So much better now...

 After switching back to low carb I am where I want to be in this next round of competition prep.  I will be honest, if I feel I am not ready to compete in five weeks then I won't.  The Emerald Cup is the biggest competition in the northwest and I want to represent on stage.  If I don't look better then last time then I won't do it.

Here's my current typical day of eating:

8:00am
1 cup of cantaloupe
1 scoop of whey protein

11:00am
1 can of tuna mixed with 2 tablespoons of light mayo
1 red bell pepper

1:30pm
Oh Yeah protein drink (I love these!)

5:30pm
6 ounces of pork or chicken
1 cup stir fried veggies (mostly cabbage)

8:30pm
6 ounces steak
Mixed salad greens with oil and vinegar dressing

1,540/207/30
This is a lower calorie day for me.  I range between 1,500-1,800 on a regular basis.  The protein is high, I know.  I just work better that way.  You may work better with more carbs.  I have been occasionally eating a little brown rice and I stir fry my veggies in oil.  When I crave a little something extra I eat an Adkins bar.  They are calculated by net carbs (total carbs - fiber - sugar alcohols, all which don't impact blood sugar) although it worries me because I never count impact carbs, I count ALL the carbs.

Still lifting heavy.  Some programs want you to change to lighter weights and higher reps for the last four weeks but I don't think I'll do that.  I need the shoulder mass, which isn't very much now and counts for a lot when competing.

Back To Low Carb

So the higher carb diet was not working.  I switched back to low carb and lost 3 lbs.  It's not really about weight loss, it's about fat loss, but weight loss is a good indicator that you are going in the right direction.  The higher carb diet was definitely not a high carb diet.  It was around 70-100 grams of carbs a day but my body just does not work well with even that amount.  I need to diet on 50 grams or less.  Competition prep is tough, especially the first time out.  I made a lot of mistakes my first round of competition prep 20 years ago.  You have to be willing to experiment to see what works.

The traditional weight lifting program is working really well.  Strength has increased every other week so I am staying strong (not losing any muscle mass).  That was one of my mistakes last time toward the end of competition prep.  I didn't eat enough and I doubled my cardio which was not smart.  As I mentioned a few posts back I was afraid that I was not going to be able to lose the weight like I did 20 years ago....because I am now 20 years older and statistically it is harder to lose weight the older you are.  I was wrong.  As long as you stay properly hydrated, get enough rest between workouts and eat enough protein you won't sacrifice hard earned muscle in order to lose weight.  Again, it's about fat loss, not weight loss.  I needed to really track how much weight I was lifting every workout and do the traditional three or four exercises per body part during one workout.  When I shed a couple more pounds then I can make an assessment but I think my shoulders already look better then they did last competition.



Here's a look at the diet I was doing a couple of weeks ago:

1/3 cup oatmeal
1 scoop whey protein

3 ounces chicken breast
1 cup cantaloupe

3 ounces chicken breast
1/2 cup brown rice

3 ounces steak
2 cups lettuce with 2 tablespoon oil and vinegar dressing
1/2 red bell pepper

3 ounces steak
1/2 cup sweet potatoes

3 ounces chicken breast
2 cups sauteed kale

3 ounces steak
2 cups lettuce with 2 tablespoons oil and vinegar dressing
1/2 red bell pepper

Basically eating every two hours, which is very hard to do.


What I am eating now:

1/3 cup oatmeal
1 scoop whey protein

6 ounces steak

5-6 ounces chicken
2 cups lettuce with 2 tablespoons oil and vinegar dressing
1/2 red bell pepper

1 small can albacore tuna
2 tablespoons light mayo
1/2 red bell pepper

6 ounces steak
2 cups chard


I shoot for 175-200 grams of protein a day, 50 or less of carbs and I don't count fat grams.  Again, you have to find out what works for you.  You may be just fine with a higher carb diet but over the years I have found that the majority of women have a hard time losing weight unless they cut the amount of carbs that they eat.

Contest Prep- New Plan

I am now solidly into contest prep/round 2.2.  I am doing a slightly different route this time.  Instead of just keeping my carbohydrates low I am also eating 6-7 meals a day.  Those meals consist of 3-4 ounces of protein plus either a carb or vegies.  The first three meals of the day are protein/carb and the last four are protein/vegie.  My carb choices are 1/2 cup of brown rice, 1/3 cup of oatmeal or 3 ounces sweet potato.  Veggies are pretty much anything that is green and are essentially unlimited.  It has been going very well. 

My pre-competition training routine is different this time around as well.  I have returned to my old bodybuilding ways (just like with the diet) and am doing a four day split.  Biceps/triceps, chest/shoulders, back/hamstrings, shoulders/quads (abs every workout).  Same exercises for each workout making sure I increase the weight (or at least attempt to increase the weight) every other workout.  For example for chest I am doing bench press 3X10, one arm incline DB chest press 3X10 and flat bench flyes 3X10.  Every third time I do that workout I add weight to the bar and/or pick up heavier dumbbells.  I am also changing my cardio.  5 days a week of lower end cardio 30-45mins.  That is SO old school bodybuilder but it works as long as you lift heavy.  Oh, and no 2-a-days.  At my first gym there were three pieces of cardio equipment - one bike, one treadmill and one elliptical.  That gym was in a basement with no windows. We had a couple of cable machines, a couple squat racks, benches, etc and a ton of weights.  It was a great place.  You don't need anything fancy to get the job done.

Now I am going to go prep my food for the next few days.  I have purchased a lot of little food storage containers so that I can divide everything up and just grab it and go.  Seven meals a day, two containers per meal means I have to stack up 14 containers.  My frig looks ridiculous.

Sometimes You Do Need To Quit

2013 started out with a bang.....in a bad way.  On New Year's Eve our van blew up on the freeway and needed a new engine.  We were without it for over two weeks.  During that time I drove our second car.  About a week into the repair the front left tire blew....once again on the freeway.  Then two days later our dryer broke.  And then about a week later my daughter Ellie (a Level 5 gymnast) broke her knee cap in half horizontally right across the middle during gymnastics' practice.  At that point I decided that this was not a good time to be training for a competition.  I often didn't have the energy to workout.  We only had one car between the six of us (two adults and four kids) and everybody had to be different places at the same time so going to the gym was not an option.  My kid's always come first, no matter what.

Ellie was at home bed-ridden for ten days after the accident before she had surgery to repair her patella.  She was home for another week after the surgery.  She has only been attending school half days up to this point but she is going back full time as of tomorrow.  She is finally able to get around without too much trouble although her knee aches by the end of the day, especially on her sport's therapy days.

So I have picked a competition in May because now that all of those fires have essentially been put out and I need to change my focus back to something that I want to do, which is compete again.  The competition is only nine weeks away but I am ready to go again and I don't want to wait until the next one which is in July.

I am going back to my old-school roots.  I am going to follow a very traditional weight lifting program.  What that means is I am going to choose three or four exercises per body part and stay with those exercises for the next two months and I will try to increase the weight every other workout so that I lift to failure.  It will be important for me to have a spotter for a few of my training sessions because I will want to really push to failure and that is pretty much impossible to do without a spotter on exercises like the bench press.

As for my diet the plan is pretty much the same as before except that I am going to be militant about eating every two hours throughout the day.  I am also going to add sweet potatoes back into my diet.

So that's the plan....let's hope we are done with all the drama for a while:)

Regroup and Go!

It's been two months since competition #1.  This week marks week one of the second round.  My competition is March 30th so I have given myself four extra weeks.  This whole first week is about eliminating my nightly glass of wine and clearing out any starchy carbs that have snuck into my diet over the holidays.  The nightly wine is pretty much just a habit so after a few days I don't really think about it anymore.

So the plan this time around?  Take it a little slower at the end.  I will start out the same way because that worked just fine but I will have more time to tweak the second half of the prep.  I freaked out a little on the last one because I didn't think I was going to lose the weight.  I stopped weighing myself about three weeks out because it was messing with me psychologically.  This time I'm staying on it.  Obviously I'm good at losing weight.  The problem was that I lost fat and muscle so I didn't look as lean as I would have liked, just smaller.  If you read my blogs about my last round of competition prep you'll remember that I have a problem with water retention so it is freaky to me to eat too many carbs.  I am going to add sweet potatoes into my diet as of now and monitor my bodies reaction.  Higher fat, low carb and tons of protein has been what's worked for me in the past.  I'll stick with that but try something a little different.

And as for training?  Once again my shoulders lagged.  I need to be more cut in my upper arm area.  I am have been doing, and will continue to do, heavy shoulder work but this time around I am planning on training shoulders more often.  Basically every other day or as soon as they aren't sore anymore from the previous workout.  It's a bummer because I can't get my shoulders sore very often so it doesn't feel like I am working them hard enough.  I just read an article that training a muscle group more often will not decrease strength or size which means that you can deter from the standard once a week split (for example, chest and back, bis, tris and delts and legs).  Of course if you Google it the what comes up most often is that to build mass you have to train less and train harder.  We'll see if training more often works for me.

And finally, I need to work on my posing.  I was nervous during figure because I was rushed out on stage.  During physique I was fine.  I'm sticking to figure this time because I still don't think I can get big enough to compete in that category.  It seems like they are looking for a more muscular physique then I expected.  I have the video from the show but haven't watched it yet.  I'm sure I'll learn a lot when I do watch it so I'm going to get on it:)

I will post my workouts and diet over the next 12 weeks so check back!

Workout Of The Week December 2nd, 2012

W.O.W. 12/02/2012

This is a gym workout.  You will need one dumbbell and a treadmill.  You can have a variety of dumbbells in various weights but each exercise requires only one dumbbell at a time.

On the treadmill:
Warm up for five minutes at an easy pace.  Perform a full *tabata at your most challenging speed then jog at an easy pace for one minute.  Repeat three more times.  For the last four minutes return to an easy pace but every 30 seconds increase the incline by .5.  For the last minute jog to cool down.
*The tabata formula is 20 secs on/10 secs off for eight rounds.

Pick up your dumbbell and perform all the below exercises on one side before repeating on the other.  Rest after you have done both right and left sides and then repeat everything two more times for a total of three rounds.  Finish with three sets of scissor abs (shown at bottom of page).

One arm snatch X10

Wide row X10

*the above photo shows a regular row.  Swing your elbow out to the side to perform a wide row.

 Heel pull X10

Calf raise

X10

Single side shoulder press

X10

 Plank row

X10 

 

Sumo squat

X10

Split suitcase lunge

X10

 

Scissor Crunch

3X20

D-day, November 3, 2012

Competition Day and Lesson's Learned

 

              1994                                         2012

So the competition was last Saturday and I did not place.  I was disappointed initially but then realized that I really didn't have any expectations except to compete and get an idea of where I was at compared to the other competitors.  You can't help feeling the sting of losing but it is so much better then doing nothing at all.  I know what I need to work on.  I over trained at the end.  My biggest concern in prepping for this show was that I would not be able to lose enough weight.  It had been almost 20 years since I competed and I know that losing weight is harder when your older.  Apparently not for me. It's crazy because I had written about how important the last week before a competition is and I ended up really screwing it up.  I did not eat enough.  I was shocked when I weighed in at 129lbs.  That means I lost about 16 lbs in eight weeks.  At least 5lbs of the that was water weight that came off during the final week but I should have gained some of that back the last two days as I ate more carbs and let the muscles fill up.  On the Friday before the show I ate four sweet potatoes and about 12 ounces of flank steak but that was it.   I wasn't hungry so I didn't eat.  On Saturday morning I still wasn't hungry but I ate oatmeal, a 4 ounce yogurt and half a granola bar.  After judging I ate a banana and a salad a couple hours later.  Next time I will eat a lot in the 24 hours before the competition.  As I had written earlier I was really afraid of retaining water.  What I discovered was that I looked better on the Monday morning after the show.  On the way home from the show I stopped at Safeway and bought a small jar of peanut butter and three apples to eat in the car.  They were delicious.  Obviously I also ate on Sunday :).  I had a large cheeseburger, some fries and two beers and then had some frozen yogurt later.  On Monday I posed a little in front of a mirror and I did look better.  Next time I will know.  I'm not going to eat a hamburger, fries and drink beer but I will have something more substantial during the 24 hours before the pre-judging.  I know competitors that eat sandwiches and that seems like it might be a good idea.

When I was backstage waiting to go on I noticed that every competitor was eating rice cakes covered in jam or jam and peanut butter.  The competitors that had their trainers back stage were actually being fed the rice cakes/jam combo as they pumped up.  I had never heard of that but since literally every competitor I could see was doing it then I decided that I will try it next time.  Rice cakes and jam are both super high glycemic foods so the uptake into your system would be super fast.  For that reason maybe it helps with posing.  I had a really hard time holding my poses during the Figure competition. My muscles were shaking pretty badly.  Posing is so important that I am positive I got marked down for that.  I also was not prepared to go on for Figure.  I went in to get my second coat of tan before the show started.  I needed my tattoos covered but they told me to come back when the Novice Men's Bodybuilding division was called because they needed to get other people done first.  I went back at that time and as the tanning people were working on covering my back they called my division.  '35 and over Figure is up and I need 50 and over Figure right behind them.  Now!'  Then they called out 'I'm looking for #41, Priscilla Bell.  Is Priscilla Bell back here?!'  I was completely panicked - I hadn't even been glazed yet, also I was first person who was supposed to go out.  I was pulling on my shoe as the Figure Over 35 women were filing off stage.  I had no time to regroup and that definitely contributed to my ability to pose, smile and present myself.  When Physique came up I was totally prepared, not nervous or anything.  Next time I am not going to get my tattoos covered, not because of what happened but because it was expensive and other people had large tattoos that weren't covered and they looked just fine.  Also I was WAY over tanned for Figure.  The dude ask me if I wanted to tanned for Figure or Physique and I said I didn't know and ask him what the difference was.  He told me that Physique has a darker tan.  After watching me pose he said that he thought I had a good shot at Physique so I should go that direction.  I ended up with FIVE coats of tanner on and, as you can see from the photos, I was way too tan.

So the decision between competing in Physique or Figure?  Most likely Figure.  The Physique women are still way more muscular then I would ever be able to get.  I do still think they are trying to figure out what they are looking for in Physique because a couple of those women looked like they could easily compete in bodybuilding...and a couple did compete in both divisions.

Below are two of my Figure photos.  The one on the left I am standing next to the winner and the one on the right I am standing next to the second place finisher.

The below photo is from the Physique competition:

I think in general my diet was right on up until the last ten days.  Next time I will start to relax my training the week before competition.  I will not do two a days every day and I will cut down on the cardio.  But most of all I will eat enough 24-48 hours prior to pre-judging.

I am planning on competing at the 2013 NPC Vancouver Natural and Tanji Johnson Classic in March.  Don't forget - you have to be in it to win it:)