Summer Slimdown: Schedule

Hey y'all! So I am on a mission through summer to start posting more regularly with fit tips, recipes, workouts etc... I also recognize that I start all my posts like this but-- I mean business this time! To kick off the goodness I'm including my schedule for my classes so you can kick off the summer with me at allllll my gyms. Get your planners marked and make arrangements, quit your jobs, school and anything else that might interfere with the gym and go to ALLLLLLL of these! (jk...keep your jobs!)


MONDAY:

• 10am Fit Moms club (H18)
• 6pm Bootcamp (H18)
• 7pm Cardio Beatdown (H18)

TUESDAY:

• 9:30am Zumba (24hr Eastvale)
• 11:30am Fit Moms club (H18)
• 6:30pm Bootcamp (24hr Eastvale)
• 7:30pm Zumba (24hr Eastvale)

WEDNESDAY

• 10am Fit Moms Club (H18)
• 5:30pm Nike Training Club (24hr City of Industry)
• 7:30pm Cardio Dance Party (24hr City of Industry)

THURSDAY

•  9:30am Zumba (24hr Eastvale)
• 11:30am Fit Moms Club (H18)
• 5pm Bootcamp (H18)
• 6pm Mud Run Training (H18)

FRIDAY

• 8:30am Bootcamp (24hr South Hills Plaza)
• 4:30pm Mud Run Training (H18--2 hour class)

SATURDAY

• 8:30am Zumba Corona

If you aren't a member at either of these gyms TRY it for freeeeeee!! Lets do this, TEAM!

Cheapskate Breakfast

I am NOT a morning person. I don't bound out of bed every morning sprinkling sunshine and happiness everywhere. Typical mornings are me stumbling out of bed, kicking Sam in the process and then yelling at him for not being excited about me accidentally kicking him. Sorry, love. :) Second scenario-- I wake up 90 seconds before I am supposed to be on the fwy and fly out of the house, sans breakfast. On the days i wake up early-- breakfast happens. Kinda. Generally i snack on whatever is handy while i throw together lunches. In the search for something handy, we grabbed some Kashi blueberry waffles that i could eat while doing my prep. Sounded good? No. They were not just bad... They were SO bad i had to throw it out- including the chewed up portion in my mouth.
A while back i found a recipe for cottage cheese pancakes that we were obsessed with for a while, until we ate it every day to the point of nausea. They were so yummy, had a pancakey texture with a hint of french toast flavor and super easy and portable. How to make them better? Waffles! I threw the same exact recipe (with the addition of blueberries) into the waffle maker, made a huge batch and froze them. Now in the mornings i have homemade, whole ingredient, non processed toaster waffles ready to go in seconds! Not only do they taste amazing, I made them for a fraction of the cost. Boom!

Kashi Blueberry Waffles

$4.59 for 8
$1.15 per serving (2 waffles)
Calories: 150
Fat: 5g
Carbies: 25g
Protein: 4g
**p.s... the ingredient list on this is too long to list... a whopping 28 ingredients!!

Knockoff Blueberry Waffles

$1.45 makes 6

$0.71 per serving (3waffles)

Calories: 150

Fat: 2.5

Carbies: 15g

Protein: 16g

Protein & penny pinching for the win!!

Cottage Cheese Blueberry waffles

First of all--get over the cottage cheese phobia. Its loaded with tons of casein protein(slow digesting protein), low in carbs, and CHEAP! Once it's blended you won't even know it was there.

1/2 cup cottage cheese

1/2 cup old fashioned oats

4 egg whites

splash of vanilla extract

frozen blueberries (just know the more you add the higher the carb count)

Throw everything in to a blender, blend until smooth and cook in a waffle maker just like regular waffles! I made a double batch and kept them out until they cooled and popped them in a freezer ziploc bag and just pull out a few every morning. Easy!

Planning to plan.

   Seeing as it is now the second day of August, I see no better time than today to start my “blog a day” challenge for myself this month. HA! Those who know me well know that I am A: faaaar from punctual, B: could win awards for my disorganization, and C: have the brain of a hoarder (no method—all madness) so this is in keeping with my personality. My immediate game plan is to blog once a day, but don’t hold your breath. =)

    Aside from my outlandish daily blog plan, my goal for August for me and Sam is to STICK to our meal plans! Usually every Sunday we try to plan out our dinners for the week, lunches for him, lunches for me, and breakfast options and then grocery shop according to the list. Apparently, when I make these fantastic lists, I must be clearly fantasizing about being a stay at home wifey who doesn’t have an undying love for DVR’d reruns of The Big Bang Theory or the attention span of a two year old. What I don’t account for is needing to leave the house at 7am for a class and waking up at 7:05, sprinting through the house leaving the idea of making breakfast and lunches a figment of our imaginations.  I also don’t anticipate how tired I will be after teaching 3 fitness classes and spending 3 hours in traffic and how in that moment, I would rather sleep on the freeway than have to make dinner. So on those days that I have a late night class and Sam throws out the idea of grabbing In-n-Out instead of either of us cooking, I jump at the thought. Every. Single. Time. While we scarf down double-doubles, all the carefully purchased groceries for our carefully planned meals grows older and goes bad and ends up forgotten until we go grocery shopping again on Sunday and throw it out to make room for our new future garbage. I’m tired of us throwing away money, and I’m scared for my arteries. I’m pretty sure my veins are just pumping red bull and In-n-Out spread by this point.

     This Sunday, instead of browsing Pinterest and picking out our meals based on the healthiest looking foods and trying to make us eat brussel sprouts out of curiosity, I wrote out my schedule, the times I’ll be getting home and figured it from there. I planned Crockpot meals for my late nights or Sam opted to grill, and pre made some breakfast food for the days that we sleep in (like today). So far we have stuck to the plan 100%. However, it’s only 3 days in but it’s a strong start! The only thing that has been off the wall, have been MY meals. I have been teaching 3-4 classes a day at about 8 different gyms on top of training clients in there, I start to forget to eat until I’m starving and have class to teach so my food has been a little off… I can completely understand when my clients tell me they get so wrapped up in their families that they just “forget” to eat. With all that I have been and am going to put my body through, I need to be putting only the absolute best nutrition in it to make it through my schedule. I’ll save that for another day. Here are two of the EASIEST recipes I have used to make our meals healthy and QUICK!

 Taco Ranch Chicken

-1 packet Ranch dressing mix

- 1/2 packet low sodium taco seasoning

-1 ½ cups low sodium chicken broth

- 4 chicken breasts

 I throw everything into a Ziploc bag on Sunday and let it marinate till it’s ready to cook either in the crock pot on high for 4 hours, or grilled. Both super easy, low cal, low fat, high protein. Only downfall is that it’s a bit high in sodium—time to start chugging water.

Turkey Meatballs

-1 lb lean ground turkey

-chopped onion to taste

-1/2 chopped bell pepper

-¼ cup oatmeal

-1 egg

Season to taste

 Side note--I usually chop up a ton of onions and bell peppers up and store it because we use it in so much so this is one of the easiest things I make. I dump everything in a bowl, mix it up and either form 1 oz balls or a meatloaf, depending on what’s on the menu. The meatballs have a million different variations; this is just Sam’s favorite. We have thrown everything from cheese to bacon in them so make it yours. It’s good with pasta, brown rice, extra healthy points when on top of spaghetti squash. These also freeze really well for a last minute dinner.

 As for veggies… we are not adventurous. Sam is about as picky as a five year old and I get nauseas if something smells old or foreign…Asparagus is our friend. He grills it, I steam it, roast it whatever. We can eat it everyday and not get tired of it. Frozen broccoli and green beans are the only other things we can eat so we stopped trying to be fancy and just eat what works.

11 Weeks. The Rebuild.

   The first three months that I have been back in California have been the most body-destructive of my life. When compiled with the last 5 months that I was in Texas being the other most destructive days...my abs have been a scary sight. After months of weekend wine fests, midnight In and Out 'snacks' (which ps--a double-double is NEVER a snack) 4 course Cheesecake Factory dinners and now my Europa body has since felt like a figment of my imagination. Its been hard to think abut how far i had let myself go... Seemingly, I have had every excuse I could think of to lose control of my clean eating and lack of exercise. Excuse #1: I had an amazing job with 10 hours of cardio built right into my schedule that I had spent years building up my client and member base where I not only loved everyone but was loved back ten fold, to now starting over from scratch where NOONE knew or cared who the hell I was or what I brought to the table. Excuse #2: In TX, my best friends were either like-minded trainers or gym junkies whose idea of a good time was inventing new torturous leg exercises or swapping clean recipes, to now having every social situation being centered around alcohol or dinners out. Excuse #3: I moved halfway across the country to move in with my brand new fiance, whom I haven't lived with even in the same zip code for the past 3 years, let alone under the same roof. Excuse #4: I was sad and borderline depressed from picking up and moving, leaving all my friends and mom behind, so while feeling sorry for myself, I hated the thought of working out in the gym knowing that they wouldn't be there.
    As most of my clients know, I have a very low tolerance for excuses. I couldn't wrap my head around why I was letting myself give in to all that for so long. At first it was nice to have a break, but my body was craving the gym, craving a workout and i was going out of my way to avoid it.
    I was going through what i have seen clients/friends/members go through time and time again. When you first get involved in a program whether it be training, regularly attending a class or whatever it may be, being a newbie sucks. No one likes to feel awkward, or like you don't know what you're doing, that you're just an intruder or feeling like you could just hear other people think, "Oh, she'll never last". Once you dive past that awkward stage and start seeing progress, the people you regularly interact with now become your cheerleaders, your motivators and the people who help keep you accountable. Its an amazing feeling to get to know like minded people and bond with them on your fitness journey. Its extra motivating to know you have a gym full of friends expecting to see your sweaty face every week, but as it often happens, life can get in the way. Whether it be a couple classes missed due to a work schedule, or a couple months off from an injury, knowing that you'll have to face those people in a completely different shape than you left is what sets off the negative nancy part of your brain. Sitting around obsessing over what everyone will be thinking about you is the poison that WILL totally derail your progress. "Wow, someone really fell off the wagon", is likely what you think everyone will think. I know its definitely what I thought everyone would think.
   Here I had been looked at as a motivator, and I fell into the exact pattern that I try sooo hard to keep everyone off of. My body fat had gone from 16% to 31% in a matter of months and I felt like I was one In n Out run away from needing a hoverround...true story. My trainer jerseys barely fit and for the first time in the 7 years that I had been working at 24 Hour Fitness I had to upgrade to a large shirt which was still snug. I didn't even feel like i deserved to be a trainer/ instructor because i felt like i was far from a shining example of what to do. I decided to take some bikini pics as I had done all through Europa's training and was floored when i saw how bad the situation really was. That was when my pity party came to a screeching halt... I cant fix ANYTHING if all i keep doing was sitting around mourning my abs. I enlisted  one of my CA best friends to meet up with me at a different class every night, which made me look forward to working out again. I was still upset about not being able to workout with Nina, Angela, Ashley or my other workout buddies, but I had to make a temporary peace with it or make  permanent peace with wearing a shirt over my bikini all summer. Then came my sweet tooth Sammy... Even though Sam's meal plans are geared towards him gaining muscle and a ridiculous amount of calories, we cleaned up our meals together and he gave up the late night drive through urges and steers clear of the junk food aisles now when we do our grocery shopping. We help each other every morning prep all of our clean meals for the day and surprisingly have saved tons of money on our grocery bill in the process. So one month later, I am the happiest I have been since i moved and i owe it all to jumping back into my old lifestyle. I can not WAIT to come back to TX to compete with my favorite people again for Europa part two... 11 weeks away and I am now happily busting my ass to make each one count!

back in the saddle

   In the weeks following Europa, i have taken major advantage of the fact that i didn't have a date with a sparkly blue bikini looming over my head anymore. I don't feel as though i have chains attaching me to the elliptical anymore, i don't really look twice at the stepmill, and when even the mere thought of tilapia and green beans crosses my mind, i get hit with an instant wave of nausea. To say i have been pretty relaxed with my diet and exercise is the understatement of the year. I had considered doing another contest immediately following Europa until me and the love of my life rekindled our romance... and my whole world has been turned upside down. Instead of reaching for a fat burner and protein shake the moment i wake up, i reach for my phone and lay in bed an extra half an hour just to hear his voice ( long distance relationships baaloooowww). I would trade my PM cardio sessions for marathon phone calls with Sam any day of the week. My priorities had completely shifted from busting my ass to sitting on my ass and doodling 'Sam' and big puffy hearts all over my notebooks (sooo kidding) and the only contracting my abs have been doing is coming from laughing hysterically at all of his nonsense (true story). After the week long visit with him that we had planned on hitting the gym daily and grilling dinner nightly turned into lazy mornings lounging around together and long dinners with friends and family, lingering over drinks and alllllll the desserts. Not exactly conducive for a six pack.

pre-epic dinner. Hate those jeans...Love that
man.

   Pre-Europa i had bought a pair of jeans 3 sizes too small for me at that time. They were adorable black denim skinny (more like skin tight) jeans that I had envisioned these to be my 'goal' jeans that i could wear with sky high heels and a tank top- not a muffin top. All through out the training process i never thought twice about these, thanks to the 70+ straight days of over 100 degree temps. Right before i left for my trip home, i threw them on for kicks and lo and behold-- they fit! I was sooo excited, i immediately threw them in my suitcase. When it came time to wear them out; 4 days, 4 decadent dinners, 2 different cheesecakes and banana ice cream later...they fit. Kinda. As in- they fit if i stood up perfectly straight and didn't bend at the knees or the waist. So after a dinner of fried artichokes, fried mushrooms, deep dish pizza, wine and a pizookie, i was sure that the jeans were so tight, they were on the verge of cutting me in half in the style of a wire cheese cutter. After dinner, we hung around reminiscing and joking over drinks and music. And by we, i mean Sam & his brother Elliott happily joked and sang songs while i stretched out almost perfectly horizontal in a recliner, complaining incessantly about how the devil clearly designed my jeans.Generally speaking, hanging around with Sam and his brother both belting out my favorite songs would usually be considered my idea of heaven.Unfortunately, all i could think of was that i was pretty sure i was about to lose my legs due to lack of circulation and then lose my boyfriend due to excess levels of whining.

   I think that's what they call rock bottom? HA! I was way too happy for that to be rock bottom, but it was definitely a turning point. I felt soooooo uncomfortable in my own skin at the moment and i actually missed my workouts. I had gone from being in the best shape of my life to just being shapes in a matter of a month. That was such an eye-opening night, all along i thought i was rewarding myself for my months of hard work and dedication when in actuality, i was basically waving the middle finger at myself for all the times i passed on simple carbs and my time spent on the treadmill. I earned my Europa body the hard way and after i got what i had wanted for all these years, i  traded it in for the things that don't matter to me even the slightest bit ( ie; pizza and cookies). Im over that! So- after a nice, long break I'm beyond  ready to jump back in the game.... before this damage is irreversible.

he's the only one that can bring that smile out of me.

it's a wrap!



     After 12 weeks, 1,000 lbs of chicken breast and tilapia, and hundreds of carb-deprivation induced mood swings later...it's over. Europa was this past Saturday and it may have been the most eye-opening experience of my life. Truth be told, I have never, EVER been comfortable with being in a bikini. I know i say that all the time and everyone always responds with an eye roll and "yeaaahhh right". I am dead serious. I grew up 20 minutes away from the beach in the bikini capitol of the West Coast and if you peruse all my photo albums, you will find maaaayyybe 3 pictures of me at the beach in a two piece. Three pictures in which will probably be me lying down and/or covering the mush i considered to be my abs. I woke up in a panic on Friday morning when it occurred to me that i would not only have to be onstage in a bikini, but i would be in front of a panel of judges analyzing every square inch of my body. Terrifying. I may have busted my ass and and look night and day different from what i did in March... but i apparently wasn't allowed to bust through a wall sized picture of my formerly fat self to show how much i had changed (a la Biggest Loser), i was just being judged on how i looked that day, which i thought was great until i walked into the competitors meeting. No one in that meeting appeared to have a body fat in the double digits, and everybody looked amaaaazing. It completely unnerved me and made me want to slink into the corner till it was all over. All i could do all morning was compare myself to every single girl in the room...i had to keep reminding myself how far i had come and while i may not be exactly where i wanted to be, i was a far cry away from where i was. As soon as my cohorts (Angela and Nina) were by my side, i felt soo much better. They reminded me i was only in competition with myself, even just being there was a huge accomplishment in and of itself. 

Day 2--our makeshift 'dressing room'
just happy I'm almost done!



      The entire day was a whole lot of hurry-up-and-wait and by the time we finally got onstage, it was right around midnight (we were supposed to be done at 9pm) which was exhaaaauusting. Luckily for us, we have an amazing support system of family and friends-turned-family members that were there the entire night, keeping our spirits up with us backstage. Then came the incident with spray glue. On a good day, i should never be given an aerosol can of glue and be told to use it to glue my bikini bottoms on...so to do that when the last carb i had was a day ago and i was pretty much brain dead, resulted in me spraying my ENTIRE ass with glue and then attempting to pull my bikini over it...definite fail. For the rest of the night, everything i sat on (I'm quite forgetful) stuck instantly and i had to rip it off like the world's worst band-aid, thus ripping off small portions of my spray tan. ha! All's well that ends well right? All i really set out to do was not make an ass out of myself and not finish dead last... I placed 9th out of 18 contenders in my height class which isn't too shabby for a first run! Best part of the entire contest was....the Cinnabun & cinnamon roll sugar cookies waaaiiiting for us the moment we walked off!

              I owe huuuuge thanks to Nina for not just believing in me enough to do this but for the endless support, help with workouts, allll my nutrition plans, diet tips, bikini advice, and everything i could have ever possibly needed to get thru this process. She is a trainer that should be in her own class...she is amazing. I have learned a HUGE amount of nutrition, bio mechanics, posing, etc from this woman and will be forever grateful for our amazing friendship <3 Going through this journey with her and Angela was the only thing that got me through it. Everytime i wanted to throw in the towel i could look over to either one of them looking just as tired as i was, powering through on the stairmill or choking down dry chicken and plain green beans and saying "we got this!"...which got me to suck it up and make it through the cardio sessions and boring meals everytime.





SO proud of all of our hard work and how far we've come!

Couldn't have done it without them :)



Me, Angela & Nina--Feb 24th, pre europa training

spray tan flex session!



Much love for my boys at Olympia....Huge help with motivation,
support and all the best supps :)

World's best Friend...Not enough words to say how amazing
she is...thats for another day and an entire blog
all to itself. Loooove her

Post-contest carb fest!! After a pizza, pasta feast....Katrine brought
us mini bundt cakes from Nothing Bundt Cakes..AMAZING!



onstage!



Now...it's on to the next one! Can't wait for the next contest and I'm ready to go hard and do work...

                                                                     

From Jack in the Box to Jacked

   So as the days tick away and Europa draws closer, I've been busting my ass and am starting to see some great results. The love handles i have neeeever loved are slowly but surely melting away, my abs are flattening out and i have officially stolen the thunder from my thighs. While a lot of it came from many whiny hours in the gym, 80% of it was born in the kitchen. I always used to ask trainers how to get rid of any belly fat or slim my thighs and was always told--diet. Back then, I immediately thought they were pompous jerks with natural born six packs, laughing away at the fat girl by giving her false hopes for flat abs. I thought you're either born hot with hip bones popping out of your jeans or you're not. Plain and simple... and if this so called 'diet' didn't include sonic blasts & kit kats, i wasn't really that interested anyway. Truth be told, genetics only have about a 10% influence on your body's structure. It will determine where you store fat, how easily you store it as well as how easily it burns it. What it doesn't determine, is the food you put in your mouth. You determine that. Once I got away from the thought that i was genetically predisposed to have a fat ass, i opted to give the whole clean eating thing a shot. Prior to May, I've never seriously dieted. I would finish teaching a class and go get ice cream (ice cream calories aren't real calories anyway) and spent more money at jack in the box a month than i would have on a new car payment (soo sad, but true). Sure, i would eat good at the gym...but I'm a trainer who works with other trainers so i thought that was pretty much mandated. Once i was off the clock, even if  i had the tiniest craving for anything, I would have it. I'm not gonna lie, dieting is the harrrdddest thing i have ever done and i have been whining NON-stop. It's not even a little bit easy for me but i am thrilled with the progress.....so i may have to place a cease and desist order on my whininess. Here's a peek of what the early weeks of the Europa diet looked like:

• 1st Breakfast: 1 scoop chocolate myofusion blended w ice & instant coffee...amazing. OR Isopure- Green Tea flavored.
• 2nd Breakfast: 2 eggs, 3-4 egg whites (or egg beaters) scrambled with1/3 cup of Jimmy Dean turkey sausage crumbles OR turkey bacon, 1/2 cup of oatmeal w/ 1 packet of splenda & 2 tbsp of ground flaxseed meal.
• Meal 3: 4oz of chicken breast or some other lean protein source...ie; tilapia, ground turkey or sirloin steak, 4oz of baked sweet potato or 1/2 cup brown basmati rice ( nina turned me on to this...so much tastier than reg brown rice)
• Meal 4:  *same as meal 3
• Meal 5: *same as meal 3 except in place of sweet potatoes or rice, i'll sub in asparagus, green beans, or zucchini
• Meal 6: Cottage cheese in some form of mixture with chicken or ground turkey

  Im a big believer in breakfast. I make it a point to make it my biggest and most carbed up meal, and taper down as the day goes by and my activity level decreases. Somewhere in between meals 3 and 5 i work out and have another Myofusion shake, post-workout. At the end of the day my calorie intake is somewhere around 2400-2800...not so much a typical "diet". It is super high in protein (close to 300g a day) and is geared toward building lean body mass so, definitely not in the cards for an extreme dieter (think HCG/500 calories a day...not so good) or if you're not doing the weight training to accompany the high levels of protein. I have yet to ever eat one rice cake, piece of celery or salad and i'm NEVER hungry. Do i miss ice cream? Hell yes. I'll sit at Chili's with the menu open to the dessert offerings, staring and drooling more over the Paradise Pie than i do the hot bartender. I may or may not have had the occasional dream about totally dominating at a cupcake eating contest only to wake up in a panic clutching my abs, thankful it was just a dream. Although Europa is a short 14 days away, I have learned a lot nutritionally and I'm sure after a couple days worth of a straight pizza and cupcake diet, I'll be right back on track with this diet with a whole lot less disdain towards it. I know the meal plan is rather boring but it makes grocery shopping soooo easy!