the willpower to stop overeating, in fact it’s much more complicated. If someone is obesity-prone, many times they are also highly sensitive to cues in the environment, such as the smell or taste of a favorite food.

Q. Why don’t diets help?

A. One problem is that when you lose weight on a diet, the amount of energy you expend at rest — part of the need-based system — goes down. Although dieting affects both the need and reward systems, it’s need that can’t be overcome. Built into every one of us, fat or thin, is a metabolic system that drives us to eat when the brain perceives that we don’t have enough energy stores. It’s this perception that can be skewed in an obesity-prone person, whose brain is less sensitive to signals to stop eating.

When you fast, even for as little as 12 hours, levels of the hormone leptin drop like a shot, which is a way for the brain to know the body is hungry. When leptin levels go back up, the brain says, "I’m full." But obesity-prone people are less sensitive to high levels, and don’t get the message to stop until levels are really, really high.

We saw this when we compared obesity-prone animals to obesity-resistant animals. We fed them both a high-fat diet. Both took in more calories than usual, but after two or three days, something clicked in the brains of the obesity-resistant animals, and they lowered their caloric intake back down to where it was when they were on a low-fat, lower-calorie diet. But it took the obesity-prone animals three or four weeks to make that correction, even though their leptin levels had gone way up.

People probably fall somewhere in between; they don’t overeat quite as much, and a good part of the calories that they put on contribute to their need-based increase in weight, which is what you can’t overcome by changing palatability. In fact, I believe a lot of fad diets work initially, at least, by being boring. People lose interest in eating. But eventually, they start craving their favorite foods, and they can’t stay on the diet anymore.

Q. Does exercise really make a difference?

A. A large group of people in the National Weight Control Registry report doing very heavy amounts of exercise as part of their weight management strategy. And we know that exercise helps overcome the body’s natural tendency to lower its resting energy expenditure in response to weight loss. But for most people, exercise in and of itself isn’t the answer.

What we are finding is that exercise done very early — immediately after weaning in animals, and probably anywhere from age 2 to 8 in humans — may help prevent someone with an obesity-prone template from becoming fat. We did an experiment in which a running wheel was put in a cage of animals who enjoy using it. They ran on it like crazy, and we found that even animals with a propensity to obesity did not gain weight, even after the wheel was taken away. The effect was incredibly dramatic.

We had never been able to change the set point of the obesity-prone before, and we suspected that exercise done during this early developmental period somehow made their brains more sensitive to leptin signals. We don’t know if the effect is permanent, but it certainly is long-lasting. And it’s encouraging because it shows that there may be a way to change the obesity genotype with an early intervention.

Q. Industry has spent a fortune trying to develop effective weight-loss drugs. Why don’t we have one yet?

A. First, the brain is effectively wired to protect itself. We need to eat to survive, and we have redundant pathways developed over eons that keep us wanting to eat, pushing us to keep our energy systems filled. If you try to interfere with one, others take over.

But a bigger problem is that the receptors these weight-loss drugs act on don’t just regulate food intake; they’re tied to a lot of other systems. That’s true of rimonabant, a weight-loss drug that the F.D.A. has refused to approve. It works on the brain’s cannaboid receptors, which are involved in eating and the reward system, but also in anxiety, depression and mood.

And this ties into the biggest problem in treating obesity, which is that people are impatient. If someone responds to such a drug, he may lose a pound or so a week. And no matter what the doctor says, he’ll become impatient and take more pills. This may speed up weight loss, but because the drug is also acting on other brain centers, the increased dosage can also induce depression, anxiety, psychosis and suicide.

We have plenty of targets for new drugs. What we need is something more like a smart bomb that zeroes in on a weight-loss target without affecting anything else. Some potential drugs are in the wings, but it will take years before they can be tested in humans. And we’ll probably need combinations of drugs that target systems both in the brain and in the body, because one drug targeting one system probably won’t produce more than a 10 percent weight reduction, which is not enough for someone who weighs 300 pounds.

Unfortunately, for now and the foreseeable future, the best treatment for obesity is prevention.

Shopping List:
Chicken: 2.99/lb at Costco (Foster Farms, 99% fat free boneles / skinless breast, low sodium / nitrates.  Organic chicken is 5.99/lb).  Get about $50 worth.

Tilapia: 5.99/lb at Costco (Fresh, Farm-raised from Ecuador).  Get about $100 worth.

Yams:  calculate how much you’ll need…i usually get about 10 lbs since they freeze well and i’ll eat them offseason, too.

Oatmeal: I like my food as unprocessed as possible.  Plus, I prefer the texture and fiber content of steel cut oats.  I have 1/4 uncooked oats in my current nutritional plan.  I cook my oats in 1-cup batches on the stove (1c oats to 1.5 cups of water, simmer on med low for 30 minutes).  I let it cook off and it turns into a cake-looking thing.  Lift it out and weight it.  Then cut it into quarters.  I stuff them into the 4-oz tupperware containers and store them in the fridge.  Each morning I will pull out a tupperware…I don’t mind eating my food cold, but you could always re-heat it with a little more water and add your cinnamon, stevia or other favorite seasoning to it.  If you’re truly pressed for time, you can cook it with your allotted amount of egg whites and have your entire meal ready-to-go (use an 8oz tupperware to pack it in instead).
4 large Casserole dishes (9×12), covered with foil
4 large baking pans / cookie sheets covered with foil
Large tupperware containers
Wax Paper
Foil
Quart-sized ziplock bags
Gallon sized ziplock bags
Pre-heat oven to 350.
Fill up all of your caserole dishes with chicken, in a single layer.
Fill up all of your baking pans with tilapia, in the baking pans (you might need to cook 2 batches)
Wrap yams in Foil and arrange on baking pan.
Fill up your oven: yams closest to heat source, chicken 2nd closest, fish farthest away.
Check on fish after 20 min.  Check on chicken and yams after 40 min.  DON"T OVERCOOK!!! SET A TIMER!

Take it out of the oven, and let them cool off (unwrap the yams).
Dice the chicken and portion them out into quart-sized Ziplock bags.
Put the tilapia into the tupperware in single layers, separated by wax paper.
Peel the yams and dice.  Portion out into ziplock bags and freeze.
Freeze everything and pull them out as you need it.  Every 4 days, pull out stuff for the next three days to thaw in the fridge.