TLC: Trust, Love, Consistency

I’m moving all my blogging antics over to a new home.
I feel weird writing about non-figure stuff here and feel weird about writing about figure stuff on stubbornlikeamule so I’ve set up a new stomping ground at http://www.michellekoen.com. I’ll see y’all over there!

I love all the little avatars everyone’s done. so I’m in:

Kek started this little meme, and I love my kitchen gadgets so I thought I’d play along.

In my kitchen I can’t live without…

My Analon non-stick pans: I was given a wok for Christmas and used it 3 times a day. Stephen then bought me a 2 4-litre saucepans and then after falling in love with them (he’s the official dishwasher of the house) bought 2 28cm fryingpans. These are all awesome and hands down the best non-stick pans I’ve owned.

My cast iron grill pan: It’s a Le Chassuer which means it’s heavy as hell and built to last. I’ve developed a good ’season’ on it now so it’s pretty non-stick and adds great bbq-ey taste to steaks.

Mundial Knife set: Nothing is nicer than nice sharp knives and these babies are the best. I don’t normally buy sets of knives or pans, but this lot is the perfect set. If only I could find where the pairing knife has gone.

Digital scales: Mine are great and accurate to the gram and can easily be switched to imperial units too.

Silicon Bakeware: So easy to clean, my silicon muffin moulds get used most days for meatloaf or pruffins.

Tupperware/gladware: Any bodybuilder knows the tupperware fetish!

Sunbeam StickMaster pro: I’ve got a huge food processor which my Dad gave me for my birthday and it’s great for big jobs. but almost everyday we pull out this mini-food-processor. It’s really just a stick mixer with a small bowl attachment and a whisk attachment. It’s great for sauces, pestos and making mince in the bowl attachment and the whisk attachment takes care of my egg whites perfectly.

Battery powered salt and pepper grinders: They constantly need filling but the convenience of being able to one-handedly grind is awesome.

Our BBQ: It’s not in our kitchen, obviously, but we cook on it most nights in the summer and it’s great for doing big batches of chicken boobs and is where I’m relegated for any fish cookery.

Stephen: Cleaner-upper of all kitchen disasters and non-dishwashable dishes. I love to cook, but I’m also known for abandoning the kitchen in a complete state of disarray.

What kitchen gadgets can’t you live without?

I’m back from Melbourne and true to form, I’m sick as a dog. Everytime I go there for some R&R I get a misserable cold. My joints ache, I feel dizzy, sniffly, croaky and cranky.

On the upside I trained all but yesterday. Including putting my sister through a leg workout she’s still cursing me for 3 days later! I also managed to find a good balance with my food. My first 3 or 4 meals where always things that I’d packed, such as chicken salads, pruffins, PN mixed nut bars, my last meal was a bit more free-for-all. The first night the big beachball belly showed up after Italian food followed by Churos (I’d been wanting to try these for years). The second night was easy, as it was the conference dinner and the main course was AWEFUL (nice squid entree) and S was sick so we both left early with our plates mostly full. Tuesday night’s meal was Afghani food, I managed to avoid the uncesisary carbs but still had a bit of bloat action, though my abs were back in the morning. Wednesday I was faced with my greatest weakness, Vietnamese food. Luckily it was Northern Vietnamese and there was no rice hotpot, so other than filling myself full of sodium I came out OK. I was feeling like death yesterday and relaxed a little bit and ate when I was hungry and all sorts of un-clean delecacies (toast, baklava & pizza all in the same day). I stopped everytime when I was no longer hungry.

So, what did the scales have to say about this?…….down 2kgs, back to just above comp weight! This is not an excuse to keep eating empty carbs, but a reassurance that I can be trusted with a bit of good food now and then.

Today I’m back on track with meals I had in the freezer (eaten in bed). Time for another nap, so that I can beat this aweful flu/cold.

Australian Muscle have just posted a huge review of both the South Australian INBA shows. You can see them here. You’ll see me in the Whyalla section, after we’d all eaten a few to many jelly babies! All the photos are stunning, nice work Sean!

In other news, I haven’t been in the gym since Tuesday. I’m still searching for my energy. Today was the first day I’ve considered training, which means I need at least 2 more days off! I’ve also been feeling a bit of a sore throat coming on so I’m super-dosing on L-Glutamine. Let’s hope airplane air doesn’t totally kill me.

Tomorrow we head off to Melbourne for 5 days. I’d originally planned for it to be a no holds barred indulgent week. However, my body has not been dealing well with even the smallest indulgences, so I’ve spent the day pre-cooking my meals. A task not made easy, due to our stove and oven electrics being broken. It’s all camp stove and BBQ.

I’ve made a delicious frittata for breakfasts (even though the hotel does complementary breaky). I’ve got 5 days worth of pruffins (choc-walnuts & blueberry and vanilla-lemon & blueberry- these are indulgent!), some PN nut bars in the freezer, and will later be bbq-ing a whole batch of chicken breasts. When I get to Melbourne I’m going to be picking up lots of salad mix, snow peas and cucumber, and a few cans of tuna. I’ll let myself have one free meal a day. It’ll be a huge change from past visits to Melbourne which have been all out food feasts.

While in Mebourne, I’m really looking forward to seeing my sister and seeing what progress she’s made since she was here for my comp. I set her up with a weights program and gave her all my PN stuff to read and a basic diet outline. She saw my physique for the comp and decided she wanted one too! I’d love to see her on stage eventually, as she has a background in dance, a degree in Performing Arts and stunning stage presence.

I’m going to take all my workout gear and get in at least a few weights sessions (hooray for my FF gold passport) while I’m away as well as getting back into a bit more cardio. Dog walks have been very lax.

If you’re in Melbourne and want to catch up while I’m there, chuck me (Michelle Koen) an email (firstname.lastname@gmail.com).

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!