The Road to my First NPC Bikini Show – Week 3

Hello again all you lovely people! As of this week I am only 2.5 weeks out from my first show! The time is quickly approaching and will be here before I know it! There are so many reasons why I am excited for this day to get here with one of them being the freedom to devour anything I want that night! I am thinking a slice of cake from the Cake Bake Lady, a BIG, JUICY burger, fries and a sugar rimmed margarita! A girl can dream right?? My cravings have been unreal this past week and let me tell you, I am ready to go back to my normal eating. I have learned a lot from this process but tracking every single thing you eat does eventually get old and tiring.

On a more positive note, this journey has helped me believe in myself and has shown me that I can accomplish goals that I though were unachievable at certain points. This week I woke up feeling like a lean machine ready to conquer the next two and a half weeks. I also hope and pray that after this competition new doors might open up for me and that my dream of becoming a sponsored athlete and ambassador will be one step closer to becoming a reality.

Diet

So as I talked about before, I decided to try out carb cycling for the first time. Since I have never done it before and did not really have anyone to give me advice on how I set it up I started second guessing myself and my calculations. The bloating didn’t go away and it was psychologically screwing with me and my image of how I should be looking so close to the show date. I was doing everything I knew of to make this method work for me but it just wasn’t good enough. On top of that the high carb days were super and I loved every single carb filled meal I ate, but the low days were another story. Eating such low amount of carbs was very hard on my body and mind. I was exhausted and lifeless by the end of the night and my cravings were unreal. I think I ate so many peanuts on those days as my fat source just to satisfy a quarter of the cravings. I also started having joint pains in my knees and I am not sure if this is due to my diet change or the increase of cardio that I have implemented into my schedule.

After assessing how this dieting method made me feel over the past week and a half, I decided on Thursday to just quit it and go back to eating the way I felt more comfortable with. I slashed my carbs to a moderate level, kept my protein high, and my fat practically the same it was two weeks previous. My body felt alright on the one moderate day I had so I decided to run with that and just adjust it accordingly. My macro count after changing it this past Thurday looks like this.

• Calories: 1,450
  • Protein: 165 g
  • Carbs: 90 g
  • Fat: 48 g
  • Fiber: 25 g

Today is Tuesday, the 6th and I have been using this macro count for the past 5 days. I have been eating 5 meals a day and been aiming at consume 30 – 35 g of protein per meal. I have also notice an increase in my energy levels and I lost all my bloating. Since my calories are so low I decided to do a refeed yesterday, AKA Labor Day. I woke up today feeling wonderful, full of energy, and happy. You will see below in my progress pics how well my body has taken to these small changes.

I expect these next couple weeks to be mentally and physically tough. Knowing how close I am finishing this prep is helping with my cravings, moments of doubt, and not so positive thoughts!

Workouts

Last weeks workouts went really well and I was really happy about that. My energy levels were high enough to complete even my leg day which was torture. Too many super and tri sets in that one, what was I thinking? I do think that my Protein French Toast Recipe is what helped me through it. Every time I squatted I just thought of the gooey, warm syrup covered bread I just ate #prepproblems

Here was how I formatted my past week.

• Monday: Back/ Abs  HIGH
• Tuesday: Cardio (Kayaked 10 miles and hiked 3 miles) LOW
• Wednesday: Legs and obliques  HIGH
• Thursday: Fasted Cardio (-Ditched my carb cycle, just was not feeling it-)
• Friday: Shoulders/ Abs / 30 min Cardio
• Saturday: Fasted Cardio
• Sunday: OFF / REST (yesyesyes)
  

  Just hanging around at Turkey Run State Park!

Towards the beginning of my prep I mentioned that balancing out my quads and hamstrings was one of my main goals and focuses while trying to sculpt

my body. I also focused on trying to create a lean and tight core while developing my obliques. I can finally say that I am feeling close to stage ready and all my hard work to fix these problem areas is finally working! #neverstop To even out my legs I focused most of my leg workouts on my glutes and hammies as well as adding in a second leg/glute/ or hammy workout each week! Core wise I did a lot of lower back exercises on back day, worked on my plank, and added in weighted abs 1-2x a week. Lots of weighted oblique side crunches have been done these last couple months.

Posing Practice

Wednesday I met up with my posing coach Stephanie again. She gave me some awesome feedback about my routine. Once I “mastered” my poses (Front, Back, Transitions) for the morning judging, she then told me that I needed a 45-60 second routine for the night show! Pretty much this is how things go between the prejudging and night show.

Prejudging is early in the morning. For this portion of the show you wait until your class is called. Depending on how large your class is they will split you up into groups. When you are finally called out, you all walk out in a line and go straight into a front pose on in position in front of the judges. They then will call for the back pose. This is when you transition from front to back. Once you assume back pose, you will look back at the judges, give them a wink, and then move your hair to the side. They will then call to face the front. You will strike front pose again and lastly you will curtsy off the stage side. This whole time it is very important to keep an upright posture and to always be looking at the judges and smiling. They will then have call outs and make you repeat the circle from front to back until they decide places. So by the end of the morning show you will know what place you are in! Finally, the hard part will be over.

The night show is mainly for your friends and family to come, watch, and support you! This is when you perform your solo performance. Moving only to music and no queues, you will walk straight out, face towards the judges then strike a pose. Then you will walk towards the judges and then strike your front pose into transition, go into back and then transition, and then front pose again. Once you are done you will curtsy off the stage smiling and keeping eye contact the whole time.

As of today, it seems to me that things are going really well! I am going to not focus on the scale but focus on the important things such as getting rest, drinking enough water, eating properly, and putting as much effort into each workout that I do this week!

Goals for the week:

• Register for show (promise I will get this done this week)
• Get my hair done
• Whiten teeth
• Figure out the make-up situation and buy some for my ridiculously dark tan I will have
• Keep practicing my posing

Next time I talk to you I will be less than a week out from the beginning of peak week! How surreal? Well I am about to hit the hay. Goodnight friends!