Today, I started with a Spirulina Smoothie made from 8 oz coconut water, the meat from one Thai coconut, handful of spinach, 1 tbs coconut butter (Artisana–yum!), 1.5 Tbs Spirulina, 1 Tbs raw carob, 1 tsp Elements for Life Blue Green Algae, 1/2 tsp Elements for Life Cordyceps, 1/2 tsp Elements for Life RevitaPhi, and stevia to taste (I used 2 packets), and blended it all up.  Not too bad, but definitely not as tasty as my normal addictive spirulina treats.  Can you tell this is a major superfood smoothie?    I figure I need the superfoods to preserve muscle while cutting the calories, sodium and sugar.

Lunch was broccoli, coconut water and a little pineapple blended into a smoothie.  It was OK, even though I was wishing I could use more pineapple and a banana.  Then it would have been really tasty.  I got really hungry in the afternoon, and ate a LifeForce Cacao bar, which is delicious and fairly low fat, sugar, and sodium.   Next week I won’t be able to do that, though.  I also had a tablespoon of UDO’s oil for pre-workout energy.  I am taking a tablespoon of that every day now.  They did a study where the athletes lost bodyfat and gained muscle by using the oil so that sounds good to me, and the body still needs SOME fats no matter what.

I worked out with intervals tonight, alternating shoulders with high rep leg intervals, like lunges, step-ups and leg extensions.   After the workout, I made a ’savory’ smoothie, which is really more like a soup.  I used a few cherry tomatoes, a few baby carrots, spinach, lovely fresh basil, 1/3 of a red bell pepper, 3 cloves garlic, 2 large celery stalks, 1/2 lemon peeled and tossed in whole, and water.  It was pretty good, actually, but would have been a lot better with some Celtic salt or Nama Shoyu!   

My assessment of my condition is that I am definitely improving in definition.  I can see more abs, and more veins are coming out.   Practicing posing last night, I felt I could definitely see more cuts.   It’s hard to tell, as the lighting differs so much from one place to another.  

Next week, I plan to carb deplete Sunday through Wednesday while drinking a lot of water to flush my body of any water-retaining substances, and then slowly carb load until the contest.  This protocol is supposed to shed the water from under the skin which obscures muscle definition, and force the muscles to ’suck up’ the water to make them nicely full and pumped.  I have been studying material from several books and former competitors, and I am attempting to take their suggestions and adapt them to a raw foods protocol.  For example, where they cut carbs by eating a lot of chicken, I plan to eat a lot of leafy greens, spirulina, superfoods, and Sun Warrior protein.   I feel nuts would have too much fat, plus my body doesn’t do well on too many nuts.   I will most likely be a salad-eating fool next week!  (And the savory green smoothies of course.)  For carbs, I plan to sprout some grains like barley and quinoa and use those to carb-load.   On Friday night,  I will eat a special meal to try to get the muscles as full as possible.  The suggested meal is a steak with Heinz 57 sauce for some sodium, so I am thinking I will make my Living burgers, which are kind of like a hamburger and have Nama Shoyu in them, which would do what the 57 would do.   My biggest fear is coming in flat, and retaining too much water. 

I plan to eat a lot of celery and asparagus, as those foods are awesome for diuretic effects.   This is just what I am thinking.  Again, this is an experiment.  If I see something not working, I may call an audible and change the protocol.   And I may find that in the future, I may want to add some nuts and that the ‘good’ fats in nuts don’t react in the body like what we normally ingest as fats.  But, knowing how I have reacted to nuts in the past, I will most likely be avoiding them like the plague for the next week.   But I plan to eat the heck out of a nut-based dessert on Easter Sunday when this contest is over!  I may eat the whole thing–with lots of dates, nuts, fruits, etc.  Maybe I will make my White Chocolate Cheezecake, maybe a Pecan Pie Cheezecake, or maybe something chocolate–who knows?

I have to share these two videos with you.  They were sent to me by a Facebook friend, and they are powerful.  The journalists didn’t pull any punches and they definitely called out some big brand names who are knowingly exposing our most vulnerable babies and toddlers to very harmful chemicals.  And all in the name of a germ-free, clean house……

Part One

Part Two

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DEFY these chemicals and toxins.  Buy holistic, chemical-free cleaners.  And not from big name brand companies, either.  Do not support them in their efforts to ‘look green’ when they are still just profit-crazed toxin-mongers.  Look for the truly organic cleaners from companies who truly care about your children and the earth, while still creating products that clean.  Many of the ones I use actually work a LOT better than the toxic stuff. 

More updates to come!

Be Defiant!

Christy

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Now I don’t know what he weighs and I don’t know if he does either.  The gym we used to go to had one of those doctor’s scales (with the little slide bar) right at the front entrance.  You couldn’t keep him (or anyone else) off that stupid thing.  It seemed that people were drawn there like a  moth to a flame.  Not me.  He had to make me get on it.  I couldn’t care less what a scale says.  All it measures is the pull of gravity.  It doesn’t know if gravity is pulling on fat, muscle, bone, or heavy cross-trainer shoes.  

Pivotal has scales somewhere, but they are the small kind that looks like a bathroom scale.  So now he doesn’t jump on it every day.  And he is making such great progress!   I have never forced him into being totally raw like I am, but he has gravitated more and more to it, and now is really into it.  And it shows!  He is very, very lean.  His little love handles are totally gone, and he has definitely put on muscle.  I am completely biased and have always thought he was totally hot anyway, but he is definitely getting hotter! 

But I digress….back to the shoulder workout.   I will outline the whole thing in a minute, but have to tell you about ‘crybabies’.   A couple BIG guys at the gym were telling me about a great delt developer which is basically an isometric (meaning static, or just holding a weight in one position) exercise.  You stand up with a heavy dumbbell in each hand, and then with arms straight, lift the bells out to the side just about 1/3 of the way up to shoulder level—and hold them in that position for 30 seconds.   That may be the longest 30 seconds ever!   We did 3 of those to burn out at the end of the workout.  I know why they call them ‘crybabies’.  We were crying for the 30 seconds to be over with!

Tonight’s Shoulder Blast:

• Warmup on recumbent bike
• Hammer Strength press, 4 sets, 1 warmup, 3 working sets.  I got 45’s on my last two sets, for 10 & 8 reps.  Yay!
• Smith Machine front presses, 3 sets, 50-60-&60 lbs. with the last set dropping to 50 for a burnout
• Superset of lateral dumbbell raises and Overhead ‘pulses’, 3 sets with 15 lb bells.  The pulses are a limited range of motion press that really keeps the pressure on the lateral deltoid
• Arnold presses, 3 sets, 20 lb bells
• Superset front raises with a 25 lb plate and upright rows with 40-lb bar, 3 sets, 10 reps  both exercises.
• ‘Crybabies’ 3 sets with 25 lb bells.   Ouch!

Simple post workout smoothie tonight was spinach, banana, kiwi, pineapple, L-glutamine, & Sun Warrior Vanilla Protein.

I made a heavenly superfood smoothie for lunch today.  I believe this would be served as breakfast in Nirvana!  1 & 1/2 Tbs Spirulina (of course!), 1 young Thai coconut flesh and water, 2 bananas, 1 tbs carob, 1 tbs raw cacao, 1/2 tsp Cordyceps, 1/2 tsp Blue Green algae, 2 droppers of vanilla liquid stevia–blend until a creamy concoction of pure bliss!

My breakfast green smoothie was awesome as well—-mango-strawberry!   Yum!  With dandelion & laciniato kale, & fresh aloe vera.

I can definitely tell I have dropped some bodyfat.  I can see it in my lower back, particularly.   I have seriously cut back on nuts and fats.  I am not in full precontest deprivation mode yet, and I may not go too drastic.  I am feeling my way through.  If I feel I need to drastically change before the contest then I will change my diet even more.  The contest is April 11th, so I am about 3 weeks out now.  I have upped the cardio a lot too.

I hope you have an awesome day.  Make it a great day!  You can choose to be happy, no matter what, and you will attract good things.  Make a difference in someone’s life today.  Ask yourself, “How can I make a difference today?” and it will change your focus completely, and new opportunities will open for you.  

Be Defiant!

Christy

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My mother is doing very well, and I deeply appreciate all the kind words and well-wishes from many of you.  I am still angry that she had to go through a second surgery, but this one was much less invasive and stressful on her, thank goodness.  They did keep her overnight at the hospital, but just for observation.  She is not able to move her left arm very well.   I had to help her put her rollers in her hair.  Isn’t that something?  She used to put rollers in my hair when I was a little girl, and now it’s my turn.  Things do change, and roles do reverse in time.  (Although when I was little, I had very long hair, and she used to put those pink sponge rollers in my hair and create these l–o–n–g  ’sausage’ curls.  Oh, I hated those uncomfortable pink things that I had to sleep on because it took all night for my hair to dry!) 

It’s amazing how deeply I sleep after a good day on the farm.  It is a lot of hard work, which leaves you tired but gratified.  And it’s so peaceful.  I dreamt very vivid dreams and slept so deeply.  

What did I do while I was there?  Well, we cut fallen trees off our pasture fence, and rebuilt the fence.  We hauled several dump truck loads of awesome composted cow manure to spread on our garden.    (My father just scrapes it up with the front end loader from where the cows feed on hay.  I am talking compost over a foot deep!  No need for fertilizer for sure!)   We tilled up the small vegetable garden, added compost, and planted some beautiful cool-season vegetables–cabbage, kale, chard, broccoli, Romaine lettuce.    We checked the cows several times, since they had some cows getting ready to have baby calves.  We put out big rolls of hay.  We fed chickens, horses, dogs, cats and cows.

Unfortunately, not everything goes well on a farm.  I had the unpleasant duty of having to pull a dead calf from its struggling mother.  She is a very young cow, and went into labor during the night, and couldn’t deliver the calf.  By the time we found her in the morning, she was down, the calf had died, and she needed help to complete the delivery.  It took both my dad and me to pull the calf from her.  It was so sad, and it affected me deeply.  My parents are used to it, as it is not uncommon to happen, but I definitely don’t see that every day, and it is pitiful and heartbreaking.

So did I work out while I was there?  Well, not officially, but I sure got a lot of exercise!   My parents have my dog on the farm, since I am not able to have him where I live, and I went running with him a couple of times.  I love my dog, and I wish I could have him here.  He is so big he just drags me along.  His name is ‘Fury’ and he is a Timberwolf/Artic wolf/Malamute mix:  83% wolf.    He is so cool.  He rides in the back of the pickup truck, and heads really turned when we stopped at the grocery store!    I also got a lot of ‘weight-lifting’ exercise, by hauling brush and limbs, shoveling compost, digging plants, etc.  I definitely think I lost some body fat with all the work, plus I was semi-juice-and-green-smoothie-fasting.  

Michael and I worked chest and triceps last night, and tonight I worked shoulders by myself, and boy did I bust out a great workout!  I didn’t feel like working out, but once I got started I was very strong and felt great!

Chest and triceps;

• Warmup on chest press machine, 4 sets increasing weights, but high reps
• Close-grip incline bench press with dumbbells, 20-lb bells, 8 reps, 3 sets
• Smith machine incline wide-grip bench press, 50 lbs, 15 reps, 3 sets
• Dumbbell incline flyes, 25-lb bells, 12 reps, 3 sets
• Tricep dip machine, 3 sets, increasing weights/decreasing reps
• Reverse-grip isolateral tricep cable pressdowns, 3 sets, 15lbs, 12 reps

Shoulder Workout (includes cardio high-intensity intervals):

• Warmup by rebounding for 10 minutes
• Hammer Strength shoulder press, warmup with 25 lbs each side, then 3 sets with 35 lbs each side, 12, 12 and 10 reps
• Between those presses, I did high box jumps, 12 reps per set
• Seated Arnold dumbbell presses, 3 sets, 10, 10 and 8 reps, 20-lb bells
• Between the Arnold presses, I did step-ups and lateral plyometric jumps on a bench
• Superset of lateral dumbbell raises with concentrated overhead presses (small range of motion)
• Bodyweight Squats and step-ups between sets
• Giant set of Smith machine front presses with 50 lbs, front raises with a 25-lb plate, and upright rows with a 40-lb bar; 3 giant sets to failure on each exercise.  No cardio needed between these sets! 
• Finished with recumbent bike for extra cardio and then to cool down

As I mentioned before, I have been on a semi-fast or maybe a ‘cleanse’ would be a better term.  I have cut down a bit on my sweet fruits and started using more vegetables, especially for juicing.  My typical juice is carrot, apple, lemon, celery, and ginger.   My smoothies have had fewer bananas and a higher percentage of greens.  I have also made some ’savory’ green smoothies, using tomatoes, carrots, cucumber, celery, greens, garlic and onions–kind of a Christy-substitute for V8.  (Which has the same antioxidants as ketchup, by the way.  NOT a healthy alternative!)

Post-workout smoothies are still very similar, though.  It’s important to get the quick-absorbing carbs, so I am still using the same general recipes.  Tonight’s smoothie was pineapple, banana, spinach, with Sun Warrior and L-glutamine.  Last night’s was apple, banana, spinach, with cinnamon, Sun Warrior, L-glutamine, honey, and parsley.

I started taking Vitamin D3 today.  I listened to the latest CD by Dr. Mercola, interviewing Dr. Cannell, who is a renowned expert on Vitamin D.  According to him, it is NOT a vitamin, but a steroid pro-hormone that affects over 2000 human genes, as well as enhancing athletic performance and muscle growth.  Sounded good to me!   I went and bought some today.  He says that unless you are a lifeguard, we all are deficient, and need at least 5000 IU per day.  The potential of Vitamin D is amazing, including preventing cancers, and even possibly treating cancers and autism.   Please research Dr. Cannell and Vitamin D online.  It is fascinating and truly breakthrough work he is doing.    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/

Until next time, keep misbehaving and Be Defiant!

Christy

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I took the day off from working out.  I am still trying to shake whatever is bothering me. My throat is still sore and I am trying to load up on antioxidants and superfoods.  I have to say that Island Fire, from  Elements for Life, really helps with congestion.  I took a big shot Sunday night and it really cleared me up. It burns and is definitely something you want to shoot, not sip (think tequila!)  But I could feel it immediately opening my bronchial and nasal passages.  I also gave it to one of the girls at the gym who is having bad allergy problems and it really helped her too. 

I have been working hard on the menu for my Living Foods Prep Class on Saturday, and I am so excited about the delicious foods I will be serving!   Mexican Hot Chocolate, Spicy Cilantro Soup, Taco Wrappers, Chile Rellenos, & Cacao Cinnamon Rolls, just to name a few.  Yum!   I am getting hungry just thinking about it!  For full details on the class, visit the Defiant Events page of this site.

Until next time, Be Defiant!  Create your own history to unfold before your eyes!  Even the smallest person can change the course of history.  I saw a great quote the other day.  It said “Every moment in history was optional.”  Think about that.  At any given moment, it is the choices we make that determine the outcome.  In each great moment of history, the person could have chickened out, they could have retreated, they could have given up, but they didn’t.  They chose to persevere and are now etched in the annals of time.  Conversely, the evil that was done–the Holocaust, Pearl Harbor, Sept 11th–they were a choice also.  The people who did these horrible things had the choice to walk away, to not do them, to avert disaster.   History is a collection of choices.  What do you choose to do with your moments today?

Make a little history!

Be Defiant!

Christy

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