Every fitness model or fitness athlete wants a lot of great photos for their portfolio. You cannot get featured in magazines without doing the work first and the prep work is a pain in the butt. Really.

I am lucky I don’t need to diet down for photo shoots, so one chore less, but the TAN sucks big times. I don’t use tanning beds at all, wear SPF all the time and rarely ever let my eyes face the sun. I am that extreme with my skin since I don’t want wrinkles or cancer from too strong exposure to the sun. But it works against me for shoots becuse I am really really pale. My skin is veeeery pale so I look like a white pig in front of the camera if I don’t wear a few coats of contest color.  Regular self-tanners don’t do the trick and mystic tan does not stick to my skin at all.

The second chore is nails and feet. Pedicure. Manicure. It just takes so much time and it makes it harder to type on my laptop.

Third is I cannot eat anything or drink anything during the 12 hours shooting. Why? Because anything that distends my stomach will make posing and holding my waist tight difficult.

And it’s cold. Yes, even in California.:-)

So, in two days I have a photo shoot which I am now prepping for. I just want it done so I can move on to the next one and then that’s it for the year.

The best thing with photo shoots is that when I am there and getting made up and become this beautiful woman, it’s so much more fun! In every day life I am a rat, lol, a real gym rat, so being glamorous and with lashes, lipstick and big hair is fun for a change. I like looking like a puma!

Leg training today. working on using my lazy leg as much as my “good” one! I do many sets of squats, but I constantly work on my form rather than go for just go up and down with worthless form. I rather work smart and not get injured than to go for squatting big.

If I were to do only three exercises for my body for a year, I’d pick deadlifts, bent-over barbell rows and barbell push presses. It’s funny how one’s opinion changes and gets altered over time as you get more experienced and older and wiser… Now for instance I could never go in to work arms only. That would feel like too little total muscle exertion. Arms are so tiny muscle groups, I like training that makes me use my whole body. Better overload, higher calorie expenditure, better looking body.

Right now I do lots of intervals to get my legs soaked with lactic acid. I love the pump from it! And I love th heat that is created, it feels more like being an athlete and not just walking in time. For a while that is what I’ve been doing for a few sessions a week but now I’ve had it with that! And my body feels less spongy and more happy and content. I like “talking” to my body, to listen to what it says. For instance, long steady state cardio makes me retain water after the workout. Intervals without too high a heart rate does not. I interpret this as my body releases more stress hormones that retain water when I do regular cardio work. Hence I should not do that style. Great, since I am not a fan of it anyway! Mixing up is great, but I like to do all out all the time.  I know it does not work, but hey, I will keep on trying until I fall over and die! JK

Working at the gym this morning. Suddenly out of nowhere a man starts his set of reverse pecdeck for shoulders and with full force raises the arms and the iron machine handle out to where I happen to walk by. BAM!!!! Right onto my sternum. I could not breathe, could not talk, It was pounding like crazy feeling like my heart was popping out! I got totally chocked and tears started to run down and I just couldn’t talk.

After this start I worked out my back like an animal. I guess I was so high on adrenaline! But as I finished I just cried like a baby. So weird. Now my brain is still trying to get what happen and I jumped to the side to save myself twice at the gym as some hand or arm was sticking out of the blue.  I really never saw THAT happen: getting a chock treatment in the gym! LOL.

You know what is really wrong with the concept of dieting? It´s the obvious “there will be an end” that goes with it! I totally don´t get how one can endure months of strict dieting just to stop cold turkey and get fatter again. Wouldn´t all the hard work be for nothing then?

I´ve never been good at dieting actually if I refer to the typical short-term diet to lose fat and get lean way of dieting. To me dieting is just eating with awareness of why, when and what as well as knowing the postive and negative consequences each meal has on my mind and body.

If you can get lean you can retain that leanness as long as you keep working at it. You see, you will for sure gain weight again would you pick up your old habits of being a couch potato and eat potato chips and instead of eating veggies just vegging out in front of play station.

I do lots of cardio. I need to! My body is not “naturally” shredded. Oh no, I wish, lol! I just got to keep burning off a lot of calories to stay at where I want to be. Which is a lot leaner than my genetics would prefer! I often get comments like “you are so lean, you don´t need to do that much cardio” or “Are you trying to lean out even more?”. First off, I AM lean because of all the training and strict dieting. If I stop doing it I will not look the same. Second, no, I am just STAYING in the shape I am. THAT takes effort and a never ending ability to just keep on even when it sucks and gets boring some times. When I feel like I refuse to do any more I just remind myself that I am so lucky to have a healthy body so I can work it like the workhorse I want it to be, and that I should be fortunate I have time to actually go to the gym as much as my schedule allows!

After photo shoots or figure shows, most competitors/models pig out. They believe their bodies are incapable of putting those pounds on again from overeating and indulging for two days or so…. WRONG! It´s frustrating and unfair but the human body is superb at gaining fat! You bet it can surely squeeze in all the fat back in in your hungry fat cells and then some more just in case!

Have you seen the commercial about “getting the real facts” about high fructose corn syrup? It’s the corn refiners that stand behind it. In the commercial one of the characters says “It’s totally fine when eaten in moderation”. Ok, so wait a minute… When was moderation part of our society? I have yet to see all us people follow moderation when it comes to sweet foods!

I went to their website to read what the corn refiners had to say and of course it was a lot of information about how great corn syrup is.. who could have known huh! Listen to this:

“High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is often the sweetener of choice because it provides many consumer benefits, including: sweetness, flavor enhancement, freshness, soft texture, browning, stability, pourability and fermentability.”

My comment on that statement: We’re not even supposed to eat that crap ok! If anything needs to be sweetened, flavor enhanced, freshened and browned, that really qualifies the food for a junk food to me.

As I see it, the consumer benefits just lead to consumer weight gain, tooth decay and empty calories lol.

Fighter Diet does not contain HFCS because it does not contain added regular sugar either.

I think the corn refiners should stick to selling baby corn instead!

The other commercial is for Kellogs K…. Hm… Is this some kind of corn product stand united campaign since this one of course too is loaded with HFCS.

Their special new product with chocolate delight flavoring takes the guilt out of pleasure so “you can indulge guilt free…”  Ah, come on!!!! You are not supposed to eat cereal as a nice calorie controlled treat, the whole idea is freaking bad! And who will stay with a little serving of 3/4 cup of it??? NOBODY who eats cereal at night I bet!

Kellogs is banned substance in my home. Always has been, always will be.

OK, so let´s get this straight again. I do not train biceps. I stopped in May 2006. I do however always get the request to train them for photo shoots…

Here you go, my treat for you who like biceps training. As you can see I cheat, I swing and I don´t concentrate. LOL. That´s how boring biceps are to me!;-)

There is this one young woman at my gym who´ve been there as long as I remember. One month she his pretty normal weight. The other month she is fat. And then almost thin. Which then transforms into fat again.

She seems to be out of control of her lifestyle and her diet in particular. She does loads of cardio, LOADS of it. And it looks like she´s actually pushing pretty hard too.

This makes me think about what my advice is to those who want to change from out of shape to the better IN shape.

When you first make up your mind about changing your lifestyle to accommodate your desire to look like a milllion bucks, consider it a short term project. This will help you feel less overwhelmed when it seems like the new diet never ends. Take one day at a time and focus on perfecting one after another. All the sudden this project becomes a habit. And habits have a habit to stick, unfortunately the bad ones in particular, but that´s why it´s a good idea to change a BAD one for a BETTER one instead of trying to have no habits at all.

Don´t stress about wanting to see results yesterday. It just won´t happen. If it did, remember the old saying what you gain with ease you lose with ease? To crash diet is never the way to stick to a diet plan.

After a while, reevaluate your diet. Instead of perceiving it as an evil must to get and stay lean, look upon it as what you choose to do. It´s not a sacrifice because following a healthy diet which keeps your weight in check is your best health insurance! So, in the long run it surely will cost you less since you now lay the foundation for extraordinary cholesterol levels, heart, gastric system and you stay away from clogging your arteries with crap!

Eliminate thoughts like “she has a better genetic makeup”, ” why do I have to work so much harder than everybody else needs to?”, “My body does not want to change”, “I hate this food and I am too tired to work out” or “well, she/he is on steroids so of course they look great. I would too if I took some!”

All these thoughts are first of all not true. You have no idea how hard other people work towards their goals. You may see them for an hour a day at the gym, but what they do and don´t do you have no clue about. And the drug-accusing… Don´t compare yourself to them because there is no reason to do that if you follow different rules and I hope you do this to be healthy and look healthy, not to be a mess inside and have a nice exterior that will look bad and drawn and saggy the day you stop popping forbidden pills.

Learn to love what you do. Otherwise you won´t keep on doing it. Having an extraordinary physique is a 24/7 job which you never quit. It´s like a business: it does not run itself and it does not increase your payoff if you treat it like a recreational hobby.

See yourself as an artist. Your body is your piece of work. Work on perfecting it and enjoy the time you´re putting into it. A really amazing physique cannot be rushed or stressed, it takes time, dedication, persistance and determination. Accept that and you will be find it to be your greatest accomplishment that will accompany you as long as you nurture it.

Yesterday I did my shopping at the local sports nutrition/health food store. I was there to buy some borage oil for a client with high blood pressure. The salesperson who I know pretty well, or let me put it this way, he should know me better by now, handed me a water sample and claimed it to be sugar free. “Yeah, greeeat” I said and informed him that I knew that water had carbs in it. And I refuse to drink anything with carbs. That´s nasty! I don´t drink my calories if it doesn´t happen to be protein powder.

Anyway, so he kept on pushing the stupid water on me until I read the ingredients for him. Maltodextrin. “But that´s not a sugar….” he said and I responded to his naive salesman response and added “but just as bad!”.

I am sick of people who try to sell me stuff I do not believe in. Does it seem like I have no idea about what I want to buy in that store? I make sure I pick my stuff with determination so I don´t attract the salespersons..lol… It´s even worse when I send my clients over with a list written by me on things to buy, perfect description and in what aisle they find it, brand, price etc, but still these salesperson cannot deal with it! Just leave the customers alone if they know what they want!!!

training today was awesome. And training the other days too. Tomorrow it´s squats. YES!!!

I believe I am the number one cabbage consumer in the world. I must be with my 5-7 lbs of it every single day.

Since it´s such a big part of my diet, I would like to write it up here. Like a tribute!

Cabbage contains compounds that signal genes to increase production of enzymes involved in detoxification, the cleansing process through which our bodies eliminate harmful compounds.

Cabbage optimizes our cells’ ability to disarm and clear free radicals and toxins, including potential carcinogens.

Studies show that those eating the most cruciferous vegetables have a much lower risk of prostate, colorectal and lung cancer-even whencompared to those who regularly eat other vegetables!

In addition to its cancer-preventive phytonutrients, cabbage is an excellent source of vitamin C, an antioxidant that helps protect cells from harmful free radicals.

Cabbage contains compounds which affect the way in which steroid hormones, including estrogen, are metabolized and the way in which the estrogen receptors on cells respond to the hormone. This reduces the risk for breast cancer.