Lazyday?!

The last few days have been a real drag for me. I'm not sick or anything, but I just can't get myself out of bed and absolutely nothing seems to get done around here. Basically I need to clean the entire house at this point. But even though I was off work the last two days in a row, all that got done was one load of laundry and I vacuumed the living room o.O Even my gym days were bad.  After I had my regular rest day on Saturday I went in full force on Sunday. And it felt amazing. But Monday and then yesterday, forget it. Might as well not have gone to the gym at all. That's how weak my workouts were. :( I just cannot seem to get myself to do anything.
But I want to stop that today. Since its's my last day off I actually want to accomplish something.So I tried to find a few motivators. Let's see if those work ;)  

 Dear Weak [Name],

I get it. You're dying for a piece of candy. Maybe it's not the candy (or the pastries, or whatever), maybe you're bored, you're hungry, you're tired of thinking about the candy all day and you're just saying screw it. One bite, one piece, one serving/helping, and then I'm done, I'll go to the gym, I'll go home for the night, I'm still on track. 

You're bored. 

This is absolutely the stupidest reason imaginable to throw yourself off track, feel disappointed in yourself and your lack of self-control, give yourself a belly you'll have to work off for four days, screw up the carb deficit that I work hard every single day to create, feel cranky, avoid plans with friends or your boyfriend, dread the weekend, add stress to your already stressful life, etc. Remember, you never get bored of accidentally discovering how slim you are, whether it's in the fitting room, when lining up progress pictures, in the locker room at the gym, when you catch a glimpse of yourself in a window as you walk down the street, when someone calls you "slim" or "toned" or "fit". THOSE THINGS never get boring. Focus on how fun and exciting that part of the process is and ignore the rest. For my sake. 

You're hungry. 

Go drink four glasses of water right now. Back? OK. Are you still hungry? If so, email someone you can confide in. Or eat a bar, or go microwave some broccoli. You know that will fill you up and do good things for your body and your goals. You don't want the broccoli? Then you're not hungry. 

You're saying "Screw it." 

If you want to quit this journey, decide to quit and then you can eat pizza and drink beer every night. You can go out with your friends and eat hors d'oeuvres all night long. You won't feel good, but at least you'll be free. 

So ... is it the freedom that you really want? No. You're having a momentary lapse. Well, think about me. The one who batch cooks on Sunday night, the one with abs, the one who's going to stand up on stage in front of 10,000 people and turn her back and stick out her butt. I'm the one who feels awesome in her clothes, the one who prances around the gym like she owns the place, the one who drags herself out of bed to do fasting cardio, the one who inspires her family, and friends. Think about what you're doing to ME, Strong [Name], when you let a momentary "oh f*ck it" overtake and overcome all of the hard work I put in every single day, every time I go to a bar and wave off the waiter when he asks what I want to drink, every time I skillfully assemble a healthy, trap-free meal at a restaurant while everyone else orders fries and a third (or fourth ...) beer or regular Coke.

And you know very well there's no such thing as "Just One Bite."

Every single time you tell yourself you can handle having one taste of something, you're wrong. Is it because you're literally powerless in the face of sugar, is your insulin really swinging that hard that you cannot resist? You know that you have a ton of self control. EVEN YOU (I obviously do). This isn't about saying no; by the time you've had the first bite of sugar, you've given UP on saying no. You're saying "yes," and you will continue to do so until it's time to go home or there is no more freaking candy left in the bowl (did you REALLY want a Mounds yesterday? They're VILE!) So don't ever let yourself cross over into saying "yes" to junk. Say "NO"!! 

A message from me to you. 

I love you (even though you're the weak version of me) because we're the same person. You have a ton to be proud of and you should love the process and love how far you've come. You can go even farther, and you'll be around less and less as time passes, you won't have to read this letter as often. You are strong inside, this is only temporary, and it will pass. Now go get a cup of water and get back to kicking ass. 

Love,

Strong [Name]

P.S. I'll be back tomorrow morning when you wake up.

And last buy not least  picture of my biggest motivator, Amanda Latona. Because she is simply perfect:

I.HATE.WEEKENDS!!!

Usually the weekend is supposed to be the best time of the week. The time you don't have to go to work and can do all the good stuff. Well not so much if you are a server for a living. In that case the weekend is when we work the most and make the most money. 

What does that have to do with me becoming a bikini competitor?! 

Well a) , my gym is only open from 7 to 9 on weekends and usually that's when I work. So I tried to just make the weekend my rest days.

 But here is my bigger problem. I am a stress eater. And my weekends are stressful :-/  And my last weekend showed me how much I have to work on my eating habits. UGH!

Friday night started off pretty good. The hubby <3 wanted Split Pea Soup for a while now and I love to cook. So I found a nice recipe and since I was off Friday night  I decided to go ahead and cook it. Bad Idea I tell you! I was cooking for about 4!!! hours. And because I wanted to do it right i got a ham hock and let me tell you, preparing a ham hock is the most disgusting thing in the world. EW! So gross!  After 4 hours everything looked and smelled fantastic though. But it tasted like old ass. I was soo pissed! So pissed in fact that I drove to Mc Donald's ( just by the way I haven't been there since last December) and got myself a quarter pounder. Bad Idea. After I was finished I looked at the bottom of the box and that sucker has a whopping 510 calories. SERIOUSLY? Its just some meat and cheese and a bun. Never again I tell ya.

Saturday I started off good again. I was at work for my first shift. Did not cave in, came home in my break and made Green Beans, Cauliflower Mash and Turkey Meatloaf. Then I went to back to work. 

Now the problem with working at a restaurant is that there is always a lot of food around you. And the problem with working at Cracker Barrel is that there is always a lot of fatty, greasy but oh so tasty food around you. So of course I caved in and got myself this lovely dish:

And yeah it was good but SO NOT worth it.

On Sunday we were super busy because it was Fathers Day. And because it was Fathers Day they had breakfast (Scrambled Eggs, Bacon and Sausage) and lunch (Tacos) for us in the break room. All super yummy but again. Not clean.  I was so mad at myself. But I guess at least I learned something from last weekend: to pack myself some food to bring to work. 

Okay just wanted to get that off my chest. And now it's back to eating clean . Wish me luck ;)

Halftime through Week 1

I'm almost done with my first week and I have to say: This really is not as easy as I was hoping for it to be.
Honestly,I knew it wouldn't be easy. I mean come on, nobody changes their entire lifestyle over night without any struggles. But man I was hoping I'd be the exception :-D
The first day really was the worst.
I usually eat really bad. Really, really bad. So it's just a habit to pick up a candy bar here and there. And to stop myself from doing that: NOT FUN!
But even halfway through my first week I can tell that it gets easier by the day. I was struggling during the first couple of days though.
Then I decided to just plan ahead. And what can I say, it really does help. It's not like I plan out every single meal for each and every day, just planning out my options. Yesterday for example I made a whole weeks worth of Breakfast Egg Muffins (recipe here ) and Jamie Easons AMAZING Turkey Meatloaf Muffins . It's just so much easier to just grab those in the morning instead of having to cook up some egg whites or Oatmeal. Especially if you are like me and really do not like to get up at all ;)
Also I made some of Jamie Easons protein bars (recipe here ). Just in case I cave in. This way I don't completely ruin my diet.
Workout wise I did not have any problems yet. If you ignore the fact that I can't lift my arms today due to overdoing it at the gym yesterday. But what can I say, I'm just learning how to do it.
To not max myself out I work out a different body par each day. Say I start out doing my legs. Next day its abs and back. Next day arms, shoulders and chest. And on day four I only do cardio. Which would be today (ugh, hate cardio...). And tomorrow will be my rest day. And then I will start the whole thing over again.
Not sure if that's the best way to do it. But that's how I'm going to do it for now.
Alright that's just a little progress report. I hope everyone has a nice weekend and
Auf Wiedersehen :)

Day 1

Okay, so here is my first set of pictures plus some measurements. Unfortunately I do not have a scale at this time. But I decided not to worry about my weight too much anyway. Since I'll try to mostly prioritize what I look and feel like. So this is me in week 1:

So far nothing special to see. I've been working out five days at the gym last week. But I didn't set up a workout plan so I was mostly playing around, getting familiar with the equipment and to see how much I can lift easily and most importantly what I struggle with. That would be my cardio ( ugh I HATE cardio ) and anything abs related. 

Here are a few measurements:

Arms: 10"

Chest: 33"

Waist: 31"

Hips: 36"

Thighs: 19"

Food wise I am mostly trying to get rid of my sweet cravings right now. I already got rid of any kind of junk food and stocked up on clean, healthy  foods. I read that women do best on a lower Carb diet in general so I am going to replace most of my Carbs with Protein to support muscle growth.

And this is my motivation to go to the gym tonight and catch up on some Cardio:

That's it for today. 

Auf Wiedersehen :)

Intro

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a picture of Jamie Eason while I spent my free time as usual on Facebook. For those of you who don't know who that is, here you go:

To me her body is absolute perfection.

I researched a bit more about her and somehow I ended up on a Bikini Competition site. And that's when it happened. I knew as soon as I saw those lovely ladies that that's exactly what I want to do.

So here is my goal. By this time next year, I wanna look like this:

 

And of course I want to compete.  My only problem: I do not have the money for neither a Personal Trainer nor a Nutritionist. Means I will have to figure it all out by myself. I've been researching a lot about what to eat and how to train and I found an amazing program on Bodybuilder.com . It's actually kind of funny because it turns out to be Jamie Easons Live Fit Trainer. But I'm not going to exactly live by that trainer. I decided to personalize it and do my own thing. I'm probably gonna do a lot of mistakes along the way but Oh Well! That's life. :)

To keep track of how I'm doing I decided to create this blog. I will talk about the foods I'm eating, my workouts, and once a week I will upload a picture with my measurements. Have fun reading and following and of course I more than welcome any suggestions and tips.