Archive for December 29, 2009

Like Randy Quaid on court day..

I’ve been missing.

Sorry about that! I had a pretty busy week last week.

Christmas day I went snowboarding, and then to my cabin.

Saturday was boot camp and work.

Sunday was work and lots of napping 🙂

Workout

Today’s workout was pretty good. I could NOT get into it, but did it anyways.

20 minute jog followed by back/hams/abs..

SL Deadlifts, Assisted Chin Ups, Prone Ham Curl, CG Pull down, Swiss ball Ham curls, cable rows(h-l), cable rows (l-h), sumo squats, HLR, LLR, and Hip Ups.

Nutrition

Eating has been really good. Other than pumpkin pie on Christmas day/my dads birthday, eats have been totally clean. Fruit has been added back in as I mentioned a few weeks ago, and i love it 🙂

Tomorrow is boxing, Bi’s/tri’s, and some cardio.

Mis-kull-aneous

I have been in a pretty blah mood today. I think the gloomy weather made me gloomy.(I’m spoiled with sunny skies 90% of the year…). I’m having one of those “what the hell am i doing” kind of days. With life, school, work, everything. It will pass. One thing I’ve learned in the past year is that feelings are temporary  and if I’m in a bad mood, it will pass. I just gotta wait it out. Boxing in the morning will probably bring out the crack head in me and I’ll be feeling much better. I think I’m also over tired from last week. I had 3 nights in a row of hardly any sleep and then one night of good sleep. I need a few more to set me straight.

By the way…stay on the lookout for two NEW clean recipes 🙂

– Chicken/Ground Turkey Pita Wrap

-Coconut pancake

Another Early Morning

Yesterday started at a whopping 2:15 AM. After waking up starving, I got up and messed around on the computer in hopes of numbing my brain back to sleep. I tried, and failed and ended up getting up at about 3AM, having breakfast, and heading to the gym.

I don’t know if they are putting something in the water, and I’m almost afraid to say it because I don’t want to jinx it, but my mood has been in-mazing lately! I hit the gym feeling like I had just taken a dose of meth happy pills.

Workout

Chest, Triceps and Abs:

DB Incline/Assisted Dips

Cable flys(lo-hi)/Skull crushers

100 pushups(10 sets of 10)/3 different variations of tricep pulldowns

It was a really great workout. I’m sore today. And am sore from boxing the other day.

Afterwards I hit up the treadmill for an hour of incline walking/running. It was a tough workout. Incline from about 5-10%, with speeds of 4.0-4.4 at one point. Running only went up to about 7mph, and was only for a few minutes. It was a workout I got from Em a while back I think. I felt amazing afterwards though!

Today’s Workout

Today is going to be a little nutzo. My brother is in town, so I promised him I’d hike with him later today. I love hiking, so what’s the big deal?

I am boxing this morning, then LEG DAY, and then running sprints(i think). After all that, we’re going to hike, and then tomorrow I’m going SNOWBOARDING 🙂 Couldn’t be more excited! Then Saturday is boot camp, and I’m supposed to do another bleacher workout with friends on Sunday. Definitely something is going to have to be cut short, either that or Monday is going to be spent lying in bed ALL DAY. I think I’d be fine, but I know that snowboarding takes the life out of me. I never make the 2 hour drive home because the one time I did, I was fighting trying to stay awake the whole time. I’ll let my older brother handle that. (I actually had to drive 6 hours from California once on NO sleep, and had to slap myself every few minutes to make sure I was alert. Funny for two reasons: 1, i was slapping myself 2, it really wasn’t funny and every hour that past I knew I still had 5 more, 4 more, etc. Talk about torture.)

Nutrition

Food is great. Loving the process right now. Favorite meal at the moment: ground turkey, avocado, hot sauce and mass amounts of green beans, broccoli and cauliflower. Also, kale chips.

Gotta get ready to spar today! Later! 🙂

Where’s your La Baron?

A healthy mind=a healthy body. That’s all i have to say about that.

Not related at all to the title of my post. And if you get the title, welcome new best friend. Take a seat, can I get you some coffee?

This will probably be pretty brief because I’m ready for some sleep.

Yesterday’s Workout

Warmed up with a 2o minute jog in the dreadmill.

Deadlifts, Low box squats, Smith split squats, Prowler, Bulgarian split squats, and i think that’s it. My legs were feeling pretty toasty woasty after this.

Finished off the workout with 45 minutes of incline walking. 10-15% 3.3-3.7mph.

Today’s Workout

Got my ass outta bed this morning for some boxing.(Missed all last week :-() I was so energized this morning and we had a great class. It was the usual 3 of us, and then two new girls that were trying it out. We warmed up and then did about 4-5 sets of each of these combos:(sorry if this makes no sense, I’m no Mike Tython ;-))

-Double jab-7, move, move, 4 up/downs(burpees minus the jump), back peddle, sprint back.

-Double jab 5, 5 hard, push Steve off of you(my instructor), bear crawl, 5 pushups, 1 min. wall sit.

-All hard(that’s what she said) 5 crosses, 5 hooks, 5 upper cuts, 6 crosses, backwards bear crawl, buddha squat jumps(actually he only made me jump, everyone else just had to do squats. do i take that as a compliment or do i knock him out next time?)

-All fast(that’s what she said??) 50 crosses, sprint, back peddle, bear crawl sprint (each set we changed it up…50 crosses, then 50 hooks, 50 uppers, 50 crosses again)

-Last set was my favorite: We did right side alone twice, then left side alone twice….5 cross, 5 hook, 5 upper cuts, sprint. We were in a hallway and hitting the mitts echoed throughout the entire facility…i dug it 😉

Afterwards, I headed to gym numero dos to lift.(gym wh*re eek).

Barbell push press, DB arnold press superset with EZ bar curls(i can do 4 reps with the 55 lb bar now! soon i’ll look like this dude…

Just kidding…I’m not that lucky and/or genetically gifted like this guy. Totally natural right?! 😉 .

-db lateral raise, super set with rear delt raise, lying rear delt pulls, and finally a few sets of cable hammer curls.

I was supposed to do sprints this afternoon but ended up working, not to mention it was raining and lightning. I didn’t want to end up looking like this:

Okay, I think you’ve had enough of my shenanigans.

I’ve been eating lots of protein pancakes, ground turkey, vegetables, and spoonfuls of mayonaise. Still paying attention?! Just kidding, i eat mayo by the bowl.

Anyways, food has been good but boring, so I’ll spare you.

I guess you can ogle at my puppy while I sleep. Isn’t he adorable?!

Dear god, someone give that dog a bath, or at least a set of teeth that don’t look like Beetlejuice’s chompers.

Hi, I’m Earth, have we met?

I’m hoping April will appreciate my title.

It’s late, but thought I’d update really quick!

This weekend I did a LOT of thinking.(Okay, when do I NOT think a lot…) but there are a few things that are bothering me about my training lately.

1. Not enough pushups

2. Um, my chin-up endurance is down to 1 on a GOOD DAY. Yeah, it was up to 4 this summer(i was also about 20 pounds lighter, may or may not have something to do with that ;-))

But the reality of it is that chin-ups are something that you get better at with consistency. You can have a ripped back, but if you don’t do chin ups/pull ups every once in a while, chances are you won’t be able to do as many as you think. Not true for everyone, but for someone like me who is Totally lower body ed-inform, it holds true. I do know some girls that don’t work out at all who can rep out 10 chin ups like it’s no big deal, but if I put the bar on their back, they would squat straight into the ground and never get back up. (If you’re one of those freaks who can do 1o chin ups and squat 150lbs and you don’t work out, then I officially hate you ;-))

The push-up thing. My old trainer had me doing 200 different types of push ups at least once or twice a week. Decline, bosu ball, incline, regular, close grip, wide grip, you name it. I was a push up master and I loved it. Getting back into that as well!

I’m going back to the basics in many ways. More deadlifts, squats, pushups , pull ups. This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop anything else I’m doing, just means I want to make sure I’m doing the things I love.

I am also not going to be training with anyone starting at the 1st of the year(it’s possible i will be meeting with my old trainer once or twice a week, but not a sure thing yet.) It is getting too expensive, and to be honest, I like my training better. Not to say there is anything wrong with my trainer now. He is great and I like his workouts, but I just really like the workouts I put together. I also miss my old trainer, Dae. He seemed to put me through hell like nobody else can do. The only reason I stopped training with him was that things started to get busy for him and he wasn’t able to train me as much as I wanted.

The truth is, I like training like an animal, and lately, I don’t feel like I am doing that. I’ve been training hard, yes, and I do notice that my back has gotten much thicker muscle-wise(fat-wise too ;-)) My shoulders have caps these days, and my quads have for SURE grown. I can’t wait to see what’s underneath this blubbery suit  extra padding i’m carrying around. I will have patience.I will have patience.I will have patience.I will have patience.I will have patience.I will have patience.I will have patience.

Although I took pictures for my own documentation, I’m not going to actually post them until I have something to compare them to(so in about a month.). I will however leave you with this……time to peel away the fat insulation.(i think i had a little too much fun with paint ;-))

Grateful

I just want to say that I am SO grateful for all of my readers. You all seem to understand what I am going through, and you know how to make me feel a little less crazy.

It can be hard to put something like that out in the open, but it feels good to do so. I never know what the reaction will be. I don’t know if I have lost some readers from posts like that, but it is just proof that I’m not a bionic super hero 24/7.(You totally thought I was huh? Santa isn’t real either…uh oh, there goes 10 more readers!(do i even have 10 readers??? :-))

Okay, enough with the wise cracks. I already feel better today. Getting that out, and giving myself permission to get back to my roots of what works for me, was just what I needed.

Workout

This morning, after a glorious 3.5 hours of sleep(thank you for the midnight entertainment, apartment above me. I like to sing Akon in the wee hours of the morning at the top of my lungs. Oh wait, that’s you.)…anyways, I pulled my tired-ass out of bed for boot camp. I actually turned off the alarm first, and don’t even remember doing it, but at 6:15, I woke up again and had a whopping 15 minutes to grub and leave the house.

I ended up eating 2 pieces of apple, and cooking some egg whites for after boot camp. I ate the rest of the apple after boot camp as well.

Boot camp was pretty tough today! 

The Drill:

-10 bleachers, plyos in between each

-3 sled runs(down and back)

-4 parachute sprints(100 yards(ish? i think..) each way, down and back)

-Sledge hammers-10 per side

-2 more sprints(50 yds i think..down and back twice)

-mountain climbers, jump ups, sumo squats, lunges, suicides x 2, and some ladder work.

I think i was a sweaty mess, but it was like 47 degrees so I really don’t know 😉

Things you probably don’t care about but I’ll tell you anyways:

Afterwards we hit up Starb’s for some coffee. I got my weekly Americano, dropped a couch off at Goodwill, bought a new protein powder since I’m out, and now I’m rotting away hanging at work.

I talked to a friend of mine about some cool things that we are working on. It will be a few months before it materializes, but it’s worth the wait 🙂

Have a Happy Holiday, and don’t make excuses not to work out!

Inspiration and a reheheally long post.

Tonight, I started reading a blog. I was reading older posts from approx. December-February of last year.

This girl was a workout FREAK. She pushed herself HARD.

She had struggled with losing some weight through calorie counting(not healthy eating) and gained it all back the following summer. The posts that I started reading were her posts of getting back into shape and deciding to train for a competition.

She posted her food, workouts, etc. and energy seemed to be radiating from her blog. Somehow, she had been able to take some pictures of herself at her lowest point, decided to make the change for good, this time eating clean, healthy foods, and sticking to her goals. And that is exactly what she did. She felt AMAZING and had no idea food could have such a great effect on the body. She had found the key to success. Eating clean, natural foods was incredible! And all of this is documented.

This girl is my new inspiration. Check her out.

Before you start thinking I’m some conceited b*tch. The whole point of this, is that I read through my old posts and it made me wonder how I got to the point I’m at now. I LOVED everything I was doing. I still LOVE my workouts, but I’m not lovin’ my body. I took “progress” pictures tonight, and compared them to last year’s. The funny thing is that I happened to take them on the exact same date last year. It was the date I decided to turn things around, get motivated, stick to my goals, and see the results. I was seeing results after just 1 month of sticking to my goals. Lately, I’m lucky if I get through 2 weeks of sticking to my guns. Why? Cuz i burnt myself out. Yep, admitting it. Not with the workouts, because I just don’t think that’s possible, but with the dieting? You bet. The thing is, when people say sugar is addicting, it is something to be taken seriously. When eating clean for a good amount of time, you truly do NOT care for anything that has white sugar, and in fact, it makes you sick to think about. Well, at least for me it did. But, once it enters your life again, you have to re-cleanse your body of it. So far, I’ve failed at doing that because I haven’t been patient enough with myself.

Here are my thoughts about the past…ohh..3 1/2 months.

1. I’m doing less cardio than I was then. This is probably a good thing, because I was doing way too much before, but part of me wants to bring back the “freak” as my boxing instructor calls it. Don’t get me wrong, I still get in at least a strong half hour a day, and a few days a week its closer to an hour, and sometimes more, but I was doing no less than 1 hour a day before. And many times, it was close to 2 hours. Not recomended, but I actually liked it. I like to train like an athlete. If things were my way, I would train multiple times a day.

2. I’m trying to be too perfect. I’ve almost learned too much. I know exactly what I should be eating, and if I screw it up slightly, I beat myself up over it. Like, I ate an apple when I wasn’t supposed to? I must have no will power or drive. What a fail. Yeah, it’s that bad.

3. Reading through my old entries made me realize that I took all of the difficultness(is that even a word?) out of it. It was easy. I ate clean foods. That was my only goal, and that is what I did. I had a target calorie goal, but I was pretty lax on it. I usually ended up anywhere from 1700 to 2500 calories per day. Looking through my Sparkpeople account…I was eating basically only protein and carbs and getting about 12 g. of fat per day HA, which I now know is Tooooootally not good, but I didn’t know then. I lost weight and leaned out. It took me longer than a typical contest prep. diet would, but I had a good 6 months to do it, so who cares?!

4. I’ve become really resistant to keeping myself in line. May, June and July, my diet changed significantly, and I was starting to get lots of “advice”. I think by September I was exhausted, and apparently I haven’t gotten up the will power to just stop being a p*ss about it and really strap down and get to it. But my other problem is dieting philosophy. So much conflicting advice out there! I have gotten lots of it in the past few years. This is not to say that it was bad advice by any means. The advice was just coming from too many different people, and I didn’t know any better. This is why I read so much. Since I began working out in 2007, I have had more people tell me what I should/shouldn’t be doing than I’d care to count. Eat more protein, eat less protein, eat more complex carbs, eat less complex carbs and more veggies, eat less fruit, don’t eat fruit, don’t eat carbs and fat at the same time, eat whatever you want, eat whenever you want, eat 6 times a day, eat 3 times a day. SERIOUSLY! I finally got fed up with it and did my own scientific research, along with trying things for myself to see what worked/didn’t work. I directed questions to people that I felt had the right knowledge, but even that is something to be taken with a grain of salt. The thing is, THERE IS NO RIGHT WAY. I even read a comment from my old entries about my fruit consumption. Someone said that for a contest diet, I couldn’t have fruit at all. Well, I had fruit up until the 2 weeks before my show and it worked out for me. Some people can’t handle it, some people can.

My rules for my last prep were insanely simple:

1. Eat clean foods(nothing processed)

2. Try to eat every few hours (not gonna lie though, sometimes i ate only 3 big meals a day (insert GASP here)

3. Make sure to get enough protein in (160-180g)

4. Try not to eat TOO many carbs (Meaning stay under 300 g. Yes, that many. and most was from fruit.)

Get this….I used to eat fruit at night after dinner. Holy. effing. cow. Talk about rebellious.

Notice the trend? I had rules, but I wasn’t super strict on them. I gave myself a break. I don’t think I ate a single processed piece of food until April of this year. I started incorporating cheat meals, and that is when that “sugar addiction” came back into my life. It is a domino effect. It starts out small, and grows.(not sure how that describes a domino effect whatsoever, but you catch my drift ;-))

Still, though, things were fine, but once I didn’t have a competition looming, I gave myself a break. And the addiction grew…and here I am mid-December, still struggling. It bums me about because I know what I’m capable. I also think it is EXTREMELY ironic, because I know I don’t even LIKE this lifestyle. Eating healthy for a few days, then somehow I feel the desire for something completely unhealthy, and instead of resisting temptation, I give in. Who is this girl?!

Well, it’s not me. I’ve never been one to give in or give up. I don’t plan on staying this way either. I also realize that I sound like a broken record, but it’s because I refuse to give up.

I am 20 pounds up from my contest weight. That is enough for me. I am done. I am channeling the me from last December, and getting her back. As for competing? I’ll decide to compete when my body is ready. i am not going to prepare my body for competition any longer. It does NOT work for me. Last time, I had planned on a March show, but didn’t feel my body was ready, so I postponed it. I was competing according to MY BODY…not dietint according to a show. I am going back to my roots and I am going to prepare my body for ME. There is no time line, there is just daily work. When I feel that my body is ready, I will compete.

 (I should mention this, I fully plan on doing Jr. Nationals in June. I am qualified for it, and I want to do a national show this year. It is on my list of goals to accomplish. If i’m not on track by then, I am sending myself off to boot camp 😉 kidding………but seriously……….)

So what does that mean for February 6th? I’ll let you know February 5th. 🙂

If you’re still reading, stop being so obsessed with me! haha just kidding. I appreciate you taking the time to read all of this. I show the upsides of training/dieting and competing, but it is only fair to show the downsides.

This girl is coming back!!

I’m back soon

I couldn’t take that much time off from blogging. 🙂

Thanks for everyone’s concern/well wishes! I have just been really stressed out lately, and having blogging on my to-do list was stressing me out even more as dumb as that sounds.

I’ve figured out that I really need to start planning my days better. I put things off and end up having lazy days followed by massive busy days where I can’t breathe. I need to learn balance. HA. Harder than it sounds for me.

I am a person of extremes. If I do something, I go into it FULL on. This is good in some ways, not good in other ways. I can’t  stop a workout in the middle. If I decide that morning I’m doing an hour of cardio, a half hour will not suffice. On the opposite side of the spectrum, if I eat one cookie, I’m eating the whole box 😉 Getting a little balance wouldn’t hurt.

Although some stress has been work related(year-end accounting is stressful, especially dealing with not one, but TWO thefts in the company. Ugh.) Even more stressful is my family, though. My counselor compares us to the Sopranos. Do I take that as a compliment?? 🙂

Without divulging too much, I am just going to say that I am glad I have become an independent person as I’ve grown up, because I need my independence right now, and am taking it. Other than my older sister and older brother, I hope the rest of the fam has a happy holiday 🙂 I say this very light heartedly, because I guess the one good thing I got from my mom is to find the good in any situation. Don’t worry about me though, I’m on solid ground. I’m a happy girl and the stress will fade. It always days. Clouds will clear, and I’ll bask in the sun. Until then, I’m going to run in the rain. Excuse my corny metaphors please haha.

Exercise

Ugh. So after my weekend of boot camp and bleachers, my quad has been nagging at me this week. I didn’t do cardio on Monday because I needed some rest, and Tuesday, I started the elliptical and could feel the quad a little bit. It isn’t an injury, yet, it’s just overworked. I gave it rest Tuesday. Today I did a half hour of incline walking and it felt fine. I am going to hike tomorrow and see how it feels, but no leg workout for me this week(other than Monday’s ham workout.)

This week so far, and planned:

Monday: Back/Ham workout – Eh, i wasn’t a fan.

Tuesday: Shoulders/Triceps: Pretty good

Wednesday: Chest/Biceps, 30 min. incline walk : Loved it.

Thursday: Boxing ,Morning hike with the roomie, Back/Hams again(i really wasn’t a fan of Mondays workout), and then sprints(as long as my quad feels good)

Friday: Shoulders, 1 hour cardio

Saturday: Boot Camp

Sunday: Bleacher Workout…depending on quad

So that’s the tentative plan.

Nutrition

Had a convo with the roomie last night. We were talking about how much competing changes your mentality with food. I think about when I was in high school. I ate horribly, but I was always skinny because I didn’t really over eat. Sure, sometimes I did, but my friends used to always joke that my eyes were bigger than my stomach(and they meant that literally because i have slightly larger than normal size eyes ;-)). I never cared about food all that much until I started dieting. Then I stopped dieting, then I found clean eating. It changed my life and I realized it was how I want to live my life. Competing somewhat changed my mentality, though. Suddenly the clean eating wasn’t a choice, but a necessity. It caused a lot of ups and downs, and at times I want to put off competing until I get my healthy mentality back. I used to eat fruits and vegetables in enormous quanitities, but competing meant that even fruit was off limits. That sucks! Anyways, I haven’t changed anything I’m just ranting a little bit 🙂 I am still carb cycling and still really liking it. I haven’t been perfect, but I’m getting there. I am working ongetting to the point where there is no “off” day. It might take time, but I’ll never stop trying. In the big picture, I’ve only been at this for 1 year exactly, as far as the clean eating goes. Ups and downs will happen, but I’ll only fail if I give up.

Trust me, I’m never giving up.

I think I’ve rambled long enough. See what happens when I don’t post for a few days?

I’ve been getting some great feedback from my clients. That in itself is motivating. One of my clients lost 8 pounds last month and is now starting to incorporate weight training to start shaping her physique to the way she wants it. I feel like a proud parent 🙂

Have a good night!

carb sunday

It’s my carb day. 🙂 I almost put it off until tomorrow because I was going to be busy all day, but I woke up so starving, I knew I needed some of the goods.

Nutrition:

m1: 1/2 cup rolled oats,4 egg whites, sriracha

m2: Protein ice cream(addicted much?)

m3: Apple, sweet potato pancake

m4: 4 oz. chicken, 4 oz. sweet potato, AB

m5: 4 oz. chicken, tomato slices

m6: 4 oz chicken, broccoli/cauliflower

Exercise

I did a bleacher workout this morning with some friends.

40 bleachers

400 jump ropes

4 laps

200 walking lunges.

I.am.spent.

I didn’t get much sleep last night either, so I’m just wasting away at work and counting down until my next meal…..

Meals for Reals

sorry i’m a mega nerd. it rhymed.

m1: 1 egg, 5 whites, 2 tbsp ground flaxseed, amazing grass

m2: coffee, 4 oz. chicken, broccoli/cauliflower

m3: 4 oz. chicken, broccoli/cauliflower, 20 almonds

m4: 4 oz. chicken, cucumber slices, 1/4 avocado

m5: 4oz. chicken, 1 med. carrot, 1/4 avocado

m6: haven’t had it yet, but most likely protein ice cream 🙂

I’m at work right now, but when I get off, I’m going home to shower and get ready and meet some friends and my sister at a bar to watch the fights and hang out. I could really care less about the fights, but I haven’t gone out in weeks and could use some hang out time with the buds!

Workouts

Boot camp this morning was good! It wasn’t as hard as other boot camps, but still a good workout. We went to Starbucks afterwards and I got a grande Americano. That is like the 4th coffee I’ve ever had in my life, and it gave me such a buzz. I felt in-mazing 🙂 Haha, light weight anyone?!

Tomorrow I am doing a bleacher workout with some of the girls I pose with. I haven’t seen them in a long time so I’m excited! Afterwards, it’s back to worky work.

Have a good rest of the weekend!

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