Stripper shoes anyone?

I've been wanting to update my blog for over a week now and so the passion of my original "this is blog worthy" story has since passed. Who knows? Maybe the passion will come back to me as I write it out for you this morning. So there I was...

I had a couple of questions regarding the upcoming show and since the website is all in Italian, I felt it was easier just to call the organizer. I had heard rumor that the female body builders had to wear heels like the Figure Girls did, but I didn't really believe it. Body builders don't wear shoes! That was the least of my worries. I needed to know if the figure girls needed their own music (they don't), and if the judges would call hamstring pose as part of the mandatories for me (they won't ... "whew"! NOT a good pose for me!), will their be translation? (No - the calls will be in Italian), and as long as I have you on the line.... Do female body builders need to wear the clear high heels? (and this is what I heard... please listen in slow motion)... "Yyyyyyyeeeeeeesssss. For everything except your 90 second routine" (please now picture the scene with my jaw dropped, eyes wide, terror stricken!) I must now tell you that never in my LIFE have I owned a pair of 5" stiletto shoes. Even in my single college days! I guess I was always a closet athlete even tho I didn't know it until I was 32, because I have always chose comfort over fashion when it comes to shoes. ANYWAY... Skipping ahead to the part where I come out of my shocked state, then tears, and back to face reality. I got onto Amazon and ordered some immediately! I found some clear 4" and felt a little lucky with that. (lucky?...really?...)

The guy said that in the past there have been female bb's that have come from other organizations that have NOT had shoes and in that case, they have all the competitors go without. **wink** I might not "receive" my shoes on time **wink** But seriously... the projected delivery is May 31-June 3, so that is a very good possibility. PLUS, I need to be able to practice in them! I've been trying to practice posing on my toes and it's hard to keep my balance that way. But... I guess it's good for the calves :-) So, I sit and wait for my stripper shoes to come in the mail. Mike is excited. He thinks I might actually wear them! *HA*

Passionate story number 2.... So there I was....

You all know that I've been dieting hard and frustrations are ample with my lack of weight loss. Since March 7th I have only lost 5 pounds. I've had nearly perfect macros this whole time. I started with the written diet, following strictly. Nothing... Then after consulting with a figure friend whom I trust, I tried to increase my calories and add in carb cycling. I did that for about 3 weeks. Nothing... and I felt like shit for half the week. I decided to go back to just cutting calories. Nothing.... Then 2 weeks ago, I added more cardio sessions. Nothing... and last week I added even MORE cardio sessions AND watched and counted every single gram of everything. Still nothing.... (please insert Rachelle having a huge, tearful breakdown here....in fact, picture me on the track, doing sprints and bawling and panting and damn near peeing my pants... got it? ... pitiful!)

So I started to study. What am I doing wrong? Why is the fat not coming off? (BTW.. I'm not losing inches either so for those of you that a might be saying.."but you probably just gained muscle..." don't bother) (please skip ahead again to conclusion of study...)

So here's the deal... if you give a horse peanut butter it'll look like he's talkin'!

Sorry... bottom line is this. I've probably destroyed my BMR (basal metabolic rate - for those non athletes) by cutting my calories too low and probably too fast. Although I was taking in about the same calories as I did during last years diet, this year I have more muscle, I workout harder, and with my personal training schedule of about 4 hours a day plus a couple massages a week (at least), I'm sure it equals out to an additional 400 plus calories a day that I burn at the gym shifting weight plates, demonstrating exercises, doing occasional sets with my clients to keep them "up to speed" or just to help encourage them, or let them copy my form... and giving massages is probably like doing an hour of Tai Chi don't you think? And I never enter those calories into my exercise log. (sometimes I enter massages if I "need the calories" to justify eating more *wink*) SO, yes, I've been literally starving myself into diet failure. I even tried taking a thermogenic last week (I had free samples) and still on Sunday I was still at 130. I SWEAR my body just doesn't like to go under 130. It's my hardest plateau EVERY time I try to lose weight I get stuck there. After, some "scientific reading", discussion with the hubby, and much contemplation with my current comp day count down, I have come to the conclusion that I will look like THIS on stage in 2 weeks. Am I stage ready? HELL NO! ((confession... I'm still at 25% body fat)) For a body builder to get on stage with that much fat borders on embarrassing and here lies the source of my tears and breakdowns. Last year my competition was FAT. You can look at the pictures and you will agree that she had no business being on that stage. Although I still look better than her and thanks to some great teaching.. I think I am a pretty good poser. BUT, I have also looked at pictures of this coming show from last year and I'll say that these Italian women are EXTREMELY lean! Too lean, really. I think they look anorexic and stringy. I'll have more muscle BY FAR than my competition (compared to last year's pics) but I will have SO much MORE fat on my body. So, since it's an Italian show, lean-ness will likely win over muscle mass so I'm not at all expecting to do well. It is what it is at this point, I'm not going to lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks. I'm going to get on that stage only so that I can gain the experience of doing a European show so that when I AM ready and looking my best, I will have more confidence on stage and really kick some ass.

Back tracking just a little. On Saturday night, I was so low cal that when I went to bed, I was nauseous. I laid in bed sick until about 12:30 when I thought I'm going to throw up or I'm going to eat. So I ate a rice cake with some BNPB (Better-N-Peanut Butter), then went to bed and finally slept. Sunday was Mother's Day. After stepping on the scale and REALLY expecting some weight loss and seeing none, and I was extremely low energy I decided to treat myself to a mom's day breakfast and have a couple extra calories. Along with my cereal I ate one sweet potato pancake (paleo with no sugar...pretty harmless but still not on the diet). Sunday I ate 1600 calories and did not exercise at all -- OUTRAGEOUS!! . Monday, although I burned about 1200 calories, I ate a little over 1500 (more than I was eating by a couple hundred) AND I had a little bed time snack (although diet food...still after 7pm). Just out of curiosity, this morning I weighed myself expecting to see a pound gain.... 129... a pound lost. WTH? So for this last week, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing and then do the same peak week diet as last year. After competition my goal is to diet as such to gain 5 pounds of muscle mass with 5 pounds of fat loss. The scale will stay the same for awhile and might even go up a pound or 2. In 2 months longer, I want to be 20% body fat and that's where I want to be during off season. I'll get on stage again with 20% but if I can keep it there all year, then next year my goal will be 14%. :-)

Of course I'll let you know how it all goes.

Happy eating friends!

"Happy" Easter!

4 weeks out... I finally lost some weight! I went from 131.4 to 128.8 this week. Whew!... I had threatened to throw my scale out the window and run over it with the car if I didn't lose weight this week! I don't know if I could have REALLY followed thru with that, so it's a good thing I met my goal.

I've passed a large stepping stone in my training...Easter. Last year, I had a BAD binge on Easter. I baked home made buns and ate about 11-teen of them WITH additional peanut butter, along with several other cheats. The day ended with tears and depression and fear that last until the end of the next week. I'm happy to report that I had NO cheats yesterday. It sure does help being paleo so I didn't have to fight the bread cravings at all. I'm also happy to report that bread cravings no longer plague me. :-) I love being paleo! On the other hand, I did have tears but not because of cheats. ... here is the story...

After church, I decided it would be a good time to take pictures. It was a sunny day and I did my hair for once. :-) I was feeling pretty good and suspected that I would be pretty happy with my progress. Unfortunately, I was not happy with the progress. I compared the pictures to last year 4 weeks out and although I'm bigger thru my upper body, I was skinnier last year thru the lower half. I think my legs look very soft and undefined. (I'm being kind to myself with this comment). The pictures made me sad and frustrated.

To make matters worse....

We were invited to have Easter fun with some friends... of course... a pot luck. (Always a bad idea for ANY dieter) I kindly declined the invite and my friend understood, but I did agree to bring my kids who are friends with her kids. When I dropped them off I was conveniently STARVING. I didn't mean to go hungry but my hunger can sneak up on me very quickly now days, and if/when I get really hungry I go into a sort of "panic". It's weird actually, but my body literally starts to go into panic mode. Heart rate rises, and I get very upset and emotional. Just the thought of "not being able to eat a that moment" makes me want to cry. SO... recap.. I'm hungry, going to pot luck, I'm hungry. When I get there, the Bubba burgers are on the grill. If you don't know what Bubba burgers are, they are probably the most delicious and most FATTENING burgers that you can buy. In the house was something baking that was so obviously full of cheese that the smell filled my entire head and that alone almost brought tears. On the counter were sugar cookies ready to be frosted by the kids, and on the table, friends were stuffing eggs with chocolate for the upcoming egg hunt. Big breath... actually... DON'T BREATHE... Unfortunately my "not breathing" talent was not at full potential yesterday. I was able to withstand the sights and smells for about 10 minutes max and I had to leave. I pretty much waved goodbye to all and practically ran to my car fighting back tears. Everyone at the party probably thought I was a real crab...or stuck up or something.

One of my Italian friends who is also training for figure, same comp as me, posted pictures on FB of her Italian Easter dinner with family... 2 appetizers, a couple of main courses, at least 2 desserts. And she sat for hours with this food in front of her and didn't eat! Honestly... my hero! There is NO WAY (based on the early pot luck episode) that I could have withstood THAT! Way to go Eleonora... she is one sexy bomb of a lady, let me tell you! I ain't got nothin' on her! I tell you that story just to remind you that looking amazing for competition doesn't come without some blood, sweat and tears... lots of tears.

So the hard dieting continues for 4 more weeks. I've decided to log my foods (as I have continued to do) and restrict my calories to my BMI plus exercise -500 calories. So if I want to eat a couple more calories, I have to do more cardio, and of course the calories will come from lean protein. That is how I lost 2.6 pounds this week. It's also the most logical in my mind. I'm still carb cycling with this calorie watching method.

Also, post competition plans have been made. Sissy and I are going to drive up for the day and drive home after the competition. Mike can't go and her husband can't either. Neither one of us wants to have a big gorge meal as we both have plans to maintain our accomplishments. But I DO have a bag of Maple Covered Peanut Clusters that I got myself for Easter. We were picking up some candy for the kids for Easter and I saw these and they jumped off the self and literally made my mouth water. That's what happened last year with the frosted animal crackers. I drooled over them for 2.5 months! At least I only have 1 month to drool and dream about the peanuts. I think I will also bring some Sesame Rice crackers, which I LOVE. Something sweet and something salty.... that will do. If I get a bad craving between now and then, I'll eat it, but I have no desire for pizza or burgers/fries or anything like that.

Here are some 4 weeks out pictures so you can see and agree with my opinion.

Paris...French Fries anyone?

I'd like to start today's blog with a piece of advice. If you are training and dieting for a competition, do NOT... I repeat... DO NOT take a trip to Paris for the first time! Sheesh! Stupid 16th birthday wish! So, yes... my oldest daughter turned 16 and we went to Paris for her birthday. After having 2 weeks of "not so great weight loss", we packed our bags and went to Paris. Great idea! I brought the TRX, a band and plenty of protein bars, rice cakes, Muscle Milk and peanut butter. We started in Milan with Mike running the Milan marathon, so we started out adventure there and I was motivated and fresh. I worked out pretty hard the first 2 days, and ate clean. We walked and shopped all day Sunday and most of Monday. We arrived in Paris Monday night and had just enough time to find our apartment and go for dinner. Our first French meal out. We were all starving. I ordered roasted chicken with fries (french fries come with everything in France apparently, and frankly, they are not as good as the fries in Italy.... weird) So I ate my chicken... and my fries.

Tuesday - A short and lame workout and breakfast in the room - perfect. Hit the train to Versailles and walked for about 4 or 5 hours. Ate a protein bar for lunch and a gluten free cookie for a snack. We ate dinner there at a "Tex Mex" place (of all things!). I had chicken fajita, no chips or dessert. The family ate "not so clean" and every one of them regretted it. I gloated.... **smile** Then we got back to Paris and did the Eiffel Tower... it was my favorite part of Paris. Truly beautiful. It was also here that I had my first French crepe. Shared... but ate most of it myself... it was amazing! I vowed that I would have another by the end of the trip. ((but I didn't))

Wednesday - I booked us a bike tour of the city. Pretty clever of me, huh? Again, shorter and lamer workout in the room before breakfast. Ate lunch with bike tour at a cafe, sandwiches only... had ham, plain... white bread. It was boring and it's been so long since I've eaten white bread that I really didn't even like it that much. There is no whole wheat bread in all of the places we went in Paris and it's the same in Italy. I have yet to find whole wheat bread at any cafe. After the bike tour we went to Notre Dame and explored the Latin Quarters. We ate dinner at a French restaurant with a fixed menu. I had French onion soup, roasted chicken (with fries) and an apple tart. It was delish! And I felt guilty... but it was DELISH!

Thursday - Euro Disney! We packed protein bars, but spent ALL DAY there and had to eat there. Let me just tell you that there is NO HEALTHY FOOD at Disney!! I didn't log any of my food that day and wrote the whole day off as a "free day". There was a slice of pizza, fried chicken and fries (no grilled options!) and a chocolate covered waffle..... I am ashamed... I did it up good that day and just hoped that 8 hours of walking would be enough to burn it all off.

Friday - The Louvre. Again with the protein bars (the last of them), but had to eat a late lunch there.... at McDonalds! Yes a McDonalds in the Louvre! I had grilled chicken salad with no dressing and NO FRIES!! It was good actually! Again, my family ate yucky and felt awful. I gloated... again. From the Louvre, we came back to the apartment, ate a healthy snack, checked out and headed to the airport. We drove from Milan, late night, required "late dinner". Mike and I had a sandwich from an AutoGrill at about 10pm with 2 hours left to drive.

I can't even tell you how anxious I was to get home to my gym, and my clean pantry food. My family was equally happy to get back to paleo eating and even the kids talked about how they felt so gross and GASSY and couldn't wait for some clean chicken and veggies! Warms my heart... truly. I went to the gym on Saturday first thing, did some extra cardio and ate clean and low calorie all weekend.

Monday morning I just crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. I weighed in at 131.4... 1 pound heavier exactly from the Monday before vacation. So in 2 weeks time, I gained 1 pound. I seem to have lost 1/8 inch off my thighs and 1/4 inch off the rear.... 1/4 inch plus in the stomach. So there you have it. I have cut my calories on about 4 days out of the week. (the 3 days not cut are low carb days... torture enough for now) and I have increased my cardio as well. Time to get some sweat going at the gym. Well... even more sweat than before.

At this point I'd be happy to end up at 120 but that is 11 pounds in 5 weeks. A pretty hefty goal.

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!