ok now what??

friday was a banner dan on the gym floor. i set a personal best in my front squat. the entire workout was a good one and i woke up saturday a.m. barely able to bend my legs. that made for a fairly interesting saturday as i had both conventional deadlifts and a cold, damp ride to the mechanics ahead of me.

with the limited mobility i didn't expect much out of my dead's. i mean first and foremost i had to bend my sore legs enough to get close enough to the bar to pick it up in the first place. well suprise, suprise... if i didn't manage to set a new personal best on back day too.

so by the time i slid into my long johns and my bike leathers my mobility issues had spread from my legs and into my back as well. thankfully the rain stopped and the roads dried up some on my way in. so what could have been a sh!tty ride, turned out to be... not that bad. i was however pretty dayummm cold by the time i got there.

maybe i should have re-thought my hip hop dance class. but i thought that the hippin' and the hoppin' might help to loosen up my legs and my back. clearly i was wrong, i was so very wrong. i left dance class with a painful gait. had i been a horse.. i'm sure i would have been taken out behind the barn and shot!

that is not where the story ends though. i slept fitfully. i imaging because i couldn't find a comfortable position. i woke up very hungry at 3:00 a.m. i figured i could have a shake and get back in bed, get up at 5:30 a.m and still make it in to work on time.

partway through my shake i was over come with the urge to faint. i put my head down on the table and willed the feeling to pass. when that didn't work it was on to plan b, get my azz back to bed before i passed out.

i couldn't have either of the parental units find me sprawled out on the floor. that has happened once before and it wasn't pretty. mom lost her mind. dad became somewhat maniacal with his smelling salt application. the fact that i had regained consciousness did not deter him in the slightest from constantly waving the ammonia under my nose. being of island heritage dad then jumped on the phone to call everyone he knew who offered a different 'cure'. i guess dad figured better to be safe than sorry and he tried them all.

i was given tea to drink... all i really know for sure is that it wasn't red rose. i am not really sure what was in the cup and it's likely best that i didn't know. i do remember my dad frying flour and feeding that to me. yes, you read that right... fried flour!! no i have no idea how you do that, i can only tell you that as far as taste sensations go... i encourage you all to give it a miss!!

trust me, the lure of mystery bush tea and fried flour is enough to encourage me to faint in my room... or should i not make it, get my azz in there before they find me!!

well this morning the walk down the hall took longer than usual. i had my hands out to help me find my way and i stumbled along as though i were drunk... but i made it. i fell on my bed and was instantly overwhelmed with an escalating body temperature, the sweats and ringing in my ears. i was like that for quite a while. fun? not so much. but eventually things calmed down. i thought about my half a shake still on the kitchen table and how much i would have liked to finish it.

then i thought about how far away the kitchen was and how i wasn't entirely sure i wouldn't pass out if i tried it again. so instead i decided to stay where i was and hopefully sleep it off. did i? i can't say for sure. i am at work but i definately don't feel right. i will consider it a victory to get through my shift without hitting the floor.

only 4 hours to go!! 3 if my client cancels.

its been a long time

so its been well over two weeks since my last post. and is it me or did the beginning just sound a bit like a confession?

first of all the things that are different:

1. i am happy to report that the extreme overtime situation at work, seems to have died down for a while.

2. my early morning client went on a business trip and i got to sleep in a couple days this week. i hope he gets the job and has to leave the country almost immediately.

3. my face has lost some of its puffiness so it looks like i may have dropped a few.

4. the stupid members at the gym who set me off, have since learned to leave me alone.

5. and the best news... i'm sleeping again.

of course for everything that is different much still stays the same. unless buddy boy gets hired as i mentioned earlier i still will have the a.m. client to work with. he comes back tuesday and thursday for the last two sessions he has paid for to date. then i will take the following week off, as that is the week im heading to miami for the NPC nationals. if he doesn't get the job and insists on finishing his 36 sessions, then i will take two weeks off after every 10 sessions. the gym has no interest in making any changes to my schedule, so i have to do what i can to limit the load on my own.

i still hate, dispise, grossly dislike, abhor and a few other good words the job that fills the balance of my day. well i had spoken at length with the woman from the agency that placed me, in the hopes that she might have other options for me. i have yet to hear from her. someone else was fairly confident there might be a positioning opening up someplace closer to home, but i haven't heard recently if that would be happening anytime soon. so the other day i started circling the industry classifieds. maybe i will find something... keep your fingers crossed.

i was taking naturopathic products to help me relax and sleep. i basically took them for a little over a week. when i stopped being wound up and started to sleep better on my own i started experimenting on going without them. so far i seem to be doing good on my own. i've never been one to rely on medication anyway.

oh i almost forgot hip hop dance classes have started back up again.%

the slide continues

last night was another night of poor sleep... and todays workout sucked! i threw a few small fits... and ended up tapping out of cardio early.

i am not looking forward to the hours i will spend at work today.

hang on dorothy... kansas is about to go bye-bye

its been one hell of an interesting past few days. oh my friends where to begin? well I guess the most logical start point is back where I left off.

I saw george on Friday. george has been calling my diets for the past 6+ years. I went to see him because of my inability to control and/or correct my weight. I had been searching for information on the internet. I wanted to find out what to do, should you find yourself in the unfortunate position of having put on waaaay to much weight post show. I could find thousand upon thousands of articles that tell you why you shouldn’t do it, but nothing to tell you how to handle it once the damage was already done.

I told george how I ate like a 6 year old the entire two weeks, (I was not allowed to train), post show. and how I then went back into full diet mode to try to get back into show shape for my photo shoot. after 5 weeks of hard dieting the 6 year old returned and I ate pretty much like that until I started with Jennifer. I told him how I was currently 33lbs over my contest weight and no matter what I tried; dropping calories, upping cardio… none of it had any affect whatsoever.

the condition I was in, was of great concern to george. he has known me for over 6 years and said that he has never seen me like that before. I had a certain wild-eyed panicked stricken look about me. I guess the good thing about that was that it helped george see that my concerns were genuine and causing me a great deal of stress. it is that stress that is keeping me from making any changes to my physique regardless of how and what I try.

so george has a bevy of ideas to try. the first of which is getting me to calm da fawk down before I implode.

so what about Jennifer? that my friends is a decision to be made later.

I didn’t sleep very well satuday night and I was in no condition to get up and go to work on Sunday morning… but I did. and maybe that’s part of what happened. a couple of members got it into their heads that they wanted to discuss with me, the supplement program of my ex-training partner. well I’m sure you can appreciate that this was not a conversation I intended to have and I told them that straight up. they however had every intention of discussing it… and to discuss it with me no less. well I work there so my reactions to member comments have to be tempered and I was doing my level best to do that. but I am a giant bundle of nerves without provocation. to add insult to injury they decided to compare her physique to mine. the long and the short of it, I tried to make a joke ‘what are ya callin me small?? dude… you never tell a bodybuilder that they are small.’

well these two members are real mensa giants and they just kept pushing till I couldn’t take it anymore.. well I couldn’t hit either of them I chose to slam my hand down onto the counter top pretty much as hard as I could. hard enough to cause the cash register to fly open all by itself, hard enough to crush the ring that I wear on my hand. I was literally shaking at this point I was that angry.

I decided to cancel my afternoon client and speed racer and I took our bikes out for a ride.

I am glad of two things yesterday… one that speed racer was free to go riding and two that jade started up on the first try. im sure had she decided to be finicky and difficult I would have ended up in my backyard in the fetal position screaming into my helmet.

the more things change...

the more they stay the same.

i cannot get the scale to move. this morning i cut off more calories. i have now cut a total of 800 calories off this bulking plan. why won't the scale move? why am i still 33lbs over contest weight??

i understand that stress factors into it... but with less calories going in, something should give.

so whats the new plan? i'm going to book an appointment to see george, the guy who has been doing my diet for the past 6 years. i want him to show me where the error is in this current plan.

and what about jennifer? well... i still haven't addressed my posing questions. partially because right now it's too fawking depressing to look as my fat azz in my posing suit. hopefully i can start to make some positive changes with my weight and then i can fix the posing. maybe one more month.

getting caught up

time to catch you up on the going's on in my life... or the lack thereof, depending upon whom you talk to.

it's sunday and i write this in the first hour of my gym shift. it's one of my worst performances on record. i am dead on my feet, i don't think i mailed in a shift this badly in the midst of show prep.

so what has me so tired and devoid of energy? simply i'm not sleeping. those of you who know are likely to give me sh!t. you will reiterate the importance of rest and subsequently growth. i will of course agree with you... however, there are two variables in my life that i can not seem to control; the length of my work day and my ability to shut my brain off and fall asleep. the longer my work day the more active my brain and the less i sleep.

i recently slept through my alarm and i missed half of a training appointment. i don't remember if i mentioned it but i now have a client to train for 36 sessions, tuesday and thursday mornings at 5:30 am. i used to sleep in on my three off days. now i can only sleep in on saturdays. since i've slept through that alarm i've been scared of sleeping through others. i'm afraid to sleep deeply and even more afraid to nap.

training throughout all of this nonsense has been amazing. i am moving way more poundage than ever before. in fact my big three total now sits at 655lbs (based on a 5-8 rep range).

the only downside is the scale. it has leapt to the right and it refuses to budge. i've talked over my weight dilemma with a variety of people because frankly it's really beginning to freak me out. 'coach jen' says not to worry about the added weight right now. she figures that my work schedule and lack of rest have me holding water, (which is one of the bodies stress responses). my boss who does my show prep training had this to say, and i will try to capture all of the eloquence of his statement. "you better quit that sh!t right now... see george.. do whatever it is you have to do... but fix that right now!!". one of my friends from the boards is currently 50lbs over her show weight and fails to see my problem. when i spelled it out for her she noted, "thats the problem with being natty".

well i'm not comfortable at this weight. and i sure as fawk don't want to have to drop 30+ lbs trying to get into show shape. so i've been hacking calories off of my diet plan. i've cut 600 calories off per day and i am currently doing 30 minutes of cardio per training day. my plan, and i do have one, is to be a respectable 155 lbs by the time i go to miami. once i stabilize my weight i will attempt to cut back to off season maintenance cardio. if i can't maintain my wieght with 20 mins of cardio i will have no other recourse but to shave off some more calories.

bodybuilding is a continuous learning process. it's about finding our how your body reacts so you can effectively maninipulate it to promote change.

and of course about being the biggest and the best LOL