gymrat0226’s BodyBlog

Wow…I think I finally recovered from the show.  The after eating is the worst!  You eat everything you want to eat that you’ve been so deprived of over the past few months…..and then you blow up like a blow fish!  Sunday morning I just wanted to have cereal with milk.  It’s been months since I’ve had milk.  We went to Chilli’s for lunch and I had mini cheeseburgers and I just kept eating them.  I was almost able to finish all of the them but seriously I was full after 2.  I was so full that I couldn’t even drink water and I was so thirsty because of the amount of sodium in the food.  I couldn’t eat dinner and then I really, really wanted a cinnamon chip scone from Starbucks so I had one around 8:00.  Well, when it was ready for bed I took my socks off and my feel looked like pillsbury dough boy feet!  OMG I freaked out!!!  I weighed myself and I had gained 4 1/2 lbs since morning!

So right back on the diet Monday morning but ended up eating some munchies last night and felt like crap again!  Today I swore no more!  I can’t do this.  I feel awful and tired and bloated.  So I stuck with it today and went to do cardio at lunch.  I feel sooooo much better now.  I’m back on my bland diet but I get to have yogurt, fruit, a kashi bar, stuff like that.  I enjoy eating that food because it makes me feel good.  I don’t know how people can eat take-out, chips, cookies, just garbage all the time.  They have no idea what it does to their body.

I’m not 100% yet but I’m sure by tomorrow I’ll be fine.  I’m going to head back to the gym and start off slow.  I’m not going to dive right into anything yet.  I’m not going to start seriously training for my next show until after Christmas.  Right now I’m going to stick with what I was doing before except focus on glutes and hams and maintain my upper body for now.

I just spent the last 16 weeks preparing for something I wanted to do my whole life….compete in a bodybuilding competition!  I finally did it…my life-long dream and now I’m hooked.  I’m already planning to do another show on May 2, 2009 in Washington, IL.  I know what I have to work on now (well, I already knew before) but it’s confirmed by the judges I need to work on glutes and hams.  So it’s going to be “The Great Bum Project of 2009!!!”

It was a really great experience for my first show.  All the competitors where really nice and it wasn’t “catty” like most people would think.  Everyone helped everyone out but I’m sure everyone wanted to win the 1st place trophy.  I didn’t go with that mindset because I never want to be disappointed.  I was in two divisions, Masters (+40) and Middle Class (5’2”-5’ 4”).  There were only two girls in each class and I placed 2nd.  When the MC announced I was 2nd place the whole crowd was silent and you could only here Danielle’s little voice scream out “No!”  It was kind of funny.  The girl who handed out trophies ended up giving me the 1st place trophy with a gift basket.  So everyone got confused and the MC said to the girl “I think you got them switched”.
After the show I was standing in the lobby and 4 people who were in the audience came up to me and congratulated me on how great I looked and how well I did on stage.  An older couple that go to my gym came up to me too.  They are serious bodybuilders.  She’s close to 70 and he’s probably a few years older.  This woman can lift as much as me and she’s ripped up!  It really is something to see.  Anyhow, they came up to me and said they go to these bodybuilding competitions all over and they predict the winners and this was the first time they’ve been wrong!  That made me feel really good.  Then one of the judges came up to me and said I did awesome.  I had a great stage presence, my upper body is perfect and the only notes he had was that I needed to work on hams and glutes….yes, yes, I know!  He told me about his show in May, 2009 and said he’d be honored if I came to his show to compete and it would give me enough time to work on my rear parts.

After the show I was so hungry and thirsty I just wanted to eat anything so me, William and my friend Alice went to Denny’s and I had Philly Cheese Stake and Fries and I ate pretty much the whole thing and OMG I felt like crap after.  Then I came home and took Williams chocolate covered almonds and started eating those and fell asleep watching TV with my hand in the bag.  So today I started off with Kashi cereal and milk!  I haven’t had milk in 2 months!  It was yummy.  Then for lunch I ate a burger at Chilli’s.  I think that did me in.  I can’t eat like that.  It totally grosses me out.  So I cooked a bunch of chicken breast and brown rice to freeze for the week.  It’s funny because I felt like a prisoner that just got out of jail.  You’re free and now you don’t know what to do because you’re scared you’ll get into trouble.  And that’s how it is with food now.  So I have to stay on track which won’t be hard because I’ve been deprived of the healthy food I like, like salad, milk, yogurt, kashi bars and now I can have them.  I don’t even think about chips or cookies I just want to have some milk with cereal…lol.

Oh well, I had fun and I know what to expect now.  So my long-term plans are to compete in the May show and start looking for a show in the summer around Toronto so I can do that show and all my family and friends can come and watch.  That would be awesome!

I have 5 days left until my competition.  My practice carb deplete/load was
very successful and I’m very happy with the results.  My trainer saw me on
Sunday to do posing and he flipped.  He told me not to loose any more weight
but I feel that I need to because my legs still have too much fat on them.

My nutritionist said we got the results we wanted so we’ll follow exactly
what we did last week so I’ll probably loose a few more pounds.  He told me
to cut back on my cardio to no more than 30-40 min/session.  And he said I
should come out 10% to 25% sharper than last Saturday.  I think that means
leaner, I’m not sure I’ll have to ask him.  So ready or not, I’m walking on
stage in 5 days!

My carb deplete/load was quite a diet experience.  When I saw my diet for
the deplete I just about flipped.  How on earth was I going to survive on
such little food and do my full body workout and 2 cardio sessions!  Well I
survived the first day.  I felt a little dumb by 2:00 pm.  I was light
headed and felt a little stupid like nothing could sink in my brain.  The
second day was worse in the morning.  I was starving by 10:00 and that’s
when I got the light headedness.  I didn’t do cardio at lunch because I just
didn’t have any energy at all.  I had to train in the evening with my
trainer and he has no idea that I’m doing this because he told me I didn’t
need to and that it’s not good for you.  I’m just about the most stubborn
person in the world and I do what I feel is best for me and I feel like he
didn’t help me at all with my diet like he promised so why should I listen
to him.  We ended up finishing 15 min early and did posing instead because
he could see I just had nothing left in me.  I tried to do cardio and that
lasted 10 minutes.

The first day of carb load was the best day of all the 5 days.  Wheat toast
and jam for breakfast tasted like a big cinnamon bun with icing on it!  The
2nd day was gross.  I had to eat so much food I felt like I was going to
explode and then no water after 6:00 pm except my shake.  Saturday a.m. I
had to pretend that it was show day so I had to get up at 5 and eat a bagel
which was yummy, then at 7 eat 2 Reeces Peanut Butter Cups and I’ve never
tasted anything so sweet in my life!  I took pics at 8:00.  Then for lunch
burger and fries.  I was so thirsty that my mouth was burning so I didn’t
enjoy it at all.  I ended up sipping about 16 oz of water throughout the day
until I took my final pics at 6 pm.  I later found out that I’m not supposed
to let myself get so thirsty and to drink 8 oz of water if I get like that.

This last week I’m extremely busy finishing my suits, getting my dress
altered, nails, training, etc, etc so I’ll probably only post one more time before the
show.

Well this is the last 12 days for me and it’s critical!  My butt is not ready and my diet has been so messed up so I hired a nutritionist for the last 2 weeks.  =”window.location=’member.php?u=410441′;” style=”cursor: pointer”>JaruebaT on bodyspace is helping me get ready and he’s awesome!  I don’t know why but it’s so much easier for someone to tell you what to eat and I’m actually sticking to it.  He cleaned up my diet for me and I started today.  I weighed myself this morning when I woke up and again when I came home from work and actually lost 1/2 lb!  And…my bodyfat read 14.9%.  I’m soooo happy about that.  The only thing now is tightening up my butt and getting rid of that fat on my outer thighs.  I really want to do this show and I’ve trained so hard, dieted and spent at s*@tload of money but I really don’t want to humiliate myself on stage and walk out there and not be ready so I hope this works.

What he’s doing for me is a practice mini carb load/deplete to see how my body responds to it and then he’ll adjust the real thing next week according to the results we get.  Tomorrow and Wednesday will be carb depleting and I’m not looking forward to it because I’m a carboholic.  Thursday/Friday will be carb loading with diuretics and no gym!!!  I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself so I have to plan something to keep myself busy.  So Thursday I’ll work on my one piece doing the stoning and practice my posing and Friday my friend who’s going to be at the show with me is coming over after work and she’s going to come to the gym with me to practice posing.  Saturday will be the practice show day and I get to have a bagel for breakfast, Reeces Peanut Butter Cups an hour before my pretend judging at 8:00 am and Cheese pizza for lunch.  Through this whole practice run I’m taking pictures everyday including 1 hour after my peanut butter cups at 8:00 am and again at 6:00 pm which would be the evening show.  I’m sure this whole process can’t hurt me at all because I was eating all the wrong things and way too many carbs.

He also told me that I need to walk on a 15% incline on my lunch and then 1 hr on the stepmill or stairmaster after my evening workout.  I didn’t have a stepmill at the gym I went to tonight so I did the 1 hr on 15% incline and holy mother of God!  My hamstrings and glutes have never felt like this in my life!  I should’ve been doing this for the past 2 months!  So tomorrow and Wednesday I’ll be at another gym that has a stepmill and I’ll be stepping my life away.