Why did the chicken cross the road?

So after a couple weeks of slow to no weight loss and my resulting panic attack along with not having ready access to Lisa (who I am going to try to stalk down tonight in a final desperate attempt) I have come down to another BIG change in diet.

Maybe I should just let things run it's course and see what happens but ..... I am not a patient woman. I had a lengthy conversation with my new best friend, who is a beautiful and stage ready (in my opinion) figure competitor who took first place in her last competition. She asked me if I had ever tried carb cycling and I said no. Only the last week of prep when you deplete carbs for about 4 days and then "carb load" the day before competition to plump up the muscles. I begged her to spend some time with me to explain, et al... (I bribed her with a free massage... man that skill comes in HANDY!) So here's the deal...

Two days of high carb, about 2300 calories on a macro ratio of F/C/P 20/40/40%

two days of low carb, about 1400 calories on a macro ration of F/C/P 20/20/60%

This is BFF's contest prep diet starting 8 weeks out. Period. No calorie cuts. Now, listen up buttercup! Here is Rachelle's GIGANTIC problem. My calorie consumption ranges from 1100 calories on Sundays to 1750 calories on Thursdays my 3 hour workout day, and 4 days are roughly 1450 calories. I haven't eaten over 2,000 calories in one day since my post contest bingeing MONTH. And that gained me 20 pounds in 3 weeks! Do you see a concern here? I'm adding .... calculating... well... about 300 more calories per day if you average it out over the week. That's an entire extra meal per day even on the "low carb days". Plus I'm adding several grams of carbs throughout the week. Half of my brain and my mouth are thrilled about this prospect, but the other half of my brain's big concern is what will happen to my BiG @SS if I add 300 calories a day?? However comma... I will be eating primarily meat and veggies. Hmmm... sound like anything I've blogged about here recently? Maybe... can you say... PALEO? Remember how I started the diet doing paleo and I changed to "the diet" after my first week of no weight loss? But I have to say that my paleo was modified and I was eating plenty of rice cakes (and peanut butter.. but not over 20% daily fat) and other "packaged foods" and supplements. Now I will try ONLY whole foods.... lean meats (and LOTS of it!!) and veggies. Fruit is allowed but as a BB, as apposed to figure, I want to achieve vascularity. I did not really achieve this last year but striving for a little more this year. To achieve vascularity, you have to cut all sugar to thin your skin as much as possible in order to see striations and veins. Gross?? ... My kids think so. I think it shows tremendous work, sacrifice, and discipline, and these are the competitors that win. I still think I need one more year to build, but ... I guess we will see.

So why did the chicken cross the road?? I guess, so it could come over to my house and end up in my fridge!

Cluck! Cluck! Ya'll!

8 weeks out pictures

May 26, 2011

I'm still very drawn the the left side chest pose. It was my strongest pose last year and I think it still is. But here are a couple more. I'm 8 weeks out. Back/lats are coming along and arms are thicker than last year. The rear end needs to lean out and I really want to get some cuts in the legs. Hopefully I will achieve that in the 8 weeks to come. I will not likely post any more pictures until the end. :-)

Dirty mouth? ... Clean it up!

As I sit here drinking my 1/2 MetRex with 2T PB (my favorite shake of the week!) I decided that I would blog about something I did that is really embarrassing. Are you ready?

So I have this thing with peanut butter. Have you figured that out yet? If not.. you are kind of slow and should probably check to make sure your helmet is fastened securely. ((if this is your first time reading my blog, you have a "by" on the 'slow comment'... Let me get you up to speed... I love peanut butter)) My kids eat waffles for breakfast almost every morning (Van's Gluten Free) and they all enjoy peanut butter on their waffles. They get that from my side of the family. If you have children you might be able to picture what the knife looks like after they are done using it. Poor knife looks like it's been thru some kind of PB horror flick. Well, any good peanut butter lover could not POSSIBLY allow a knife covered in perfectly good PB to just go straight to the sink. There might even be a law against that. So being the law abiding citizen that I am, I always lick the knife before throwing it in the sink. Besides, a utensil covered in PB doesn't get clean in the dish washer so I'm helping in many ways. This is my morning routine. Lick the knife, sometimes the fork, and if there is a remaining bite on the plate I will usually eat that too. Call it my little daily "happy vitamin".

On Monday, the kids left for school and I was left to do a quick clean up and take my vitamin. Hunter's plate was on top of a bunch of dishes in the sink. No harm, nothing else touching it. Fork with one bite left of waffle, so I pop it in. What's that? ... What's that horrible taste? ... Spit spit spit... rinse... spit... rinse... spit...

One of the kids had washed hands before leaving and there was SOAP on the plate! It took me over an hour to get the taste out of my mouth! So kids, what did we learn from this? DON'T EAT OUT OF THE SINK! EVEN IF IT'S PEANUT BUTTER!

Now I just make sure to clean all forks and knives BEFORE they reach the sink. (At least I didn't eat out of the garbage!) So there you have my embarrassing cheat confession. I ate soap all in the name of peanut butter.

On another not so embarrassing note. Today I did pose practice with the figure girls from Aviano that are doing the competition also. They are all incredibly beautiful and have super smokin' bodies. I can say that and still be straight right? But it's true. They have all worked hard and are dieting down and it's all paying off. I'm the lone body builder of the group. I realized that I have not practiced posing for almost a year and boy did I feel it! My legs were on fire! So I have officially put pose practice into my workout schedule 3x a week. On top of that.. I see a lot of wall sits in my future. :-) Although I'm currently weighing in at 132, and have between 12 and 17 pounds to lose in the next 8 weeks, I feel strong and confident.

Ps... So did I find Waldo? Yes! I finally caught up with Lisa, and it was great catching up with an old (aka, young, hot and inspiring) friend! Thanks for the chat Lisa!

Where's Waldo? (I mean Lisa?)

Reflexions of a desperate body builder...

So you may be asking yourself, "How's Rachelle doing with training for her second competition without a trainer?" (or maybe you don't really give a crap) Well, I'm going to tell you anyway. No one is forcing you to read this blog.

It all started with a book... The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf. Enough said! Just read it yourself and you can form your own conclusions. As for us, we are going for it and have been for 2 months. I have slightly modified as I have kept my Kashi Go Lean cereal for breakfast and the occasional Toufayan (if you have never tried these, they are the awesomest tortilla in all the world--AND low carb/hi protein) "We" as a family have also "modified" the paleo to include gluten free foods like rice cakes (my favorite treat), Quinoa pasta and the number of other gluten free foods grows. The kids still eat some dairy although we switched to Silk (soy milk) which the girls both prefer and the boys and I don't really drink milk anymore at all. But the kids still eat some cheese and yogurt. But it turns out that Tianna has some lactose intolerance anyway so we have cut the food budget considerably with the, now small dairy budget. I digress. The point is.... a paleo diet is very clean - meat, veg, fruit and we added gluten free products which are all mostly made with rice/rice flour. Also you will not likely find any food in our house that has processed sugar. (besides the occasional treats for the kids) SO in all my "young wisdom" I decided to try to see how much weight I could take off for competition training by eating paleo (sans the fruit) and tracking my calories. Calories in vs. calories out - right? Things have been going well and I have lost about 6 pounds with not too much effort.

So why am I "desperate"? Well, perhaps it's too soon to panic, but I did not lose any weight last week (well, not true... I lost .2 pounds... Whoopie!.. but essentially, I didn't lose anything) So now I'm at a place where I have to lose 2 pounds a week to meet my weight goal of 115 by comp day. BUT... I've also gained some size since last year so maybe 115 is too light? I'll tell you this.... I looked at some videos of the women in last year's Italian competition and they were all smaller than me in musculature (save for maybe one that was close to my size) but they were all very very lean. I really want to lean out thru the legs and gluts this year and that darn booty just doesn't want to let go! You know, it's been a part of me my whole life.

I wish I had a trainer to tell me what to do with myself! Is 115 too little now that I've added mass? Should I continue with the paleo eating just cut the calories? Should I start adding more cardio now? or wait for another couple weeks? I think Lisa went on vacation and forgot to pack me in her bag. The nerve! I mean, really Lisa? You're just up and going to leave me alone to self destruct? **wink**

On a more positive note, my 2 figure clients are doing GREAT! One has lost 5 pounds in the last 2 weeks and the other has lost 2 but working her butt off to gain muscle. These 2 girls work so hard, I'm intensely proud of them both and I can guarantee that I'm going to cry like a proud mother when they are up there on that stage. So why can I be confident with them but not with myself? I guess I'll wait one more week before I hire a private investigator to track down Lisa. And then perhaps a kidnapper type person to bring her to Italy for the next 2 months. NOT TO MENTION that having a trainer makes for WAY better blogging! Don't you miss the Angel vs Devil stories? And there can only one first time tanning/waxing/shaving/painting stories.... Ahhhhh... good times.... Although I've heard some interesting stories about waxing in Italy. Stay tuned... maybe I can make a good blog for you to be entertained... for once!