2008 Transformation Contest

The last week was rough.

You already heard about my diet problem, and I am now almost entirely sure it is the wheat oats I ate all the past week. My weight was not moving at all, just stood there at the same spot. I also experienced energy drop. It was hard for me to get up in the 05:30AM and do the morning workout. I was already afraid I was going to stop progressing, that I have reached some sort of plateau. I have experienced such things before and it takes some time to break out of it.

Today I feel much better. I got up and finished my workout as usual and doing just fine. I know I have lost a week and I will compensate for it this week. Now I understand much more was affecting my condition last week. Major factor is the stress. I am starting my own business venture. I will start my own on-line supplement store and I have so much to do about it. Yesterday I reached one milestone by actually registering my business and getting all the papers required for the business start. I can relax for a moment, but not for long. This week I have to work on my web site and scripts for on-line sales, plus I have to make contact with all the distributors in my country. I am very excited about this and I have such a positive vibrations I just know I will succeed!

Now I am still running on empty here, no supplements are used, but I feel strong and energized. I will double the boxing intensity for this week and lower the calories and hope for the best

That’s it from me for this call, keep your intensity high!

malibuilder

Before I became MILF HUNTRESS, my internet name was RAISING WOMYN.  I have three daughters that I am raising.  Not as an accessory to man, but as a loving equal.  Introducing, my 3 sweet girlie-girls.  My little womyn.  I picked the song, "Prickly Thorn, Sweetly Worn", because this is what raising children has been to me.  The pleasure, the pain. Protecting babes from the bristles, then releasing them into the wind.

I had a fabulous weekend.  Great workouts, quality family time, complete productive and positve planning to reach my goals,  and some r and r.  What mroe can you ask for?

Made a little video.  I like to use this as a warm up however if I am running short on time, I use it as a circuit with three rounds and can get out of the gym in under 30 minutes.  Enjoy

Oh and a shout out to Pixi…Happy Birthday.  Enjoy yourself today and much happiness throughout the year.

OK, last week was going down, then up and down again. I am not sure why but at the beginning of the week I lost few pounds and than a sudden energy drop, and I gain some weight (watter probably) and than I get down again.

Anyways here are the progress pictures:

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
                  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

   BODY TRANSFORMATION, END OF WEEK 8.

I took a planned cheat night out with my husband this week.  On it’s own I do not believe this would have been a problem.  

I joke about “refeeds”, but I do believe in the principle behind them. 

The problem for me, being carb sensitive,(ADDICTED!  ADDICTED!), means that once I let some carbs slip in, my body does not want to give them up again.  

This leaves me vulnerable to strong cravings until I get a grasp on myself.

I could waste time in regret over 7 BELGIAN chocolates I utterly lost control and binged upon yesterday.  

Or I could look to the experience as one to learn from.  

The fact of the matter is, no matter how strong our resolve, how great our intentions, we WILL EVENTUALLY crumble to temptation, UNLESS temptation is removed from us.  

Especially when under going periods of stress, whether mental or physical.

I am still enjoying the competition.  But as I have never done this before, I am learning how to pace myself.  

I have no nutritionist or trainer.  I am attempting to make a dramatic change with nothing but intuition, guts, and instinct.  

Sometimes I second guess myself.  Sometimes I lose my vision.  

I am fighting a battle in my mind over the loss of muscle tissue.  In my pictures, I can see a decrease in size, and it frightens me.  I have had no decrease in strength.  This is a good sign!

At a family birthday party this weekend, I began getting the “you are getting too thin” comments.  I never wanted to be “the thin girl”.  I wanted to be “the buff girl”.  

I have to have courage.  I know I have to strip away the fat in order to go farther.  

My inner ectomorph is being revealed.  As much as I like heft and bulk, I am finding that genetically, I have a body that is built to be long and lean.

I measured in last week at somewhere between 18.6-19.1% bodyfat.  

How do women mentally get past the barrier of going lower than this?

Women compete at 10% bodyfat or less.  How do they manage to hold onto precious muscle as they cut their bodyfat to such extreme lows?

I am sucking up my fears of loose skin (which is becoming more evident daily, especially on my backside).  

I am learning.  I am embracing the challenge.

I am walking through my fears of catabolism.

I will not let my fears hold me back any longer.

All I can do…is work the best to my knowledge and abilities.  Relying on my body to give me the answers.

I envision a stronger, leaner me.  I envision my muscles growing bigger, stronger, better defined, as my body grows evermore leaner.

My meal timing is off.  I must admit, I do not time my meals.  I eat when I am hungry.  

This means today I ate 4 meals instead of 6.

Breakfast:  4 scoops strawberry Intra-Pro  (I know…a HUGE SHAKE…a whole blenderful actually…but I was STARVED.  This is what my body wanted.)

Lunch: Large Pack Albacore Tuna, 1/2 bag salad, 1 green pepper sliced, 3 vinegars, spices and seasonings,

Pre-Workout:  1 apple

Workout: Super Pump 250, BCAA’s

Post-Workout/Supper: 1 Scoop Vanilla Intra-Pro, 1/2 Scoop Caramel Protein, 1/2 apple, 1 large spoon honey, glutamine, cinnamon,

Misc: lots of Crystal Light with apple cider vinegar, 1 Diet Rockstar, 1 pack berry gum.

TOTAL CALORIES:  1800      TOTAL PROTEIN:  164

I believe taking it easy on myself was good for me this last week.  It was good for me mentally, as well as hopefully rebooting my metabolism in the process.  

My weight;  137.

No losses, no gains.

However, it is time to see what I can now pull out of me.  This week, I will be staying 110% on task.  

We are pulling around the corner bend.  It is these last few weeks that count… the most.

I will give it my all.  I will give it my utmost.  I will keep my head in the game until the game is done.

HAVE A GREAT WEEK EVERYONE!  WHAT YOU BELIEVE, YOU WILL ACHIEVE!

Here is a quick update.  I am down a total of 14 pounds and 7.5% body fat.  I will let you know the inches tomorrow.  I couldnt get my measurements done today.  

Here are this weeks pics.

Well.  Let me know what you think.

Well ladies and gentlemen,

A few things to say today.  Pictures and video may be missed this week because I can not find the camera battery charger.  This is why I argued for a camera that took AA batteries but hey.   I know it is in the house somewhere and that I was the last person to handle it.  It will be in the last place I look, always is.

Let’s be frank here for a minute or two.  I am outclassed in this competition.  Maddi is looking cut.  Dare is a picture of proper form and steely resolved.  Mali is an animal that replaced an animal.  Those push-ups he did were strong and straight.  Fusion is young and has found his stride as he resets his motivational focus.  My competitors are all top notch and really class people.

I am another story.  There are some tremendous changes going on in me.  Some of the changes you can see in the pictures and some you can’t.  My journey was in full swing prior to the competition.  Starting in November I had 178 pounds to lose, give or take 10 pounds depending on what I look like near the end.  Today I have 143 pounds to drop.  That is terrific and I am very happy with that progress.  This progress is due in large part to bb.com and the members here.

What you may not see is the health improvement and strength gain I have undergone.  There are a few readers here that understand what it is like to be almost 200 pounds heavy.  Just living was an effort.  Now I am feeling strong and firm. My pants are far too large. My wife remembers what muscles feel like on her man’s arms, chest, and quads. I am moving better.  I care so much more about this than a scale number.  While the scale reads 1/2 a pound up I know that I am actually much better physically today than I was last Wed.  

So back to the competition.  Because I have so much to lose I will still be the fattest person in the group at the end even if I would lose 70 pounds.  Because I was the most out of shape I will still be the weakest in the group at the end.   This bugged me a bit a few weeks back.    Here I was in a competition that I feel I have almost no chance of winning.  I was wondering why I was even selected to be in the contest.   Yes, when I feel sorry for myself I go all out.

But that wasn’t the point of the competition and winning was never about who was chosen the transformer in the end.  The competition was setup by Bodybuilding.com and our sponsors to encourage others to join the journey to health and fitness.  This is why I was chosen and why Maddi was chosen.  We have competitors from the most out of shape to the close to very in shape and everything in between.   The thing the competitors have in common is that we are all using Bodybuilding.com to accomplish our goals and hopefully showing others how to best use the site.  I think it is in this sense that we are all winners here and owe a great deal of thanks to Bodybuilding.com and the sponsors for the opportunity.  

This is also not to take anything away from my fellow competitors.  Without their motivation and dedication they would not have improved the way they have since 12/26/07.  Just take a look at their progress pictures and you know that you are seeing people that know how to get after it.  Whichever competitor wins you can be assured that they fully deserved that win.

We see the end of the contest ahead of us and yet that ending is artificial for all of us.  The competition end is not the ‘end’ for any of the competitors.  You see, we will not fail at our goals.  I am certain that Maddi and Mali will end up on the stage.  SCT will be a great trainer.  Fusion, Dare, and myself will get our weight down and harden up to a point where we will not be embarrassed to wear a swimsuit.  

You know what?  It is good to be alive!

Scale today shows 240.9 lbs, my last measure showed 244.2 and that was Saturday LOL.

Any way here is my workout video for this week. After I finished my morning cardio I did some push-ups, here is how it looks

BTW. I was a bit sore from Monday chest workout I was pushing 350 pounds!!! Loosing fat, and my strength remains, it is a sure sign I am not loosing any muscles

I was once a highly conflicted individual.  

That which I wanted to do…I did not do.  And that which I did not want to do…I did do.  

This was not because of sin, but because of many taught spiritual and societal beliefs which did not line up with my honest and true life experiences.  

Idealism breeds mental illness. 

My large degree of naive idealism and fanatical innocence nearly killed me.

There was a 550 pound waiter serving me and my husband Saturday night.  I watched other patrons, laughing, sneering, joking about a man…who was slowly, but capably doing his job.  He probably had more strength in his left pinkie, in his heart, than these jokesters did in their entire bodies.

I believe that morbid, gross, obesity, is caused by inner soul confliction.  The likes of which many of you will fortunately never know.  

I overcame my confliction, my outdated, idealistic, taught modes of thinking.  I learned to take life for what it IS rather than what I was taught it SHOULD be.

Many people are never able to do this.

Take it easy on them.

Take it easy on yourselves.

Thats right.  I am back at bat.  Ready to swing and smash one out of the park.  Feeling great again.  Workouts are back and intense.  My muscles are complaining a little since they took almost a week off.  They will shape up in no time.  

This week I thought I would bring you a sample of some of my back exercises.  If there is an area that I slack on,this would be it.  I know its part of the major core and that I should work it as diligently as I do other body parts.  I seem to dislike back exercises the most with the exception of the smith machine pull-ups.  I must say that I liked them…a lot.  I am looking forward to adding them to my routine.  

any way, here is the video…

I got in a wonderful workout last night.  Really tore up the lower body.  It felt great since I really haven’t had a good workout in several days.  I felt like I was back into the groove of things.  

Tonight I am hoping to find a new love.  I am going to try a exercise that I found in this months Muscle and Fitness.   I was very excited when I seen it.  I have hopes it will move me towards being able to actually do a complete pull up. Its called a weighted smith machine pull-up.  Here is how it works:  You set the smith machine stops at waist height and set a bench a few feet away from the bar, parallel to it.  Take a wide overhand grip on the bar and squat down to hang under it.  Place your feet on the bench in front of you so your body forms an “L”.  At this point, a partner can add weights to you lap if you choose.  Obviously, I wont be doing that part yet.  From the hanging position, pull your chest to the bar, squeezing your lats hard, and the return to the starting position.   For those of you more experienced, you can switch hand positions to the close grip to hit the lower back. Or better yet alternate them.  

Here is my progress for the last week:

Weight: up one pound (215.0)
Body fat%: the same

No I am not disappointed.  I expected it since I had been sick and everything has been off.  I don’t want my competitors getting to cocky though.  I am back and feeling great.  Hardcore workouts continue.  Restocked the groceries…clean eating is on.  Water intake has been increased.  Got myself a little valentines gift too….a new mp3.  I am so ready to bring it…again.  

Here are this weeks pics:

Just a few signs of overtraining….or overworking.  I don’t know which.  

That darned cold Jeep isn’t helping matters much.  5 degrees fahrenheit this morning, the windshield a sheet of ice.  Rolled down the window and dumped my water bottle on it.  Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Then, dropped a blender full of my LAST peanut butter chocolate protein shake all over my floorboard.

Got the kids to school, and started my day with 20 minutes weighted vest elliptical.  

5-10 minutes stretching.

21 sets abs, the good stuff, mostly weighted, hanging, or both. 

12 sets triceps.

Put the doggone vest back on for a 10 minute jog…on incline.

Ran home for lunch and a quick clean-up.  Straight to work.  6 hour shift.  Getting IMMENSE negative energy from a coworker who has weight to lose.  Another elderly coworker fell on the way in and busted her head.  Kind of a rough day.  My heart wasn’t there.

Straight from work back to the gym.  

10 minutes weighted vest stairmill.
10 minute weighted vest elliptical
10 minute  weighted vest incline jog.

40 reps bench dips, 50 reps cable and rope pushdowns

Came home, took a pic, here I am,…

I weighed in this morning at 137.

Down 2 more lbs.  A total of 20 lbs gone now.

(108 lbs total.)

See…I’m tired.  I can’t even get excited about it.

THERE HAS GOT TO BE AN EASIER WAY.

lol

I figured you guys could find interesting to check out your biorhythm I was skeptical but we all have our ups and downs. You can calculate yours here:

http://biorhythms.perbang.dk/

Anyways I am at my lowest point right now, so I guess when I get on top you better be afraid LOL

Here are my weekly progress pictures:

Front relaxed

Side relaxed, (yeah right )

Front double biceps

Front lat spread:

Rear double biceps:

Rear lat spread:

The quality is awful I know, please forgive

It never ends for me, 4 steps in the right direction 10 backwards. Anyways had car issues, I know this isnt a car forum but a couple of video for proof of the car issue. And one Gaspari review.

Let’s talk about scale numbers and why they really don’t matter much to me.  A quick warning to all, I will get a bit crass below this line.  (more…)