Hey gang!  Y’all are probably wondering where I went!  Between a crazy hiring season at work, a move to Fort Worth, and a spontaneous trip to Vegas for the hub’s birthday, I have been one BUSY girl!

We’re getting settled into our new neighborhood—it’s so nice to be closer to family and for Shane to not have an hour and a half commute!  We found a great gym here in Fort Worth and have been busy getting our workouts in and exploring our new city.  Getting away to Vegas for the 4^th of July weekend was awesome!  I had so much fun gallivanting with my favorite person.  Even after being together for 10 years, we still have so much fun spending time together!  Although this was our sixth trip there together, it was the first one we’ve taken to Vegas by ourselves—every other one we’d been with friends or family.  It was a quick 2 and a half days but we managed to see all of the beautiful hotels, had a couple of great meals, took a ride on the new High Roller, and caught the most AMAZING Cirque Du Soleil show, “O”!  If you haven’t seen O yet, you MUST!  It’s one of their older shows, and it’s at the Bellagio.  I’ve seen several Cirque shows, and this one blew them all out of the water—literally!  My jaw was on the floor for most of the show.

Since it’s been a little bit since my last post, I thought I’d just give you all a general update about how offseason is progressing.  My last couple of check-in meetings with my coach have been great!  We’re both pleased I’ve finally “stabilized” with my weight for a while, and have put on quite a bit of muscle mass in the 3 months post show.  I’m having a blast training hard and heavy, and enjoying my weekly cheat meal!  That said, I’ve known for the last few weeks that if I really wanted to do the show in November, then I would go back into Contest Prep in August.  Man that got here FAST!  A little too fast actually.  3 months just flew by, and I just now feel sort of settled into my post-show body.  After much deliberation, I decided I really want to take the rest of the year to really grow and have a true “off season”, and I couldn’t be happier with my choice.  My coach and I both feel like this will give me a GREAT change in my physique since it will roughly be a year between shows.  I will now start prep January 1 for a show in early/mid April, likely Better Bodies here in Dallas.  If I had done the show in November, I would have just gone right back into off season, and would have to put my body through another prep quickly to do an early show next season.  This can be dangerous and wreak havoc on your metabolism, and we don’t want to risk that.  By finishing out this year in off season, it will set me up to do more shows if I need or want to next season.  Additionally, I already know what it’s like to be in “prep mode” for January, February, and March, which is when I’d be doing it for the April show.  To me, that means a lot.  I was already questioning how I’d get through an August, September, October prep when it’s football season and pumpkin EVERYTHING for Fall!!  You’d best believe I’ll be catching me some TCU football games this season since we’re back in Horned Frog country over here, and the pumpkin everything— gosh that would be hard to avoid!

Anyway, I’m excited to have a few more months to get some work in and make more changes!  I know 5 months sounds like a long time, but if you do the math it’s only 25 weeks, which is essentially 25 more workouts per muscle group the way my split is set up.  Not long at all!  But, with the 3 months I’ve already put in, it makes me really optimistic about what’s going to happen.  I can already see so much more muscle in my legs, and my strength now is awesome too!  I’m doing lat pulldowns at 115lbs.  When I started training over a year ago, I could barely do 70-80lbs!  I’m really enjoying lifting to lift and grow, and the clean eating part, well, it’s just how I eat so I’m used to it.  This is a lifestyle, and I’m really remembering what it felt like to workout because you really are doing it solely out of choice, because it’s part of your lifestyle and you really want to, not necessarily because you really have to with a show goal you’re working towards, even though most of the time I really wanted to workout then too.  Waiting a little longer to get back on stage will be worth it when I bring a much better package as a competitor, and I’m sure by then I’ll be SOOOOOO ready to lean out and get back out there to smile, sparkle, and strut!

Coach is going to put together a “mini project” for us to focus on through the rest of this year, so I’m looking forward to finding out what that is.  Rest assured, you’ll be along for the ride!   Hope you all are doing well!

Till next time,

-Mere

If you saw my IG post I put up the other day, then you know where I’m going with this.  Let me first start by saying that I still believe that deciding to compete is one of the best decisions I have ever made.  I love the discipline, structure, and drive it fires up in me, and I know that the longer I continue to train and live this healthy lifestyle the more my physique will continue to develop and muscles will continue to grow.  Bodybuilding is a process.  A continual process.  Every opportunity I have to push myself makes me love this sport more.  And I’m still only just beginning.  Competing is just as much you competing against yourself as it is you competing against others.

You all should know by know that I tend to be pretty honest here about my fitness journey.  That said, I haven’t been fully transparent with you guys about post-show life.  Everyone’s body is different, and what we’ve learned about mine is that it apparently is taking me a while to “balance out” after the show.  Prep is really hard on your body physically, particularly with hormones and your metabolism.  Your body gets used to surviving on a very low caloric intake, and carbohydrate intake, and as you know, your diet is extremely restricted and super clean.  No alcohol, no sugar, etc.  My downfall was really those first two weeks after my show when I was travelling and not really sticking to my structured diet and eating on plan.  Lesson learned.  DO NOT GO TO NEW ORLEANS or ANYWHERE on vacation right after a show!!!  Your body needs to be able to acclimate back to a normal diet, and it is much easier to do that when you have time and a routine.  I won’t lie.  I was still getting my workouts in those first two weeks, but I was pretty wheels off with my nutrition.  After those first two weeks though, I was totally back on the bandwagon and have stayed on since then.  I haven’t binged, haven’t skipped a workout, haven’t skipped cardio, haven’t skipped meals.  I’ve stuck to the plan.  2 months and 20 pounds later here we are.  Not going to lie, it has taken me 2 months to adjust to the “softer” look I have.  I go back and forth between feeling like the Michelin Man, and feeling like a damn linebacker because my shoulders feel so much bigger!  My clothes fit differently, and the scale and I have a mutual hate-hate relationship.

The good part?  I’m strong as hell in the gym.  I’m pushing myself to add weight on exercises, have had fun changing up my workouts, and am having a blast when I train.  If there’s one thing I want to make sure I stick to, it’s my love of lifting and how much fun I have working out.  I freaking love it.  I’m enjoying my weekly cheat meals with Shane, and the occasional cocktail.  This is a lifestyle, and it works for me.

Here’s the not so good part.  Any competitor will tell you though that it’s a total Mind F&%k watching your body morph into something totally different post-show.  In short, I spent the first probably 5 weeks after my show feeling like a fatass and a part of me felt angry at my body for turning on me.  You were so cooperative during Prep!  What the eff is going on?!?  Why do I keep gaining weight?!?!  I wouldn’t be as mad if I had been frequenting drive-thrus, eating copious amounts of peanut butter, or wolfing donuts and cupcakes on every whim, because then I would have had myself to blame.  But again, I wasn’t.  What the eff was going on?!?!   I’m so glad I have such an awesome coach, and great friends and teammates that understand and can mentor me as I enter this “offseason” phase.  Offseason is when a competitor is consuming more food (still on a “clean” diet), and focuses on building more muscle (gains) so that they ultimately will have a better physique at their next competition.  Weight gain is an automatic after a show, but in a true offseason it’s pretty much your focus.  Good weight gain though.  Muscle.  There’s as fine line to balance between fat weight gain and muscle growth.  After my show, my coach and I set a goal to hopefully do my second show in the Fall, giving me an 18 week offseason before I started another prep.  If I do the show we’re planning on in November, I would theoretically start Prep again in August, but honestly we’re in a watching and waiting mode right now.  Luckily I have check-ins with my coach every two weeks, where he can monitor my progress and see how my body is changing with my diet and training.  I’m still doing cardio several times a week, and this week we decided to start carb cycling again at dinner a few days a week so that I can keep my body fat under control while my metabolism sort of resets.  I’m not going to go quite as crazy with cheat meals for the next two weeks just to see how things go, because honestly, I really don’t want to get any bigger than what I am right now (body fat wise) and my coach doesn’t want me to either.  It’s a learning process for both of us.  As frustrated as I’ve been with my body, I’m happy to say that I feel like I’ve really turned a page this week.  I’ve learned that being frustrated and pissed off at myself won’t make me any leaner.  Sticking to my diet and kicking ass in the gym and focusing on that and the other positives in this process (like the growth of my legs and my strength building!) will make accepting my new “look” easier.  Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could all walk around all shredded all the time?  Sure!  But honestly, yeah right.  That’s totally unrealistic.  You have to have balance, and being that LEAN for an extended amount of time isn’t healthy!  Nicole Wilkins (the Figure dynasty and one of my biggest role models) looks totally different in her offseason than she does on the Olympia stage.  Why I am I holding myself to an unrealistic standard?

I have this image in my mind of what I want to look like at my next show, and I’m not stopping till I get there.  In order to change and grow your physique, you have to EAT more to TRAIN harder and build more muscle.  This is all part of the process.  If it were easy, everyone would do it, and many competitors can’t deal with this part of competing, so that’s why they quit.  As for me, I’m sticking to my diet, sticking to training, and trusting the process.  This is me embracing my fluff, embracing this part of my journey, and embracing what’s ahead.

Till next time,

-Mere

I have officially decided that I am a creature of habit.  Yes, I love traveling and being spontaneous, but 90% of my day-to-day life (at least the Monday through Friday part) is spent with work, eating, sleeping, and working out.  Throw some TV watching and some Junior League in there and that’s pretty much it.  And I’m okay with that!  I have a great job, great friends that also pretty much have the same routine, pretty awesome family, and it makes for a relatively drama free life.  New Orleans and Florida were awesome, but I am so glad to be back in my routine!  Let’s not forget—this is the first week in 3 weeks that I haven’t gone out of town!  I don’t know how jetsetters do it.

That said, I was finally able to meet with the “boss” a.k.a. my coach Saturday, and debrief about the show.  It felt so good to have some encouragement and reassurance both from him and my teammates that what I had been thinking and feeling and, more importantly, what my body was doing the last couple of weeks was totally normal.  Coach and I were both were on the same page—I needed a few months to really develop some muscle and work on my legs more in order to bring the total package to my next show.  If you take into consideration another 12-week prep, that would put us into the fall show lineup.  In an ideal world, at least 3-4 months is needed to put on muscle and “bulk”.  So, as of right now, we’ve picked either the NPC True Strength Games on September 26^th or the NPC Texas Fall Classic on November 7^th.  One is just 23 weeks out (giving me only 11 to bulk!) and the other is 29 weeks out, which would give me 17 weeks to bulk.  More than likely, we’ll go with the November show, but the September one is a possibility.  Ideally, I’d like to try to do both, but we’ll see.  If I did both, I would have 2 chances to get NQ’d which means (nationally qualified) for next year.  The True Strength Games would also be a cool show to do, because a year ago it was the first bodybuilding competition I ever went to.  It’d be pretty neat to return to the True Strength Games as a competitor just one year later!

In any case, now that it’s “off season” my focus is to EAT and GROW!  This is the fun part!!  I can focus on lifting heavy, and making sure that I’m eating all of my food.  Cheat meals are back—HELLO!  My diet has changed considerably.  I’m now doing 5 meals a day instead of 6, and I have a higher percentage of my calories coming from carbs and fat in order to get the right macros to build muscle.  The water weight bloat is slowly coming off.  I’m now 8 pounds above stage weight, and could see 4 of my abs yesterday!  Thank goodness I’m getting back to normal!!  My coach advised me that in 2 weeks, I’d have a much better representation of what my “off season” body will look like, and I’ll likely be a lot happier with how I’m looking physically. He also said that it usually takes your body and metabolism 4-6 weeks (without a trip in there!) to get back to normal and recover after a contest prep.  Have I mentioned how much you really should have a good coach if you’re going to compete?  My workout split (or schedule) has changed too.  I now have 2 off days (WHAT?!?!) and I am lifting 4 days a week, plus a fifth that can be circuit training or hot yoga, plus I’m slowly tapering off on the cardio as well.  Hooray for spending the Summer building muscles!  I see some pool time in my future!!

This is a whole new chapter of my journey.  To be honest, I had to sort of do a mental check earlier this week.  Sure, a lot of competitors just do one show… and that’s fine.  But for me, this new diet and new routine are taking me to the next level.  It’s exciting but it also makes me nervous.  I’m human—the nasty, negative side of me was rearing it’s ugly head, and negative thoughts were creeping in.  What if I screw up? What if I can’t build muscle fast enough?  What will I look like?  Will I get fat?  What if I lose?  What if I’m not strong enough?  Then, I reassured myself and said “Self. You’ve already proven you are strong, you are capable, and you are building YOUR body.  Not anyone else’s.  Let’s do this!”

This is a process.  Bodybuilding is more than a sport;  it’s a lifestyle.  Prep is more than just 12 weeks;  it’s making the choice every meal and every workout,  and committing to a goal and making healthy choices every day that get you closer to that goal.  I’m so glad that I have shared my journey here and on Instagram because it motivates me and encourages me to see how far I’ve come!  I’m so excited to see how much I grow inside and out these next 6 months.  Remember, the outside changes are just an indicator of the changes happening mentally and emotionally as well.

Till next time,

-Mere

So, going on vacation right after the show was definitely not my brightest idea.  As I mentioned in my last post, the “post show shenanigans” started right after the show.  I had a burger, fries, a cocktail, cake (oh my God, the cake was so ridiculously good), then Sunday it was brunch with mimosas, some treats on the drive home….I had worked hard and earned it, right?

Sort of. Going into the week after the show, I knew that my body would be adjusting as I transitioned off of a very strict, clean, structured diet, and I had several fellow competitors, my coach, and friends all tell me that I’d put on a few pounds of water weight (hopefully mostly water weight) quickly, but I still thought “No way, I’ll be fine!!  Not me—I’ve got the metabolism of a genetic super freak, I can handle it!”

During Peak Week, my coach gave me a reverse diet and reverse cardio plan to adhere to after the show. He knew that I was leaving Wednesday after the show to celebrate my birthday in New Orleans, and we both knew that I wouldn’t really be on plan the entire trip, but I went into it with good intentions!  I would enjoy myself “in moderation”.  Monday I did my 30 minutes of moderate cardio like a good girl, and I ate on plan!  The Girl Scout cookies and crap I bought at Buc-cee’s went to work where someone else would eat them, and then came Tuesday.  I did the cardio, ate on plan most of the day, then had an amazing birthday dinner with my friends at my favorite Mexican restaurant with a couple of skinny margaritas and of course birthday cake… and beer afterwards!

Needless to say, by Wednesday night after our first day of New Orleans deliciousness, my feet were looking pretty swollen, and I could tell that I was definitely carrying A LOT of water.  By Thursday, I felt like Jabba the Hutt, and was starting to resemble him as well.  What the hell was going on?!?!  We were easily walking 6-7 miles a day, and I did cardio on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, but the combination of alcohol, sugar, fat, and carbs, was making my body go into a tailspin.

By Sunday afternoon I was literally WADDLING around the French Quarter, absolutely miserable.  My legs, feet, and ankles hurt from how swollen they were.  This was a bad situation.  Mentally I was feeling pretty good, just exhausted and kind of a little checked out.  I was enjoying myself and letting my mental and physical self just recoup a little bit.  We got back to Dallas Sunday night, and I was “good again” Monday and Tuesday.  I ate on plan—lots of protein, veggies, and good carbs—did my cardio and got lifting in too.!  I was starting to feel better, but in just a week, my body looked COMPLETELY different from how it did on stage.  I was embarrassed and self-conscious, and so discouraged.  Had I really just undone in 6 days what it took me 6 months to work for?  I could not stop Googling post-show bloat, weight gain, and rebound articles.  How long would this last??  Would it ever go away? Was I destined to be a fat cow?

Wednesday I left for Fort Lauderdale for a work trip, and brought my egg whites and oats to eat on the plane, and a couple of Quest bars and peanut butter for snacks.  I was only going to be gone 36 hours, but I didn’t want to do any more damage.  Wednesday night was dinner and more drinks with our executive team and then I headed back to Dallas on Thursday afternoon.  It was a great trip, but boy was I ready to get back in my routine!!!

Prior to my show, I knew that my metabolism would be in a funk right after the show.  Your body gets so depleted and dehydrated, to look “stage ready” for a matter of hours, and it is impossible to keep that conditioning for very long.  And it’s not healthy!  The problems come because (A) you will engage in post-show binging where you allow yourself to eat foods that had been so restricted for so long, and (B) your body will not be able to handle or know how to deal with all of the extra calories and carbs that you are consuming and therefore your body will turn it to excess water weight and body fat.  I was lucky because I had a couple of cheat meals during my prep, but I really think that it was the booze that did me in.  I had gone 12 weeks without it, and although we didn’t go crazy in NOLA, my body just didn’t know how to process it.  My saving grace was probably all the walking we did and sticking to my cardio.  That and trying to be at least somewhat healthy with what I ate on the trip. A po-boy with a salad instead of fries is a good swap, right?  The hardest part though is the mental part that comes with this.  You beat yourself up and think, “wow, two weeks ago I looked completely shredded and was in the best shape I’ve ever been in and now I’m a fat ass…  cool.”  It’s very discouraging.  VERY discouraging.

Yes, a week of eating and drinking and two trips had definitely taken a hit on my body, and I looked as bad as I felt.  The good news, though, was that I knew what it would take to get it back.  Get back in gym, and starting feeding my body with the right fuel.  As I write this, I’m 10 pounds above stage weight.  Is it all fat?  No, likely not, but some of it definitely is, and it’s not the end of the world.  I will work it off as my body readjusts.  Every day gets better.  But, I know that I will NEVER go on vacation right after a show again.  You need to have control over your diet as you reintroduce foods and recover from contest prep, and being out of town makes it really difficult to do that.  Clean eating and training has now become a lifestyle for me.  I feel better when I exercise and eat the right foods.  It’s not about just competing, or doing it for one show and then letting it all go to waste.  Bodybuilding is about building your body—physically, emotionally, and mentally.  I am ready to move forward and build an even better me.   Oh there’s my wagon!  I’m hopping back on.

Till next time!

-Mere