NZIFBB Northland Champs

First show ever... SO MUCH FUN!!

Photo report!!!

We knew it would be a good one when the road trip started off with me freshly tanned,wearing just a lava lava...

Did not know I was a red wine fan until Friday evening.. funny what a few months with minimal sugar will do to you!

Friday night finishing touches- tan, toe nails, rice cakes with almond butter and red wine.

My amazing hair and make-up lady Elle putting my hair in place

Pre show with my man Kurt

 

Symmetry poses at the pre-judging

 With the other girls in my class during pre-judging

Lunch break - NANDOS!! MMMMM Greasy chicken!!!!!!!!

I won my class - Novice Figure tall, then the Overall figure class - two medals!!!

Photos with Hayley, winner of the overall bikini class

With the wonderful Michelle

Yay!!

With my Mum and Mum #2

My girls Shenae and Tash 

Krista, my number one tanner, road trip companion and best flat mate ever!!!

We finished off with a delicious BBQ, and apple crumble YUM!!

I had an awesome weekend, it was perfect to have my first show up in my home town Whangarei and to be able to share it with all my closest friends and wonderful family..
5 sleeps until the next show - bring on the cardio, the weight sessions, the de-carb and of course the RE-CARB... until next time

4 sleeps until Northland Champs!!

I can't believe I am getting on stage in FOUR SLEEPS!! It has been such a long journey! My first official day dieting and training was documented as the 19th of June! Here we are 122 days later, 10 + kg of fat loss and over 11%(??) body fat loss (Official numbers to come!!)

Plans are in place for the next few days! Posing, chicken eating, training, asparagus eating, water drinking, tanning, road-tripping, carb-saturating, more tanning and finally getting polished up (eyelashes, hair, make-up, nails) then STAGE TIME!!!  SO EXCITED!!!

Thankfully on Saturday night post-comp I can have a substantial meal so I am looking forward to a stress free catch up with the family and friends who are road-tripping up for the show, and eating measured, portioned un-weighed quantities of meat! (and maybe a smidgeon of Krista's famous gluten/dairy free apple crumble!)

I'm sure this meal will refuel my brain and body, and set me up for the coming week, back on the pre-comp wagon to prep for my second show!

Here's a wee pic from some posing I did with Michelle a couple of weeks ago - I have leaned out since then due to the diet I've been on - but don't have any more recent photos than this! I would be lying if I said this current diet is easy! Its not easy, its not exciting, but it is neccessary and it's only for two more days until I start to carb-up on friday..
               
                 Until then, I'm going with the motto...

3 weeks (with oats) til show time!

Wow I had a lot of views on my last post! I guess that's what you get when you post pictures of yourself in underwear on the internet..

So this is it, we are down to the nitty gritty last 3 and 4 weeks before my competitions! No room for stuff ups with diet, no missed gym sessions and LOTS and LOTS of posing and routine practise!

As a part of the Shape Class I am entering, we have to perform a 60 second routine to music. As I am definitely NOT a dancer, I enlisted some help from the amazing Johanna Mountfort. I had my first routine-learning session a couple of days ago - Jo has put together an awesome fun and cheeky routine, I can't wait to master it and get up on stage!

Jo, who has choreographed my routine

            Tash and I took ourselves for a road trip down to the Waikato IFBB show on Saturday night so we could pick up a few tips and see how these girls work the stage. 

This is a pic of the girls who entered the Novice Figure tall class - which I will be entering in 3 weeks time.

Michelle was also competing and looked stunning, this is with one of her clients Olya who competed in the bikini class. 

I made a fantastic discovery this week, I finally found somewhere that sells gluten free (non-contaminated) oats in NZ! The tricky thing about these oats is that the NZ and Australia/US licensing laws are different, so while they are labelled as GF in Australia or the States, they aren't allowed to be sold as "gluten free" in NZ.. Oats contain a different type of gluten to wheat, rye or barley and some people with celiac disease or gluten intolerance are ok to have them - I am one of those people!

I have been having rice porridge in the mornings which is ok if you can mix some fruit, yoghurt or maybe even some egg whites in there to bulk it up a bit.. but without the extras it looks a bit like porridgey-glue...
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 My morning porridge is my main carb source at the moment (3 weeks til show time, carbs are a rarity!) so I am VERY excited about being able to enjoy proper oats for breakfast! Here is the link for the oats, my fellow glutard sufferers. 

The plan for the week is to Stick To The Plan! Diet, cardio, weights, get enough sleep, practise, practise and practise.. Oh and maybe go to school from time to time. Until next time..

Progress time

I thought it must be about time to show the world (or at least the three people who read my blog ;) what we've achieved so far. We had a posing session last week and took a few photos.

I want some of those wee squat pants that make your bum look great, I might have to invest in some before my next photo session!

I'll post a front picture next time - when I'm not bloated from dinner!

Some sprinklings of thoughts for the week:

*A Chiroscience exam and Pathology exam on the same day is never as bad as it seems in your head.

* I love posing!

* I've cut down on my chewing gym consumption.. slightly.. (from a packet a day to cold turkey) and hallelujah - WAY less sore tummies and no more unexplained bloat!

*Keep your traps supple!! (trapezius muscle - the one that gets all knotted and sore when you are stressed) Life is better without headaches stemming from tight traps! The restriction from my traps was preventing me from being able to move my shoulder girdle properly while posing practise, so I've tried really hard this week to stretch and keep my shoulders pulled back and down, and the whole area feels better :)

* I made some Protein Balls last week, as little presents for the lovely people who help me out. I couldn't taste them but I received good reviews! Kurt said he ate all his in one go so they must have been ok!

This is the recipe:

1 cup oats
A handful of almonds (20-30)
2 TBS cocoa
2 1/2 scoops chocolate protein powder 
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla essence
5 chopped up dates
2-3 packets stevia
2-3 TBS Peanut butter
Dash of water - enough so that you can mix but don't make it sloppy
Coconut to roll in

Using a blender, combine the oats, almonds and protein powder together. Transfer this to a bowl and mix in all the other stuff until you have a consistency where you can roll them into little balls. Roll them in coconut and freeze/refrigerate them. One serving is probably about 4, depending on how big they are!

*We've been discussing possibly potentially maybe entering two competitions before this season ends! .. but it will depend how my body progresses in the next few weeks.

*To keep my body progressing we've altered my training plan. It now involves high reps of light weights in the morning with a spot of cardio, and high and low reps of heavy and light weights in the evening.. with a some more cardio! I will post more info on this next time!

*I am SO grateful to all the people who are helping with this journey, from Michelle who puts in a lot of effort each week with diet, training, posing plans (the list goes on!), to my friends who are always encouraging, to the Mad Butcher for occasionally selling cheap chicken.. ($12/kilo!!).. It is all appreciated!!

That's all for now folks.
               Until next time...

"The more you love your decisions, the less you need others to love them." 

Spring time, hobbits,birthdays and other snippets of fun

To celebrate the first day of Spring, I decided to take my afternoon cardio outdoors.

          I needed a hill. To walk up. The closest one being One Tree Hill so I headed on over.

I should have done this months ago! No one told me we had our own Hobbiton just down the road! Stone walls, wee stone huts, lambs, grass, flowers.. beautiful! I need to go here more often!

Earlier on that morning I'd had my weigh-in. The skin folds are slowly decreasing, body fat percent is still going down and I am noticing change in my body every week. Including my jeans becoming ridiculously baggy! Needing new ones, I discovered to my delight that I've dropped TWO jeans sizes since I started dieting 2-ish months ago... BOOM! Can't get much more proof than that!

My diet has been pretty consistent over the past few weeks - if it ain't broke why fix it huh!

I have around 300g of veges (cauli, beans, red onion, courgette) with lunch and the same with dinner - the high fibre in my diet keeps me from being hungry, the kumara at lunch keeps me going and the exercise and strictness of the diet (no extras allowed) keep me losing body fat! Plus I am learning to cook with herbs and spices to keep the flavours interesting. Win win win! My latest discovery is garam marsala - what is this and why did I buy it? I have no idea but it tasted good on my chicken tonight.

I had my first visit to Ali G who makes the posing bikinis. We've picked a fabric and a style, and have planned the blingy-sparkly bits. I'm so excited for how my bikini is going to look! It's a classic Tarn colour which makes me very happy.

Kurt just had his birthday so beforehand I spent a bit of time trying to think of fun non-food ideas that we could do. I ended up making the classic eggs bene for brekkie and timing my porridge cooking so we could eat at the same time, nawwww...

Eggs Benedict and Protein porridge for brekkie

We spent the morning at Waiwera hot pools which was lovely to relax (and soak out the sore muscles).

Dinner was at Gengy's... genius! Maybe not 100% romantic, but we caught up with his friends there, they were happy (all you can eat) I was happy (could choose exactly what I wanted to eat) Kurt was happy (it costs $1 to eat there on your birthday).. Lots of happy people!

Birthday's aren't complete without cake! I was rather impressed with my efforts this year, Pecan-pumpkin cupcakes with rum buttercream icing. (No I didn't even lick the spoon!!)

Fun stuff aside, today was a bit of a scary day as the most precious pup in the world, Oscar-Riley had emergency spinal surgery. The surgery went well and he should be back to his rascal ways in no time, so before I sign out for the night, here is a picture for you to admire.. xxx

Mid-Semester mayhem

Week eight somehow coincided with my school week eight - the last week before our mid-semester break. It's usually chocka-block with exams but we got off lightly this year.. 3 of our exams were held in week 7, so this week we just had to tackle a Pathology test, a Neuroscience exam and a Chiroscience assignment. All of which have been tackled successfully! 

We received our results for the exams held in week 7.. now I may have had a few vacant brain moments during my week 7 exams, so I was SUPER EXCITED when I got my results back yesterday with all my marks above 90% Yippee!! 

Michelle suggested that I slightly change my gym plan, to focus on a short, sharp weights session.. Big lifts, compound exercises only, and then to finish with 30 min cardio (up from 20min). So ideally I spend about 30 min on weights, 4x a week, but I work HARD!

The idea is that lifting heavier and involving more muscles and joints will 1) burn more calories during my session 2) make my muscles more metabolically active (this means I burn more calories at rest) 3) avoid over-training  which leads to muscle loss.

This new plan = AWESOME! My aim this week has been to do four compound exercises per workout, maxing out at 10-12 reps, performing four sets of each exercise.  Thank golly gosh for  bodybuilding.com as a resource. (Check it out if you haven't already.. loads of exercises and info!) For those that may not be familiar.. a compound exercise is one that requires movement of more than one joint, vs an isolation exercise that generally just works one muscle/joint.

This is my knee! Circled is the
bone fragment that was removed.

So! My favourite workout: Legs day! Without a doubt!
In December last year I had a much needed knee operation where I had a small piece of bone removed from the front of my tibia (shin). Since then I have been reluctant to squat or lunge too heavy.. but on Wednesday I cranked that barbell up to 50kg and smashed out a set of 12, happy as larry!!!

This is the heaviest I have squatted since I injured my knee.. so the heaviest in about 2 years!! Needless to say, my bod is feeling it...walking down the stairs HURTS (no knee pain though!!)

Squats = awesome bum

My weigh in this week is on Saturday morning which I was secretly happy about as this means One More Day to Smash It In The Gym before scales and pinch day!!


Happy friday people! Get under that barbell and crank out some squats if you haven't done so in a while.. or ever.. its so worth it!

“Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” 

― A.A. Milne

Stinky Saturday, So-so Sunday, Marvellous Monday

So I weighed in on Friday.

My body fat was down a tiny bit, not as much as we'd hoped. I will admit I was a Wee Bit Disappointed, especially after working so hard all week.

However, all is ok, I still have 8 weeks - lots can happen in 8 weeks!

Moving on..

I believe life is balanced - there will always be some good, some bad, some fantastic, some horrible.. and sometimes things are just steadily in the middle. So after an average weekend, I felt it was my time for some good.. and this came today in the form of winning a Portrait session for Kurt and I!

A bit like this? Maybe not :P

A while ago we'd decided we wanted to have some professional photos taken together, looking all buff pre/post comp and low and behold, up popped a competition for this exact prize!


I was sitting in pathology class today, refreshing my facebook, refreshing my facebook.. knowing that the winner(s) were to be announced today and when my name popped up I was so excited! (Due to distracted-excitedness I definitely am going to have to re-read a large portion of my notes on gastritis.. blergh)..

THANK-YOU to  Jennifer Johnston-Clark  for making my day/week (day/week in the future) so marvellous! I can't wait to train hard and get some awesome photos taken with my lovely man-friend!

The other exciting thing that needs a mention - My amazing trainer/mentor/friend Michelle competed this weekend down in Taupo at the INBA South Pacific Champs, she looked stunning and placed 3rd in her class, but also won the prize for the Best Overall Performance!

Here is a stage pic for the proof, Michelle in the pink bikini.

Michelle is a woman of many talents - personal trainer and massage therapist to name a couple.. check out Michelle's Facebook page here.

So that is all for tonight folks, I will leave you with this wisdom.. "If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will look lovely." - Roald Dahl (Genius)