The words of the past week has been HUNGER and TIRED. In fact I'm hungry now and I only ate an hour ago! These days I'm hungry about an hour after I eat, and usually after breakfast is my worst time so I have to distract myself and go walk the dog then go training. The burn of training seems to quash my appetite for a while but boy but the end of weight training, the protein shake and recovery stack sure tastes good.   left: Look Mum, I got heels on!  Still finding the relaxed posed the hardest. As you can see I still haven't got it quite right.

Then the second most hungriest time, not that I'm not hungry at other times, is after afternoon tea.  You know that witching hour before dinner time where you know you have to hold off till dinner. I try to keep myself busy and work on the computer but more than likely I'm in the kitchen preparing food so I can eat straight on time.

A couple of weeks ago I'd eat every 2.5 hours but this week I've brought it to about 2 hours and even then I'm counting down the millisecond and checking my watch when the time is up! I'm sure all the dieters know what I mean.  But with only 4 weeks to go, this is how I'm supposed to feel.  As the body gets more depleted it obviously wants to keep itself alive and so it gets hungry.  In the bad old days, when I didn't know much about contest prep, I did go hungry because I thought if I ate something it would make me hold on weight and eventually I did as my metabolism slowed. 

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This past week I feel I am actually going to get there and look ok on stage.  The diet and training seems to be finally falling into place and things are happening and I'm now 53.75.  Feels like its taken such a long time to get here so I hope it continues! When I first started posing a few weeks ago, I didn't really want to see myself in the mirror but now that I can see some lines and hardness on my body, I don't mind it as much.  I still mind Linni making me pose in front of the guys at the Environment mind you!  but now that I've been practicing and getting more comfy on heels and seeing some definition appearing I feel good and motivated to keep going.  So I've been posing every day, and the act of posing itself is quite a workout and it hardens up the muscles, so would recommend all athletes do at least 15min a day. left: trialing the new eliptical trainer from fitnessonline

Haven't written much about my diet but its probably no different to any other competitors' diet.  Plenty of egg whites, chicken (although still don't like it!) and fish.  I find all the white meat helps me lose weight fast so have stayed away from red meat, although I do have it probably once a week to keep up my iron levels. Carbs, well not too much of that. On my low cal days I'd have 150g sweet potato and higher cal days, I'd put in some sweet potato at lunch time and afternoon tea.  I have been playing around with the number of low cal days I'd have before putting in the high cal day just to trick the body to keep on losing fat.  I definitely feel much hungrier after my high cal day so I know my body's still burning away.

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The last week has basically been business as usual. Plenty of cardio, eating and training which has resulted in me loosing 1/2kg yay! so I'm now down to 54kg.  Be thankful for small mercies eh?!!  Everything is happening but oh so slowly. My body loses weight pretty much evenly so sometimes when I look at myself I think I'm not loosing anything but that's only because a little bit loses all over.  So got to keep that in mind so I don't get too frustrated with myself. 

In saying that there are some parts that are loosing wee bit faster rate than others. Really happy with how my legs and butt are coming down, back, chest, little bit of waist.  But still have trouble with my big arms, delts, general leanness in my waist but fingers crossed they'll catch up in the next couple of weeks - well they have to or else really!!

 

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There will be a a major turning point in every competing bodybuilders journey, or just regular people who want to lose weight for that matter, that when you look at yourself and you think ‘ no, this is not good enough'.  It could be not being able to button up your jeans, you've got flabby bits oozing out of your crop top or you're not loosing weight as fast as you want. This moment came to me on the ominous date of Wednesday 13 August at 3pm when I was getting my bikini fitted with Ali Gascoine. 

Lisa with Ali G

When I put on that bikini and saw how I looked I really wasn't happy with how I'm progressing and I know I should be looking a lot better than what I am.  I looked like an apple on a stick! lets make that a toffee apple which makes me sound nicer. Sure, I probably had a kg of water on me in the afternoon and looked smooth, and probably the fact I had my monthly ‘friend' visit didn't help my outlook either.  But you know what, I'm glad that I saw myself at my worst as that's really spurred me to shift up a gear and get even more focused on what I have to do.  I'm going to keep that horrible white bod snapshot of myself in my head so that when I'm feeling tired and don't want to do cardio, that picture will make me do it as I don't want to look like that on contest day!

So what else can I do? I went and looked back in my training diary to see what changes could be made to my eating/training plan. 

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