The I Love Carbs Blog

Tomoorow hits my 1-1/2 week until show time.  I’m nervous, but calm at the same time.  I think this time I did a lot better leaning out.  Last time, there was a lot of guess work.  Not knowing what my body would respond best with what kinds of foods, supplements, and training.  I now know I’m carb sensitive.  So, my coach slashed my carbs pretty early for the contest prep.  With that said, carbs also have helped a great deal with helping me grow.  About a year ago, I started out skinny, but not a lot of muscle.  My coach wrote out a diet plan and had me eat  as much as 400g of carbs per day!  Looking back at those photos, I did, however, look puffy, but I certainly gained so much!  I feel like a whole new person with a totally different outlook on training and food.  I have this week left on a low carb diet, and double cardio session.  I’m dropping bodyfat…THANK GOODNESS!  On Sunday, I took my BF% and it was at 14.4.  I was ecstatic!  I don’t think I got there even at the last show!  Today, I took my bF% and it is now at…*DRUM ROLL*…12%  YAY!  I have a week and a half, hopefully I can take it down even lower.

Today’s training was good.  My sister met me at my gym and trained with me.  She’s looks great, and has 5 kids!  I took her through a lower weights, higher reps back day and ended it with 30 minutes of cardio.  I love freeweights, but this week and next, I’ll be using a lot of machines since my strength is low, and looking at the baby weights I’m having to carry hurts my ego.  lol.  I set the weight to warm up, and she was shocked that THAT was the weight I used to warm up with.  She admitted that she doesn’t often train her back.  WHAT?!  that’s crazy talk.  It’s such a big muscle group, how could she possibly not train it?  So, hopefully, she’s sore tomorrow.  haha.  We went out and had a salad afterwards.  She wanted to go get a "protein" shake at Planet Smoothie.  I shot down that suggestion and told her that’s a crap shake loaded with sugar and empty calories. 

Along with the contest prep, I have a big venue I’m baking a ton of cupcakes for.  Unfortunately the venue is the same day of my show date!  I’m also selling aprons that I have made.  They’re vintage inspired half aprons with a cupcake design on them.  (I’ll take progress pictures this week along with my aprons, just for those of you that are curious)    Yeah, I know, I have strange hobbies.  Bodybuilding, baking cupcakes, and vintage aprons.  Oh well, we all have our funny quirks.  I’m fortunate that my family supports/tolerates all of mine.

I’ve been enjoying being leaner earlier this time.  It’s funny though, people treat you differently when you’re leaner.  My girlfriends, who I see often, start giving me excuses on why they haven’t been able to workout, or keep to their diet.  I don’t care about the excuses!  It’s not like I talk about working out 24/7.  I actually don’t talk about it at all.  One of my girlfriends actually started bashing female bodybuilders about them looking like men.  REALLY?  (Did she forget that she was speaking to one at the moment?)  Now, that’s not the look I’m training to achieve, but I do know they workout hard.  And I admire that.  The person who said this is also an over weight female, that happens to tell me often how skinny and fit she USED to be.  I don’t judge her for deciding to eat junk.  And who’s to judge these female bodybuilders?  That’s obviously the look they don’t mind having. 

Thank you guys for all the supportive comments!  I promise, progress photos will be up this week. 

Almost there

It’s coming down to it and am getting excited about the show.  I just keep telling myself, just 2 more weeks of low carbs, and then I can carb load.  Today I was supposed to have a very low carb day.  I blew it.  Nothing REALLY bad, but I had some bananas sitting on the kitchen counter, and they looked SO good.  I ate one.  Darn it.  And every night, my little one gets hungry, so she wanted a bowl of Cheerios.  I grabbed a small handful.  DARN IT!!!  I know it’s not much, but it’s these little things that’ll kill me up there on that stage.  My problem seems to be that when I see progress, my mind starts thinking it’s not so bad.  One banana, or a handful of Cheerios won’t hurt.  Unfortunately for me, it all loves to stay in my bottom half. 

I have been doing very well, other than that.  I meet with my trainer tomorrow so he can critique my posing and change my diet around.  I’ve started drinking lots more water, and I’m feeling a bit bloated today. 

I trained in my garage tonight.  That was a little different, but pretty cool.  I worked bi’s and tri’s, and cardio.  I ended up keeping a fairly light weight, high reps, without pauses.  My weight training felt great, muscles were pumped, veins were popping, and I finished in 30 minutes!  Then I did 50 minutes of cardio. 

I’m ready to crash now.  But, I’ll be up at it again in the morning.  Gotta love that morning cardio…not really.

Training has been good, as good as it will be until after the show I suspect.  My energy levels are low.  I had to cut back on somethings as I’m coming down to 3 weeks until the show.  I realized that I had too much on my plate, and I thought I could do everything myself.  I completely broke down the other night, and couldn’t handle it all.  Fortunately, I have such a supporting hubby and daughters, they picked up the slack. 

I met with my trainer on Tuesday, and he changed up my diet.  My diet looks like this: Low carb day, an even lower carb day, and then a ridiculously low carb day, then cycled again.  I’m on track for the show, a lot better this time than last. (THANK GOODNESS!)  I’m now doing double cardio sessions.  Towards the evening, I am exhausted, but later on in the night, I catch a second wind, and I don’t feel tired/sleepy.  Lately, I’ve been able to get to bed a bit earlier.  I’ve been trying to get to the gym earlier too.  It’s become this social thing there, and it’s hard to focus on training when you have people coming up and interrupting you.  I’ve been going there for over a year now, and they’ve been witnesses to my “transformation”.  Don’t get me wrong, they’re all nice, and on any other occasion, I would stop to chat a bit.  But, since I’m feeling the pressure of the diet, training, and show date around the corner, I’ve got to stay on track.  So, I’ve been going to the gym at a different time of the day to avoid the “regular” crowd I see and socialize with.  It was nice today.  I super setted all my exercises, and did my cardio, and was sweating buckets when I finished. 

Back at it tomorrow…I’ll be training shoulders, and throwing in some quads, abs, and of course..the dreaded cardio. 

Train Hard, and Lift HEAVY!

I have been so depleted this week.  My carbs are low, and my highest day had 75g.  My cardio is up now to 7 days a week, 50 minutes.  Twice this week I haven’t had much energy to train, so I ended up doing the cardio instead.  The diet has been working though.  After my chest meal I went up to 129lbs from 126lbs.  Two days later, it went back down to 126.  Then 125, then today 124.4!!!  I got in a decent shoulders and traps workout before the cardio today.  I started with some Arnold presses to warm up.  Then did DB Presses.  Moved onto Cable UpRight Rows, and then super setted DB Side Laterals and DB Front Raises.  On my second set of those, I could hardly lift my arms.  I just lost my strength.  My form was way off, so it was time to call it quits on that exercise.  I moved onto the Hammer Strength Shrug Machine, and then did DB Shrugs.  I finished off with Alternating Cable Cross Overs for my rear delts.  Then ended it with the Reverse Pec Deck.  THEN I did 1 hour of cardo.  I know, I was supposed to only do 50 minutes, but you know me, I get stressed out when it comes closer to the show date and start becoming a cardio fool.  I am determined to get my darn lower half leaner this time!  I’ve been dropping weight very well lately, so my coach tells me that he may give me another cheat meal.  I might decline it.  lol.  I would LOVE it, but I know what carbs do to my body. It just sucks it right up and holds onto it.  I’m 4 weeks out tomorrow.  So, I guess if I must have one, it better be real soon.  I’m thinking after I four more weeks of leaning out, I should be around 121lbs at the most.  Drop the water and I may come in at 115?  I’ve started taking in more water and multi-minerals so I don’t start cramping.  So far, so good.  Hopefully this weekend I won’t be lazy and I can get my hubby to take progress shots for me.

I’m more determined then ever!  As I’m training today, my coach is training this lady.  She looks to be in good shape.  Then he tells me that he’s probably going to stick her into the show I’m doing!  WHAT?!  Then he tells me that she’ll be competing in the Masters catagory.  I’m cool with that.  I’ll be so ticked if he has her doing the Women’s Open with me.

As I sit here typing…I just finished baking up a batch of Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting.  The whole house smells delish.  I was feeling festive today…with autumn here and Halloween and Turkey Day coming around, pumpkin spice cupcakes sounded fun to make.  Plus, tomorrow I’m visiting my parents and I can bring some to them.  It was my dad’s birthday this week and I forgot to call him that day.  I called him the day after and I feel so bad about it.  My mom was excited to hear us visiting, she said she would cook my favorite Vietnamese dish, Pho.  DANG IT!  I can’t have it I told her.  My parents haven’t fully understood the whole bodybuilding thing.  I showed them my contest pics and my mom didn’t think it was me.  Someday, they’ll have to go to one of my shows and see for themselves.  It’s not that they’re NOT supportive, it’s just that they don’t understand it.  It complicated to explain.

Tomorrow I get 100g of carbs and will love every bite of it.  I can’t wait for my morning oatmeal!  I saved this day to train legs.  I haven’t been able to blast them lately.  Since tomorrow I have the extra carbs in me, I thought it would be nice to kill the legs. 

Yesterday was a high carb day for me.  Hubby and I went to the gym and I hit arms and cardio.  It felt good to feel good, and not tired and drained from having low carbs in my system.  Arms were feeling pumped! 

We went home and got ready for a night out.  We were going to go to a BB show in town, but went and enjoyed a nice dinner together (our cheat meal!) and spent some quality time chatting and stuff.  It’s been so crazy busy in our house with the girls having practices almost everyday, and throw in school, church, and training…not to mention baking   So, it was nice to just have a relaxing night.  My cheat meal was uneventful.  I splurged on the appetizers.  We went to an italian restaurant and of course they bring you some fresh-out-of-the-oven white italian bread with seasoned olive oil to dip it in. MMmm!  And we ordered calamari (for me) and hot spinach dip.  I had a little of both with a small glass of white wine.  My dinner was actually pretty light.  I thought I’d balance off the appetizers with something healthier.  Plus, I was thinking ahead and I knew I would have a cupcake later on.  My dinner was a 4oz. grilled salmon, with grilled asparagus and grilled broccoli.  The best part of my cheat meal came later.  I was able to experiment on different cupcake recipes and flavors and actually got to eat it! 

Today I’m up a couple pounds.  No big deal.  But I am so bloated from eating that food last night.  My body just doesn’t like it.  My tastebuds definitely enjoys it though.  Got to get back on track now.  I’m 5 weeks out, and feeling really good about leaning out this time!  I have to start practicing my posing and routine.  I meet with my trainer every week now for fine tuning.  Here we go again folks!!! 

It’s been awhile since I last wrote anything.  My training has been good.  My strength is up and down, depending on high/low carb days.  Yesterday was a low day.  Usually I end up revising my training to higher reps, lower weights.  But, since I traied a bit earlier, I was feeling pretty good.  I lifted heavy for chest and abs day.  I did 45 minutes of low intensity cardio.  By the time the evening rolled around, my blood sugar dropped, I was feeling tired and weak.  I laid there in bed thinking about the morning’s bowl of oatmeal. 

Today I revised my back training as well.  I super setted and kept a slightly lower weight, and also did 45 minutes of cardio.  My weight is dropping better this time around than last time.  I think I’ll come in maybe around 115lbs for this show.  Hopefully much leaner in my lower half.  I’m feeling pretty good about it right now.  I’m not stressing out as much since I know what to expect.  I’m starting to feel crampy, and so I’ve started with my Multi-Minerals and extra water.  This Saturday I will be 5 weeks out, and I get to have my first, and only cheat meal!  YAY!!!  Last time, I craved so many things, and wanted to eat everything!  This time around, I do “want” things, but not as bad.  So, I don’t know what to have for my meal.  Whatever it is, I will definately throw in a cupcake.

That brings me to another topic…cupcakes.  I have started a small business.  I’m hoping to open up a shop, but for now, I’m doing wholesale/retail/catering.  I bake cupcakes, and baked goods.  Mainly delicious cupcakes.  This past weekend I had an order and they turned out beautiful!  I just love the way it makes a person smile when they get their hands on a cupcake.  There are so many exciting things happening all at the same time.  It’s a blessing!

Don’t worry about me though…I am completly focused on the diet, even with all these yummy, delectable cupcakes baking in the oven waiting to be frosted!  Here’s a picture of part of the order….try not to drool

  Red Velvet Cuppy with Cream Cheese Frosting and Chocolate Crowns.

Dark Chocolate Cuppy with Marshmallow Meringue.