End of week 23...

As some of you may know I have now started my pre contest diet for 2012. I know what you might be thinking.... What the heck! Why are you starting your diet when your 5 months from your show? Well friends I have to be ahead of the curve and The Boss said it's time lol. It's ok though because I was ready. Mentally anyway....

I started Monday (12/12) because Saturday night we had a Christmas party and I knew that wasn't the day I should go cold Turkey lol. So Monday kicked it off and really the week went great. There were a few times that I struggled during the week however I managed to push though and stay on track. I'll post this week how fight those nasty food craving and kind of things I crave (yes pizza is on the list but yall knew that!)

Here is a sample of my diet for those of you interested.

4:30am Whey Protein Shake
5am Training
7:30am Egg Whites & oatmeal
10:30am Whey Protein Shake
1:30am Grilled Chx, Mixed Green Salad and Red Potato
4:30pm Chx and Mixed Green Salad
7:30pm Tuna with Green Veggies

My supplements include multivitamin and vitamin c two times daily.

My training has stayed pretty much the same except that I've added cardio and really upped the intensity of my workouts. This was quite a challenge this week. The lack of carbs starting affecting Wednesday so I added a few extra to one of my meals. Friday morning I had no energy and no motivation to workout, and so that session lasted about 45mins.

Saturday we took the day off because we had some shopping to do, and so today we hit it again. We ended up working out around 2:30 and I had plenty of energy to get through a new crazy workout I tried out. I'll post it tomorrow and explain it all to you. INTENSE!!!!

Ne who I hope you all are starting to atleast think about your 2012 goals and getting plans in place to execute those goals. I'm back in business and I'm here to motivate in any way that I can. Really, you guys motivate me which is what I need the most right now.

I'll be blogging alot more now that I MUST stay on track!!!! If you all get a chance post your 2012 goals in the comment box below. Whatever the goals maybe ;-)

I look forward to hearing from you all. See ya tomorrow!!!

Here's to Finding your Northstar......

23 Weeks till GO TIME!

The one in the white suit is when I first started Jan 2011 the one in the black is now Dec 2011. My O my look at the muscle. I have A LOT more work to do and with a contest prep just around the corner I hope Ill be pleased with the final result. 23 weeks and counting......

25 Weeks Out/ Video Post 1

Thanks for watching my first video post! More to come ;-)

Happy Monday!

Hey, Gang! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. It was absolutely beautiful here! We took full advantage of the cool weather by painting our house... Even though it was hard work the sunshine made up for it.

Friday after Joshua got off work we went straight to Lowes and picked up some samples of paint colors we thought we liked. We rushed home and tried it on the house only to find out we did not like the colors we picked at all! So back to Lowes we went. After searching through tons of paint chip samples I finally opened up one of the pamplets they have on display with all the painting ideas and there it was!

I have such a hard time picking out individual items that would go together but when I see something I like I can totally run with that. So when I saw this picture we ran with it, lol. This is a terrible photo but the colors are Gray Silt, Chef White for the trim and Very Black for all the doors. I loved this look. Just the little bit we have done has made a world of difference. 

We have only done the bottom so far but the door will be black, deck railings will be white and the deck itself will be a dark reddish brown. 

The upper deck took me hours just to get that far and lets just say I barley made a dent!

After painting all day Saturday with a dern brush and rollers, Joshua and I decided that we needed a break and headed out to dinner with our friends Chris and Anna. We all met up at Mellow Mushroom downtown and then went over to a local bar to hear The Eric Scott Band. We recently met Andy Fleming who plays the fiddle and vocals so we told him that we be coming to check them out. They were really good! I didnt take any photos but you can check out their Facebook page here.

Miller Lite and UnSweet Tea... I needed the caffeine to stay awake and the beer to relax. Just one of those days....

Sunday we woke up bright and early to get a head start on painting and Joshua was determined to get farther with the painting than we did on Saturday. Thank goodness our neighbor had a sprayer and that got the job done WAY faster. 

We didn't however make it to the gym over the weekend. We felt that plenty of calories were burned standing on our feet all day painting a house. 

This morning we got back on track at the gym and worked on chest and tri's. I must say that I'm pretty proud of my myself because when we were doing our dumbbell bench press, on my last set I was able to do 50lb dumbbells for 10 reps! I was feeling the burn at that point. 

The rest of my day will be spent taking care of the mess below...

Yes, a HUGE pile laundry calling my name to be folded... 

looking like a hott mess.....

Nice hair huh, lol

AJ is over Monday already...

and running some errands before I hit up the gym again for some cardio....

I hope you all have a super productive Monday! If you get bored today I have plenty of laundry that needs folden...LOL

Here's to finding your NorthStar....

i know, i know...

OMG i truly can't believe it's been over a MONTH since I last posted.... VERY BAD BLOGGER!

To be honest with you all, not to much has been going on in the land of The Britton's.

I mean we did go on a spectacular one year anniversary vacation in the Southern Caribbean..

Where I received one hell of a sunburn because I thought I was tan enough to stand the heat of the equator..

Went snorkeling in Aruba after a few of these... Probably not the safest idea we had but definitely the funnest!

Wore a super sexy dress to formal night compliments of my Grandmother ;-)

Drank far to much....

Ate like pig and complained when someone jumped in front me at the buffet line....

and where my love bug and I shared many loving glances and reminded ourselves of how lucky we are ;-)

Hands down the BEST vacation we have ever been on. There are so many little details I would love to share with guys but man would we be here all day.... Those were some of the highlights and who knows maybe I'll get a wild hair and do a proper post on all of our vacation adventures!

In other news, we really have just been hanging out with friends, doing a little tailgating and hiking and enjoying this nice fall weather.

 GO CLEMSON!!!! 

We have also continued with our training for 2012 and are now back on diets. Well I'm on a diet ;-( I gained 15lbs in 3 weeks and let me tell you I'm paying for it now! I've been carb cycling, doing tons of cardio and keeping bad food to a minimum till my weight comes down. It's hard work but a good reminder of what can happen when you lose focus, fall off the ban wagon and get just plain lazy.....

I'm going to make a promise to everyone (especially my biggest fan, my husband ;-)) that I will NEVER go more than a week without blogging. For one it helps me stay motivated and accountable! I have truly missed you all and I hope you have missed me!


Here's to finding your NorthStar.....

Ingredients

After catching up on all the blogs that I read on a daily basis (probably like 50 or something, I know, way to many but I hate missing out on anything, lol. Joshua reads FOX news and I read blogs...) I decided that at 3:30pm I was going make myself do cardio. Like karatenurse, we are going to Puerto Rico and a Caribbean cruise in 30 days!!! I am so stinking excited about it! I mentioned before that I want to look smoking hot because I know that there will be bikini photos and what not (thanks for reminding me this morning Stacy, lol). So when I got to the gym I was amazingly PUMPED! I jumped on the treadmill and knocked out 20 mins of HITT then finished out on the elliptical. I was pouring sweat and it felt good! After the sweat session I headed home for dinner. Oh btw, Joshua helped me figure out what I did wrong on the turkey loafs. Hello Britney! Use metal pans not silicon and I took out a few ingredients that really weren't needed. So tomorrow you guys are going to have a new and improved Turkey Mini Loafs recipe! 

After dinner, which was so yum, (Turkey Mini Loaf, Veggie Melody) Joshua turned on the Netflix to see what was new. We watched this hilarious stand up comedy routine by Nicholas. I'm not sure if you guys know who he is. He was in Grandmas Boy and he played Terry the Roller Skate Boy on Reno 911. Pretty funny stuff. 

After a few good laughs we came across a documentary called Ingredients. It was "kind of" like the movie Food Inc. Which I highly recommend, both are huge eye openers. It is about local restaurant's and communities supporting their local agriculture. Since we have become fairly clean eaters I've become very interested and conscious in where my food is coming from, how it was grown and who grew it. I truly believe in sustainability. I believe that as a country we have let "big business" and the commercial food industry tell us what is good for us and have made  food far to convenient. The days of learning to farm or even growing your own veggies is seemingly lost amongst all the fast food chains.

 I will be the first to admit I know nothing about even growing a tomato, however I want to learn. I would love to be able to grow some of my own veggies or at the very least buy all of our meats and veggies from local farms. As bodybuilders or just clean eater, we know that our bodies are our temples, so why are aren't we eating the very best ingredients possible? Something to ponder on today...

How do you guys supports your local agriculture?Which reminds me that our Farmers Market is open today so I'm going to head that way! Here's to finding your NorthStar....

Want to know where you can buy locally? Check out this link. www.eatwellguide.org

Sucker Punch!

Yesterday around, I don't know 3 o'clock, I got into really bad mood. More depressed than anything. Sometimes life gets in my way and when that happens I get pissed. I will go ahead and admit that usually when something doesn't go the way that I want it to it's because I didn't follow my/our plan accordingly. Hence plan failing and turning me in to a self loathing brat. Joshua absolutely hates it when I get like this because no matter what he says or does it just doesn't help. Only ice cream can fix the situation. So on our way home we stopped by the grocery store and bought some No Sugar Added Klondike Bars. These Klondike bars are somewhat smaller than the originals and have a much thinner layer of chocolate around them. There also only 160 cals per bar and 22 grams of carbs. I likey that ;-) 

We also picked up a movie from the Blockbuster Movie Express box, Sucker Punch! We get tons of discounted movies with our Groupon codes. I think we spend like $2 and get 5 movies. It's a great deal for us because we don't mind waiting for a movie to come out on DVD and save the rest of our $8 per ticket. Movie theaters have become such a rip off these days! However they will be getting my money when The Help hits the big screen this month.. Oh yes, the book was so good! I couldn't put it down and ended up finishing it in a matter of days. Normally, if it's just an ok book it takes me a few weeks or months.... Just depends on if I'm feeling it or not. 

NE who, Joshua has been eyeing Sucker Punch for quite sometime now. Well, since it came out in theaters but like I said, we wait till it's cheap lol. Since it came to Blockbuster Express, about everytime we rent a movie he makes mention about renting it but I always snub my nose because to me it looked stupid. I'm not into comic book stuff and or video game fantasies and that's what this movie is based on. But last night I didn't care about much anything other than sitting in the recliner with him, feeling sorry for myself over a Klondike bar.. so we rented it. To my surprise it turned out to be really good! LOL Its a very "girl power" flick and I'm definitely into anything that makes women more powerful. I mean in all seriousness we do rule the world, we just let men think they do...BAHAHAHA

The movie starts out very strange and at first we just weren't sure where they were going with it. Dad kills Mom for inheritance money which she leaves to kids, Dad tries to kill kids but older daughter stops him, then she is sent to Mental Heath facility and then..... that's where it get's sketchy. It's one of those movies where you really have to follow along closely, like Inception. WOWZA, was that movie h-a-r-d, hard to follow...

So the girl in Sucker Punch is basically beaten down and treated really terrible throughout the movie however there are people that are teaching how to take control of her own future. To not be taken for granted. Sometimes good things come in small packages ;-) You guys will just to have to watch the movie to see what I mean. 

The film ends with the screen going black and Sweet Pea (The Madame trying to help her) saying that "you have all the weapons you need, now fight!" Which got me thinking. Here I am, sitting here feeling all sorry and down low, when really it's not that bad. I know what I need to do to fix the situation. Sometimes our plans don't go the way we want them to, or we don't follow them like we should, but we have two choices: be pissed or do something about it. I choose the latter. I get so mad at myself sometimes when I don't do the things I know I need to do. Weather it's putting up the laundry, doing cardio, not eating Klondike bars for comfort.. whatever it is. By choosing to do the opposite of what is going to make us successful we set ourselves up for failure. Now, I have a family to help take care of, 9 months till Jr. USA's, a business to get off the ground and  a blog to write, if I let myself fall off of the plan's that are set before me then I will have failed myself and that is just not an option. 

Im taking control of my plans and getting shit done. No more pity party's for me anytime soon! What are you taking control of?

Here's to finding your NorthStar......  

Hmmm... Where did I go wrong?

Happy Tuesday Everyone! I have been quite the productive little Figure Girl (lol I like calling myself a figure athlete sometimes, I mean for heavens sake that's what we train for day in and day out right?). I cooked several new recipes for you all, however none of them really turned out like I wanted. I just don't know where I went wrong. This is where I need Mister Britton to show me what I need to add or take away.

For instance I made Mini Turkey Meatloaf's.

I didn't have an actual turkey meatloaf recipe to follow so what I thought was why don't I take my favorite traditional meatloaf recipe and adjust it to my liking... That sounded like a good idea. 

First of all, they took FOREVER to bake... I put them in the oven originally for 30 mins @ 375 degrees. Since I measured them out in 2oz servings I assumed that 30 mins would cook them very well. Wrong, after 30 mins they looked like they were still raw and just beginning to cook. So I hit the timer for 15 more mins. Nope still not done, so another 15 mins. I then tasted one and it looked and tasted done but my gosh were they bland.... 

I guess I needed to add more spices and tweak the recipe a little more. I'm going to show it to Joshua, have him taste them and see what he thinks... dern it I thought these would be amazing.... my meatloaf is always so good... 

While they cooled I made some homemade ketchup. Once again, FAIL. Geezz I'm two for two here! 

This time I had a recipe and followed it just like it said but when I taste tested it as it cooked, BLAH.. I didn't even try to mess with it because I had no clue what it needed. 

At least it looks pretty in the jar ;-)

I'm going to try the recipe from here next time. When I try new recipes cooking clean or healthy sometimes it doesn't always work the first time but I'm not going to give up! I just need to experiment a little more. I just know that come contest prep, my food selection is going to be very limited and I really want to find some recipes that I know I will be able to have or incorporate in my diet. Joshua doesn't care so much about this like most bodybuilders, but I'm a "need variety" kinda girl. 

Hence my trip to local fruit stand on my way to the gym this morning. I bought some fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers and was given a bag of free lettuce but it didn't look to good (that's why it was free, lol).

I ended up just throwing it out in the compost. Do you guys use a compost? Our neighbors started it and when we moved here they asked us to add to it anytime we wanted. We're just "green" like that , lol....

With my fruit stand veggies I made a little salad and added some onions and Italian dressing. All prepared in my new Rachel Ray garbage bowl. I use it for mixing stuff though. 

Of course this turned out awesome because how do you mess up fresh veggies? At the rate I'm going, I'm sure I could think of a way... 

So colorful, and YUM O!

Even though none of my new recipes turned out quite like I wanted them to, I still ate them. I mean they weren't that bad, still edible. I don't think Joshua will be trying to eat the last one or anything, but I'll manage to get them down the 'ol hatch, seeing as how I tried my bestest ;-)

Have you guys made anything lately that didn't go as planned? Tell me about it! I love hearing from you all. Here's to finding your NorthStar.....