Lean Bodies - Neely Tartaglia

As expected, it was a big show. LOTS of Figure competitors. There were 24 in my class, and I took 11th. A lot of people have asked if I’m happy with that placing. I don’t know about ‘happy’ but I guess the best way to put it would be content. I wish I could have placed higher, but then again, it always could have been worse. I’ve been waiting to get a look at the scoresheets again to see the point differences. See how far off of the top ten I was.

So Friday was quite the chaotic day. I had a shoot from 9-11am. Video and stills. Those shoots aren’t all that easy (being that it’s a lot of flexing the entire time). And we ended up being outside the entire time. Where it was super hot. And I had my water cut. Ugh. I ended up sweating like crazy, and it was interesting trying to keep from sweating off my tan. That didn’t work out all too well. So after that, I had to do some serious tan repair.

I got back to the room, laid back for about an hour or so, then got to putting on another coat of tan. I was getting nice and dark with that coat, and when I was nearly done with it, all of a sudden I started to turn green. Not like the incredible hulk or anything. But like when a penny gets really old and gets that green tinge to it. At that point, the Figure competitor’s meeting was only about an hour or so away. So hopping in the shower and starting over was pretty well out of the question. I started to panic. I kept going back and forth from the bathroom light to the sunlight, trying to figure out how bad it really was and what it was going to look like in the stage lights.

I got down to check in and do the competitor’s meeting. And when Noel and Ali saw my tan, the look on their faces told me that I was in trouble. There was about an hour and a half gap between the meeting and when I’d be going on stage, which still didn’t give me enough time to wash it all off and start over. I was freaking out. I went back up to my room and cried for a bit. Thinking, “great, another national show down the tubes because my tan is screwed.”

Erik was texting me, telling me that I needed to do something. The girls had told him how bad I looked I guess. I was mortified. He told me that Ali had some tan that goes on pretty quick and I needed to suck it up and get down there to let her put a coat of that over what I had. So Ali to the rescue, we went in one of the bathrooms backstage and I stripped down to let her put a good coat of her tan on me and hope that it would help. Which it did. But I was still a little green. (btw Ali, thank you again).

So on to the point where I was nearly on stage for the one piece round. The expediters run through everyone with their model turns to make sure you’re doing them right. And when the head expediter got to me, he asked “what kind of tan do you have on?” I nearly burst into tears right there. He called for one of the Protan girls from the pump up room to come out and have a look at me and see if she could fix me in time.

The way the rounds were running, we went out in smaller groups (groups of 8 in my class) and did quarter turns, then back off stage. Once everyone went through that, we went up individually to do model turns, then everyone would be up there as a whole to do call outs. So I went out for the initial quarter turns with my green tan, then as soon as I stepped off from that, I had to haul butt back to the pump room to have the Protan gals slap on a coat of quick bronze. They pulled me out of the model turns from where I was supposed to be so I could do that. As soon as she was done with me, I had to haul butt back to the side of the stage (not easy to do in heels either) and I made it back just in time to be the last one to go up and do model turns in my class. It seriously took every ounce of will power I had to try and keep my composure and not walk on stage crying. It was so humiliating to have the head guy backstage bascially tell me that I shouldn’t be on stage looking like that.

So in the call outs for the one piece, I was in the third call out. Disappointing, sure. But at least I was moved to the center of that call out, meaning that I was teetering on the edge of the top ten. And with how I was feeling at that point with all of the chaos with my tan, I was kinda surprised to be placed there.

Somehow I made it through that round keeping a smile on my face. And as soon as I got backstage again, I started to lose it. I packed up my things as quick as I could and took off for my hotel room. I sat in the shower, washing off the mess of different tans, and just crying for a while. At these shows, how you look in that first round pretty well determines where you’ll be in the next round. There’s entirely too many girls for them to completely re-judge everyone in the two piece round.

That night I was up until around 3am, starting from scratch on a new tan. And just hoping that it didn’t turn green again. Because if it did, I had no other tanning supplies with me to start over once more with a different brand.

Needless to say, when I got up in the morning and saw that I hadn’t turned funny colors during the couple of hours of sleep I got, I was ecstatic. I just had to hope that maybe I could be one of the few that the judges look at in the second round and say, “why did we place her there? She needs to be moved up.”

And I did get moved up. Woohoo! I was the last one called in for the second call out. They had called out the first four in that grouping, then there was this long pause. And when they said 106, it took me a couple of seconds to register that, hey! that’s me! lol. I was kept on the end during those comparisons, so I knew I was still sitting somewhere at the bottom of the top ten. But just the fact that I did get moved up made me feel a lot better. I really wanted to make the top ten.

After the two piece round, I had hoped to catch a nap. No such luck. I made some phone calls, ate a little food, then I was nice and sleepy, all comfy with my feet propped up, grabbed my phone to set an alarm, and realized I’d only have about 20 minutes to cat nap before I’d need to be up retouching my hair and makeup and checking my tan before heading back down for the next competitor’s meeting. So I said screw it and got up to get going on things again.

Finals rounds were fairly uneventful. They run through Figure so fast at finals and if you’re not in the top 5, then you’re not going to be on stage much. Pretty much just a couple of times of walking across the stage with a quick wave in the middle. I knew I hadn’t made top 5, so I went ahead and indulged in some junk food backstage lol.

After I was done with my rounds at finals, I ran back up to the room to change into something a little more presentable than sweats, and headed back downstairs to the hotel bar to finally be able to meet a bunch of people from the LBF board. I’d been able to meet a few people throughout breaks in the show, but I didn’t have a whole lot of spare time to really be social. So it was great to be able to finally kick back (have a drink!) and talk to a lot of people in person that I’ve only ever known online.

I had an absolute blast Saturday night with everyone. I drank too much, that’s for sure (I think a lot of us did! lol). Thanks to everyone that was able to make it out to the show. The support you all have given those of us competing has been wonderful. And that’s probably the loudest cheering section I’ve ever had at a show!

And to Ali, Noel, Kelley, and Laura… it was fabulous to meet you guys! SOOO nice to have some people I know to hang out and talk with backstage. You guys have been incredible support for me. And if you guys hadn’t have been there during all of the tanning crisis, I don’t know what I would have done! Love you guys

And to Erik, I’m so glad I finally got to meet you! I have you to thank for making me the ‘best Neely yet.’ Thanks for trying to keep me calm and rational over the weekend

I leave for the airport in less than two hours.

I spent most of the day yesterday packing. It’s amazing how much stuff I need to take for this. I sure hope I’ve got everything. I woke up a couple times last night thinking of other things I needed to remember to throw in a bag when I got up. Add to that the 3 or 4 times I got up to pee.. I didn’t sleep very solid. At least that should mean I’ll be tired early tonight.

I got my base coat of tan done last night. Three light coats of Protan. I’m nicely orange/brown right now. It’ll be fun to see the looks I get sitting around at the airport. That’s getting rinsed tonight when I take my final shower for a couple of days. Gotta love how we all start to stink by the end of a two day show lol. I’ve got my perfume packed though so I won’t stink quite as much

I’ve been filling out over the last couple of days. Full, but wet. Now with some tan on, I’m seeing more of what I’ll be looking like on stage. It’s just waiting for when I get to strip off some of this water now.

This morning, it’s all a little surreal to me. The show starts tomorrow. Yet it still doesn’t seem like it’s that close. Once I get to the hotel, get to see all the other insanely tan people wandering around, I think it’ll really set in that this is it. It’s show time.

Chicago, here I come

It’s Tuesday evening… A day and a half before I leave for Chicago… 3 days from now I’ll be going through my first judging round. Wow this snuck up on me quick.

The last couple of days have been…interesting. I’m not quite sure how to describe it better lol.
Training and cardio sessions went well. Although I haven’t liked the fact that I’ve needed to pee like 10 minutes into all of my sessions and having to fight the urge until I was through with my workouts. Yeah, me and the potty have become fast friends. It’s a darn good thing I’m not out on the road this week. I’d have to pull over at every large bush on the side of the road lol.

Emotions have been up and down and up and down and there were a few loop-de-loops thrown in for good measure too. Being bloated as all heck toys with my head. But I know it will come off in a couple of days. It’s just a matter of continually beating that into my own head as I look in the mirror and see how wet my muscles look. Then there’s the flights and trying to make sure that nothing gets lost. This whole restriction on liquids is not cool for this kind of packing. Especially when it comes to trying to keep my bottles of tan with me. I think I’m going to try and see if I can persuade the people at check-in to OK me keeping it in my carry ons.

Almost all of my food is cooked for the rest of the week. I have to boil up some eggs tomorrow but that’s about all that’s left. I spent a good chunk of time cooking pancakes today. MMMM pancakes! I may have went a little overboard with them, but oh well. I don’t think they’ll go to waste.

Tomorrow starts the tanning process too. A couple of nights ago I took a long bath and then slathered myself in vaseline for that ultra moisturizing overnight effect. Then today, I gave myself a good slimy layer of lotion along with another vaseline treatment to my feet. So my plan for the morning is to get up and do one more good layer of either lotion or vaseline, let that soak in for a couple hours, shower, exfoliate, shave, and then start the base coat of tan. I’ll leave that on until we get to Chicago. So that’ll get rinsed Thursday evening, one final shave session, then the next coat goes on.

I’ve got a photo shoot set up Friday morning, so I’ll probably be halfway through my tanning for that (which will look much better on camera than the full stage dark tan). Then once that shoot’s over, the rest of the coats of tan go on.

Wow, it’s really almost here. Once I get that tan going on tomorrow, it’ll finally sink in that I’ll be one stage in just days.

Now bear in mind people, I did these later in the day and I’m low carb and water logged. Plus I’m pasty white. lol.

And the video… I don’t know how to embed it on here, so just click this:

http://www.fivegrandcreative.com/photostorage/neely/neelysuits.mov 

:D

Training: on. Great workout. Great pump. Lots of staring. Busy day in the gym though (gee, it’s Saturday, what did I expect?). So I had to intimidate a few kids with my massiveness to keep them from stealing my equipment lol.

Cardio: off

Diet: 100%. Wow am I ever craving a soda. And there’s Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper and Diet Coke in the fridge. Dang it.

Water: 12L. I feel like I’m drowning.

Halfway busy day today. Ended up doing another photo shoot which I wasn’t completely prepared for. There was talk of me shooting today, but nothing was really concrete about it until about 2 hours beforehand. So I had to hurry up and get presentable, which stressed me out. I hate having to rush my beautifying regime. Although, rushing things may have helped. I came out looking pretty darn good lol. I’ve worked with this photogapher before, so it was comfortable and fun. We got some really really really cool stuff I’m excited to see them all. He should be getting me a disc of everything before we leave to Chicago so I can make some picks. Since I’m so close to show, he wanted to play up my muscle some more. He got some killer shots of my back which amazingly is something I don’t really have in my portfolio.

One thing that sucked about the shoot though, is the candy. Yes, candy. In the makeup room, for some reason there was a big bag of bubble gum. Probably left by another model. And not too long ago, they did a shoot with a gal in a bathtub filled with Skittles. Skittles are like my primo candy of choice. So they still had all of that in the office, re-bagged (why I don’t know) and the bags were something like 54oz’ers. There were a lot of Skittles there. The one thing that really turned me off of it though was the thought that some gal had been rolling around in them lol. Soon enough and I can have some candy. hehehe

It’s so odd, I’m not that big on sweets and candy, but deny me it for a few months and I turn into a sugarholic.

Ooh! Ooh! I got my two piece in the mail from Jodie Bruce today!! (http://www.fitweardesigns.com/) It’s soooo pretty It got here right before we were leaving for the shoot, so I had to wait to put it on til the evening when we got back. I got some snapshots of me in it, so I’ll have to dig those up to post.

The one piece is finally done! I think lol. I’ll try and get some snaps with that on too to put up. I don’t want to just use my phone like I’ve been doing since that thing doesn’t give true color or really show the way the stones sparkle.

Got an update from Erik about what I’ll be doing during the next couple of days. With shows in the past, the things I’ve done during the final week, I was almost scared to open that email and see what kind of torture he was going to put me through lol. I gotta say, it looks nothing like I’d anticipated. Which is a good thing. It’s not going to be anywhere near as bad as final weeks in the past. Just looking at the carb outline made me happy. Ahh, the simple things that amuse me

Later on in the day, I seriously thought I was going to float away from all this water. I had to back off on my consumption during that shoot (having a huge belly full of water probably wasn’t going to be all that attractive). I’ve been trying to go by a time table with it, getting in one liter every hour. So during that shoot, I cut it back, meaning I had to make up for it afterward. Luckily, the shoot didn’t take as long as planned so I wasn’t too far behind. But still, it was more water to chug down than the one and hour I’ve been doing.

Emotionally, I’m starting to even out. Or go numb. One or the other lol. I’m getting excited. Things are starting to come together. I’ve got both suits. My tanning supplies got here. I’ll be doing some final mass cooking sessions soon. I’m also freaked out. But I have to keep telling myself that at this point, I’m gonna look how I look and I can’t really change anything. I’m really happy with how I look right now (full of water and everything) and my freak out level is beginning to calm down. I think I’m going to do well. With all of the pictures of myself I’ve been getting lately, and studying them like crazy, I’m pretty darn pleased. This is by far the best I’ve ever looked. I worry that I don’t have enough size in my legs. Or that they’ll be too smooth. But then again, I’m pretty pale and wet right now. So once I get some tan on and flush out some of this water, I know things will look different. Plus, I know tend to hold more water in my legs. So things WILL change with how they look right now. Also, there’s the fact that the trend in Figure is moving toward the less defined legs. Which could work to my advantage lol. I just know that I’ve done everything I could up until this point to present the best package that I feel is appropriate for this show (with lots of help from Erik of course ).

I’ve got a really good feeling about this show.

I leave in 5 days!!!!

This has NOT been a good day for me emotionally. I’ve cried more times than I can count. It just comes out of nowhere. I’d be stressing about something, then BAM! Here come the tears.

All throughout the prep process, there’s plenty of ups and downs. Motivation, hunger, stress, all kinds of emotions ebbing and flowing. And sometimes, there’s just no way to control it. Sometimes it’s dang near impossible to be able to take a step back and breathe and calm down. It’s like that little sensor in your head that makes you think something through, that makes you rational, gets turned off. And it can be like a dam bursting.

Today was one of those days where rationality and realism took a vacation. And I got left behind.

I’m water logged, I’m sore, I’m stressed, I’m worried, I’m hungry, I’m lethargic….

And thus begins the final prep week.

6/8 summary:

Training: off

Cardio: on

Diet: 100%

Water: 13L

Training: on. Had a great workout. Although my step-ups were a little awkward. I seem to have unilateral balance issues. But only on my left side. lol. Or maybe I was just staring out the window too much while I was doing those.
Cardio: on. This gym I’ve been using here is a two level place. All the training stuff is upstairs. Normally, the stairs aren’t too big of a deal. But after a draining session of intervals, they’re cruel and unusual punishment.

Diet: 100%. Made a fun little concoction this morning. I made my oats with tea instead of plain water. Celestial Seasonings Black Cherry Berry. Yum!

Water: 12L. Yes, you read right, that’s twelve.

Another fairly low key day. YAY! Spent some more time on my suit. And between that and the two trips to the gym, I didn’t really do much of anything. That’ll all change this weekend though. More shoots booked that I have to be at. I don’t think I’ll be modeling at any of these, but I have to be there either way.

A week until I leave. Wow.

Training: off

Cardio: on. It was the cutest thing when I got to the gym.. I got in the locker room, and this gal was just getting ready to head out of there. She turned around and followed me back in, asking how on earth she could get arms like mine. She said she wanted to follow me around the gym and mimic my workout. It moments like that, that can really put a smile on my face.
Diet: 100%. Had some nice grumbles come out of my belly today. Sounded like a small wild animal was caught in there and trying to escape.
Water: 5L

Thank goodness, finally a day that wasn’t jam-packed full of things to do. I got up when I wanted, lazed around, didn’t have to run off of everyone else’s schedules for a change. It felt SO good.

The main thing I did most of the day was make myself go blind working on the stoning of my one piece, with one break to go pick up some more glue. I’ve got most of it done at this point, and not many loose stones left, so at least the end is in sight! lol.

Some progressions…

Plain, unstoned:

With some bordering and accents done:

And with a bunch more thrown on there:

Obviously, the color is off being that I’ve just been using my camera phone (someone should take that thing away from me lol). But it gives you an idea of what I’ve been doing.

Best guess at this point, there’s a little over 1200 stones on there. I’ve still got some more to put on, so it’s not quite done yet. Once I’m happy with it and calling it done, I’ll get some better shots of it (with me in it, not stretched over a pillow) to where there’s truer color and you can actually see the full effect of the sparkle from the stones.

We keep joking that I have the best dressed pillow in all of Dallas.

So my biweekly was Monday. And yeah, I’m just now getting around to posting about it. Oops.

Weight was down 1 1/2 pounds, putting me at 120 even. Measurements dropped a grand total of 2 inches.

Sorry, but the front pose shot isn’t going up. It was horrid.

Looking at my numbers over the course of working with Erik on this prep… In a time period of about 7 1/2 weeks, I’ve dropped 10 pounds and 14 inches (if my quick math is right lol). And some people think that results take forever. As long as you stick with things, it doesn’t take long at all

6/3 - Leave Austin for Houston.

Training: on.

Cardio: off

Diet: 100%

Water: 5L

I got up early, well earlier than the guys lol. Headed to the gym to hammer out my workout so I could get back to the hotel to finish packing up things and get out before check out.

Headed to Houston, I slept pretty much the whole way. Amazingly, I was able to get comfy enough to get some z’s leaning on some photography equipment in the truck. I was tired.

Made it to Houston around mid afternoon. I’d forgotten how humid it can be there. It’s been years since I’d been there, so when I got out of the truck, it was like walking into a steam room. Not as bad as I remembered though, so it was tolerable lol.

We unloaded most of the stuff from the truck and invaded Jodie’s apartment. Poor thing had no living room left by the time we got everything in there. The guys and Jodie took off to scout out some locations for the shoot on Monday, and I stayed behind to somewhat reorganize the mess of our luggage and get to working on my suit some more.

They got back, and the guys still wanted to head down to Galveston to check out some beach areas. So it was me and Jodie sitting around talking diet over rhinestones, fabric, and the hum of her sewing machine. It was girly time. lol.

I got the loops put into my one piece for the clear straps that she had for me to use. She did some work on my two piece. And I got to work on those dang stones on my one. I was up way too late working on it, but at least I got the border stones done.

6/4 - Photo shoot day with Patricia

Training: on.

Cardio: on.

Diet: Refeed!

Water: 5L

Jodie and Patricia weren’t kidding when they said that the gym right there doesn’t have much for A/C. It was a sweatbox. And the people there have a hard time putting weights back where they’re supposed to be. But it was fun being in yet another different gym.

So I got my workout in, headed back to Jodie’s to wake the guys and get things underway with being ready for Patricia to show up for her shoot. First thing on my agenda was getting my biweekly done. I came to find out though that my laptop wasn’t hooking up to the internet at Jodie’s like we thought it would. And my biweekly documents and records are all on that thing. So of course, I start to panic. It’s a long day ahead of me, I’m pressed for time, and now I have to figure out how to get my biweekly in.

Cue breakdown number 1.

We ended up having to burn those documents onto a disc, transfer them to Jodie’s computer, and then send them through my alternate email since my main email is set up through my laptop and well, I couldn’t do anything with it.

Then Patricia shows up. She was early, which was great. But I hadn’t even hit the shower yet. And I needed to get the both of us ready to be shooting all day and into the evening.

Cue breakdown number 2.

I had a good cry, got a little frustration and anxiety out, and then had to put my game face on to get going on things since my little breakdown set me back another 20 minutes in the schedule. Oops.

On to the shoots… Patricia did an awesome job. It was a jam packed day and we were literally running location to location (with her in heels half the time too) so that we could be sure to have enough time to get to Galveston before sunset and get the lighting right out there. She was a real trooper and kept up with the energy pretty darn well. She and I were both in the back seat of the truck with coolers and bags of our food, snacking on our meals between locations.

We got back from all the shooting around 9pm, which put us at about 7 solid hours of shooting. She was tired and went home, and I had to take my tired butt back to the gym for some intervals. I REALLY didn’t want to do them. Once we got back to Jodie’s place and I sat on the couch, I had virtually no desire to even get back up. So after lazing around for a little bit, and scanning through some of the shots from the day, I finally got my gym clothes on and headed out the door to get those intervals done.

Once I got back from intervals, I got cleaned up, washed the sweat and dirt off of me from the gym and splashing around in the yucky waters of the gulf. And then set to work on my stones again. I spent a good hour lining out stones on the coffee table, trying to finalize what the pattern would be on the back of the suit. I finally decided on one and got to work on getting that set on there. And that’s as far as I made it on stone work. I was exhausted, and by that point it was around 2am. So I finally went to bed.

6/5 - Leave Houston to go back to Dallas

Training: on

Cardio: off

Diet: 100%

Water: 5L

Got up, as per usual, earlier than the guys to get my workout in. I got back, they had pretty well gotten their things packed up and were ready to go grab some food. They’ve been pretty good with me about going somewhere else to eat instead of bringing junk food back to eat right in front of me. So while they were gone, I got my things gathered up and weighed out my meals for the road.

Now, normally driving from Houston to Dallas takes something like 4 hours. But we had to take a route back through Austin so that we could pick up a bike that we left there from the rally. The trip ended up taking about 8 hours. I slept as much as I could, which was probably at least half of the trip lol.

Once we got back to Dallas and got things unloaded, I had to hit the grocery store. My chicken and broccoli reserves were getting a little low. So the guys went and got some food for themselves, and I hit the store for some meats and veggies. Got that all cooked up, I just need to go out and dice it up now.

Luckily, we’ll be in Dallas until it’s time to leave for the show. I’ve been getting sick of sitting in vehicles for hours on end and eating dry oats and cold broccoli. There’s nothing planned for the next couple of days (at least that I know of) so my plans are to kick back, relax, lay in the sun, finish the stones on my suit, and de-stress. And of course work out too, but now I don’t have to worry about running on such tight, hectic schedules with it.

Ahhhhh, I’m tired. Week and a half to go.

I’ll post biweekly stuff tomorrow.