Lean Bodies - Noel Clark

This one is from someone that I have already posted amazing before and afters of here : http://leanbodiesconsulting.com/noelc/2008/08/22/awesome-progress/
Cara has done an amazing job. She looks like a completely different person now then when she first started and I am very excited that she is going to stay with me and do a bulk over the winter to see how much muscle we can add to her body. Here is what she had to say:

At 32, I decided enough was enough and knew I needed to make a change to take off some extra weight and get back into the active lifestyle I had throughout high school and college. I had long admired the physiques of fitness and figure competitors but was never able to wrap my head around the commitment I needed to make to get there for myself.

She also goes above and beyond her job as a trainer/nutritionist by investing time to talk and listen when I’ve needed her. I can’t say enough positive things about Noel and what she has done for me. I look forward to continuing our work together and can’t wait to see more changes in myself!

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.

Prep is going well. Training is always good I hit a PR today in the gym with DB Snatches-70lb! Things seem to be coming along like usual–leaning out from the top down. I have seen some nice measurement changes the past several weeks but minimal scale change. This is a good thing (I tell myself over and over and over ) I am predicting a typical big scale drop soon. That seems to be what happens with me during my prep. I think I am just living for all day cheats again LOL. Man, I think I am spoiled.

This show is going to be a ton of fun-especially since it is here in Atlanta. This will be the first show that my girls will get to see me in, as well as other family members and a ton of friends. This will be the most in-house support I have ever had–sooooo exciting. That just makes me work that much harder!

8 weeks! You can do ANYTHING for 8 weeks. Especially since I still haven’t even started Cardio yet :shhh:

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!

Hard to believe that I will be flying out to chicago for the Jr Nationals on Thursday.  These last 5 weeks have flown by.  I am definitely as ready as I can be for this next show as well as the break that comes after it.  There are some changes that I have made these last few weeks and I hope that they help make the difference for me.  This is definitely a much larger show than the Jr USAs (if that is possible) and I am sure the competition will be that much better.  Hopefully I can just continue to improve the package that I bring as well as a higher level of stage presence to show off my hard work.  I have been wearing those heels all over the house in hopes that it is just THAT much easier on stage.  I will have another great support system there because I am lucky enough to have my hubby coming as well as Erik and Amy.  They were all able to help out at the last show and I just am so thankful that they will be coming along to Chicago as well.  I know that we will definitely be doing a little celebrating after the show (my birthday was Friday and I missed out on cake :(  )  Keep your fingers and toes crossed for me that I get through these last few days of what I would say has been the most difficult diet and training thus far.

First off, I am back from my trip to Vegas.  The conference was overall a good one.  Met a lot of people and learned some interesting things.  I was DRAINED when I got home to Atlanta on the red eye yesterday morning.  I arrived at 5:20 and went straight to teach boot camp. I was dead.  After that I had to get my own workout in, get home to yads of laundry and grocery shopping PLUS work. LOL.  BUT I did get 10 hours of sleep last night and feel like a new human being! 

If you read my blog you know that I leave a week from today to go to Jr Nationals.  I have been basically dieting now since mid January.  Can anyone say –TIME FOR A BREAK.  I keep telling myself, one more week, one more week.  BUT I will say that my body has had enough.  I think that if you do compete you need to keep in mind how many shows  you do, as well as, where they fall during the year.  Dieting for too long with no breaks is NOT a good thing for your body.  I am showing signs of overreaching.  The thing is, Erik and I knew this would happen but with the dates of these two shows, we thought we could do these and then take a nice break before coming back HARD for Nationals which is not until November.  At the beginning of the year I was thinking of doing North Americans again but that falls right in the middle of Jr Nationals and Nationals.  This would allow very little down time for me and I think that my body would really suffer.  I just really think that it is important for those to remember that getting really really lean for these shows is not good if you don’t incorporate breaks…both dieting breaks as well as training breaks.  I am going to be taking 2 full weeks off from the gym after this show and we will slowly up my calories.  I don’t typically have rebound from competing but I think that is due to better planning for after the show. 

I am getting really excited about Jr Nationals.  Like I have said before, we have made some adjustments to both my diet and training these last 5 weeks and I think we are accomplishing exactly what we were after.  Keep in mind, you can’t do a TON in 5 weeks, but I think that our goals are being hit.  I am headed to a Physique Critique this weekend with a National Judge here in Georgia to see what he has to say about the progress.  It should be informative and helpful coming into this next show.

Hopefully I will get some pics up soon. 

So I took about a week off from the gym after Jr USAs and I really needed that.  Unfortunately I had to go to do a bit of cardio because I only have about 5 weeks between these two shows.  But last week I was back in the gym lifting and dieting full force.  Erik and I have made some changes to my prep these last few weeks.  Very different stuff for me, but we have some goals that we want to hit for this next show.  The diet has been the most difficult for me yet, but I did get a free day yesterday that got me through the week and hopefully will get me through these last two.  I ended up dropping 7 lbs last week.  Yes, some was clearly water that I was holding but I ended up sitting about 2-3 lbs below where I competed at Jr USAs.  That was the goal, but we didn’t think I would hit it that fast.  The all day cheat brought my weight back up this morning, but as my body has shown in the past, I will drop the water this week and look better by weeks end.  I just hope that I can get through this week LOL–this diet is a killer. 

On another note, I am headed to Vegas this weekend to get my CISSN (Certified Sports Nutritionist by the International Society of Sports Nutrition)  and go to their conference.  It is going to be a long weekend ending in a red eye back home early next week.  It should be fun though.

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.

So basically 2 weeks left of dieting and one week of getting all the stuff together.  No more all day cheats for me…boo! LOL.  I think this is the part in the prep where I start to get paranoid.  Am I ready?, will I be exactly where I want to be come show day?, Have I done ENOUGH?, Will I look my best?  I had my first really down day yesterday.  I was going to take pics and when I saw myself…I knew it wasn’t going to be a day for taking pics.  I am the type of person that looks at my pictures on a split screen and compares every detail LOL.  Good in one sense that I really just want to continue to improve, but bad in another because I think we are our own worst critics.  If I see something I don’t like…..watch out!  Hopefully I can get in a better frame of mind and take some pictures soon.  I do need to get some to Erik. 

My diet has changed up a bit for this last stretch.  My off day carbs have dropped and my fats on those days have gone up.  Training days have been left the same and I am still getting some good carbs in those days.  I think my calories are still the same just changed up the macros a bit.  Today is only my second off day since we changed the diet and I am hoping that it goes as well as the first.  I actually felt really good that day.  I thought that I would be starving considering that my veggies are still out, but I did well.  The veggies are still out only because we are so close to show and I don’t want to go through feeling bad trying to figure out what was the cause of the stomach stuff.  We will add those back in after the show.  I do miss my broccoli

I am very fortunate to have quite a few really great friends coming with me to Jr USAs this year.  Erik is flying in from Canada to help with last minute details and drive up there with me.  My sister-in-law is coming, which I am very excited about.  She was with me when I qualified for National shows and hasn’t had a chance to come again.  Of course my hubby will be going and then 4 other close friends: Cindy, Ileen, Amy and Lyn.  They have been planning the menu for afterwards YAY!! It will definitely be a fun time.  They have all been so very supportive and encouraging through this process. (THANK YOU GUYS).   

So like I said, Hopefully I will be in a better frame of mind to take some pics and get them up. 

Hope everyone had a terrific weekend!