Got scissors and a T-shirt? Make a workout tank!

I've overloaded my husband with home improvement projects from Pinterest, so I needed to find something that was on a smaller scale to satisfy my need to destroy/create.

Luckily I came across this project which required nothing but a T-shirt and scissors.

I cut off the neck, the sleeves,and the bottom seam (so you have a long skinny piece).

I cut the armholes deeper and a V-shape into the back. I also cut the shirt a little shorter so it would hang loosely.

Cut the seams off of the long skinny piece and then stretch it until it's really long. 

Wrap the skinny piece around the narrow part of the back, knot at each end and voila! A new workout tanktop! Took ten minutes.

So comfy!

Leftover material made a lovely ascot for Ralph.

I know what I'm doing with all those unused T-shirts in the closet!

Protein Ice Cream

When it's 100+ degrees day after day, I crave something cold. And sweet. And chocolate.


But ice cream isn't really diet food.

Fortunately my trainer told me how to make protein ice cream.

Basic recipe:
* 1 scoop flavored protein powder
* 1 tbsp of water
* Flavor extract if you want (I used raspberry)
* Optional - scoop of plain Greek yogurt


Don't put too much water in! Mix it all up in a little bowl and stick it in the freezer until it's the right consistency.

Google "protein ice cream" and you'll find lots of recipes - some with cottage cheese, yogurt, fruit, ricotta cheese, etc.

Mmm a delicious cold summer treat that's not cheating!

Enjoy!

Protein Ice Cream!

There's a Reason It's Called "Contest Prep"

 I took a break after the last show and just did a maintenance diet. The upside was I got to eat a lot more food. The downside is that to put on muscle you have to put on weight...and that can be kind of tough to deal with mentally. Even being smaller than I've ever been, it's hard to see that number going back up on the scale. But I think the mental toughness and discipline is a huge part of why I enjoy competitions.

And now it's the start of round 3!

Along with discipline, advance planning is critical to achieving my goal. It's not like I have all this extra time during the day so I have to plan ahead. I've been working 10 hour days at work, plus doing more from home, and then somewhere in there I have to squish in a 1.5 hour commute, walking the dog, doing housework, and, oh yes, the whole prep thing: cardio, weights, and food.

"You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win." ~ Zig Ziglar

Each week my trainer sends me my diet and training plan. Depending on how my workweek is looking, I lay out which training session I'm going to do on which day. I know what exercises I'm going to do when I get to the gym, and I keep my gym bag packed with my journal and gloves.

My Fridge

But most important is the food. You'll hear that getting the body you want is 80% nutrition, 10% training, and 10% genetics. And in most cases (at least in my town) you can't just swing by a drive-thru on your way home to get 5 egg whites, green veggies, and sliced yams. I'm so busy at work I'm not really familiar with the concept of a lunch break...I'm eating very quickly and on the go pretty much all day long.

So I plan and I prep. I'll usually spend about 1.5 hours on Sunday cooking almost all of my proteins for the week, baking yams, slicing veggies, weighing (food scale is my friend), and packaging it all up so it's ready to go and I can just throw one of each into my cooler in the morning. You can see my lovely fridge to the left there.  I like the Gladware for my salads and to heat my fish (cold chicken I can do but cold fish is not going to happen). Ziploc baggies take up a lot less space so I use those for anything I can eat cold.

Breakfast in a Box

Speaking of mornings, breakfast is my favorite meal of the day...and technically I get two breakfasts! I like hot oatmeal and hot egg whites - often mixed together as a pancake - and that does take some time to cook. So to speed things up I keep all my breakfast supplies in one crate in the pantry, so all I need to grab are the egg whites from the fridge. Oatmeal, measuring cup, cinnamon, Pam spray, and a pill box with all my morning supplements - all ready to go. Once a week I refill my supplement box so I don't have to open 10 different bottles each morning. This simple crate saves me SO much time and stress - even when I'm not doing prep.

And with that, I think I'm going to go prep for sleep. :)

Clean Eating Crock Pot Stuffed Peppers

The best thing about a "maintenance diet" is getting creative with recipes (there's only so much you can do on a contest diet). Currently I'm eating a lot of ground turkey. I came across this recipe in Clean Eating and attempted it with the ingredients I had in my house. Pretty simple and it cooks up in the crock pot over 7 hours. I made it the night before so I could take it to work, but you can throw it together in the morning and have it ready when you come home.

The shredded zucchini adds a lot of volume to the meat and gets some extra vegetables in without anyone else noticing (**husband**). If you don't like corn (**husband**), leave it out. It's pretty easy to change things out to taste. I for one add a LOT of garlic to everything.

It makes enough filling for about 6 peppers but I could only fit 4 peppers in my crock pot. So I made some meatballs on the side.

Ingredients:
* 1 24 oz can of diced tomatoes
* 1.5 cups chopped yellow onion
* 3 cloves minced garlic
* 3 tsp chili powder
* 3 tsp ground cumin
* 1 tsp dried oregano
* garlic powder to taste
* 1 cup chopped fresh cilantro
* 1 lb ground lean turkey
* 2 cups grated zucchini
* 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
* 1 can yellow corn
* 1 can low sodium black beans
* 4-6 bell peppers, tops and seed removed and discarded

Directions!

1. In food processor/blender, blend tomatoes, 1/2 cup onion, 2 garlic cloves, 1 tsp chili powder, 1 tsp cumin, oregano, and 1/2 cilantro until smooth. Pour half of the mixture into the bottom of the crock pot. Place the empty peppers into the crock pot.

2. In a large bowl, mix turkey, 2 tsp chili powder, 2 tsp cumin, zucchini, 1 clove minced garlic, garlic powder to taste, remaining onion, corn, cilantro, beans until well combined.

3. Stuff the turkey mix into the peppers. I topped mine with some extra jalapeno. Pour remaining tomato mixture over the top. Cover and cook on low for 6-7 hours. If you want, sprinkle some cheese on top before serving.

Enjoy! 

Bonus: Each pepper fits nicely into a Glad twist container for easy portability.

Stair Remodel...Step by Step...Part 1

Every spring I get this urge to do some kind of home improvement project and this spring is no exception. Actually I started playing with Pinterest and I have a huge list of home improvement projects to do this go around.

Before

Our stairs have been carpeted since they moved in. This wasn't so bad at first, but the cats had apparently decided to use the steps as their own giant scratching posts (despite the many scratching posts I have for them),  leaving tears and hole in the carpet. I also grew very tired of dragging our big vacuum up and down the steps, using the little hose to vacuum though I could never seem to get the steps as clean as the rest of the floor.

I got a quote from a professional on replacing the carpet with hardwood. It was a few thousand dollars and I couldn't justify the expense.

Then came Pinterest...and I saw someone else had redone their stairs. So I started searching and found a great tutorial here and did a lot of research on stair parts.

What lies beneath - carpet padding,
tack strips, and a mess

And then I said to my husband, let's rip up the carpet. So we carefully pulled back one step (at the top of the stairs around the corner where no one would see) to see what we were dealing with.

Wasn't too bad...tack strips and carpet padding, but the actual ODF treads underneath are terrible and whoever cut them obviously wasn't too concerned with making the edges straight. We could do this.

So in our zeal we went to Lowe's and picked up oak "retro treads." They're called retro treads because they're cut thinner so you can place them on top of the existing ODF treads. Otherwise if you're doing the whole thick tread, you have to deal with removing all of the existing treads and attaching the new treads to the stringers directly, and that is a big pain. Not to mention a safety issue - stairs have to be uniformly high and wide for accident avoidance.

We then returned home to tear up all the carpet and tack strips on the bottom half of the stairs (and by "we" I mean my handy husband).  Those carpet staples are not fun to get up.

Nosing Sawed Off
 Subtreads are now flush with the risers

If you notice, the lovely particle board tread have rounded edges that the carpet fits over. To use the retrotreads, you have to have a flat edge. So we used a combination square to measure how much needed to be cut off, then screwed a 1x3 down a long the line to act as a guide for the circular saw. This part was incredibly messy and got sawdust everywhere, and set off the smoke alarms three times.

Tread Tool

Now that the subtreads are flush with the risers (the part of the step that's vertical), it was time to start cutting our retrotreads. Of course, not a single step is the same shape. Shocking. So the hubby found a "tread tool" online at a box store, which are the metal pieces you see in the photo. You attach those metal pieces to a 1x2 board, adjust them to the right angle for each step and tighten down. You can then pick it up in the middle, lay it down on your new tread, and mark your lines for cutting.

Note: Learn from our mistake and label the "front" of the tread tool (after the photo above I wrote it on the 1x2). Otherwise you can cut the new tread backwards. Fortunately because each step is a slightly different shape, the tread that was cut backwards fit another step. 

After this handy hubby cut each tread with the circular saw using a finishing blade and fit it into its new home. This did result in some minor wall damage and lots of swearing. (During this process, I was distracted by the ugly flat builder mirror in the powder room and decided to take it down which led to holes in the wall there and a new project which I will cover in another post).

All bottom treads are cut and fitted!
Now to take them back to the garage for staining.

But now the bottom ones are all cut and labeled by number so I can start staining! They're looking good! We're going to stain them dark to match all our dark cherry wood and install white risers.

Ralph is not a fan of demolition.

The landings will be the next challenge...

See the whole project:

Stair Remodel...Step by Step...Part 2 Treads and Risers

Stair Remodel...Step by Step...Part 3 The Landings

Chicken Soup for the Figure Soul

I competed in my second show! Yay! And I did better than my first show! Double yay!!!

I felt more confident this go-around, even though my hubby said he could see me shaking from the audience, which isn't a good thing when you're being judged. But oh well. Get on stage in a bikini and a Doritos-tan and try not to shake.

Speaking of tan, I had a much better one this time too. I used Aglow Tanning at the recommendation of my trainer and they did an amazing job with my hair, makeup, and tan. I felt like a princess...in a rhinestone bikini and 5" heels.

After this show, we hit up the Cheesecake Factory. I went straight to the pasta page on the menu. It was delicious, and yet after months of eating food with very little oil and no pasta, my stomach wasn't too happy with me. Or so I thought.

We went to Denny's the next morning. But as much as my mind wanted to eat, my tummy couldn't finish. By the time we got in the car I was aching all over. I was thinking it was maybe a result of dehydration (when you're used to 1+ gallons of water a day cutting that down for the show is rough). We had a two hour drive home, and it was a really good thing my hubby was driving, because I apparently fell asleep for most of it. And then when I got home (at 3pm in the afternoon) I went straight to bed. And stayed there for the next two days with a fever and chills and all that good stuff.

So though I had plans to eat every recipe I'd saved to Pinterest, all I ate for 2 days was chicken noodle soup. Holy sodium. I ended up at urgent care and diagnosed with a nasty virus that is going around (and has taken out everyone at work). I am just now feeling normal. It also made me WEAK. I'm just now getting back to lifting what I was before the show, and even then it's a struggle.

So that was my "cheat week." Lots of sleep and soup and now I'm back on a maintenance diet and lots of water and Vitamin C...and in about 4 weeks I'll be back on a contest prep plan.

Stay healthy, my friends!

Figuratively Speaking...

...it's showtime again!

Amazing, how slowly the time will pass when all you want is Peanut M&Ms...yet how quickly time passes when you have to get on stage in a bikini again! Eek!

Building a competitive physique takes time; lots of steady, small consistent improvements that pretty much go unnoticed on a day to day basis.

I'm freaking out about getting on stage again. But excited too - it's not the big unknown anymore.

That said, I was getting cold feet tonight. Not feeling ready. Feeling tired and thirsty and nervous.

Then Erin Stern (who is one of the top figure competitors in the world) posted her own before and after photos. It took her 8 years to get there; I shouldn't feel bad about not getting there in 3 months.

So I took some photos in my suit. (I'm not going to post them because I'm so pale I'll blind you. I definitely need like 3 coats of spray tan, as horrible as that whole tanning process is.) I then cropped them next to the photos from my last show.

Miracle of miracles....I'm no longer a "pear!" I am now in size small on the top AND the bottom! I'm down another ten lbs from the last show (I'm a little worried bc my suit bottoms are a little big now but better than too small...thank goodness for Bikini Bite). I can do shoulder presses with 30 lb dumbbells, which is double what I was doing in November. And I know the spray tan makes a world of difference too...so I can't wait to see these show pictures.

And I am so appreciative of all the support from my friends and family and my amazing trainer Patricia. :) Especially to my hubby who has tolerated the smell of fish cooking every week and my recent lack of time for housework. I owe him a trip to Texas Roadhouse.

So however this competition goes, I feel like I already won something. :)

And I intend to keep on going and keep on getting better- next show is in July! And I want a trophy! (But first I'll make time for some Peanut M&Ms).

One day, one decision at a time...go figure. :P