Three Weeks Out till Women's Physique Competition

Yes, I am still here! Busy, busy, busy! When I post this it will really be only two weeks from my competition, but I just got around to doing this. It's been a fast and furious few months in preparation of my first Women's Physique competition, I almost feel like it's my very first show, but it's not, I should be calm and collected, but the thought of this new REAL posing and a dance/posing routine to music is starting to make me a bit anxious. 

I spend as much time as possible practicing my posing, videoing it and critiquing myself. There is always room for improvement. Luckily I have some awesome people nudging me along and checking in now and again. It's exciting that my friend Sakura Barrientos and I will be sharing a room the night before. We have our tans scheduled together and we can talk and laugh all evening long. Usually I am all by myself, posting pictures on Facebook of my cheesecake that I am eating, which drives all the other competitors absolutely crazy! I get lean, super lean and that's my "secret" to filling out the night before. That  along with a huge baked potato and steak. Then I eat the same thing in the morning. The fun is just about to begin.....

I have maintained my weight higher than usual on purpose. In these pictures I am 124 pounds, but as I write this I am at 122 and have been for almost a week. I will drop only a little bit more and hopefully, will look perfect once I dehydrate. That will make the skin tight and hard looking, it already looks thin. In fact, Wednesday night as I sat attempting to breathe (after Roy had me doing squats with a whopping 162 1/2 pounds!!!!), he looked at me and said "Your skin on your arms and chest is paper thin" yes, it looks white, translucent, delicate and....thin now. The only part left is the abs and upper hip area a bit, but it will go shortly.

I have not curtailed my lifting, at least not intentionally. No weights have been lowered, but Thursday at 5:00 a.m. as I trained hamstrings and lower back on my own, I felt so fatigued, that at times I wanted to crumple to the ground and just cry.

Then I thought of my dad who has been struggling with real fatigue, brought on by his Acute Myeloid Leukemia (bone marrow cancer). His will not go away when he rests or eats a cheeseburger, mine will. It made me cry a bit thinking how selfish I was being and reminded myself that I hate whiners. I pushed on and finished my training, at the dictated reps and weights. I know I was making a lot of noise as I performed set after set of back extensions on the Glute Ham Raise, while holding a 50 pound dumbbell to my chest, people were looking, but I didn't care, I never do.

I have been training two, and sometimes (often) three times a day. I don't do a long bout of cardio, the 20 minutes on the stairmill or treadmill has turned to 30 minutes. Then the stairs at work, usually 3 times a week, but not for long, I don't have the energy to run up and down, and jump rope for more than 20 minutes.

So any free time I have is spent grocery shopping, preparing food, eating or sleeping. That's about it. 

And there is the lifting, the part I love, every single day, sometimes twice a day just to fit it all in. My shoulder training has changed a bit and I have added in cables to round everything out. So on Tuesdays I have to go back to the gym after work to finish up shoulders. Then on Fridays after I train shoulders with Roy, I eat and make sure I have fuel, then it's back into Gold's to finish on my own. It's not a good idea to train for a long extended period of time, just like fasted cardio - you are just making your muscle eat itself all up!

My suit bottoms should be back to me Saturday, so Sunday I have to take some video of myself posing in my suit. It does make a difference and I haven't had it this whole time, so I am only guessing how I will look. I sent it back to Celeste Harsa of Suits by Celeste who made my suit for me because....my glutes have changed. They have gotten bigger (this is a good thing) and more muscular, so when I lost bodyfat they pretty much stayed bigger than usual. My suit did not care for that, it wanted to be a permanent wedgie and those are forbidden in the rules! The funny thing is, most of the suits look like wedgies anyway!

So I have been wearing some "boyshort" undies when I pose. It doesn't seem to bother anyone and allows me to see my body better.

I am also very fortunate to belong to a gym where so many people support me. It's almost all men, there are very few gals at the gym (who lift) first thing in the morning. But they're all encouraging, tell me how great I look, offer advice and are generally fun guys to be around. 

Below is a video of my posing, if you are an email subscriber you will need to click on the blog link at the top to go directly to the blog to view this (that means you dad!)