Competitor Blog: Bread like things - a review

I am an amazingly lazy cook. I love eating but I hate cooking. I think it’s a chore from the devil. How can something so awful and labor intensive be required several times a day?! I wish that I enjoyed it but I just don’t.

I love sandwiches because I am busy person. I don’t want to have to slow down and bust out a full service of silverware at every meal. I also hate washing all those dishes. Unfortunately, sandwiches typically require bread and therefore carbs. Don’t try and tell me to wrap it in lettuce; those suggestions will get you punched. Recently I found these little foldy sandwich thin things, FoldIts. It’s made by FlatOut which has a couple things I have tried and been very happy with. I selected the Ancient Grains variety as it had the most protein, sitting at 10g per serving (3 fat and 17 carb). The bread is the right balance between fluffy and the good kind of chewy. It doesn’t taste grainy or like dirt. I think I like these better than typical sandwiches because they keep my hands even cleaner since there is a folded edge! I like these better than wraps because they give more bread like substance.

One of the other items I have tried is called Artisan Pizza Crust by FlatOut. It’s an incredibly thin crust that cooks remarkably fast. I have made BBQ chicken pizza and buffalo pizza on these. It takes less than 10 minutes to get a meal completed. I think I spend more time weighing my ingredients than baking the pizza. The rosemary and olive oil one is my favorite and has 6g protein, 25g carbs, and 1g of fat. This is similar carbs to a slice of bread but it has a much larger surface area and you can really spread your protein toppings out over the top. Since this is so thin the crust does tend to get a little floppy but the edges will crisp up nicely.

The thing about IIFYM that I love is the flexibility to still eat things that I want to eat. Any diet out there that forbids certain things is sure to set you up for failure. Does this mean I get to eat whatever I want whenever? No. But it leaves me the choice to make the decision (and sometimes sacrifices) for things that I really want to eat. What tricks have you figured out to get the things you enjoy back onto your plate?

Competitor Blog: Practice Posture

When I first starting posing I would get scolded for looking down. Sand, my posing coach, would ask me what I was looking for on the ground. When you walk on stage you want to have your head up and look the judges right in the eye with a look that says “this is my stage and I am the best thing on it”. You can’t do that with a rounded shoulders and eyes averted.

Over time, I think a lot of women learn this unconscious habit of casting their eyes downwards and slumping forward. It’s as simple as avoiding dealing with other human beings or appearing “too inviting”. If you don’t make eye contact you don’t give another person a chance to try to grab your attention and interact with you. Slumped over you try to make yourself look less noticeable and unassuming. A lot of people will accuse you of “sticking your boobs out” simply from having your shoulders back. If you have ever had to fend off a person’s unwanted and over-zealous attempts at wooing, you totally understand. If you have yet to experience this yet in life, I envy you. 

I also would be scolded for walking like a lumberjack. I can’t help it! I have places to go and no time for a sassy little sashay. But when you step on the stage that is EXACTLY what they want. You can’t stomp out to your spot on the stage, rigidly do your turns and stomp off. Well, you can but it won’t place you very well.

I practice my “girl walk” up and down the straight stretch of hall at my work. It’s relatively low traveled and it’s nice and long. Here I practice how the “girl walk” feels and try very hard not to overthink it. It’s a gentle sway, almost drop of the hip. It is a weird thing to try and explain and I imagine everyone feels it a little different. Once you start focusing too hard on the walk you will lose it.

So I started to make the effort to improve my posture and exude self confidence. Throughout the day I try to correct my posture. I do stretches to help loosen up the front muscles that have been shortened from years of crap posture. I do exercises to fire the back muscles that help pull the shoulders back. When I walk down the street I send mental feelers out to my body; are my shoulders back and posture decent? Do I have my head up? When I am at the gym walking through the floor I give myself a little pep talk “Are they looking at you? Damn right they are looking at you! You own this place. You are the winner of this day and you keep that tiara up high!” It sounds ridiculous but it does really help get you in the brain space you want to be in when you step on stage.

By working in these little bits into my day I am practicing portions of my posing. It is important that you practice posing until it is automatic. That way if your brain tries to freeze come show time your muscle memory will show you the way. If you are not practicing for a show practice for life. Fix that posture!

Competitor Blog: Finding Satisfaction

I was designed to eat. When people say “Oh, I forgot to eat!” I am immediately appalled. My whole life can be summed up by moments of being awake counting down the moments until I get to eat or sleep. I am essentially a sloth trapped in a human’s body!

This can make cutting macros a bit of a challenge. There are many times I find that I still desire to eat more. Please note that I am usually no longer “hungry” or feeling hunger. I just enjoy the eating process; chewing, tasting, and feeling the warm hug of carbs in my belly. Since eating my weight in food is not an option I have picked up a few tricks to help tide me over. 

Water never does the whole “fill up the space and feel full” trick. I like my water icey cold and I will drink a lot of it but all it does is make me and my belly cold. It is flavorless and does little to appease my demanding taste buds. Coffee however fills me up quite nicely. It’s warm and I can get it flavored without extra calories/macros. If I am feeling really generous I can doctor it up with some sugar free creamer (tracked of course) or some sugar free flavored syrup. The flavored syrup is my new thing for home. A little can really go a long way! I use ½ a tablespoon and it is plenty. Coffee works better than tea for the full feeling. I am not sure why but I try not to look a gift horse too hard in the mouth. I did not drink coffee before but now that I have started it is a nice routine. I even have decaf because sometimes I feel the need to “snack” at night time and this can help if I am feeling desperate. 

Keep busy. It is easier to do physical busy activities on the weekend. Often you won’t notice that you are feeling a little hungry if you are up trying to get a chore done. Even if you do think “hmmm I could eat” you are usually so into your project you can put it off until the next appropriate food time. The important thing is to make sure you stop and eat at regular intervals. Otherwise, you may find yourself ravenous and falling headlong into poor food choices.

I am a soda drinker. I like the fizzy bubbles and the sweetness. Try making your own Italian soda’s. Using the sugar free syrup and club soda I can make myself a sparkly beverage to help cut the sweet tooth. It’s different from the La Croix flavored waters which are OK but a little bland. It really can help shake up the monotony of water and it feels like you are having a treat.

So tell me, do you have any tricks that you use to help pacify your consumption cravings?

Competitor Blog: Where did I put my groove?

After a long hiatus of couchsurfing and eating food like a pig post party it is now time to put my plans into motion. There is some what a mental block to getting back to the gym and back to tracking my food. But the food is an old familiar hat. Weigh, track, and don’t go dark. My husband who meal preps for me, is right back in the swing of it too. I really thought the food was going to be harder than it has been. 

It seems that I am struggling with finding the best fit for my workouts. When I see Mike it’s easy because I don’t have to think up what to do. He tells me what he wants and I belly ache and try to barter my way into a better deal and end up doing what he requested anyway. Making nasty faces all the while. But on my own I go to the gym at 5:00 AM. I have to be out of bed by 4:30 and out the door by 4:45. There is no time to snooze or glare at Facebook. All of my items have to be ready to throw in the car and go; I pack my bag the night before. If I forget one thing it throws the whole rhythm off. I loathe mornings but for the most part I have this down as a science. Except for that one time I magically snoozed halfway through my workout time and didn’t realize it until I was brushing my teeth. In an effort to keep myself on track, I write a workout plan in a notebook the night before (or weekend before if I really have my life together) so when I get to the gym I am not fruitlessly lifting random stuff and hoping for the best. I have approximately 45 minutes to an hour to work out. I need to be on my way to the showers by 6:00 am. 

Now I go to a different gym than the one I train with Mike at, these mornings. We can leave it nameless; there are only like 4 options in town you can probably figure it out. I am starting to become so disgruntled at the gym. First: it doesn’t have heat which isn’t super horrible because I will warm up but it is annoying. I apparently have the metabolic system of a reptile because the cold gym makes me want to curl up in a corner and go back to sleep. Second: it has been extra full lately. Yes, I realize it is probably a lot of New Year’s Resolutioners in there and they are doing good things. I am happy they are there, for them, but not for me. I don’t like people, especially people anywhere from wake up time until 9:00 AM. It’s best not to even glance in my general direction until after then. Third: no one in the building knows how to rack the weights or get them remotely close to where they should be or have them in pairs! I mean God forbid I dream ascending order AND two of the same weight in the same place. I could see them maybe getting out of order throughout the day but there is zero effort by staff to rectify this chaos. It drives me bananas; wandering sad and forlorn about the gym. Looking for that sad, lost, lonely dumbbell. Eating into my carefully calculated minutes.

In the grand scheme of things the above issues are really minor inconveniences. Would it be nice if they were different of course! But there isn’t any reason I can’t work out even without them being different. For now I will continue doing the best that I can there. I am looking into and trying to puzzle out different options that will fit both my family life and my gym life. I hope in the coming weeks I can find my gym groove and get back into the grind of it. I have goals to accomplish, rogue dumbbells be damned.

My Marathon Experience

I am baaaacckkkk!!! Has everyone missed me and my charming personality? I knew you did! 

I took a long hiatus after my debut into the world of a bikini competitor. I had other goals to complete that required a lot of time. I had a marathon to finish! No not Netflix but a real life, grueling 26.2 mile type of marathon.

I joined a group of like minded individuals to endure the Beat the Blerch marathon this last September in Carnation Washington. This race completes me on a soul deep level as the aid stations actually have tasty snacks like Nutella sandwiches and cake. One of the stations had potato chips! Banana’s be damned!

I put a lot of hours and miles into my marathon training. Two to three days during the week were spent running “short” distances and every weekend a loooong run. I would then spend the other days of the week in the gym cross training or in the pool to give my joints a break. Towards the end of my marathon training the only thing I wanted more than anything was to be done. I had spent so much time doing *something*. I had to be running and before that in the gym or I would not get the results that I wanted. If I didn’t run in the days prior to the race then race day would not be successful. I was tired. I was painful. I was ready to be done.

So, race weekend appears and my mom and I load up the car and drive up to Carnation. It was a fun trip up and we reserved a yurt right on the race course so commute would be quick. It was relatively dry the day before as we tucked into our carb load and then to bed. Nerves and an increasingly loud squeaky mattress kept me up for a while before I was able to drift off into sleep. Race day my eyes pop open and what do my ears hear? Rain. Goody. I get out of bed with hopes it’s my imagination (it’s not) and start dressing in my running gear. Happy that my overpacking nature is serving me well today. I apply my anti-chafing cream (weird with another person in the room by the way), get my rain jacket and lace up my sneakers. It’s time to run.

Like every race, the excitement from the pack mentality is exhilarating! We listen to the opening speech (the monologue from Independence Day) catch some marshmallows that were hurled from the platform and we are off. The rain is still falling but after half a mile I am HOT. So I am now committed to running with a jacket tied around my waste for 26 miles. I really had a difficult time finding my stride for a bit but after a few miles I am able to space out and get into my groove.

Mile 17 arrives and I hate seeing it. Mentally calculating how much further I have to go. If we stopped at 18 I could do this but the thought of 8 MORE miles almost breaks my brain. After 18 I start to fall apart. My body is getting increasingly painful, my feet are soaked and I am so very tired. But I slog on. Once I hit mile 20 I conceded to walking. My knee hurts when I run but my hip hurts when I walk, I find blood and realize I am bleeding on my stomach. That’s what happens after 20 miles of a shirt barely touching moles, they bleed. I have rocks in my shoes and I am an eyelash width away from tears at the thought of 6 more miles. I shuffled and despaired for 4 miles and saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I started to run more. I wasn’t going to make my goal of under 5 hours but I WOULD make it over the finish line under my own power, damn it. I can see the finish line now. I put on the biggest burst of speed I could muster, I had to pass that couple walking after all.

 

I did it! I completed 26.2 miles under my own will power. It took 5 hours and 37 minutes of shambling, shuffling, and determination to make it across that finish line. The endorphin dump and victorious feeling eased my aching joints and raw skin. Would I do it again? Oh gawd NO! Am I happy that I did it? Absolutely! And I plan on bragging about it forever (sorry not sorry).

The Feelings of Competing

This blog post is LONG overdue. As some of you know I had my very first bikini competition in May 2016. I did better than I ever dreamed I would do. My goal was to get up on stage and do it and if I placed that was just frosting on the cake. I entered two divisions; Novice Bikini and Open Bikini Class F. Novice is for those who have not competed or placed before. Open Bikini is open to anyone who would like to compete, F is my height division. I decided to do both divisions because I really wanted to get a tiara! But if you are trying to save money and enter only one division enter open. Open is really what counts, no one really touts a novice trophy in the big pond.

I came away from my show with two pieces of hardware; 2nd in Novice Bikini and 1st in Open!! Talk about blowing the goal out of the water! I was so excited! I worked my tail feathers off and it was apparent and I won!

To get up on that stage was one of the most exciting and scary things I have done. I was really doing it. I was really going up in front of a ton of people and then asking seven strangers to judge me on my looks and my sassy nonverbal skills.

All the girls I went up on stage with were really great. We were all so excited and back stage everyone was friendly even if we were all going to be gunning for the same trophy in just a few minutes. In a sport that can be perceived as a vanity sport I met a lot of really great people. I feel like I was adopted into a family of sorts. We cheer for each other and give encouragement to each other. It is a God send to have like-minded people around when “normal” people look at you like you have lost your marbles because you are weighing an apple.

After all that training finally came to fruition I was excited to have some time off. Unfortunately, I am a dummy and set my sites on a marathon later in the year. I shifted my training from lifting to running. I still lifted just not as aggressively. I was ready to be not as regimented with my time and my diet. I needed to take the time to bask in my victory and eat cake. It was actually very difficult to let the measure everything, track everything mentality go. I could see where eating disorders could arise out of this sport if you were not careful.

 My boobs came back. I put my body fat back on and the world turned warm once again. I am so happy that I did it. Some days there were tears and some days I was angry. I was so tired and ready to be done. But there is not one day that goes by that I regret it. If you are on the fence about competing I say do it! Nothing will make you stick to a diet and exercise goal quite like a competition. You don’t have to win trophies and tiara’s to be a bad ass.