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The Marta Mathews diaries |
| By
Marta Mathews |
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September 29, 2003
I had a great weekend diet-wise and I'm quite proud of myself! I will
definitely enter the month of October with a bang! I'm going to re-visit my
workout and diet strategy tonight to make sure I am properly prepared for my
last thirty days. I'm going to hate October because of all the extra
pressure I know I will put on myself... But I will persevere!
October 1, 2003
I have exactly one month left to the competition.... Mentally I am ready for
the next four weeks but the physical part is starting to get more and more
difficult with each passing day. After dropping Creatine I made some changes
to my training regimen as well. I'm focusing more on lifting lighter weights
with more reps with very little idle time between sets. The last few
days at the gym have been very intense and my body is just plain tired. I've
added extra L-Glutamine to my diet in order to speed up my muscle recovery,
but I hardly feel any better. This month will also include a lot of extra
cardio... My goal is a minimum of 45-60 minutes of cardio every single day.
In fact from now on I will
prioritise cardio over weight lifting... I'm not
sure if this will help or not but I want to try something different this
time.
October 2, 2003
It's kind of pre-mature to be getting all excited for sticking with my one
hour cardio per day commitment, but so far so good. I performed one hour of
stationery bike or treadmill for the last three days in the row. I must say
it's a very boring process though. I was considering splitting it into two
sessions - do thirty minutes in the morning and thirty minutes over lunch -
but by doing this I risk missing it completely due to unexpected events at
work. I certainly don't want to give myself any excuses for missing cardio
during my final weeks of preparation so I decided it would be best if I try
to get it done all at once first thing in the morning. I've also completely
cleaned up my diet. Not that it wasn't clean to begin with - I just
eliminated or cut down majority of negligible food items such as low-fat
coffee whitener, low fat salad dressing, chewing gum, condiments,
sweeteners, etc. All these things can easily add up to more than a hundred
empty calories a day - that's an extra seven-hundred calories per week and
twenty-eight hundred calories per month! If you think of it, one could live
on this amount of condiments for two extra days! I completely realize that
my decision to eliminate these items off my menu might appear a bit
excessive, but I'd like to think of it as strategy to get in better shape.
October 3, 2003
Recently I was contacted by one of my fellow contestants by a name of
Nicole. Turns out I have already competed against her last year and now we
will meet again on a stage
during The Man Show! Yesterday I received a
message from Nicole saying she was sick during the last four days and was
forced to miss a few workout sessions. When I read what she wrote I
immediately jumped into the following conclusion: NOT ENOUGH VITAMINS &
MINERALS in Nicole's diet. My suspicion is obviously completely unjustified,
but as soon as Nicole mentioned the word "virus" I could not help my mind
backtracking to some of my past pre-competition experiences. I always seemed
to catch a lot of colds and viruses during my preparations for previous
events due to the fact that my diet was lacking vital minerals and vitamins.
This time around I've been supplementing with multivitamins every single
day. I take a vitamin pack first thing in the morning with my first meal and
some L-Glutamine and then again immediately after my evening workout with
more L-Glutamine plus post workout shake. So far I've not been sick once and
as soon as I start sneezing excessively I pop a couple of Vitamin C's and I
feel fine. In fact, I will be taking
extra vitamins tonight as I've been
strangely cold for most of the day
and that's usually not a good sign.
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