Second Time in the Winners Circle!

My second 3rd place finish!!  Not too shabby!!

For those that are wondering, I just completed a 49 day Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle Holiday Challenge.  This was my second Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle Challenge.  AND my second THIRD place finish!!

Here is what the judges wrote about me, I highlighted my favorite two quotes:

Second runner-up (3rd place): Cyana Briles

Here are Cyana's before and after results by the numbers: weight down 20 pounds, body fat down 9.6%, lean body mass up 2.6 pounds. She also dropped 4.25 inches off her waist and 3.5 inches off her hips. 

What's most striking about Cyana's results is that she didn't just lose weight or become a smaller versions of her old self, she achieved true body transformation - the reduction of body fat AND the building of sleek, lean muscle. The end result is a body that almost doesn't look like the same person - she's got a whole new body shape!

We also couldn't help but notice how one of Cyana's success strategies was using a "visualization picture." That's where she pasted a photo of her face on the body of a top former IFBB fitness olympia and current WBFF figure athlete. This "vis pic" technique is very popular with our members because it allows you to see yourself in your minds eye with the new body you want and much more easily re-program you self-image.

It's uncanny how well this kind of visualization strategy has worked for "burners" in past challenges and Cyana is a stunning example - her arms, legs and shoulders have all started taking on that "figure athlete" look.

The look is unmistakable and very distinctive: a rounded "cap" on the shoulders, which makes the waist look smaller, solid bicep and tricep muscularity in the arms, nice calves and super tight legs with that "line" defining the muscles down the side of the leg.

Even if you're not a professional physique judge trained to notice these things, you can still look at her physique and see that it's visually stunning. You just say, "Wow!"

 

This kind of body doesn't come from dieting alone. It comes from pumping iron, a lot of sweat and a mind totally focused on clear goals for each day, week and the entire 49 days. See it in the mind, take action and the body will follow.

As all our champions have in common, Cyana knew that fat loss is a first a math equation of calories in versus calories out, so she focused diligently on her calorie deficit. With her target calories pinned down and carefully tracked, her calories came from carefully chosen farm-grown natural foods. That combination of the right quantity and the right quality of food did it! 

Every so often we come across a contest entry that was tracked for 49 days, but we knew that there was a long history which came before that. Although this contest was judged only on the 49 day holiday period, if you looked back to Cyana's initial starting point and compare the "before before" photos to the most recent after photos, you would have to agree her overall transformation in the past year is one of the greatest we have ever seen.

This most recent 49 days was just one goal - one segment - of her continuing journey, and the fact that she's made so much more progress after already having come so far is truly impressive.

One more thing: This was not her first time in the winner's circle: Cyana also entered the 98 day summer Burn the Fat Challenge and made the top 3 in that one as well. Being in the winner's circle twice is a rare honor held by very few others. Congratulations!

 

Completed My Holiday Challenge!

While most people are just getting started on their New Year's Resolutions I'm wrapping up seven weeks of very healthy living!  This is the first time I've ever found myself at the New Year in better shape than I was at say......Thanksgiving.  In fact I'm in best shape of my life and I'm 46 years young.  For the past seven weeks I've been a challenger in the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle Holiday Challenge.  For the past seven weeks I've been tracking everything I eat.  I've been making sure to get enough high quality protein to help me get strong and lean.

Thank goodness for 20,000 little brown organic cage free egg laying birds.  Well I didn't eat that many eggs but I did eat a bunch of them.  Eggs are so economical and such a wonderful source of protein.  I have to admit that I never separated an egg white from an egg yolk.  First, it just seems like a lot of work.  Second, nature made it that way, Third, the fat in the yolk helped me stay full longer.  Eggs are a nutrient dense food.  The amount of vitamins, minerals, amino acids and healthy fats (remember that many vitamins and minerals need fat present in order to be metabolized properly) present in eggs is high for the number of calories in an egg.   Okay can you tell I like eggs?  I make my living supplying these eggs for the grocery stores so I hope you like eggs too. 

For the past seven weeks I've been going to the gym at least four times a week and working out.  I've been lifting weights and performing a workout routine that was recommended by my friend Audrey.  She was the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle Summer Challenge Champion.  If that workout was good enough for the past champion it was good enough for me.  The workout is by Tom Venuto and is called TNB (The New Bodybuilding)  It's a great full body routine you can perform at any gym, it features a split workout routine which is great.  That way only half my body was sore on any given day instead of my entire body.

In addition to the strength training I've been doing some sort of cardio workout every day, sometimes twice a day.  Going into the challenge I still had a bunch of fat that needed burned so that the muscle I was working on so hard would show up by the time the challenge was over.  It was important for my cardio to be enjoyable, or at least as enjoyable as possible.  I will have to admit that an hour of cardio on the elliptical machine at the gym was not the most entertaining type of cardio I performed.  Great music to jam to on my I-pod helped me stay motivated.  I also used all time spent doing cardio as "visualization time".  Cardio tends to be a little mindless so I though; why not utilize that time with constructive mental exercises? It soon became a habit for me to really get a picture in my head of my dream body and what I wanted to achieve.   I have to say this visualization habit has flowed into other parts of my life I now visualize my dream body achieving great goals.  My biggest goal is to be inspiring.  I want other people who are struggling with their weight and with their health  to know there is a safe sane way transform your life.

Okay.......enough about what I've been doing the last seven weeks.

Here's some before and after pictures that represent what I accomplished in that seven weeks.

 
So as the title suggests I've completed my seven week Holiday Challenge.  I entered myself for judging.  Thousands entered!  Only ten to twenty percent of the people who enter finish.  Out of those only one female and one male will be crowned the "Champion" and win a killer vacation to Maui!!   It will be about two weeks before I know how I placed.  I'm hoping to at least be in the top ten and of course my goal all along has been to be the Champion. 

If you've followed my blog or just read back to the beginning of it you'll find out that my transformation from fat to fit began back in May of this past year when I first found Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle and competed it a fourteen week long Summer challenge where I placed third overall for the women.

Here's a picture of me at the beginning of that challenge and then the end of this challenge.  This pictures represents my total transformation.......Thus far!!

 

Please if you've stopped by my blog and you were inspired in any way or have any questions, please leave me a "comment".  I'd love to hear from you!

If I could do this, so can you!

One Week left in the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle Holiday Challege!

Time has flown by!  Six weeks to be exact.  It's passed in a blur.  I try to look back but I only see workouts strung together one after another, I see menu plans and pages full of numbers. I try to wrap my brain around my transformation but it's too big and multifaceted to grasp easily.

I exist in the present moment.  In this moment I weigh 169 lbs and my body fat is 25.3%.  I started this challenge six short weeks ago weighing 186 lbs and my body fat was 33%.  One week left to see what I'm made of.  One week left to challenge my limits.  One week left...........then I'll be able to say I gave it everything I had for 49 days. 

To officially enter myself for judging in this challenge I will have to post my "after" pictures and write a winning essay. This will take place in one week!  I'll be sure to post my after pictures here too.

Stay tuned!

Half way through the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle Holiday Challenge

The last Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle Challenge I did was this past Summer.  Over two thousand people entered the challenge and I placed third overall for the women.  I wanted first place with all my heart!  Looking back I see it all unfolded the way it was meant to.  Had I won that challenge I might not be pushing it as hard this challenge.  I'm more motivated than ever to be crowned the Champion of the Holiday Challenge.

The Holiday Challenge is a 49 day body transformation contest.  The winner will be the person who has made the best and biggest transformation as shown by their posted results, their posted before and after images and their final essay.

The hardest part of entering my first challenge was having my picture taken in a bikini.  I hadn't owned a bikini in years!  Then I had to post those pictures!  I remember looking at those images and I cried my eyes out.  How had I let myself go?  How had I become so fat?  I was horrified, I really looked at my body and I saw the reason for my poor health.  I was obese in the worst way....around my middle.  Every one agrees that carrying visceral fat around your middle is an indicator of poor health, including high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease to name three big things. 

One good thing about posting those horrible pictures is that I realized the only way to save face and to redeem myself was to post much better after pictures.  Now I cherish those first before pictures.  They stand as a reminder of where I started on this journey.  They mark how far I've come.

Week four of the Holiday Challenge is wrapping up.  We post our weekly results on Monday morning.  I started the Summer Challenge weighing 219 lbs.  I started the Holiday Challenge weighing 186 lbs.  I'm now down 9.5 lbs in three weeks bringing my weigh down to 176.5.  I'm hoping to be down another 3 lbs this week when we weigh in Monday morning.

It was much easier to post my before pictures for the Holiday Challenge than it was to post them for the first time during the Summer Challenge.

The difference 33 lbs makes is truly amazing!  My health is so much better, my attitude is so much better and heck I just look so much better! 

I look at these two images and I visualize what the next one is going to look like. In my minds eye I see that it's going to be awesome enough for me to win the Holiday Challenge! 

I imagine that it will look like this.

Mentally Gearing up for the Holiday Challenge

My transformation from Fat to Fit continues. 

Life is a journey to be enjoyed.  
Struggles are just mile markers on the road of life that define and shape us. 

I started this Blog after I finished the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle Summer Challenge 2011 where I came in third place.  It wanted to showcase my achievements so far and hopefully inspire someone, anyone, that if I could do this so could they.

I burned over 40 lbs of fat in 14 weeks during the summer challenge following a very healthy and sane program.  Yes it was work, but what better labor of love can there be than to work on yourself; to decide that you - yourself matter and that you are worth the work.

That challenge ended a little over two months ago and I'm very pleased to report that I have not gained back one pound of the fat I burned off during the Summer Challenge.  In fact I've lost two more pounds.  I wasn't trying for any additional weight loss during this time as I wanted to give my body a break.  I wanted to practice the art of maintenance.  I wanted to prove to myself that this program was smart, safe and sustainable for every day life.  I couldn't be more pleased with what I've learned from this experience.

There is another challenge on my horizon!!  I'm very excited about it!  This challenge is billed as the "Holiday Challenge". It starts around Thanksgiving and goes through the New Years!  This challenge is only seven weeks long, where the Summer Challenge was fourteen weeks long.  I'll think of this as a mini-challenge with big goals!!

Most people will go into the Holiday Season knowing that come New Years they will be a few pounds heavier than they were before and a good New Years Resolution is to get rid of those extra pounds and any others that might be hanging around.  I on the other hand will go into the Holiday Season starting a Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle Challenge.  Come New Years I will be twenty pounds lighter and be much stronger than I started the Holiday Season!!

It may seem crazy to some people that a Body Transformation Challenge would go through the Holiday Season instead of starting on the New Year!  I agree, but mentally I love the dates of this challenge, but alas this will be the third and last annual Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle - Holiday Challenge.  In the future marketing smarts will prevail and the Holiday Challenge will be moved to a New Year Challenge where there will of course be thousands more people ready for such a challenge.  I understand the marketing behind this and it only makes me more excited about being in this last - Holiday Challenge.

The prize once again is an all expense paid luxury vacation for two to Maui!  I of course am busy mentally visualizing myself as the grand prize winner sitting on a beautiful beach in Maui!!

If there is anyone reading this who would like more information about this program that helped me achieve such great success it can be accessed by clicking on this link Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle. If you purchase the the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle e-book you will be eligible to enter the Holiday Challenge with me!  Once you purchase the book and have access to the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle website you can find all the information about how to enter the Holiday Challenge.  If you have any questions at all please feel free to email me or leave a comment.

Raw Milk from my Jersey cows................. Making Butter and Cheese

 

Up front you need to know that I believe Raw Milk from Happy Healthy Grass Fed Jersey Cows is the most nourishing, life giving, health promoting food source on this planet. 

There is a huge difference between the processed milk you buy at the grocery store and the milk I get from my cows.  You would think, "they both come from cows, how can they be different products?"  Mainly the milk you buy at the grocery store is pasteurized and homogenized.  In my humble opinion you might as well say that grocery store milk has been killed and devitalized rendering it toxic to people who consume it.  Where as the raw milk I hand milk from my happy and healthy grass fed Jersey cows is full of universal vital life energy.  To enjoy the true health benefits of milk it has to be consumed raw with it's full component of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, fats, proteins and carbohydrates intact, the way Mother Nature intended it.  Why is this simple truth so hard to understand?

I find our government negligent in promoting a toxic product like pasteurized and homogenized milk for health to the masses.  Our government's current policies promote quantity over quality, who cares if the milk is a little dirty because it's going to be pasteurized and homogenized at the processor.  Current policies promote large scale corporate dairy farms and milk processors who can afford all the fancy equipment to milk thousands of cows a day or process millions of gallons of milk a day.  Pasteurizing and homogenizing milk kills and denatures what was once a life giving healthy product.  Ever wonder why if milk is so full of vitamin D and vitamin A naturally that the label on grocery store milk says, "Vitamin A and D fortified"?  Processing kills the vitamins so the answer is to add an inferior quality of the vitamin back into the milk.  WHY do something like that?  What processing does to ruin milk makes it toxic to consume.  Processed milk causes allergies and inflammation responses in the body leading to everything from heart disease to cancer.   I've only exposed you to the tip of the iceberg here.  Want to know about how homogenizing milk fractionates the fat molecules in milk making them harmful to your body?  How about how processing turns the complex carbohydrates in milk to simple sugars?  I could go on and on and on............  Instead I'm going to give you links at the bottom of this page to articles where all the scientific research has already been documented.

"I hold a vision in my heart of a government that one day will promote healthy values over corporate greed."  -ME

The government with all it's regulating abilities could monitor and certify raw milk as clean for consumption, have it tested at the processor and have it tested and monitored on the grocery store shelf.  This would not be any more difficult or demanding than what it does now to monitor pasteurized and  homogenized milk.  A policy like this would in fact promote small scale dairy farms and processors with health conscious practices to flourish. This is the way it worked in the 20's through the 60's when milk was regularly delivered to our doorsteps, raw, healthy and full of life giving energy.

Okay, I'll hop off my soapbox for a few minutes.  Please don't leave yet! Check out these pictures of my cows and of butter and cheese making!

Randaleen is very pregnant in this picture

Flossie is pregnant with her first calf here. 

This cheese is air drying, next it will be waxed and aged

A view in my cheese fridge that I use for aging my cheeses

  

my electric churn has turned cream into butter

molding the butter into cakes

Randaleen has just calved.  Check out that udder!

New baby bull calf, still wet

Both the Weston Price Foundation and Dr.Mercola have great articles about the health benefits of Raw Milk

As promised links to articles whit lots of scientific data to ponder.  Warning, rather scary!

Raw Milk vs Pasturized Milk  the cool thing about this article is that it's from  Armchair Science, London written in April of 1938   Armchair Science is a British Medical Journal.  The more things change the more they stay the same........

Master your Milk Alergies, the douglas report  a good article stating that people who think they are lactose intolerant probably aren't.  They're just intolerant of pasteurized and homogenized milk and could easily drink healthy raw milk.

Real Milk Cures Many Diseases article on the realmilk.com website, siting a Mayo Clinic article written in 1929.  Gosh if I had any of these diseases I would certainly go this route

Effect of Pasteurization on the Nutritional Value of Milk

Pasteurization Does Harm Real Milk

Health Benifits of Raw Milk

The War Over Raw Milk Heats Up - Dr. Mercola

The FDA says drinking this is a Crime

A 98 Day Body Transformation Contest

May 25th through August 31, 2011 found me competing in a 98 day (14 weeks) 
body transformation contest.

What was I thinking?!  I'd never done anything like this before.  I was never very successful at losing weight and I'm in my mid forties!  I didn't think you could lose weight easily after 40.  Sure I was 70 lbs overweight, but when my self esteem would get low I'd go someplace like Wal-Mart and look around at all the people who were 100 lbs or more overweight.  Not a very good strategy for improvement, but it made me feel better none the less.

To enter the contest I needed to be the owner of an E-book called Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto.  Tom is a natural body builder who has been sharing his honest approach to fitness and inspiring people to make healthy changes in their lives.  Deep down we all know what to do to loose weight.  Tom's book in a nutshell:  We need to eat less and exercise more.  Right?  Sounds simple.  Nothing news breaking here.   He wasn't promising a new diet pill, a quick fix, or a magical way to fitness.  Reading the first chapter of his book I found my "News FLASH!!", he hooked me with: How to Set Powerful, Compelling Goals That Will Propel You Forward and Charge You Up With Unstoppable Motivation.  He wrote that goal setting was the most important step! If you couldn't master the mental game it was going to be next to impossible to make serious changes.  This was my light bulb moment, it all made sense, it clicked.  I now knew why I had failed to succeed in the past.

While reading Tom's book there were other light bulb moments for me, not the same wattage as the first chapter but still great information that helped me understand the process of transforming my body from fat to fit.   The second chapter of Tom's book taught me that if you try to lose weight by restricting your calories in an extreme way without exercising that up to 40% of your weight loss will be lean body mass (muscle).  Not a good thing!  Muscles make us strong and fit and healthy.  I wanted to loose FAT not Muscle!  I wanted to know that every pound I lost was 100% fat!  I learned the secret to success was adding exercise both cardio and strength training to a healthy diet high in lean protein that was only moderately restrictive in calories.  The next chapter taught me that scale weight was not the best nor the only way to measure results.  You could lose five pounds of fat and add five pounds of lean body mass and the scale would read zip and you would lose your motivation thinking you were not achieving any results!  I learned all about how to measure my body composition, learning how many pounds of fat and how many pounds of lean body mass I was.

Okay, okay.........there was so much more I learned...... but enough about Tom's e-book Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle, if anyone is interested in reading it you can purchase it by clicking the link.  He also has a book in hard copy you can purchase on Amazon called The Body Fat Solution.  I didn't mean for this post to sound like a commercial, but this body transformation contest and e-book were the launch pad for my transformation from fat to fit.  I have many mentors guiding me in my quantum quest for health, wealth and happiness but Tom Venuto was one of the first.

For 14 weeks I dedicated myself to burning the fat and feeding the muscle in my own body.  I focused my mind on my goals.   I ate healthy.  I jumped on my mini trampoline for cardio.  I did lunges, squats and pushups for strength training. I hula hooped for my core.  I did yoga for flexibility.  I meditated for inner peace.  I wrote everything down in my journal.  Every goal, every meal, every workout.  I tracked my results from week to week and made adjustments when necessary .  At the end of 14 weeks I was totally transformed!  I WAS A WINNER!  Did I win the grand prize trip to Maui?  No, but I came in third place out of thousands of people who entered the contest.  To me that was still an awesome achievement!

Check out my before and after pictures at the bottom of this post!
In 98 days I lost 34 pounds! I went from 219 pounds to 185 pounds. My body fat percentage went form 46%  to 31%. I Gained 9.3 pounds of lean body mass and melted 43.3 lbs of FAT!  I trimmed over 8 inches of fat off my waist and 5 inches of fat off my hips!  The before pictures horrify me.  I'm embarrassed for anyone to see them.  No one would be seeing them if it wasn't for the fact that they document how much I achieved in 98 days.

The journey continues.  I'm still achieving my fitness goals! I'm going to loose another 35 lbs and see where I am then.  I've entered my first 5K race, it's October 23rd in Myrtle Beach, SC. One of my ultimate goals is to run a marathon and another is to compete in a triathlon when I turn 50. You can support my progress by signing up to follow my blog by entering your email in the box on the upper left hand side of this page.  I would love one day to have hundreds of blog followers.  Thanks for taking the time to share in my journey.