Lean Bodies - Noel Clark

So how many people’s houses look like this:

Now multiply that times 3 and you have my house! And as everyone knows by now..I love candy. So now what? How do you NOT eat it? I was thinking about this when my Sister in Law called and I could hear my 2 year old niece in the background asking for a Kit Kat for breakfast. And she was MAD because mommy was saying no! Why no? Well, you don’t eat that for breakfast, you don’t eat it for lunch either, but you can have a piece at some point–get that I said A PIECE. Not 6 pieces or 12 pieces or 20 pieces. Why? Because it isn’t good for you. That is what we tell our kids right? “You can’t have all that junk girls, it isn’t good for you.” Maybe we should take our own advice. Have a piece every now and then, but not a ton. IT ISN’T GOOD FOR YOU. Start looking at this ‘healthy’ eating differently. Doesn’t mean you can’t have ANY it means you can’t look like this:

(great shot by Isaac Hinds)

Well, it is now 7 weeks out from Nationals and I am really getting excited. I am definitely in the groove with the diet and training and feeling really great about where I am. There are going to be so many people coming to this show in support of me that I just can’t wait….nervous-YES! but very very excited. So…today is a free day for me! Erik was sweet enough to send me KETCHUP CHIPS YUM!!! Never in a million years would I have ever thought I would like these LOL. And I will definitely have a nice juicy burger today.

Training is going great. I am throwing around weights that are PRs for me. I hit my 70lb One Arm DB Snatch that I was after. My Rack pulls are up to 335. My pull-ups are coming along nicely ever since I have been using my bands instead of the Assisted machine. If you get a chance and have chins or pullups in your training, you should get a set of mini bands. They will make a world of difference for you! Here is a great place to order them if you are interested: http://www.ironwoodyfitness.com/index.html
Here are a couple of 7 weeks out shots.

I have been slacking on the blogging lately.  Life has taken over…. lol

Contest prep is definitely underway.  I am just under 10 weeks away from Nationals here in Atlanta.  Am I nervous…yes :)  Just plugging away and trying to get the weight and measurements to drop.  I feel like each prep at about this time, everything seems un-reachable.  So I am going to just try to do what I am suppose to do and come out on the other side….hopefully with a better mindset.

Life has been crazy busy…having my girls playing soccer this year has kept us on the move constantly.  I some how am now helping to coach my older daughter’s team.  This is something I swore I wouldn’t do….but I am actually enjoying it.  We had our first game last weekend and it was a tie.  I definitely can count that as cardio and am surprised that I had a voice the next day LOL.

I will have more to share soon ….promise.

Here is a Back shot from about a week ago:

Most often I talk about my journey through this fitness industry.  The ups and downs of competing and training and dieting and bulking, but I want to talk about a client of mine:  Cara Richman.  She has been with me several months now and has just really made some great changes.  She started out doing both Olympic lifting AND Cross-fit.  Two very different goals.  Overall, she wanted to shed some bodyfat.  Wait till you see the progress that she has made.  I think one of the things that I like about Cara is that she has a great attitude about all of this and it has rubbed off on many people.  She has become a huge contributor to our forum www.leanbodiesfitness.com as well as getting her husband and several friends to get fit!  Cara started this weight loss journey on her own and once down about 14lbs, hired me to help out.  Overall Cara has dropped about 23 1/4 inches and come down from 135 lbs. to 107 lbs.  Her plans are to finish off the ‘diet’ phase in the next couple of months and then go into the fall with the focus on adding some nice muscle.  I think there might be a little bit of the figure competition bug in her for next year :)  She definitely has the drive to get it done.  Congrats to you Cara, your hard work has definitely paid off in many ways!

 These are Cara’s before pics.

Here are her afters:

Amazing!

Ok it is time to get serious. I have my head in the game now. I feel like I have just been so preoccupied with other things lately -that this show and this show prep hasn’t seemed like a priority. Well, it is now LOL. I have to bring an even better package to this show than I did to Jr Nationals. PLUS, this is in my hometown and I have a lot friends and family coming. Some of which have never even seen me compete and don’t know much about this ‘figure’ stuff anyway. LOL. So here are some starting pics. I have some work to do but Erik and I both KNOW we can get there. I think that is one of the cool things — he and I have been working together for a while now and KNOW how my body tends to work.  Off we go!

I have a few more stage pics and then quite a few candid shots from this past weekend in chicago. 

Here are a couple that Jody took while I was on stage during the night show. 

Right after the awards..Jody took this shot!

My birthday cake that Scott got for me.  It was a very pretty cake ( but tasted so bad LOLOLOLOL )

Erik and TIm (Jody’s husband) Were sooooo excited for the pizza.  Me? I had a cheeseburger LOL

After stuffing my face LOL

“second place!!”

I know Erik has more on his camera.  Hopefully there are a couple of him and I after the awards :)  Can’t wait till November.

I still haven’t gotten the pictures from Erik, but I did upload the ones Amy and Jody sent me..so thank you girls!  Here is some of the fun we had:

me getting my make-up done by Laurie St.Michael.  She is fantastic if you ever need a make-up artist at a show and it doesn’t hurt that she is incredibley sweet!

This is Jody and I outside our hotel room after Saturday morning pre-judging. 

This is me, Amy and Jody

Amy and I on Saturday-I have one right after this that is Amy and I making a silly face..but i gotta get pic approval for that one

Me and Scott

Here is Erik wanting to be a figure competitor and then me laughing at him in the next shot

I have tons more so I will post up again tomorrow.  Some of my birthday celebration and then some of the night show and post show yummies.

Like I have said, the goals that I was hoping to achieve this show I definitely hit. I mainly wanted to come out more confident than I had in the past and with an overall better presentation. Definitely still room to improve in this area so i hope that at Jr Nationals I am that much more at ease on stage. I got the score sheets this morning and turns out that I was 1 point from 5 and I think just a few points out from 4. This gives me hope that I can crack that top five in Chicago … that is what i am shooting for at least.

Aside from the competing part, I had a blast with all my friends. We all hung out in-between the shows and then had the after party at my friends Amy and Kevin’s house. They were awesome hosts for the evening. You should have seen the spread….we had way to much junk there. The table was covered with pizza, sushi(blech), brownies-all kinds, cookies, candy, puppy chow, chips, crack, ooey gooeys, spiced pecans, birthday cake for Ileen that didn’t even get cut nor did the ice cream get opened lol…and I am sure I am forgetting other stuff. It was really ridiculous. here are some random pics from the trip. Thanks again, for all your support. Luv you guys!

This is Laura and I (another LBC client) She looked AWESOME by the way.

Erik, Laura, and I

Me and hubby

Lyn, Cindy, Ileen, Amy, and Kevin.

Kevin

The crew

Erik, Lyn, Ileen

Scott and I I see you hiding that food in your hand.

Yes, Amy and I are jumping on their tramp. LOL

Yes, I do realize that my face is a different color … I just couldn’t put any make up on after taking all that off. Me and Amy

Here is me looking like a dork! We were taking down the balloons and sucking in the helium LOLOLOL I think it was about 1 a.m. at this point lolol a little slap happy!!!

cindy…:)  we wore her out!

I have so many more…..

Thanks for the great memories guys!

Prejudging started at 10:30 but we weren’t out there until around 2. Jr USAs is definitely a long long day but I have to say that I like it better than the 2 day events at the other National shows. We went out in our one piece first in large groups. We did our quarter turns and then came back out for our individual presentation. From there we had call-outs. During the first call-outs I was added to the first 5. This was a huge thing for me. After that we went and changed into our two piece suits where the process is the same except no individual presentations. This time I was called out in the top five. Here are a few shots from MD.

They don’t have any shots up in the two piece but here are some taken after the night show

We all went back to my room to eat in between the prejudging and the night show. Headed back over to the venue at about 6:00. The night show went pretty smoothly and I had a lot of fun. I was able to meet a lot of girls and catch up with some others that i hadn’t seen in a while. I ended up placing 4th in my two piece and 6th in the one piece with an overall placing of 6th. This is a great improvement for me and hope to keep progressing.

I will post some fun pictures tomorrow with all of my friends that came to support me and some with other competitor’s.

My meals just aren’t cutting it on off days. I am ready for it to get here, just not ready for it to get here. Yes, I realize that makes no sense, but you should see the spread that my friends are putting together for post comp celebration I will get that night off and then Sunday off and then right back on my diet for Chicago.

I am posing now, twice a day. It gets tiring up there with so many girls, especially since I tend to go out near the front. It feels like you are squeezing your muscles FOREVER. I am working on just feeling comfortable in my poses as well as making my turns more fluid.

Training is still strong. Cardio is meh! I can’t imagine doing a lot of it (thank you Erik). Here is a shot of me from Sunday. Abs are there I promise..just gotta get them to pop.