So many people have asked me what I did to lose all of the fat weight, my history, my diet, my training, motivation, etc… I am going to try to cover all of those topics and share as much information as possible. I began my journey of transformation on January 18, 2000

One of the main things I want everyone to understand is that I did this in various stages. I did four official challenges with breaks in between. I also want to caution everyone that each person’s body is different and will respond differently than mine did. I implore you all to do the Body for Life plan 100% for your first 12 weeks without tweaking. See how your body responds to the whole program before you judge it. It works!!

MOTIVATION
Probably the most important thing I did to succeed throughout all of my challenges was I honored my self promises. This helped me tremendously. Honor self-promises! Bill says in his book,” Would you trust someone who repeatedly lied to you? Of course not" The promises you make to yourself are the most important ones to keep. I was lying to myself for years saying that I would get in shape and eat right. My confidence was at an all time low because I didn't trust myself. Now, I make little promises to myself all day long and I keep them! What a confidence booster to do this day after day after day. Sounds simple, but if you really do it, and do it daily, it does wonders for your self-esteem. Try to start out small and just make 3 easy promises to yourself and keep them. Take it day-by-day and sometimes hour-by-hour. I found that if I thought about the entire 12 weeks, I ended up feeling like I couldn’t do it. But if I just focused on one day at a time, I knew I could get through one day!

I stayed motivated by reading all the muscle magazines and by listening to the Body for Life cassette tapes in my car when I drive. I listened to those tapes for 10 months straight whenever I put my key in the ignition. My cassettes are just about worn out!!

I did a lot of visualization. I visualized Bill Phillips coming to my house to deliver my EAS jacket, medal, and check. I found a picture in a magazine of the body I wanted to have. I pasted my head on the picture and looked at it frequently. Believe it or not, I exceeded my expectations and now have a better physique than the model!! I visualized myself running on the beach with the body I wanted to have. I visualized every muscle, how I felt, the scent in the air, how the sand felt on my feet, the expression on my face, etc… At first this visualization was hard because I was no where near this body, but as I got closer and closer, it became easier and easier to do this visualization. Later, I visualized myself on the bodybuilding stage receiving my trophy. How wonderful it is to live out your dreams!!

I also play a lot of mental games with myself. I repeat the following things to myself during my workouts when I feel like giving up:
“I’m building my body for life, lean, firm, strong”
“How bad do you want it, Pam?”
“No compromise”
“I will not be denied”
“Someone out there is working harder than you, Pam”
“Who do you want to be, an athlete or a fatty?”
“Prove it can be done, Pam!”
“Fake it ‘til you make it!”
I have also gotten myself to the gym by telling myself that I will do a lighter workout. Then when I get there I decide to do a hard workout. Then I tell myself that I will do my hardest workout. Sometimes I would play tricks like that during cardio too. I would tell myself that I will cut cardio short and only do 5 intervals. Then I would get to 5 intervals and tell myself to do only 2 more intervals, then I would tell myself only one more and then finally just complete the whole 10.

I used a “star” reward system. Every day I would reward myself with colored star stickers for what I had done. The stars represented different things:
Red – Did you complete your workout?
Green – Did you eat “on program” (no cheating)?
Silver – Did you drink all of your water?
Gold – Did you think positive thoughts of yourself?
Every night I would look forward to the “reward ceremony” I had for myself. It really affected my decisions during the day. If I was tempted to cheat, I thought about how I wouldn’t earn my star that day if I cheated. You may want to set up a reward system such that when you have 3 weeks of 4 star days you buy a new outfit for yourself or something. I recommend that you reward yourself for “doing” not for “the scale weight”. Your effort and consistency is more important than what the scale says.

I NEVER LET THE SCALE SET MY MOOD FOR THE DAY OR WEEK!!
In fact, I try to weigh myself as little as possible. Remember, you are building muscle! Not only do you build muscle but you increase the density of your bones, increase the fluid in your blood, and muscle weighs a lot more than fat! Try not to let it affect how you feel about yourself.

Every day when I wake up I ask myself, “Who do you want to be today, Pam?” I make a conscious decision to be a healthy, fit individual rather than a lazy, fat person. Whenever I have a tough decision to make throughout the day I ask myself, “Pam, will this take you closer to or further away from your goals?” Then I have my answer on whether I should do it or not.

CARDIO
I have always done my cardio first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. For the first 3 challenges I followed the Body for Life program to the letter except I bumped up my cardio to 30 minutes per session after a few weeks. I still made sure I hit the 9's and 10's every workout (that is SO important). I used the recumbent bike for the first 6 months and then added the treadmill and elliptical trainer to my workouts. As I got in better shape and needed more challenging cardio, I started using the stepmill (where the stair rotate like an escalator). It wasn’t until my fourth challenge when I was preparing for a bodybuilding contest that I started doing cardio 6 days per week. I found that when I was doing cardio 6 days per week, it became MUCH harder to stick to the nutrition plan. I have always done intervals with my cardio. Even when I increased my daily time to 45 minutes, I still did intervals, just not as intense. I would say I hit a level 8 on my intervals when I extended the duration past 30 minutes. My opinion on High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) where you do one minute walking and one minute running all out: It is excellent for burning fat!!! I will only do HIIT 3 times per week for a short duration like 3 or 4 weeks. It can really burn you out fast. I did 30 minutes and hit 10 level 10 intervals per session. WHEW!!!

WEIGHT TRAINING
I work out at World Gym. They have a great selection of free weights and cables there. I try to stick to the basics. I push myself extremely hard. If my muscles aren't sore the next day, then I feel like I didn't work hard enough. I literally take my muscle to “muscle failure” where I physically cannot do another rep. I visualize Bill Phillips or one of my buddies from LEANandSTRONG standing there daring me to do another rep. I visualize them holding $1000. They tell me they will give it to me if I do another rep. If I still REALLY can’t do the rep, I know that I have hit a level 10. I change my routine every 4 weeks by changing the exercises per bodypart, # reps, poundage used, etc…

During my first 3 challenges I did the rep scheme and bodyparts as laid out in the BFL book. During my 4th challenge I split my workouts like this:

Monday: Chest and Triceps
Tuesday: Quads and Hams
Wednesday: Back and Biceps
Thursday: Shoulders, Abs, and Calves
Friday: Chest and Triceps
Saturday: Quads and Hams
Sunday : Rest
Monday: Back and Biceps
Tuesday: Shoulders, Abs, and Calves
Wednesday: Chest and Triceps
Thursday: Quads and Hams
Friday: Back and Biceps
Saturday: Shoulders, Abs, and Calves
Sunday: Rest
Repeat
I did 3-4 sets with 2 to 3 exercises per bodypart. I also did 10 – 15 reps per set. I used lighter weights and took less rest in between sets (15 – 30 seconds). I always do weight training in the morning before breakfast and before cardio.

NUTRITION
In the first 3 challenges I followed the BFL nutrition plan to the letter except I ate an occasional egg yolk and if I wasn't hungry for my last meal of the day, sometimes I would skip it. During the week I ate a lot of chicken breasts, brown rice, potatoes, fish, tuna fish sandwiches, chicken fajitas (recipe in the April/May issue of Muscle Media), nonfat cottage cheese, yogurt (in fact, I use the blender to blend together nonfat cottage cheese and yogurt in equal portions, makes kind of like a cheesecake taste), Stagg Turkey Chili (99% fat free), pasta with marinara and cottage cheese (sounds gross, but mixing the cottage cheese with the marinara makes for a creamier almost tomato/alfredo sauce), yams, hard boiled eggs (I do eat the yolks occasionally), protein powder cookies, etc... I will sometimes have a protein bar if I am in a tough situation where I can't get to my regular food or if I am really craving chocolate. I look for protein bars that are low in sugar and higher in protein. Some really good ones are: Pure Protein – S’mores, Designer Protein – Chocolate Malted Muscles, Designer Protein – Peanut Butter and Chocolate, Solid Protein – Cookie Dough, and EAS Lemon Cheesecake bars.
In my first 3 challenges I didn’t count calories or grams. I used Bill's portion guidelines from the book. I want this to be a lifetime habit and not just a diet. If I had to count calories every day for the rest of my life, I would be back at McDonalds ordering french fries and bagging the whole program.
In my 4th challenge I was training for a bodybuilding event so I hired a personal trainer to work with me once per week. He worked up a specific diet for me every week. This diet was adjusted to account for my current bodyfat%, weight, when I woke up, when I worked out, what time I went to sleep, etc…. The diet was different every week so it is hard to quantify it into meaningful text, but I will try. The whole concept is that you don’t want your body getting “used to” the same thing over and over because then the metabolism will slow down. So you vary your calories every day and vary the starchy carbs and protein every day. I will give you an example menu: Breakfast: 12 egg whites, 3 cups of spinach, 2 cups of mushrooms, a sprinkle of sesame seeds mid morn: Protein shake (50 g of protein) with _ cup blueberries Lunch: 10 oz romaine lettuce, 3 tomatoes, 2 cups green beans, 5 oz chicken breast, 1 T flaxseed oil mid aft: 2 cups squash, 2 cups broccoli, _ cup brown rice, 5 oz turkey breast Dinner: Protein shake (50 g of protein) This example was one of the lower starchy carb days. If it had been a day with more carbs I would have had a serving of corn in the mid aft meal and a Meal Replacement Shake for dinner instead of a protein shake. I would have had a few strawberries with breakfast as well. I hope this gives you all an idea. There were a couple of weeks when my trainer wanted to see the fat weight come off fast, so he kept me with a low amount of starchy carbs and limited my intake of milk products. On other days it was perfectly fine for me to have nonfat cottage cheese and fruit like I did while on the BFL nutrition plan. I always ate 5 meals per day while preparing for the bodybuilding contest.

SUPPLEMENTATION
I have dabbled a bit with the supplements. I primarily use a quality protein powder, glutamine, an occasional quality meal replacement powder, and a quality fat burner if getting ready for a photo shoot or competition (these are listed in the order of importance). When getting ready for the bodybuilding contest I used creatine as well.
You can do this without much supplementation. I mostly just relied on a quality protein powder for my first 9 months on the program.

WATER
I drink LOTS of water! I drink between 1 and 2 gallons per day. I know that it is important to transport all of the fat waste out of my body. Here's an analogy: Let's say that you wanted to clean your floors. You spent all this time sweeping and sweeping up all of the dirt and grime and put it in a pile. Then you realized you didn't have a dust pan to get it into the trash and out of your house. The pile of dirt just sat there and eventually dispersed itself on your floor again. I think of fat in the same way, you do all of this exercise to get rid of it and you dislodge it from the cells of your body, but it keeps circulating until it has a "dust pan" to take it out of your body. That dust pan is the water you drink.

FREE DAY
I totally used my free day for the first 3 challenges! A lot of people make the mistake of not using it and end up "cheating" on their diet during the week. I recommend that people USE IT and don't have any guilt about it! In the first few weeks, I LIVED for my free days!! I ate nachos, cookies, ice cream, pizza, burritos, etc... but I did not cheat during the week. It works, it really works!!!
In my 4th challenge here’s what I did: The first 4 weeks I ate one “free meal” per week and stayed on the nutrition plan the rest of the time, the second 4 weeks I had one “free treat” per week (It was usually a McDonald’s ice cream cone for me!), the third 4 weeks I eliminated the “free treat” and stayed on the strict diet the entire time, knowing that after the bodybuilding competition I would have all of the “free treats” I wanted during my week off.

IN BETWEEN CHALLENGES
I believe that you need a break every 12 weeks. Not only do your muscles need a break, but you need a mental break from all of the structured eating and planning. I would recommend that you eat everything you are craving, but try not to eat large quantities of it. It can really make you sick. You can set aside one “binge day” if you want, but you don’t wan t your week off to be a “binge week” as it can wreak havoc on your system. I am cautioning from experience here. [blushing]

FINAL WORDS
I am a totally different person inside and out and you can be too. Now if someone says I can't do something, a fire burns inside that tells me to prove him or her wrong... and I do. I feel like an Olympic athlete, yet I am not competing with others, I am competing to be my own personal best every day that I train. Everyday you can chose to win in your competition and everyday is a prize called the present. Enjoy it, enjoy the journey, you deserve it!