Progress Pictures... Finally!

I have not posted any progress pictures through the past 12 weeks because I have not had any pictures that were really "Progress Pictures", only ones that I've taken in the mornings while getting ready for work and they were in my bra and panties. I didn't really want to post those. But since I had my husband take some pictures this past Saturday I thought I'd go ahead and post the begining pictures and my 5 week out pictures. Now, keep in mind these photos were impromtu and I did not have any make up on in either set of pictures and the 5 week out pictures was at the tail end of having bronchitis! Also, my posing leaves a lot to be desired at this point....

June 04, 2012 - Begining

    

August 25, 2012 - 5 Weeks Out

 

I think I will try and get weekly progress pictures taken from here on out since my body will change each week and then each day on the last week.

Till next time...

Love to all & God bless

Elizabeth

                                                                                                                                                                                                               







Bouncing Back from Bronchitis...

Howdy! It's been a while since I've posted so I thought I'd give an update. It's hard to post often since I don't have access to the internet at home and I usually don't have time between work, gym, and cooking. I am now 4 1/2 weeks out from the competition and at 6 weeks out I was doing great and really making some good changes at the gym with my weight and had started to focus on the places that I really needed to fine tune like my shoulders and back. I was also on the line about how to progress my meal plan and trying to decide whether to stay with what I had or to move on to the carb cycling meal plan.
Then, last Saturday, August 17th, I started feeling bad. I felt like I had smoked a pack of cigarettes. It was deep in my lungs.. later that day I got a bad headache and that night I got the fever. The next day I was in bed all day then stayed home from work on Monday. This was not good. I needed to go to the gym. I tried to stay on my meal plan as much as possible, Sunday and Tuesday were the only days I was not straight on it. Tuesday I went to the doctor and was told I had bronchitis. Good thing was that I got some antibiotics and could tell I was improving within a day of having them in my system. I did not like being down, it hurt my motivation and confidence but I didn't fight it. I knew that if I wanted to get better as fast as my body could, I had to chill and rest. I definantely got caught up on the latest movies! This Means War with Resse Witherspoon is a good one! And for some reason I was craving some good westerns and watched Open Range which is another good one!
Saturday I made it to the gym even though I wasn't sure how much I'd be able to do. I decided to have my husband take some pictures of me to send to my trainer so she could point me in the right direction. Thank goodness she was able to respond quickly because I was going to the grocery store afterwards and needed to know what I needed to get to prepare for the week. Her response was to start the phase 3 carb cycling meal plan and phase 2 workouts. So I did a 20 minute circut to get my blood flowing and muscles pumped before I had my pictures taken and then I did 30 minutes on the eliptical climber at a light-moderate pace. It felt good to do something but it also hurt my lungs. I'm glad I didn't push it. I went to the grocery store and got all of my food for the new meal plan. I was excited and ready for something different. Before I got sick when I was looking at the carb cycling meal plan I really didn't want to try it because it looked like a lot of work... a lot more than I was already doing because it listed something different for each day. I'm glad I'm doing it now because it give me variety. It's a lot more work to prepare and mentally think about it because it's not only 7 different days of food but between 3 and 5 different meals a day. I am still supplementing with protein drinks.
I'm a day and a half into the new meal plan and workout and I have to say that I'm liking it and I'm pretty darn sore! Yesterday I had grapefruit in my breakfast and for lunch I had romaine lettuce, a tomato, 8 oz of white albacore tuna fish and sugar free balsamic vinaigrette dressing (YUM). It was very filling because you can have as much lettuce as you'd like and 8 oz of tuna is a lot. This was such a good meal all the way around!



Along with getting back on track after being sick and getting started on the new phases of my meal plan and workouts, I'm also getting prepared for the presentation details part of the competition. I ordered and received my competition tan that I will use. Well, I'm going to do a test run on it this coming Labor Day weekend to get a feel for how to do it and make sure the color and the product itself works okay on my skin. I've ordered a posing DVD to help guide and instruct me on my posing. I think the posing is one of the top most important things to have nailed down for a competition and I have to say that I am lacking on that part. I have watched several DVD's that have small posing parts but aren't real in depth and my husband and I have practiced one time in my heels at the gym. I really need to spend a lot of time on this from here on out so I'm anxious to get my new DVD this week. It has a lot of excellent reviews so I'm hopeful that it will hold up to them. I will get my husband to trim my hair about 2 weeks out, I have my days off from work approved, I'm growing my nails out so I don't have to get the acrylic or solar put on them, and I got my polygraph exam scheduled for the day before the show!

During all of this I have said that is a very difficult challenge but felt led by God to do this. I still feel the same way and very strongly of it. This IS the most difficult thing that I have ever worked on, attempted, or tried BUT knowing that it is something that God is leading me to do and having my husband's FULL support, I continue on. Last week when I was at home sick, my confidence was down and I questioned whether God had changed his plans for me in this. . . as I questioned that and read the bible trying to get closer to Him and to know Him better, He answered me by telling me that He doesn't change his plans. He doesn't change his mind and He wouldn't lead me where I can't go, He is ALWAYS with me! I realized that I CAN still do this, I will just have to really put my ALL into the next 4 1/2 weeks until September 29th and I can get up on that stage and celebrate and show off my hard work!

Temptations....

This is what I was met with when I walked into the kitchen at the office to open my can of tuna fish and cut up my apple.... It's a cruel world! Sonic breakfast tacos & Shipley's donuts and kolaches.

And all I walked away with was my tuna fish, apple........... and a fork! The Devil comes in all forms to try and tempt you and make you fall! Be ready & stay strong!

If I influence just one person...

I have heard people say before that if they are able to reach just one person or witness to one person out of all these people or if I am able to influence just one person out of all of this, it will be worth it and I used to think in response to that, "Really, just ONE person? Out of ALL of these people and out of all you've done, you would be happy just reaching one?" I never understood that until now. After having some people ask me questions about how to diet or exercise or tell me how much they believe I can do this OR better yet, if I have just one person tell me how they have started exercising, I truly feel that if I have reached ONE person, it's all been worth it! God is seeing me through this and he lifts me up when I am down. He uses the people around me to get through the ups and the downs. If he can use ME also to witness, influence or reach someone, to God be the glory!

Not for the Faint of Heart...

I have upped my cardio now which was little to start off with because I wanted to focus on gaining muscle. Now being 8 1/2 weeks out I have started to do more than three 30 min sessions a week. I have started running 3 miles outside in the evening and on the days I run 3 miles in the morning, I'll come home and run 2 miles in the evening. The mornings that my husband has to get up and go to the fire department are the mornings I ask him to help wake me up when he leaves so I can go run. This has been about a week and a half now, since my back has been feeling better. Let me just say that it is HOT and HUMID here is south east Texas! I don't think I've ever sweat this much!
So last night I was talking to my husband on the phone while he was at work and I was telling him that I feel like I've leaned out pretty good and put on some good muscle but that I feel like I need to build more muscle. I feel like I need a change in my work out whether it be more weight, more reps, sets, etc. He agreed and we talked about some of the things that I can do. He also told me that I'm going to have to start putting a lot more time into the gym, like more than and hour or hour and a half! SHEEESh! I was just telling him the other day that I like to get in there, pump it out and get out. So he said last night that it's not really going to be possible to do that anymore unless I split it up and do half in the morning and the other half in the evening. This is where it's really going to start getting tough on the physical side..... and the mental and emotional sides too! I also have GOT to start practicing my posing!!!! I fell very behind in that part of the training. I think a lot of it has to do with not having the space but I'm just going to have to deal with that and get to it!
That's it for now.... Happy Hump Day! 

Yep!

Minor Setback...

Okay, so while we were in the midst of moving and had our house packed and moved except for necessities, I'm at home alone and was using a wooden chair as a stool to reach up and open an air vent. Well.... I didn't have the chair directly under the air vent so while I'm reaching, I'm also leaning... and lost balance. The chair went forward and I went down, face-up on top of the chair. Fell square on the small of my back and knocked the wind out of me! I was able to wiggle my toes so that was a good sign and my sweet dog came and licked my face so I was okay .... right? For the next week I thought so. I had an area on the right side of the small of my back that was swollen but that was about it. No bruising or discoloring of my skin. I was continuing with my workouts at the gym and helped my husband move a lot of our things. All was okay as long as I didn't wear anything too tight around my waist. One week later I went to our house to clean it before we had the carpets cleaned. It was about 4 hours of shower scrubbing, sweeping, dusting, vacuuming, mopping, etc. That night it was everything I could do to just get showered and ready for bed. My lower back hurt so bad that I just wanted to lay down. So apparently I over-worked it or re-injured it but from then on I couldn't do any extensive exercise without suffering that night. After about 3 weeks, I was pretty frustrated! I decided to stay home from work and the gym until I was able to see what a doctor said about it.

At this point I was so frustrated and unmotivated, I was ready to throw in the towel on my training. I ate pizza the night before (my husband was working) and ate some candy. I was so on the fence that I was losing my balance. The day I stayed home from work I got an appointment with a sports chiropractor. I think my back hurt worse after I saw him! And I hadn't been to the gym in two days! I was literally in tears because I was frustrated and it was out of my control. HOWEVER, the chiropractor said I could still go to the gym but I needed to take Aleve, use a cold pack on the affected area and he showed me a stretch I needed to do every hour and I would be FINE.  We went directly to the pharmacy to get some Aleve and a cold pack and I tried my best to hold onto hope that it would get better as quick as the chiropractor said until after I had time to let the Aleve, stretches, and cold pack work. This was on a Weds and I had not gone to the gym the day before or this day and I still decided not to go to the gym until I saw how I felt on Monday. I DID re-direct my diet back to my training meal plan. One of these nights I was reading my current issue of Muscle & Fit Hers to try and get me re-motivated and I read an article on getting contest ready and one of the things it said was to start 12-14 weeks out because when it goes over that time frame you can lose motivation. That's when it clicked that maybe I started too early and that's why I had lost so much motivation. But I look back and see how everything had fallen into place so far I didn't think that was the case. I think that I needed to start that early to build my foundation but I did lose motivation because I started so early and therefore, I think that my little break to heal my back was much needed to get me going again.
That Saturday evening I decided to go run around the loop by my house. It felt SO good to sweat again! Granted it was only 4 days I didn't exercise but mentally it gave me a REVAMP that I needed! Both the break and the "Second Start". One of the things different was that I had always done my cardio inside the gym. This felt really good running outside on the road! The next morning I stopped at the gym on my way to church. I was running late, AS USUAL, so I only got 20 minutes in on the elliptical machine and only 157 calories burned but hey, it was better than putting it off! That evening I went for another run around the loop by the house. I felt GREAT! I was ready to get back to the weights!

Sky HIGH Cravings!

The past couple of weeks have been really busy for me between moving and going out of town. I have still been on track with my training and meal plan, except for one day. We were out of town for a day with some friends and my cravings were sky high! It didn't help that I wasn't able to get away from the temptation. But all I can do is move on from that day.
Yesterday, a Tuesday, no particular day... my sugar cravings were so bad that I was making the longest mental list of foods I want to devour as soon as my show is over!! I told my husband that it even got to the point that I was telling myself that I was done with this eating lifestyle! Wow! That's pretty bad and that's the first time I have ever had those thoughts! ... and I'm only 11 weeks out! Wait till I'm down to 2 and 3 weeks out! But, as great a supporter as my husband is, he worked with me through my training yesterday and pushed me to do more that I had to and stuck with me through cardio! He also reminded me that when athletes are in their off-seasons and aren't training for a competition, there is more lenience and "cheat" meals allowed to curb those cravings! I am so thankful for him! I could not do this without his support! 11 1/2 weeks out....

Here are some pictures of some of the things I was (am) craving yesterday & plan to devour after my show:

A bag of Cany Corn!

A LARGE glass of Chocolate Milk

Fresh glazed donuts!!

Hot pizza!

Quacamole!



Queso!!

 Oh my goodness!! I am going to be sick! Ha Ha! Not sure how much of this I will actually let myself eat but I will have a little of it all! But for now....

It's a constant motivation battle! That's part of the challenge! No more looking at the food I want & more looking at my goals! LET'S DO THIS!!