Not cranky, and 5 days till I leave.

The last few days I have been feeling very tired. I tried practicing my routine a few days ago, and well it did not go so well. I felt as though I had run out of gas. I did take 2 days off, and had a cheat meal this past Friday. My 'cheat' meals are not what others would consider to be cheat meals. I have a sandwich and some peanuts. Just enough to take the edge off, and give myself a bit of a break. It did help on Friday. I rested all day on Saturday, and got my hair done. I can sense today that I am in much better shape emotionally, and physically and will practice my routine again today.

Erik reassures me that to feel 'crappy' right now is normal. I know I can get through my routine and do all the moves properly and 'sell' them, but when you have an off day this close to the show, you wonder - 'Am I really ready?' I practice the posing quite often. It is really hard to flex your muscle like that under the hot lights, and make it look effortless. This is a mistake I made last year. I did not really know what I was doing and just went into last year's Nationals with no expectation for myself, so did not really prepare that part. It is worth 66% of the score, so hindsight is 20/20 and this year I made sure to practice.

I have been dieting for 10 weeks, since around the end of May. I had a few things lined up in June, so that is why I started my diet a bit earlier. For the Arnold I only dieted for around 46 days. This time, it is upwards of 75 days. Each week I do make changes to my diet to keep my body changing.

I wanted to update pics here, but I am having issues with my internet. I have a PC but it takes forever to download my photos there, and I usually upload from my Mac.

I will see what I can do.

A.