Journey to the Stage: April 13/15

Damn it chest and tris. Why you gotta be so hard? I think I'd even take a leg day over a chest day. 

Seriously, I find chest really hard. I did make one little tweak that seemed to make a big difference so at least I traded hard of one fashion for hard of another. Two NSV birds with one stone. 

Workout: Body Beast Build Chest and Tris

Post Workout Fuel: Beachbody Results and Recovery Formula with water, 1/2 c orange juice, banana. 

Food: We won't go there. I promise. I'm trying. Grrrr…… NO ONE warned me how hard cutting would be after getting to bulk.

But HEY…I'm getting a noticeable tricep. Thank you genetics for giving me arms that do not like to show off the work I put into this muscle group. NOT. 

NON SCALE VICTORIES!!!! 

Every so often there are these awesome things called non scale victories. They are these marvellous feel good deep inside moments because they have flip all to do with the scale. I got to experience THREE of these babies today. 

Two of them are tied together. First off, I do my work on a ball instead of a bench (we don't have a second bench, no room for a second bench, and I look at the plus side of the extra glute and core work).  I had been experience some neck pain and strain from the position required for incline presses and flys. This caused me to be distracted, scrunching up my neck, and overall sucking at those moves as a result. I need some mind picking of my fellow program followers and a few had some suggestions. One was to sit on the floor and lean back onto the ball. IT TOTALLY WORKED. I was really happy about that because I felt I was able to engage the chest muscles SO much better and didn't experience any neck strain (or the headache I was getting as a side effect). TOTAL WIN!!!

But wait…there is more!! Because of that I was able to go up in my weights on the chest presses. 20s!!! I was pressing the 20s. I'm pretty pumped about that because it wasn't all that long ago that I was putting down my 3 lb weights and had to choose between being defeated OR grabbing soup cans instead. Obviously I chose the soup cans or I wouldn't be doing this today. 

Third NSV was that freaking awesome feeling you get when you are lifting the same weight as the muscly bro dude in the video. HECK YA!!! It was the drop set in the tricep kickbacks. We were both using 8s. It may not sound like much but trust me!!! 

Additional Activity:

Family walk and geocaching. Have you ever geocached? SO MUCH FUN!! The kids love the trinkets we can trade. We always leave a guitar pick. It's our thang. 

Till next time.

Rock. Lift. Love. 

Journey to the Stage: The Beginning

Every day when you get up you are given an opportunity to make that most of that day. What we choose to all do varies so much. We all have dreams we want to accomplish but very few of us do anything in our regular to actually make those dreams come true.

For the last almost four years I have been working my butt off in the weight loss department and in January I decided that to take it up a notch that I wanted to work towards a figure competition. Talk about a lofty goal eh? From over 250 lbs to strutting in a sparkly bikini and heels? But here I am. Still working out steady with Body Beast and starting to get more and more dedicated in the nutrition area (where so much of our results actually exist).

I was doing some googling the other day and have a few actual competition dates in mind now. Which means that I have real dates looming over me. Dates that are roughly six months away. The local competition is in October as is the WBFF competition in Edmonton. So I suppose that is what I am shooting for.

I AM doing this. I AM preparing for competition. I AM a body builder. That in itself is pretty crazy to say. From Obese to Beast YO!!!

Every rep I take is working towards an overall goal of baring almost all. OH, not to mention that I am also preparing for a dragon boat race in June (but I'll toss that in another blog post).

SOOOOO all of this to say that I am going to be blogging a whole lot more. I need the utmost dedication and for me dedication comes with putting things out there. By sharing my daily exercise and activity, and macros and meal plans (URGH) I will stay that much closer to my path. #accountability

Each post won't be long. Most will just be to document what I did that day, how my nutrition was, any PRs I made. I'll maybe throw in some family stuff along the way. Some days there will be pix, some days no. Maybe I'll even do a vid here and there.

So in honour of this documentation I will begin today. Because there is no better time than the present.

Food: today SUCKED. You can check out how badly it sucked by finding me on MFP . It includes me packing away 1/2 a 1 lb chocolate bunny. See, this is EXACTLY why I need to document for accountability.

Work Out: Here is where I usually nine times out of ten kick ass. Today was Back and Bis. 50 minutes. And kick ass I did. I moved up to 20s on my reverse rows and 20s on the one arm rows. Also went up to the 20s on the seated bicep curls. Great workout overall.

Post Workout Fuel: Today was chocolate vegan Shakeology with chocolate almond milk and a banana.

What I Need To Work On: Not eating chocolate bunnies. Drinking more water. Drinking less coffee.

So there you have it.

I'll let you in on some more of my plans tomorrow, mwahahahaha. I'll tell ya what is the scoop on my Macros and what my Body Beast plan is.

Till next time,

Rock, Lift, and Love

Jessica