Bali belly...

I am back from Bali! Our holiday was amazing, the most awesome holiday doing a whole lot of nothing which was just what was needed!

Padang Bai :: Uluwatu

If you have not been to Bali, I cannot recommend it more highly. I went with some girlfriends in February and loved it so much I had to get Simon over there. The thing I love about Bali is not only the people, who are so lovely and friendly, but the truly incredible quality of the food. My words wouldn't come close to describing some of the most beautiful restaurants and cafes that we ate at and I think everything tasted that much better after nearly four months of super clean eating. Every meal was crazy good and the service really does leave Sydney restaurants for dead.

Seafish Bloo :: W Hotel Seminyak

Word of Mouth ::  Seminyak

Potato Head :: Seminyak Beach

Petitenget :: Seminyak

The Junction :: Seminyak

Mozaic Beach Club :: Batu Belig

ku-de-ta :: Seminyak Beach

Le Sal :: Seminyak

I trained four times while I was in Bali. My aim was to train every other day and walk the others which I stuck to. There are two gyms that I tried out and would be worth going to if you need a bit of a party pump while you are on holiday ::

Hammerhead Gym at 80361 on the border of Kuta and Seminyak. A pretty good gym with all the equipment you'll need for a great work out. This gym has more locals than tourists and very inadequate air-conditioning so prepare to get sweaty!

Hammerhead :: Sweatfest

Another option was Seaside Gym on the Beach right on the border of Legian and Seminyak at 18 Jalan Pantai Arjuna. The gym is under the Seaside Hotel as is a modern hotel gym. It is smaller and quieter than Hammerhead and the air-conditioning is better. Personally, I liked Hammerhead, I liked training with the locals.

Seaside Gym

So I ate a lot. A lot at breakfast, a lot at lunch and a lot at dinner. Safe to say I spent the whole holiday with a full tummy. I binged and I binged a lot.

On our second to last night, we headed up to the Rock Bar in Jimbaran Bay. Rock Bar is literally a bar on the side of the rock and is accessed by an inclinator. We sat on a day bed, drinking cocktails and watched the most beautiful sunset.

Sunset :: Rock Bar

We then headed for a BBQ seafood dinner on the beach. I ate at Jimbaran with the girls on my last holiday and I was fine. Not this time! My last day in Bali was spent poisoned by a Jimbaran Bay prawn. I was suffering from the infamous Bali belly.

Jimbaran Bay

Not only did I come home with Bali belly but I also came home with a Bali belly! This was taken after the most amazing all you can eat breakfast at the W. I really did eat all I could and I seem to have left my abs somewhere on Seminyak Beach!

Following the worlds best breakfast :: W Hotel Seminyak

I look in the mirror now and can really see how much I enjoyed my holiday. I ate what I wanted, when I wanted, drank a lot of cocktails and bintangs and really did go with the flow. I would love to say that I did all of this without thinking about it but that would not be true. I thought about what I was putting in to my body and how long it would take me to lose the fat I was putting on.

I am fine with not looking how I did a month ago although I would not complain if I did. I now know what I had to put my body through to look like I did at my competition. I now know when I am looking through Oxygen or Women's Health what the women in the magazines have done to get ready for their photoshoots and I think that competing has given me a slightly better body image. I am learning to not be too hard on myself.

With saying that, I am not happy with my Bali belly and I am now at the start of a new challenge. So how long will it take me to lose what I have put on in Bali? How long will it take me to get back to a point where I can look in the mirror and be happy with what I see.

My new challenge to myself is to see what I can do with my body from now until the end of November. Can I lose in a month what I put on in a month? Nothing too exciting, no comp to work towards. I am going to train and eat well just for me. Chris will do my skin-folds so he can keep an eye on my muscle mass (as my goal is to put more on so my diet may need to be adjusted over the next month) but I am not going to weigh myself at all.

This challenge is to try and get my body to where I am happy with it, where I do not pick myself to pieces when I look in the mirror, to find that happy balance I have been looking for for a long time. I will check my progress purely on how I look and feel. I am excited and really pumped to have a goal without having a goal, if that makes sense.

Time to rock this rig in to summer!

Knees...

Do you remember that nursery rhyme "your neck bone's connected to your back bone, your back bone's connected to your hip bone, your hip bone's connected to your knee bone"?

I have just found out that this nursery rhyme is too true. I found out that my aching knees are not actually being caused by a problem with my actual knees but a problem with my hips.

My knees have ached and at some points over the last six weeks they have actually hurt. I sucked it up and made a decision to not go and get them looked at until after my competition. I had a feeling that the training and the sprint work I was doing was what was causing the aches and pains and that the doctor would more than likely tell me to rest them which I knew was not an option.

Ignoring something and hoping it will go away is not really my style. And I definitely wouldn't recommend to anyone to just hope for the best. I was worried each work out was causing more, and possibly irreversible, damage.

The day after the competition I rang and made an appointment to see my Sport's Therapist. Daryl Phillips at Performance Health in Newport is nothing short of a miracle worker. I have seen him a few times before for various exercise injuries as have members of my family. Walking in to see Daryl went something like this ::

Daryl: "Hi Erin, what's happening?"
Erin: "Hi Daryl, my knees ache. I've been training for a fitness competition and putting heaps of stress on them etc etc
Daryl: "Ok Erin, stand and squat for me
Erin: "Ok" (I squat)
Daryl: "You have really crap external hip rotations, you have your mother's hips, you get this from her"
Erin: "Shit Daryl you can tell what the problem is by just watching me squat!!!"

Everytime I have been to see him he has had a look, maybe a bit of a feel of the problem area, tells me what the problem is, what is causing it and how to fix it. Daryl is AMAZING!

If you have a problem with anything in your body, aches, pains, pulls, I cannot recommend him more highly. Go and see him, he will diagnose it and repair you.

My knees have been strapped for four days, I have new orthotics in my runners, some of my leg exercises have been stopped for the time being with new (and I am going to say harder) exercises introduced to improve my hip rotation.

And luckily the six weeks of ignoring the pain and continuing to punish my knees and hips has not done any irreversible damage. I am very lucky! These knees will be back in the squat rack in no time!

4th...

Last weekend I placed fourth at the INBA NSW State Titles in the Fitness Model Tall Division.
 

I went in to the competition not caring if I placed but when I was actually up there I wanted it so badly. I would have loved third, I am not going to lie, but at the end of the day I achieved what I set out to achieve and placing fourth in my first ever comp against some really stiff and experienced competition was a massive achievement! I am too hard on myself, and this is something that I am making a conscious effort to work on. I should just be proud of myself; I am proud of myself.

The 48 hours before the competition were hard. After seven days of no carbohydrates, the two days before the comp were spent pumping myself full of starchy carbs. After going weeks and weeks on a very strict and limited diet you would think being told that you can eat nine meals a day, each with a portion of meat and a massive portion of carbs would be easy. The first two meals were and then each meal became more and more challenging after that. Like the rest of my prep, I focused, knuckled down and shoveled those meals in to me like they were my last.

The night before the comp I went to bed and I was solid as a rock. The carbs had had the desired effect and I had filled out and hardened up.

I stopped drinking water at 6pm on Saturday night. Throughout the night I ate half a kilo of peanut butter and strawberry jam. Again, sounds good after six weeks of no sugar but after about the third spoonful it starts to get a bit sickening.

I woke up and noticed big changes in how I looked and felt.

I was thirsty and I was only allowed 100ml of water an hour for the whole day. To go from drinking 6-8 litres a day, down to 1litre was more of a mental challenge than I expected. To go from making such a conscious effort to drink as much water as you can during ketosis to then having to ration yourself was the weirdest feeling mentally.

I enjoyed the day. I loved being at the competition and seeing all the other competitors. I loved being able to eat snickers bars and lollies guilt free to help fill up my dehydrated muscles. I was so happy with how I looked and I really don't think there is anything I could or would do differently if I decide to compete again.

I will practice my posing and really try and perfect it and get more confident at it. I think this is what did let me down a bit on the day. The girl who came first had been competing for three years and you could tell by how well she posed and how confident she was on stage. I think this comes, like anything, from experience.

Sunday night was awesome. We went straight from the comp to Nield Avenue in Rushcutters Bay for my celebratory meal. Amazing Lebanese/Mediterranean food and a few glasses of champagne. This was my idea of heaven!

Then on to Max Brenner for a waffle with ice cream and extra chocolate sauce. I was so full I thought I would burst. I had missed that feeling!

The next morning I woke up super early and went for a big walk. Mentally I felt really good and I didn't feel this big come down or anti-climax that a few people had told me I would feel.
 

Monday was spent relaxing and eating out with a few more glasses of wine. By Tuesday I was ready to get back to the gym and back on track with my clean eating. I am back on the diet of five meals a day, every three hours with protein, starchy carbs, fibrous carbs and good fats. I have gotten in four awesome weights sessions with three one hour power walks outdoors. I feel amazing, I feel strong and I am happy that I have filled out a bit since last weekend. And I think Simon is glad to have me back to "normal".

I just wanted to say an incredibly huge thank you to my awesome trainer, Chris Dufey from Vivid Fitness, who's unwavering support, knowledge and guidance saw me achieve big last weekend. Without you I would not have been able to prepare to get on stage nor have the confidence or drive to compete. You gave me the tools to transform my body into exactly what I wanted and I am looking forward to an exciting future working alongside you and your beautiful wife, Lauren. You are a truly gifted and generous person and trainer! Your testimonial and my photos* are on their way to you shortly!

And next weekend Simon and I are off to Bali for 10 days. Eating and training over there will be interesting. I am undecided about whether to have a big rest from it all or whether I should try and watch what I eat and try to train every other day so that getting back to where I am now is not too hard when I come home. I think I will see how I feel and go with the flow!

* I am a lucky girl; my boyfriend Simon is a photographer so I do have some awesome professional photographs that he took on the day. He is a perfectionist and wants to fiddle with them so I will share them in a later blog post.