I do this all the time. Start something and then leave off midway! Aaarggh! Okay, I'll get back to the Emerald Cup story tomorrow. But I have to commit to memory my last cheat meal before Chicago.

Restaurant: The Keg Steakhouse
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Appetizer: Smoked chicken dip with crisp pita bread triangles and tortilla chips for dipping. Can we say cheese, chicken, cheese, chicken, cheese? Add a yum in there, and you have this appetizer pretty much summed up. Oh, and add in some licking of fingers too.
Salad: Caesar salad with freshly shaved parmesan cheese. I love Caesar salad and get it wherever I can. Outback is the only place that makes it even close to how my mom does it, but hers is still my favorite!
Main course: Special of the day was a thick cut of sirloin steak with a white cheddar and crabmeat topping. The kitchen forgot the topping, so it was brought out separately and deducted from the bill. That was fine because it was actually a bit too cheesy for me, if that's possible. A twice baked potato came with this, but I wanted a regular baked potato. They make this three cheese butter (I think cheese was the theme for the evening) that combines sour cream, butter, chives, and three kinds of cheese all blended together. Altogether now...YUM! Then there was this strange French pastry looking thing that I tasted but put aside in favor of more of the smoked chicken dip. Why waste tastebuds on something that tastes just okay when you can have something that is...yep...you guessed it, yummy!
Dessert: Of course I was going to get dessert. Are you mad to think I wouldn't?! I don't care if my tummy looks like a 12-month pregnant woman's stomach. I'm having my dessert! [Insert stomping of foot here.] Chocolate cake with a fudge (not hot fudge, real fudge) topping and bits of toffee throughout and vanilla ice cream. It wasn't too sweet, not too cakey, not too fudgy. Just right!

I ate as much as I could and then waddled my way out of the restaurant. And then I didn't put another thing in my mouth except toothpaste to brush my teeth that night. I had to make sure I could pull up this memory file at any point in the next six and a half weeks.

Speaking of six and a half weeks (almost sounds like 9 1/2 weeks, but that's a whooooole other subject, and we're just not going there), I will be on stage in Chicago on June 18th and 19th, and I have a ton of things to work on before getting there.

I did shoulders on Sunday (see, I earned that meal. I worked shoulders so hard that I had to replenish my energy.). The workout has changed a bit, so let me post that here:

Side lateral raises: 2 warm up sets; 1 straight set; 1 drop set with only one weight change; 1 drop set with two weight changes.
Upright rows: 3 sets. I started with 60 pounds but could do many more reps than what was originally intended, so I upped the weight to 70 pounds, which I could do, but I didn't feel it as well in my delts and didn't want to sacrifice form for ego, so I dropped it back to 60 pounds for the last set.
Smith machine reverse press: This is the new exercise. Big Mike on the public board recommended this, and it was one I was going to try anyway after reading about Matt DuVall's workout in the June issue of Flex. But Matt uses a free bar, and Mike suggested the Smith machine to avoid any cheating or rocking back and forth. Let me just tell you, this one kills. I'm strong with it...15 pounds on each side for sets of 12 to 15, and I'll up the weight next week, but it is a deadly exercise. Before you try this one, ask for instructions on the message board, and I'll go into detail about how to do it properly.
Rear pec deck: 3 sets. I'm a bit too short and little for the pec deck machine at the gym, so I couldn't go as heavy as I would have liked without sacrificing form, but I just really concentrated and did it very controlled with a slightly lower weight and really killed my rear delts.
Shrugs: 3 sets of 16 with 40 pound dumbbells. I can do much more, but I don't want to look like the Hulk.

My entire shoulder region is dead. Dead. Dead. But here are the goals:

1) Create roundness to the front delt region. It's a bit flat there. You'll notice this when the contest pictures go up from the Emerald Cup.
2) Create a bit more fullness to the rear delt, mostly from where the side delt connects to the rear portion. Where the rear delt and the traps connect, the shoulders are very full, but the problem is from the side view. I have bumpy shoulders, rather than a smooth, round, full look like most of the girls who are beating me do.
3) Add a bit more thickness to my traps to make my upper body appear bigger and not so tiny. I have to be careful and not get carried away, though. So shrugs will be done every other week and with moderate weight and high reps.
4) Keep adding to the cap of my shoulder (the side delt). The bigger my shoulders are, the smaller my waist and quads will appear.

I really liked my shoulder routine!

I did back yesterday and cardio in the morning for the first time in about a week and a half. I was dying. I felt sick and dizzy, but I punched through it and finished the entire 35 minutes on the elliptical. The first session back is always the toughest, especially the day after a cheat meal or a cheat week. Your body is kind of dehydrated and full of junk, so it has to get rid of so much, and here you are punishing it after you've been rewarding it for awhile. It gets confused and decides it doesn't like you anymore. After all, you were stuffing it with peanut butter, chocolate cake, ice cream, Twizzlers, steak, sandwiches, chips, bread (that's a long list, and that doesn't even begin to cover what I had last week), and suddenly you've taken it all away and made it do some work. So it decides, "I'm going to punish her by feeling sick. That'll show her!" But I stuck to everything and showed my body who's boss...my brain!

Back was awesome yesterday!

Warm up sets with regular grip lat pulldowns.
Superset of lat extensions and reverse grip pulldowns. These were upped from just three supersets to four. Let me tell you, sometimes I hate myself for coming up with these bright ideas. My back was screaming to leave it alone by the time I finished the third set, so you can just imagine how I felt with the fourth set.
One arm dumbbell rows. Again, four sets. Again, stupidity entered my brain when I came up with that bright idea!
Seated cable rows, very low reps, but just three sets...thank goodness!
Hyperextensions, done with very light weight and very high reps. I don't want to build the lower back muscles because that will push my abdominal wall forward again, like it was when I was powerlifting, and that's not good for the stage.

Today, sprints and chest and more cardio. The change with chest is to focus more on the very upper portion of my chest and where my pecs and front delts connect. I have to thicken this up and add to the roudness from the side view on the stage.

Sprints also changed a bit. And they're not fun. I actually detest sprints, and it's a chore to get me out there to do them. Once I've started, I'm okay, but the actual act of me going outside and getting warmed up and doing the first sprint is torturous for me and anyone around me. But this was my sprint routine for today (and doing them with the lingering allergies from Seattle made for a great, wheezy time):

Run one mile for a warm up. I'm a bit slow and sluggish, so I only did it in 8 1/2 minutes. That will change as the days continue.
Three 60-yard sprints (one at 60% max speed, one at 80%, one at 100%)
Two 100-yard sprints (full speed)
One 200-yard sprint (full speed...this was the kicker. I sounded like a smoker when I finished that one.)
Two sets of walking lunges, 75 yards each
Hobble back home for one set. Lol!

And here I am tonight. I think only my fingers don't ache. Well, that and my stomach, now that I've quit eating so much. I went from about 103 to 104 pounds for the stage to 112 by the time Sunday evening ended. I'm at 110 now, and that's good. I have a bit more than six weeks to lose six pounds, which is plenty of time! And I needed the off week.

It's interesting. I went back through the photos and compared the 2002 Junior National pictures with the recent ones taken from the Emerald Cup, and I can actually see a difference. So it's all working. I just hope the judges will agree come Chicago and the Junior Nationals. And if not? Well, it's back to the drawing board. I'll just have to work harder and smarter. I have one concern though...what if by the time I present what the judges have asked (bigger shoulders, bigger back, smaller quads) the other girls have bypassed me and gotten even bigger than they are now? Do I still play catch up? Or do I throw my hands up and say it's enough. I like me. You can like me or not like me, and I don't care. But I like me, and either I compete with what I like or I don't compete at all.

But it's too early to think about that. I still have control over this. And I have the drive, intensity, confidence, and desire for it, so I must keep going. I must!

Pleasant dreams, everyone!

Jodi