Iron Mountain Classic Competition!

Okay, so I will start this post off with a warning....there will be pictures of me scantily clad on this post so if you don't want to see them, then don't scroll down:) I have been kind of surprised by the mixed feedback I have gotten since doing this competition. A lot of it has been negative, which I wasn't really expecting. Most of it had to do with me being "immodest" and it has kind of hurt my feelings a bit. Those of you that truly know me know that I am very modest and very self conscious about my body. I don't like to show off my body, but the purpose of a figure competition is to show off hard earned muscles and you can't really do that without wearing the suit. I equate it to a swimmer who goes to compete in a race....nobody expects them to cover up and not put a swimming suit on. It should not be viewed as a sexual type of thing at all and I have been disappointed with some of the negative remarks people have made. However, with that being said, I have also received A LOT of support and love from people and it has really helped get past the negative stuff. I had so much support at the competition...Kent and Kathleen drove all the way from Twin Falls just to watch me! Seriously...who does that? I loved having them there and appreciate their support so much! Jared and Marianne also took time out of their busy lives and drove there to watch me and took all their kids after just getting back from Mexico. I loved having them there! I also had two of my closest girlfriends there to support what they call "team Amanda". And, of course, my husband who had put up with me and supported me every step of the way was my #1 fan there. I love him so much and know that he's the best husband in the world...sorry ladies, but it's true:) I also had my awesome trainers helping me and supporting me as well. It was an amazing day!

I set a goal and accomplished it! It was definitely the hardest thing I have ever done, but also one of the most rewarding. It's amazing to see what your body can do if you give it the proper fuel and are consistent with it. This pushed my limits in so many ways and made me do things that I never thought I could and I am really proud of myself for doing it! I went into this competition prep with the goal of finding out what my body could do and what it looked like underneath all those comfy layers of fat:) I have been lifting a long time and wanted to set this goal and do it. Even after watching Taylor do this, I had NO IDEA what it would entail to get there. I was in prep for 15 weeks which included eating a very set diet of clean foods and exercising like a mad woman. There were days that I couldn't even imagine why I ever wanted to do this in the first place, but there were also days when I was so pleased with how my progress was coming along that it all evened out. Overall, I feel stronger and more athletic than I ever have. It has given me a new sense of self esteem and I feel so healthy!

So, lets start out with how I did...I placed 3rd in my class and was happy with that! The 1st place girl in my class took home the overall award and looked great. Both the girls who "beat" me have been competing for years and looked really good. I missed 2nd place by 1 point and 4 of the 7 judges thought I should have been second so I was pretty happy with that. I was SOOOOO NERVOUS on stage. I didn't know what to expect and I was literally shaking like a leaf. I couldn't stop no matter how hard I tried..darn adrenaline anyways:) Hopefully, that will get better with time because your stage presentation is very important and can really affect your placing. But, I really didn't care how I placed at all so I was super happy to bring home a 3rd place trophy:) Okay, here are some pics now...

Here's my class in our front poses...super competitive class! Check out my fake tan...pretty crazy huh?

Here's our back pose...yes, that is just as uncomfortable as it looks!

Here's our side poses. The girl in the middle took first and the girl on the far right was 2nd place.

Here's one of just me from the side.

And from the back...

Here's our group with the top 5 trophies:)

Here's my hot hubby....it's crazy how different the tan looks under normal lights huh? Tay looks like an albino next to me:)

Kent and Kathleen after the show! Thanks so much for coming guys!!!

Jared and Marianne...before anybody asks, her hand is on the table behind us...lol!

Here are my trainers...Roger and Ally Baker. Seriously can't thank them enough for what they have done:) The other competitor there is Shawna, another RAB girl...she looks awesome!

Anyways, I think that's enough pics for now. I am so glad that I did this and really admire people who do it because now I know how much hard work and dedication it takes. I want to say thank you to all of you for your support and love. It really helped and means a lot to me!

28 DAYS OUT!!!

I seriously cannot believe that I am saying this, but I am 4 weeks out from my first figure competition today. In some ways the time has gone by really fast. In others, not so much. Since my last post, I have been pretty busy with all of my contest prep, working, stoning my suit, posing practice and working out. I have now been doing 2-a-days for a week and will continue that until my competition. I have to go to the gym in the morning for cardio on an empty stomach and then I have to go back later to do my lifting. I have now been dieting for 11 weeks total with 4 more to go. I am still doing a ketogenic diet with my only source of carbs coming from veggies and have been doing that for 4 weeks now with 4 more to go. Let me tell you....a low carb diet literally turns me into a mean, neurotic mess:) Taylor probably wonders why he ever married me..lol! On some days, I feel just fine, but on others, I feel like I have no energy whatsoever. To add misery to my low energy, I am STARVING all the time. However, Taylor is trying to gain weight to put on muscle mass so he is eating 5,000 calories a day to gain weight. He has found that if he eats any less than that, he doesn't gain weight. So...put those 2 things together and I literally want to strangle him with my bare hands on a daily basis! Every time he says "oh...it's time to eat again and I'm still so full" I can barely restrain myself from doing the flying monkey leap, tackling him, and kicking him while he's down:) But seriously though, all violent thoughts aside, it get really hard sometimes. For example, we went to the Washington Ironman Competition near Seattle last weekend. It is a 2 1/2 hour drive for us and we knew that it was going to be an all day trip. So, I prepared all of my food ahead of time and packed it in my cooler so that I could stick to my meal plan. Well, I didn't account for the fact that I would be up 4 hours later than I usually am and by 9:30 PM, I had eaten all of my meals and was STARVING! We then had to drive home and Tay decided that he was hungry and stopped at Burger King where he proceeded to order a triple whopper and large french fry. Oh my gosh...the smell of french fries in that little car was almost too much for my starving self to take. Then, he started shoving his face full of french fries and I just felt like having a mental breakdown. NOT one of my better days.... Here's a pic of us at the competition. I look like a giraffe with my neck stretched like that:)


So there's the bad and the ugly of my contest prep. Let's move on to the good! I have officially finished stoning my suit, except for the straps!!! I have to wait until I sew the straps to stone them so I know how long they will be. I can do that about 2 weeks out. Here are some pics...they really don't do it justice! It's so pretty! I can't believe I didn't ruin it! One of my prouder "domestic" moments because it was REALLY time consuming and hard to get it to look right.

Here's the top. Remember, I still have to stone the straps, so it will look better after I do that...
Here's the front of my bottoms...
And the back of the bottoms...
Then I tried putting them together, but the bottoms kept sliding down so it looks kind of funny.

Okay, I know some of you have been requesting pics of me and my progress. I am way too self-conscious to post them yet on here, but I promise I will post contest pics:) I am excited to say that I recently turned 30 and have never been in better shape in my life! My coaches have dialed in my diet so that I have been able to maintain my muscle mass and I have NEVER been this lean before. Super exciting! (even if I am carb deprived) I have especially been noticing changes in the past 2 weeks and it seems like my body finally got the memo that it's time to start changing and shredding off the fat:) It's been an amazing journey to realize what my body can do if I give it the proper fuel and stay consistent with it. Most of you know that I am a very self-critical person and always see my flaws first. I am starting to feel so much better about myself and the way I feel. I can feel a difference in the way I hold myself and I am proud of myself for sticking to this. I am excited for the competition, but more than anything, I am excited that I decided to start this journey. I can honestly say that I don't care if I place dead last in my competition...I feel like if I step on the stage knowing I have done everything I could, then I already won. I am so glad that I found my coaches because they provide so much support and encouragement as well as doing all my diet plans. I hold them solely responsible for the changes that have taken place. They have been GREAT! And, as much as I get mad at Tay, I couldn't ask for a more supportive and amazing husband. He puts up with so much from me and I love that hot man more than I can say! Can't wait...only 28 more days to go!

46 DAYS OUT!

Okay...so I officially had to say a ceremonious goodbye to carbs on Saturday night. My new meal plan started Sunday and let the KETO begin! My only source of carbs in my diet now come from vegetables like asparagus, mushrooms, onion, broccoli, cauliflower and bell peppers. Who knew you could miss oatmeal so much? I am now 46 days out or 6 1/2 weeks and am getting pretty excited and nervous. I am going to post a few pics...I have finished the outline on the bottom of my suit and can now start on the design...300 hand glued stones later:) The pics don't do it justice, but the stones are really pretty. Once the design gets started, it should look really good!

I have to start on the top now too. This is seriously time consuming, but it's better than paying several hundreds of dollars for somebody else to do the same thing. Wish me luck with no carbs:) I'm going to do my best to stay sane....

Hunger

Wow....this week has been a tough one for some reason. I am now half-way in this process. I have 7 1/2 weeks to go and I have been dieting for that same amount of time. I am now on my 4th week of very low carbs. I take in about 60 grams of carbs daily which consists of 1/2 c. of oatmeal after my workout and then the rest comes from vegetables. As a result of staying on low carbs for so long, I occasionally get a "cheat" meal which consists of 1.5 hours of eating what I feel like. My first cheat meal was a couple of weeks ago and I paid for it dearly the next day when I went to the track to do my sprints/plyo workout. Definitely not one of my finer moments, but let me share...I sprinted 200 meters followed immediately by 200 meters of lunges and then repeat that process going around the track without rest. Let me just say that there was projectile vomiting and 1/2 hour of me laying on the football field seeing stars after that one. Then I had to get up as soon as the stars stopped and finish my workout with my jump squats and skater jumps. Again, so glad that nobody had a video camera that day:) So, anyway, back to the diet. With such low carbs in my diet, many things happen...1.) I turn into a grumpy monster that will bite anybody's head off with little or no provocation. 2.) I feel like I have no energy whatsoever...even if I wanted to chase a little kid to steal his ice cream cone, I couldn't do it:) 3.) I FEEL HUNGRY!!! I sincerely believe that for most of my life I haven't really known what hunger feels like. Sure, I've been "hungry" before, but not like this. My meals are very planned out and if I deviate from that plan, my stomach turns into a painful grumbling mess and then the grumpy monster is soon to follow:) Poor Taylor...maybe everybody that reads this could call him and give him some moral support while he has to live with a crazy lady for the next 7 1/2 weeks! On a more positive note, I have started stoning my suit and it doesn't look half bad! I have really had to put my perfectionistic side away and realize that it's not going to be perfect, but it will still be pretty. So there's the weekly update...thanks for letting me vent here. I feel like it's therapeutic to just get it out sometimes:)

FIGURE COMPETITION

Okay...so I have officially gone crazy and decided to do a figure competition. I find myself in need of a place to vent and discuss this journey, so what better place than on our blog? After Taylor competed in his show, I was just really amazed by the female figure athletes and it made me want to compete as well. Those of you that know me well know that I love to work out. I have been consistently weight training for as long as I can remember, but have never been disciplined with my diet enough to see the fruits of all of my hard work. Well...I have decided to do a competition and shed that fat so that I can see what's "hiding" underneath. To add a little bit of psychosis to my current insanity, I am "blinging out" my own figure suit. Figure suits can range anywhere from $300-$3000 in cost depending on how many stones they have and how much they sparkle. Well, I am WAY too cheap to pay that much, so I had a suit made to fit me and I am going to stone it myself. Again, for those of you that know me, you know that the crafty and creative side of my brain never developed. I am horrible with crafty stuff, but my frugality won out over my pride this time and I am going to give it a whirl. Here are the before pics of my suit and I will post more after it is done. Yes....that suit is SUPER TINY! I throw up in my mouth a little bit every time I even think about trying it on..let alone wearing it on stage in front of hundreds of people:)

Anyways, I am about 6 weeks into my 15 week competition prep. I will be competing in the Iron Mountain Classic in Wenatchee, WA on Oct. 29th. I have been sticking to eating 6 meals a day of clean foods and avoiding processed and refined carbs. When I decided to do this, I realized that I couldn't figure out my diet on my own because I haven't ever tried to get that lean before. And let's face it, my body holds onto fat like there's no tomorrow. So, I decided to hire a couple that owns RAB Fitness in the Tri-Cities to help me with my diet and exercise program. They are both very successful competitors and they help people with competition prep. They have been absolutely AMAZING! They formulate all of my meal plans and work-outs and all I have to do is stick with it. LOVE IT! Don't let that fool you into thinking that my raging sweet tooth isn't begging to be satisfied however:) The diet allows me a lot of variety in healthy foods, but sometimes my brain just wants junk food. So, when I really feel like eating chocolate, I look at my suit. If I still feel like eating chocolate after that, I try it on. Words cannot describe the humiliation, but at least my chocolate craving magically disappears after that:) So, this is now the place for me to talk about my contest prep. You'll hear about the good, the bad and the ugly! Wish me luck!

Just when you think things are going good......

So, I will post a quick update on us because I feel a very strong urge to VENT! Since we moved to Moses Lake 18 months ago, we have been living in a rental house that we really love. It is a 3 bedroom house in a decent neighborhood with a fenced backyard that allowed pets. We have worked really hard to make it our home and have really loved the house we live in, even if it is just a rental. We rent through a real estate agency that manages the property, so we have never met the actual owner of the house. We just pay our rent to the real estate agency and they give it to him and if we have any problems, we contact the agency. Over the past couple of months, we have been getting people knocking on the door from a bank asking if we are the owners of the house and thought that was pretty strange. We have also been getting mail addressed to somebody that we don't know from that same bank. So, 3 days ago, we got a call from the real estate agency telling us that the owner had defaulted on the mortgage and our house is now on the market as a short sale and is priced VERY LOW to sell quickly, which means that we have to move. Let me tell you how awful the rental market here is right now....you can either live in the ghetto and pay next to nothing, but risk getting "capped" by the nearest gang member, or you can live on the lake and pay a million dollars a month for a crappy house that happens to have a view. Oh.. and did I mention that nobody wants to allow pets? AHHHHHHH!!! We have officially resorted to driving around neighborhoods and calling the For Sale By Owner signs and asking if they would be willing to rent instead. No, I'm not kidding...that's what we spent all day doing today with no fruits to show for our labor:( Anyways, that's my venting for the day...please pray that we will be able to find a place to live soon!!!

VANCOUVER NATURAL COMPETITION

WARNING!!!!! This blog post WILL be filled with excessive bragging and pictures of a VERY HOT MAN:) So...this past weekend was the Vancouver Natural Bodybuilding Show and it was Tay's first bodybuilding competition. I will start off by saying that I am so proud of how hard Taylor worked to be ready to step on that stage. For 12 weeks, he literally put his heart and soul into this competition. He gave 100% in all aspects. I watched him wake up early to do cardio and then head back to the gym later on for his weight training every day. I watched him weigh out every ounce of food that went into his body and keep track of every calorie in order to cut all the fat off of his body. He had to stick to a diet pretty low in calories and had to be exact in his ratio of carbohydrates, protein, and fats. He literally did not cheat even once on his diet for 12 weeks. He even felt bad one night after eating a couple of extra bites of brown rice because he was so hungry and depleted...that's the closest he came to cheating. The amount of dedication and perserverance that it took for him to do what he did was amazing all by itself, but the ultimate goal was to compete. I'm going to explain the process of how the show runs because I didn't know this before we went, so most of you probably don't either:)
So anyways, the competition was on Saturday April 2, 2011 and we left Moses Lake on Friday morning. It was about a 5 hour drive for us, so we decided to leave early and stay 2 nights. We got there on Friday and he had to go to the weigh in at 5:30 that night. As you will see from the pictures I will post, you have to get CRAZY tan and bronzed to go on stage. All that bronzing comes with a price...mainly a very painful back and neck for me after spending 6 hours literally painting on his tan layer by layer. So that is what we spent Friday night doing. Kent and Kathleen drove over 9 hours to come and support Tay and they stayed with us in the hotel! It was so amazing to have them there and I know that it really meant a lot to Taylor to have some extra support there. They kept me company the entire time, which was great because the competition was LONG and entailed a lot of watching other people waiting for Tay to come out on the stage. Anyways, so we woke up early Saturday morning and headed to the pre-judging. The competition consisted of pre-judging early in the day and then the finals at night. However, the pre-judging is where most of the actual decisions are made as to who is going to win it. Taylor signed up to compete in the novice division because it was his first competition thinking that he would be competing with other first time competitors. That wasn't the case....you qualify to compete in novice as long as you haven't won your division before. He competed against 8 other guys and he was the only first time competitor. This was a BIG show and the competition was FIERCE! I couldn't believe how great all of them looked. I could not believe how AMAZING Taylor looked. You could seriously teach an anatomy lesson from his body:) I am a little biased, but I thought that Tay definitely looked the best during pre-judging. After pre-judging, we knew that he was in the top 4 because of the way they arrange the competitors, but we didn't know the actual placing. So, then we went back to the hotel to wait around until the finals. I seriously can't even describe how amazing he looked. This may sound weird, but as the day progressed, he just kept looking better and better. The cuts in his legs got deeper and he just looked more shredded as the day progressed. The finals started at 6:00PM, but Tay didn't get back on stage until almost 9:30 because of all of the competitors. He had to do an individual posing routine to music for 60 seconds and then they brought out all of the top 5 from his class. They start by announding the 5th place winner, then 4th, then 3rd, then 2nd and 1st. With each name that they announced, I was screaming louder and louder because it meant that Tay was getting closer to first place. When I say screaming, I'm being serious...I feel so bad for anybody that was ANYWHERE near me during that competition because I was cheering for my man pretty loud. Kent and Kathleen were there too, so we were pretty loud and I'm sure people thought we were crazy:) So, it got down to the top 2 competitors and the announcer was asking the crowd who should win and I'm not kidding when I say that people who didn't even know Tay were screaming "TAYLOR". It was awesome!! Then they announced that he had WON THE HEAVYWEIGHT NOVICE DIVISION!!!! I was so proud of him. But, the bragging doesn't end there....he then had to go up against the winners of the novice lightweight and middle weight classes. They posed together and then the judges decided on an overall winner for the novice division. Yep, you guessed it....HE WON OVERALL!!! I have never been so proud of him in all my life and I literally could not stop jumping up and down and grinning from ear to ear! It was so great to see all of his hard work rewarded. He got 2 AWESOME trophies and was really pleased with the outcome, but you know Tay, he was very modest about the entire thing. They gave him a judges score card to see how each judge voted and only 1 of the 7 judges didn't put him in 1st place. That's amazing because it's usually about half and half for one competitor vs. another. I'll post a bunch of pictures now and they will blow you away!

This is right before pre-judging...don't make fun of the tan:)
Kent, Kathleen and I hanging out at pre-judging (for 4 hours). It was soooo good to have them there!
Kent and Kathleen look AMAZING! They both just finished a 12 week challenge and lost a ton of weight and body fat! Super HOT!

Again, us just chillin' at pre-judging.
This was Tay in his heavyweight novice division in pre-judging.


Again, here is he at pre-judging posing with another competitor.
This was at the hotel in between pre-judging and finals. I'm telling you...he just kept getting more and more SHREDDED as the day progressed!

MAN....LOOK AT THOSE LEGS!!!!
This was the top five being called out in the finals that night.

Like I said, they call out 5th place first and then 4th and move their way up to first. The top 3 are in the back there....
And of course, TAY WON, so here he is getting his trophy for the winner of the heavyweight novice class.
Then, he had to go up against the winners from the other novice weight classes to decide on an overall winner. Here they are posing..
More overall posing..


Again....sorry, he just looked sooo hot it deserves a few extra pics;)


So, then they announced that Tay had won the OVERALL NOVICE DIVISION!!!!Here he is getting his trophy from this guest poser at the competition...

Look at that TROPHY! He got 2 super nice trophies!

Here they are together...we were all SOOO excited. I think that Kent, Kathleen and I were more excited than Tay.
This was pretty much the look I had on my face all night long....grinning from ear to ear with pride:)

So, there you have it. I know this was a long post, but I know a lot of people wanted to be there that couldn't make it and I wanted to portray it like it was. It was an AWESOME day and I can't even say how proud of him I am!