Cut Mode: UPDATE- 18 weeks IN & 13 weeks OUT!
February 9, 2014 – Leslie Franklin
I have now been dieting for 18 weeks… and I am officially 13 weeks out from my first show! Whoa… that’s for REAL, so close! AHHHHH, Exciting!!
I had another Powerlifting meet this weekend, it ended up a bitter-sweet. My squat sucked! Got my opener of 220lbs and felt easy so decided to just go for a PR on the 2nd of 245, but didn’t get it, tried again on the 3rd and missed it again 🙁 Bench went better. 1st attempt 145 and smoked it, 2nd attempt was 150 (my previous meet PR) and got it, next was 155… And I GOT IT! But, I was red lighted because my butt come up a tad off the bench 🙁 but hey, PR in my book! Next was deadlifts, SMOKED 270, jumped to 285 which was a meet PR and got it!!!!! 3rd attempt was 300lbs…AND I DID IT!!!!! Holy crap!!! I can’t believe I did it!!!! Soooo excited about it!!!!! Totally makes up for missing my squat 🙂 all-in-all a good day. Finished with the same total as my last meet but the kicker… I was in a LOWER weight class, I call that a success 🙂
I’m now down another 4lbs from my last update sitting at 123lbs! 11lbs total in about 18 weeks. About .6 lb per week…pretty darn perfect! Losing weight slowly is my focus so I can really hold onto my HARD earned muscle from a year of off season and growing since my last bodybuilding competition.
Always continuing to make changes and adjustments to keep me progressing so here’s what we did since my last update.
Cardio: Well, we first switched things up a bit and I went from doing 15 min steady state cardio 2x per week to doing what we call MIIT cardio (Medium Intensity Interval Training) for 10 min 2x per week. I do 1 min ON and 1 min OFF, similar to HIIT cardio but a little easier to be able to make it to 1 min without passing out 😉 I do things like battle rope, box jumps, jump rope, ball slams, etc… anything to help improve strength WHILE getting cardio. AND still doing 2x per week of the 7 intervals of HIIT cardio (30 sec ON 30 sec OFF).
I did this up until about 1 1/2 weeks ago when I got sick and just COULDN’T do cardio, it was like my throat was on FIRE. I haven’t done cardio since… and ya know what… I’m still DROPPING! I know right, WHAT! I’m going to add it back in next week, but start back at just 4 days with 2 sessions 5 intervals of HIIT and 2 sessions of 5 intervals of MIIT for now. REALLY make a hard PUSH for these next 13 weeks.
Gotta maintain this muscle, so we are keeping cardio as low as possible and just concentrating on burning body fat through the workouts and nutrition. To be honest, I LOVE not doing much cardio (this coming from an EX-runner). My workouts are SO much better. I can really give my workouts my ALL and don’t feel like I have to “save” energy for the cardio.
Training: Yep, you guessed it… still incorporating power lifting (Squat, Bench, and Deadlifts) in with my bodybuilding style. After the meet this weekend I’m going to start training 7 days per week hitting my weak body parts twice and even 3x for shoulders & back. I will now have heavy days, med rep range days, and high rep days. My heavy days are my powerlifting days with Low reps being about 3-10 reps depending on the exercise. My med rep days will be 10-12 reps and high rep/hypertrophy days are somewhere from 12-20 reps. Because of training SO many times per week I keep my sets fairly low and do NOT hit failure each and every time. On Squat/leg day I hit all rep ranges because I just have one leg day (I do NOT need these darn tree trunks to grow any more).
So now my schedule looks about like this most weeks:
Sun: FULL body & abs (high rep depletion), 5 HIIT cardio – (refeed)
Mon: deadlifts, shoulders & back (heavy) – (med diet)
Tues: Chest, biceps (high/med rep) 5 MIIT cardio – (med diet)
Wed: Squats, legs (all rep ranges) – (med diet)
Thurs: shoulders & back (med rep), 5 MIIT cardio – (high diet)
Fri: bench/chest, tris (Heavy) – (med diet)
Sat: shoulders & back (high rep), 5 HIIT cardio – (med diet)
Food & Diet: I’m still doing the carb cycling approach with a Refeed, High and Med day diets. My low day diet is going away since I will now be training 7 days per week, which will actually bump my weekly calories a bit to support the extra day of training. I have had to adjust my macros twice since my last update to keep me progressing. My medium day (the majority of my days) is still at 145g protein, carbs dropped a bit to 155g, and 30g fat, about 1475 calories. My high day is 145g protein, 175g carbs, and 30g fat, about 1575 calories. We are still keeping my refeed at 275g carbs for that spike in calories to keep metabolism strong.
Foods are still basically the same but I switch things around a bit based on what I want as long as I hit my macros for each meal:
Meal 1 – egg whites, 1 whole egg, turkey bacon and fat free cheese (sometimes I use turkey sausage)
Meal 2 – Chicken, rice or sweet potato, & veggies (lately I’ve been on a pretzel and pita chip kick for my carbs. Put them on salad for a nice crunch)
Intra workout- I drink Xtend BCAA’s and 30g of carbs of dextrose (Glucose) from Ignition
Meal-3 – (post workout) 1st Phorm Phormula-1 Whey protein Isolate & Cereal (I switch up the cereal for variety, my fav right now is Phormula-1 Loop D Fruit and Fruity Pebbles! MMMMMM)
Meal 4 – 1st Phorm Level 1 protein & oatmeal (Lately I’ve been making protein muffins for this meal, super easy to make and SUPER portable if you are on the GO, here’s a link to my recipe– https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=618137874902315&set=a.519258964790207.1073741844.513553245360779&type=3&theater)
Meal 5 – Chicken, rice or sweet potato, & veggies again. Yeah…on a KICK again… I’ve been having chicken with salad, salsa and cheese flavored sprinkles and low fat ICE CREAM for my carbs!
Meal 6 – Casein protein & peanut butter (took carbs from this meal as one of my changes, but I DO LOVE me some peanut butter)
My supplements consist of:
1st Phorm Phormula-1 (Whey protein Isolate, FAST acting protein for post-workout)
1st Phorm Level-1 (a combo of whey isolate, whey concentrate, Milk Protein Concentrate, Egg Whites and Casein for a sustained release, this is great for throughout the day)
1st Phorm Ignition (dextrose/glucose)
Xtend BCAA’s
1st Phorm M-Factor Godess (Essential Vitamins, Minerals, & Micro-Nutrients)
1st Phorm ALPHACre HD™ (creatine and beta-alanine)
1st Phorm Micronized Creatine Monohydrate
1st Phorm Downtime PM
Seizing Every day!
The picture below was actually from about 3 weeks ago, so I’m a bit leaner now, but I HAD to share. This photo a monumental thing for me, been working for almost 7 years to grow some shoulders. Every comp I’ve done that’s ALWAYS the comments “need bigger shoulders”. Well, I was doing my shoulder workout this day, pulled my sleeves up (cuz I was just plain gettin hot) and glanced in the mirror and freaked OUT for a minute, I couldn’t believe that was me in the mirror. Seriously the fist time in my life I’ve looked at myself and said “HOLY CRAP! My shoulders look huge”. Feels sooooo good to see results from hard work.
Cut Mode: UPDATE- 13 weeks in!
January 8, 2014 – Leslie Franklin
Update time! Well, I totally set some new PR’s at my last powerlifting meet! 240lbs on squat (PR by 10lbs) 150 on bench press (PR by 2lbs) and 280 on Deadlift (PR by 5lbs). And to top that, I won Best Female Raw Lifter at the meet!!!! YEP, I’m STILL getting stronger WHILE dieting. It’s so awesome and feels good!!!
I’m now down 3lbs from my last update sitting at 127lbs! 7lbs total in about 13 weeks. Seams to be going pretty darn perfect! Losing weight slowly so I can really hold onto my HARD earned muscle from a year of off season since my last bodybuilding competition. I have had to continue to make changes and adjustments to keep me progressing so here’s what we did since my last update.
Cardio: We added 5 min to my Pre-workout medium intensity steady state cardio it’s now at 15 min… but still just 2x per week… yep that’s it, gotta maintain this muscle, so we are keeping cardio as low as possible and just concentrating on burning body fat through the workouts and nutrition. To be honest, I LOVE not doing much cardio (this coming from an EX-runner). My workouts are SO much better. I can really give my workouts my ALL and don’t feel like I have to “save” energy for the cardio. We bumped my HIIT from 5 intervals to 7…oh wow, two more…LOL still at just twice per week.
Training: I switched up my weight training a bit, it had been 12 weeks on the same type of plan so I just felt I needed a change. I am still incorporating power lifting (Squat, Bench, and Deadlifts) in with my bodybuilding style. I totally hooked on powerlifting, I FREAKING LOVE being STRONG and moving THAT much weight around. My PL coach jokes that I’m addicted… he’s totally right 😉 Still training 6 days per week hitting my weak body parts twice and even 3x for shoulders. But, now I have heavy days and high rep/hypertrophy days instead of hitting all rep ranges at each workout. My heavy days are my powerlifting days with Low reps being about 3-10 reps depending on the exercise. My high rep/hypertrophy days are somewhere from 10-20 reps, again, depending on the exercise. On Squat/leg day I hit all rep ranges because I just have one leg day (I do NOT need these darn tree trunks to grow any more).
So now my schedule looks about like this most weeks:
Sun: shoulders (high rep), abs -7min HIIT (med diet)
Mon: back, biceps (high rep) -7min HIIT (high diet)
Tues: bench, shoulders, tris (Heavy) -15min PreWo (med diet)
Wed: Squats, legs (med diet)
Thurs: shoulders (I do med rep range on shoulders here), chest, triceps (High rep) -15min PreWo (refeed)
Fri: deadlifts, back, biceps (heavy) (med diet)
Sat: off (low diet)
Food & Diet: I’m still doing the carb cycling approach with a Refeed, High, Med, and low day diets but I have had to adjust my macros a couple times since my last update to keep me progressing. My medium day (the majority of my days) is now 145g protein, 175g carbs, and 32g fat, about 1575 calories. My high day (1 day per week) is 145g protein, 200g carbs, and 32g fat, about 1675 calories. My low day (off workout day) is at 145 protein, 145g carbs, and 32g fat, about 1450 calories. We are keeping my refeed at 275g carbs for that spike in calories to keep metabolism strong.
We had a couple more holidays since my last update, Christmas and New Years, and ya know what… I stuck to my plans on both days! It was hard, and it was a challenge, but ya know what… it was SO worth it. I like the feeling of LEAN better than any food tastes. I still got to enjoy the time with my family and that’s what holidays are all about. But, I did actually DID get to eat with my family. I made food that would fit into my plan for everyone and no one knew the difference 🙂 LOVE me some candied sweet potatoes (made with everything that fits my plan of course).
Foods are still basically the same but I switch things around a bit based on what I want as long as I hit my macros for each meal:
Meal 1 – egg whites, 2 whole eggs (sometimes I use turkey bacon or turkey sausage and some fat free cheese to make an omelet)
Meal 2 – Chicken, rice or sweet potato, & veggies
Intra workout- I drink NRG-X Xtreme BCAA’s and 30g of carbs from dextrose
Meal-3 – (post workout) Sublime Whey protein & Cereal (I switch up the cereal for variety, my fav right now is Cinnamon swirl sublime Whey and Maple brown sugar Life cereal…OMG!)
Meal 4 – Casein protein & oatmeal (I switched to casein protein because it’s a slower absorbing protein and takes longer to digest, therefore it holds me over longer.)
Meal 5 – (this one varies depending on what I’m craving, cuz everyone knows night time is the hardest time of the day when it comes to food). Chicken, rice or sweet potato, & veggies again. OR – Yeah, I get on my craving kicks. The past few weeks I’ve been having burritos from time to time, with either chicken, lean ground beef or fat free cheese for my protein and salsa or I make it like a quesadilla and toast the tortilla in the skillet with the cheese all melty inside (mmmmm, i’m making myself hungry 🙂
Meal 6 – Casein protein & oats or pancake mix –Yeah! that’s right! pancakes a bedtime! (I spread my carbs out a bit and took some from other meals of the day so I could have a few carbs at the last meal with my casein to keep me a bit fuller at night)
My supplements consist of:
NRG-X Sublime Whey
NRG-X Xtreme BCAA’s
Vital Core (multi vitamin/greens)
Xtreme Greens (can’t get enough greens)
Joint Maxx (cuz I’m gettin old and my joints need it)
Beta Maxx (Beta-Alanine)
CEE 3000 (creatine)
Maxx Drive (for those LONG workouts)
Overdose ReDux (pre-workout)
Seizing Every day!
The picture below excites me like you wouldn’t believe. I reluctantly took a year of offseason after my last competition to really gain some muscle needed to do well at the Pro Figure level this year. Well, I DID! We are all our own worst critics, most people struggle with that, I’m no different. I just hadn’t SEEN it until I put these pics side by side. Muscle is so hard to come by for a woman, and a small woman at that, so I’m just super excited to SEE 4 lbs of muscle! The pic on the left was during my prep in 2012 and the one on the right was just about 2 weeks ago (now I’m down another lb from pictured).
Cut Mode: UPDATE- 8 weeks in!
December 5, 2013 – Leslie Franklin
Everything is still going as planned. Still seeing changes in my body, getting leaner! whoot whoot!! I AM still getting slightly stronger AND definitely NOT losing strength at all. My next power lifting meet is in about 1 week and I will be setting some Personal Records at a lower body weight than my last meet. I’m now down another 2lbs from my last update, so 4lbs total. Perfect weight loss for me. I feel great! I have had to make some more changes and adjustments within these last few weeks to keep me progressing so here’s what we did.
Cardio: We added 10 min of Pre-workout medium intensity steady state cardio 2x per week…yep that’s it. I usually walk up hill for these cardio sessions and sometimes I will lightly jog here and there just to keep my heart rate up around 130. Still doing the 5 min of HIIT cardio twice per week, doing one day on the stationary bike and one day on the prowler. On the bike I do HIIT like this: warm up for 2-3 min pedaling moderately fast at a low level, then 5 intervals of about 20 seconds at a HIGH level so I can really hit failure in 20 seconds (sometimes I don’t even make it 20 sec cuz my legs and lungs are burning SO bad) and then off for about 40 sec. After the intervals I just sit there and pedal moderatly for another 3-5min to let my heart rate get back down. When I do the prowler I will warm up a bit on the bike or treadmill then jump right into pushing that death machine! LOL I will push it down and back (takes about 25-30 seconds) then rest for about 45 seconds (this thing is brutal, so I need more rest time to catch my breath) and just do that 5 times. OUCH!
Training: Weight training is still the same, incorporating power lifting (Squat, Bench, and Deadlifts) in with my bodybuilding style. I train 6 days per week hitting my weak body parts twice and even 3x for some. I train HARD and push myself to get even stronger WHILE prepping. I am hitting all rep ranges for each body part in each workout. Low(3-6 reps, power lifting style on the days I do those), Med (8-12 reps), High (15-20 reps).
I had to adjust my weekly schedule to accommodate the Thanksgiving holiday refeed/cheat meal and the carb up/refeed before the powerlifting meet. So my schedule now looks like this:
Sun: shoulders, abs -5min HIIT (med diet)
Mon: back, biceps -5min HIIT (high diet)
Tues: bench, shoulders -10min PreWo (med diet)
Wed: Squats, legs (med diet)
Thurs: shoulders, chest, triceps -10min PreWo (refeed)
Fri: deadlifts, back, biceps (med diet)
Sat: off (low diet)
Food & Diet: Instead of adding a bunch of cardio we have dropped food/calories which is WAY better than blowing my brains out on a treadmill forever 🙂 As you can see above, I now have 3 different diets. This is a carb cycling approach that we started about 2 weeks ago. My medium day is 4 days of the week and is 145g protein, 200g carbs, and 32g fat, about 1675 calories. My high day is 145g protein, 225g carbs, and 33g fat, about 1775 calories. My low day (off workout day) is at 145 protein, 170g carbs, and 32g fat, about 1550 calories. My refeed has dropped slightly, at 275g carbs. Of course over Thanksgiving I had a cheat meal to enjoy the holiday with family, which was awesome.. LOVE me some Moma’s mock pecan pie and cheesy mac & corn, it’s amazing! 🙂
We are also trying a little different approach with NO carbs in the morning so my body will utilize fat for fuel.
Foods are still basically the same:
Meal 1 – egg whites, 2 whole eggs (dropped the carbs but added back in some fats from the yolks)
Meal 2 – Chicken, rice or sweet potato, & veggies
Intra workout- I drink NRG-X Xtreme BCAA’s and 30g of carbs from dextrose
Meal-3 – (post workout) Sublime Whey protein & Cereal or poptart or candy corn cuz it’s in season and it’s awesome!
Meal 4 – Sublime Whey & oatmeal
Meal 5 – (this one varies depending on what I’m craving, cuz everyone knows night time is the hardest time of the day when it comes to food). Chicken, rice or sweet potato, & veggies again. BUT lately I’ve been liking me some pretzel crisps (fitting my carb macros of course) crushed up on salad with my chicken and some walden farms dressing…mmmmm. OR one night I just wanted something sweet so I had some low-fat ice-cream…yeah, that’s right I said ice cream while prepping! hehe
Meal 6 – Casein protein (dropped the peanut butter to accommodate the fats in the morning meal, but my casein has 5g of fat so I’m still having some fats before bed)
My supplements consist of:
NRG-X Sublime Whey
NRG-X Xtreme BCAA’s
Vital Core (multi vitamin/greens)
Xtreme Greens (can’t get enough greens)
Joint Maxx (cuz I’m gettin old and my joints need it)
Beta Maxx (Beta-Alanine)
CEE 3000 (creatine)
Maxx Drive (for those LONG workouts)
Overdose ReDux (pre-workout)
Seizing Every day!
CUT MODE: Update – 4 weeks in
November 5th, 2013 – Leslie Franklin
So far so good! Everything is going super awesome. My body is changing, getting leaner AND stronger! I’m now down about 2lbs from when I started which for me is a perfect weight loss in 4 weeks. I feel great! I have had to make some light changes and adjustments within this first month to keep me progressing so here’s what we did.
Training: Weight training is still the same BUT getting STRONGER. We added just 5 min of HIIT cardio twice per week. I’ve been doing one day on the stationary bike and one day on the prowler. On the bike I do HIIT like this: warm up for 2-3 min pedaling moderately fast at a low level, then 5 intervals of about 20 seconds at a HIGH level so I can really hit failure in 20 seconds (sometimes I don’t even make it 20 sec cuz my legs and lungs are burning SO bad) and then off for about 40 sec. After the intervals I just sit there and pedal moderatly for another 3-5min to let my heart rate get back down. When I do the prowler I will warm up a bit on the bike or treadmill then jump right into pushing that death machine! LOL I will push it down and back (takes about 25-30 seconds) then rest for about 45 seconds (this thing is brutal, so I need more rest time to catch my breath) and just do that 5 times. OUCH!
Food: The only change we made was dropping fat slightly, first drop was 5g (45 calories) and the next drop was another 5g of fat (45 calories), now I did drop from things like peanut butter which made my protein go down slightly. So now my Calories are at about 1935cal (155g protein, 250g carb, and 35g fat). With calories going down, I slightly increased my refeed this week to 300g of carbs from 250g. Foods are still basically the same:
Meal 1 – egg whites, fat free cheese, oatmeal (dropped the yolk, but replaced the protein with fat free cheese)
Meal 2 – Chicken, rice or sweet potato, & veggies
Intra workout- I drink NRG-X Xtreme BCAA’s and 30g of carbs from dextrose
Meal-3 – (post workout) Sublime Whey protein & Cereal or poptart or candy corn cuz it’s in season and it’s awesome!
Meal 4 – Sublime Whey & oatmeal
Meal 5 – (this one varies depending on what I’m craving, cuz everyone knows night time is the hardest time of the day when it comes to food). Chicken, rice or sweet potato, & veggies again. BUT lately I’ve been liking me some pretzel crisps (fitting my carb macros of course) crushed up on salad with my chicken and some walden farms dressing…mmmmm. OR one night I just wanted something sweet so I had some low-fat ice-cream drumsticks…yeah, that’s right I said ice cream while prepping! hehe
Meal 6 – Casein protein & peanut butter (slightly smaller amount of PB here)
My supplements consist of:
NRG-X Sublime Whey
NRG-X Xtreme BCAA’s
Vital Core (multi vitamin/greens)
Xtreme Greens (can’t get enough greens)
Joint Maxx (cuz I’m gettin old)
Beta Maxx (Beta-Alanine)
CEE 3000 (creatine)
Maxx Drive (for those LONG workouts)
Overdose ReDux (pre-workout)
Time to DO Work!!!
Cut MODE: ON! The beginning
Oct 7th, 2013 – Leslie Franklin
Well, my prep for 2014 figure competitions has officially started! Yes, it seams FAR away but I’m taking it SLOW with the goal of maintaining the hard earned muscle I have worked SO hard to put on in the last year of off season/GROW MODE. This year will be different and better than any other year. John and I LOVE doing new things and making prep better and better year after year for myself and all of our clients. For my clients that wonder what I do, well here ya go the short and long of it 🙂
I’m starting my prep with ZERO, NADA, ZILTCH, ZIP, ABSOLUTELY NO cardio! and keeping it out for as long as possible. Whahooo for that! But I will be training 6 days per week hitting my weak body parts twice and even 3x for some. I will be training HARD and pushing myself to get even stronger WHILE prepping. WHAT, that’s unheard of… well, it’s gonna happen right here 😉 Training is going to be HARD to maintain muscle. With my new LOVE of powerlifting I will be incorporating Squat, Bench, and Dead lifts as well into my workouts cuz there WILL be more meets in my near future, and I just gotta. I will be hitting all rep ranges for each body part in each workout. Low(3-6 reps, power lifting style on the days I do those), Med (8-12 reps), High (15-20 reps)
My workout split looks like this:
Monday: Shoulders, Chest (bench press)
Tuesday: OFF
Wed: Back & Biceps (deadlifts)
Thursday: Shoulders, chest, Triceps
Friday: Legs (squats)
Saturday: Shoulders & Abs
Sunday: Back & Biceps
FOOD! Nope, not starving AT ALL. Calories started at about 2050cal (160g protein, 250g carb, and 45g fat)! With a small refeed once a week. Also, I will be fitting my macros with things I crave when I want them. So I don’t and won’t feel deprived. Of course MOST foods in my diet will be whole/clean foods. On a typical day my meals look like this:
Meal 1 – egg & egg whites, oatmeal
Meal 2 – Chicken, rice or sweet potato, & veggies
Intra workout- I drink NRG-X Xtreme BCAA’s and 30g of carbs from dextrose
Meal-3 – (post workout) Sublime Whey protein & Cereal or poptart or candy corn cuz it’s in season and it’s awesome!
Meal 4 – Sublime Whey & oatmeal
Meal 5 – (this one varies depending on what I’m craving, cuz everyone knows night time is the hardest time of the day when it comes to food). Chicken, rice or sweet potato, & veggies again. BUT lately I’ve been liking me some pretzel crisps (fitting my carb macros of course) crushed up on salad with my chicken and some walden farms dressing…mmmmm. OR one night I just wanted something sweet so I had some low-fat ice-cream drumsticks…yeah, that’s right I said ice cream while prepping! hehe
Meal 6 – Casein protein & peanut butter
My supplements consist of:
NRG-X Sublime Whey
NRG-X Xtreme BCAA’s
Vital Core (multi vitamin/greens)
Xtreme Greens (can’t get enough greens)
Joint Maxx (cuz I’m gettin old)
Beta Maxx (Beta-Alanine)
CEE 3000 (creatine)
Maxx Drive (for those LONG workouts)
Overdose ReDux (pre-workout)
As I get further into prep and fat burning becomes a bit harder I will be implementing some natural fat burning supplements from NRG-X and they are:
7KD100 (7-Keto® (3-acetyl-7-oxo DHEA)
GCB800 (Green Coffee Bean Extract)
RK100 (Raspberry Ketones)
&
Green Tea extract
Acetyl L-carnitine
Time to do some WORK! 🙂
