TLC: Trust, Love, Consistency

In trying to fit almost 3 hours worth of extra stuff into my day (posing, cardio, weights) I’ve been looking at rejigging my schedule. One of my ideas was to get back to cycling to work. After all, it’s the fastest way to get to work and it ticks the cardio box nicely. I stopped cycling a few weeks back as I was feeling way to carb depleted to handle it.
This morning I made adjustments to my breakfast to include some oats, ameranth and buckwheat porridge to power the bike. Breaky was still 300 calories-ish but just different macros. Sucked down my new pre-workout combo of BCAAs, l-tryosine, creatine, glutamine & alca and off I went.

I intentionally took it pretty easy and averaged about 22km/h (about a 15% reduction on my usual speed). Made it to the gym in one piece and pushed through my chest workout in an acceptable but not awesome style. I’d left my Xtend in the bottle on my bike, locked downstairs, outside the gym so made do with water. Exactly 59 minutes into my workout  (and my second to last set) all sense of strength was zapped. Finished up, showered and changed and downed my Xtend as quick as possible to see if I could reverse the zombie’s curse.

The first hour of work was a write off, even after having my post-workout meal of chicken, veg and pearl barley. Then I realised, woah am I thirsty. I must have downed 1 litre of water in half an hour. Magic, the zombies curse lifted.

At lunchtime I decided I’d better make sure I could get back home again, as I don’t have time to get the train tonight, so I ducked across to the supermarket and bought a big bag of frozen brocolli and cauliflower to add to my snack (kangaroo pattie). Yuck, there is NO FLAVOUR in supermarket frozen veg, but hopefully the extra greens should keep me rolling through to the afternoon a bit more evenly.At first I was stressing it was outside of my scheduled meals, but then I came to my senses and realised half a bag of broccoli is 50calories of fibre, hardly a determent!

So next time I’m feeling like death:
water
green veg
take a nap (not an option at work)
glutamine

I’m slowly learning from this science experiment!

In other exciting news, I did a quick and probably inaccurate self caliper measurement and wound up with 13.5%. Tomorrow, Joe will do proper measurements for me but things are looking up. May even increase calories slightly.

I’m feeling so pumped to get into the gym.
I know I said I wasn’t gonna hit the gym until Monday, but after yesterday off and seeing my progress pics, along with a solid night’s sleep I’m literally watching the clock for my lunch break. IT"S BACK DAY, yum! I know if I go now the gym will be packed. Can I really wait another half hour!!?

I’m also a little excited because I’m meeting with my suit maker tomorrow. Eeek! It’s really happening… I’m gonna compete!

A big thanks as always to V for her wonderful advice and to everyone who’s dropped by and like my abs. I actually haven’t done any ab work in 3 months, just pilates…. go figure.

It’s Thursday, which means progress photos.
I’m pretty happy with how things are coming along. You can see the rest of my photos on my bodyspace, but here’s one my boy couldn’t resist.

Just back from my posing lesson, it was a lot less scary than I imagined. Though I’m not sure I’m going to remember it all.  Wobbly on my feet was certainly the best way to describe me. My heels felt very different on hard wood floors than they do on our loungeroom carpet.

My favourite part was when I was told "you just put your arms like this; then do the lat thing". Erm… the lat thing is what you’re supposed to be showing me! Apparently I did ok on the lat thing and my abs are going to be my feature in my routine. Who’d have thought I’d have abs, but there they were smiling back at me.

I’ve been instructed to go through the poses along with my All Female Classic DVD and do all the turns and stuff until I know them inside out. I also need to find somewhere non carpeted to practice which is either my tiny kitchen or the garage. Garage would be fine in summer, but it’s mid-winter here!

Every time I meet with a new person about my figure conquest I have this secret self destructive desire that they’ll tell me I can’t do it. Every time, they only have encouraging words. Most of the time I entirely believe in myself. When I’m talking to the boy or my Dad about it I’m almost cocky in my optimism, after all what do they know about figures. For my reckoning I’ve cleared my last ‘expert’ until I step on stage.

I’m feeling more, and less, like a poser every day.

After all my complaining yesterday about my shocking workouts, I am taking V’s advice and calling in rest. No weights until Monday and I’m really going to force myself to only do my morning dog walk. Problem is, it’s sunny and not windy, perfect bike riding weather.

In reality I haven’t had a rest week in at least 13 weeks. My body always starts beating me up at this time. The timing isn’t awesome but if I come back super energised then I’ll be able to pound out some really awesome training next week and I’ll be in a much happier space. Right now I’m forcing myself through all this and it’s no fun.

Dog walking+super doses of glutamine+ 9hrs sleep x 4 days= a new me

Also, I meet with Mareike my posing coach, today for the first time. I’m a little scared.

My last few workout with Joe, my trainer, have left me feeling a little lack-luster. We trained shoulders last night and i just couldn’t get my head into the right space, again. I love training shoulders and left feeling disappointed. I think I like setting my own pace in the gym and working through the weight and reps that I know I can do. On the other hand I love having someone there to help me get out that last 2 reps that I just can’t do myself. I’ve got about 3 more sessions with Joe paid for and I’ll feel guilty if I don’t keep training with him up until my comp, but I just don’t see the benefits right now. All this being said, I’ve had generally unfocussed and weak workouts for about a week now, hopefully it’s just a monthly problem and I’ll be firing again next week. I sure hope so, I can’t handle feeling weak for much longer. On a contradictory note, I’ve also been thinking it’s time to start chatting with more of my co-gym rats. We’ve all trained together for ages and I’m always to shy to say hello.

I’m on day 2/3 of the no caffeine, no chilli, no AS (in addition to my other no wheat, no dairy) and I’ve failed on the no AS and no chilli fronts. When no chilli means, no paprika or chilli I’m just stuffed. Lemon juice, salt and smoked paprika are my staple chicken seasonings. I’m going to have to check how much paprika counts. The no AS (artificle sweetner) is something I would have thought would be a breeze; and it would be, if it weren’t for Xtend. I tried taking BCAA capsules instead but the Xtend has all sorts of other goodies which are just to nice to avoid. Again I’ll be querying this one.

On the no coffee front, I think this was an excellent idea. At 6am I thought it was a lousy idea, but I have slept really well the last few days and anxiety levels are right down. I think I was getting really used to the caffeine and thermofuel wasn’t as fun as it was when I started. Hopefully this means when I’m back on it in a month it will all be magic again. In the meantime my new pre-workout stack is BCAAs, glutamine (must buy more), tyrosine capsules, acytle L-carnatine and creatine. Without a scoop of Xtend in this mix it’s truely gag worthy. I’m also trying to get back on the green tea and have just started taking spuralina powder.

This morning’s workout was only so-so as I didn’t really get enough sleep last night; quality- excellent, quantity-poor. It took me the whole workout to figure out why I wasn’t on the game, so sleep is back on my priority list. After my workout I picked up some berocca high performance, which is what I’ve been using as my multi-vitamin. In all the fandangle of my other sups I’d run out and forgotten about it. The combo of a berocca and a pot of green tea was just what i needed to get my energy back and I’m very glad I didn’t cave on the coffee.

Reading the results from last year’s SA INBA show I noticed that there is an award for ‘most potential’. Normally I squirm at such things, but I really want this one. This is my goal. My body is looking awesome, but I just don’t know where my left delt is going to come from. So my plan is to step on stage absolutely smokin’ and get that award….. That or they need a new category for most deformed!

Tonight, it’s back to Dr Frank for more crunching, poking and worried looks. He does claim to have a plan for my left delt, but (un)fortunately he only works on a whole body basis (kinda why I chose him). I donated blood at the Red Cross yesterday in an effort to find out my blood type. I won’t know this until next week and then he’s going to start blood typing my diet. I’m not sure how I feel about this, but anything is worth a shot and my body is my science experiment.

"Wow, this has 1.2g protein in a serve, that’s really good. Right?"
"Yeah, that’s really high"

The quinoa I was buying had more protein in it than that so I had to look. It was a carton of oat milk. I really wanted to say something, but held my tongue.

On a side note the almond milk I had this morning on my buckwheat porridge was lovely. I had no delusions of protein in that meal. Strangley enough I noticed that I was suffering from congestion afterwards. How can my body not like buckwheat?! I’m getting stuck for carb sources other than vegies.

A quick update after a relaxing weekend.
Friday night I was doing my head in. I was a tightly coiled spring, so I decided Saturday, I would try to think about something other than competing. I stuck to my meals and did a quick bit of cardio (jumped rope for 15 minutes) and that was it. No crazy sprints, hours of planning diet on CalorieKing I was just a normal civilian eating a lot of green vegetables. By the evening I was tired but feeling so much more recovered. It was lovely. I really get worked up sometimes on account of having to work all my diet and exercise out myself and then not being so sure of my plan. As if by magic (or maybe a drop in anxiety levels) my weight nicely dropped Sunday morning and I was given a double booster as I could already see great progress in the mirror.

Sunday, hound and I had a lovely 45 minute walk through the hilly parts of our neighbourhood. We took a new route and found a nice walking trail in need of further investigating. I then stocked up on my vegies and eggs at the farmers market. I love that while I have to eat so much crazy food for my lifestyle I can be responsible for where it comes from. I tried my best to do my quads and biceps workout that afternoon, but I just couldn’t get my left arm to co-operate with front squats and moved on to angled leg press instead. I slaughtered it. I’d knock out 15+ reps put on another plate, and easily another 15. I think I wound up doing almost double what I normally would. Weird. Mentally I really wasn’t there and this wasn’t getting me fired up. There were also these 2 (weedy) guys absolutely screaming at each other ‘****in pull mate’ etc. etc. jerking weights about and throwing them to the ground at the end of every set, it was driving me and everyone else in the gym crazy. Halfway through my leg extensions I cracked and turned into gym bitch from hell. Apparently they work out like that every day and no one had ever complained before. The guy look like he wanted to hit me. Gawd I love being a chick!

This morning I went back to the same gym to train chest (my gym has multiple locations and I prefer different ones for different days), luckily they weren’t there, but the heating was cranked up to maximum, making for a very off-puting workout. I really struggled to bring my mind to the game and couldn’t channel a huge amount of strength. I played around with a combo of DB work, hammer strength and cables and eventually decided I’m due a refeed. Good thing I’ve got one scheduled for tomorrow. Bring on the carbs! I’d totally not left myself enough time to do cardio and had to knock out 15 minutes of inclined sprint intervals. Running felt really good and I would have loved to have gone for longer but I had an appointment with a new member of team Michelle, Dr Frank. Dr Frank is an osteopath/chiropractor/accupuncturist/kineisiologist/natropath and general body guru and I’d read and heard good things about him. He gave me a thorough quizzing about my entire medical history and then very matter of factly dictated my defects to his assistant. It seemed like I have a lot of defects, but he really seems like the guy to fix them Again, we was worried about the atrophy of my left delt. He treats lots of BB’s and want to work really hard with me to get it sorted. I so want my shoulders back!

I was poked and prodded inside and out (he poked around in my mouth and now my sinuses are clear). He did that horrible thing that chiropractors do to your neck, which makes you vow never to see one again, but it wasn’t so jerky so I’ll forgive him. In general I left wishing I’d got onto the whole thing sooner. His whole body approach made so much sense and is so much better than the patch-up work I’ve been getting done. I’ve got 2 more sessions this week and then have to visit him regularly for a total of 12 sessions at least. By the end of today’s session he’d made my neck and shoulder feel a fair bit better,  cleared my sinuses and made my hips feel like I actually have control of them (I’m very flexible and they cause no end of problems to me). I really do feel as light as air.

Dr Frank also furnished me with a little guide book of tips and how tos and asks all his clients to go wheat, caffeine, orange, pork, chocolate, peanut, dairy and spicy food free for 1 month. I was doing fine until this point, but no coffee and no chilli make Michelle go something, something (go crazy? don’t mind if I do). Also no artificial sweetners. At this point I wasn’t really sure which of my supps I have left. No Xtend, no whey, no fat-burners; oh my! I promised him I’ll do my best. I also have to find out my blood type so that he can fine tune my diet. A-types don’t do so well on red meat apparently; and blood type  might help explain my rice issues too.

Looking forward I’ve got a huge week, tomorrow, operation monster shoulder begins with Joe. Wednesday and Friday I’m back to Dr. Frank, Thursday posing classes and tomorrow lunch fish and healthfood shopping on my lunch hour. Good thing I don’t have too much on at work!

I just got back from a photoshoot for a client and I was faced with my absolute diet nemesis. You can wave chocolate at me all day and I won’t cave, but  the smell of coconut milk, lime and chilli will get me  every time. I almost rang  Stephen on the spot and called in a cheat dinner. Then I remembered, I’d already planned Thai food for dinner.

Tonight I’m cooking Kapoa Kai (Basil (chili) Chicken).
It’s so quick and tasty and isn’t hard to make a healthy version at home. It’s so easy in fact, that I did it on my cooking show, healthy helpings, a while back. Watch it here.

It’s a great reminder that Chicken and greens need not be boring!

You’ll need:

Chicken Breast fillet cut finely
Fresh chillis and garlic finely chopped
Fresh basil
Green Veg (green beans, steamed brocolli, or snow peas are nice, though traditional there are no greens added)
Fish Sauce (nouc man)
Oyster Sauce
Chicken Stock
A small amount of peanut oil

Heat a non-stick wok until very hot.
Spray/brush with oil.
Add in chilli and garlic (watch out for the fumes!)
Add in the chicken and stir fry until almost  cooked through
Splash in about 1-2 tablespoons of stock (for 1 breasts worth of chicken) and add the veggies.
Continue to sauté for a further minute.
Add about 1 tablespoon fish sauce and 1/2 tablespoon of oyster sauce (for 1 breast), simmer for 1 minute until sauce reduces and thickens.
Remove from heat and toss through 1/2 bunch of basil.

Make a truck load of this and have it for lunches during the week, it reheats well. If your diet permits eat it with steamed jasmine or basmatti rice.

Did you know: basmatti rice is as nutritious as brown rice, with a texture much closer to white rice.

Will my left side even out in time?

I just uploaded more progress pictures (here, and here). I can see progress. Fat seems to be coming of my midsection and chest.

I worked shoulders good and hard last night and was looking amazing afterwards. Every muscle and vein was popping out. I had time to kill so I practiced my (poor) posing technique in the changerooms, much to the amusement of passers by.

By the time I got home to take photos they’d shrunk a bit, but everyday, in my weights sessions I can see definition coming through and it gives me confidence to keep going.