Dieting 101 
75% of contest prep & looking your best comes from your diet.  75%!!!!  That is huge!  I cannot stress enough how important a good diet is to achieving your ultimate physique.  Now, all diets are not created equal.  Some work better for the vast majority of the population, others do not.  Certain diets take extreme sacrifice and will-power, and again others do not.  It's all about pleasing your taste buds enough to satiate hunger and tide you over until your next meal.  If you are not enjoying what you are eating, there is no way you will make it through one week of an 8 or 12 week diet period!

  Here I have put together some simple, healthy recipes that I use during my contest prep.  Some of them don't even taste like diet food!  Now a little background on my particular dieting strategy-I am a strictly ketogenic dieter, which means: carb-free!  I get carb up days on Wednesday & Sunday up until I am 4 weeks out, but other than that the most I will eat on any given day carb-wise  is about 5 blueberries/1 strawberry, 1 hershey kiss, a handful of dark chocolate peanut m&m's, or 1/2 glass of skim milk-all of these right before bed because I usually have a hard time falling asleep.  Notice that is OR in between them-I will have one or the other, not all 3.  I find those are quick fixes to feeling better and all under 35 calories!  During the day I love to snack on nuts-preferably cashews or Planters spicy chipotle peanuts (you can buy them at the gas station in the little blue bags) or celery dipped in peanut butter.  My total carb intake is <10g per day (the equivalent of a few tablespoons of peanut butter, a few servings of peanuts, etc); I do not count the vegetables that I eat such as cauliflower or broccoli since they are all fiber and fiber does not count!  Always remember to take the total carbs and subtract dietary fiber from it to get your REAL carbohydrate measure.  Take note, not everyone must diet this way-a lot of men and women can still implement carbohydrates (as long as they are of a low glycemic value) into their diets and still see the same results.

  The positives of carb-free ketogenic dieting is that fat intake can be a little bit higher than normal-I like to use 1 whole egg and the rest egg whites when I cook but if I go out to eat I can order whole eggs at no cost to me.  I can also eat regular bacon sometimes (while I still peel off the fat most of the time), turkey sausage, lunchmeats such as ham and turkey, red meats such as: steak, london broil, corned beef, ground beef, pizza without the bread and minimal sauce, small quantities of cheese & butter, oils, etc.  I enjoy cooking which makes this fun for me; I can always figure out how to make recipes carb free!  You might also notice that I do not have a lot of seafood mentioned anywhere on my site-it's not because it's bad for you (because it is VERY good for you), it's just because I hate it :)

  Dieting takes me a long time to "get into the swing of" but once I am, I feel very good about myself.  I'm talking if I am doing a 12 week prep, it will take me almost a full month to finally cut out all of my bad foods and carbs except on carb days and do perfectly regarding eating every 2.5 - 3 hours.  I'm not a machine and slip-ups happen!  When I turned 21 I took 2 weeks off of my contest diet prep (it was very early on-like weeks 11 & 10 or 10 & 9, I forget exactly) and enjoyed my birthday, since it was a once in a lifetime experience!  Here you can find awesome recipes-I would love to hear your input on them and also any that you all use!  Don't worry about nutrition facts, I can try my best to figure them out if you don't have the information.

  A great program for anyone trying to monitor their food intake is NutriCalc Plus 3.0 by McGraw Hill.  Google it!  It is only around $13.00 and it is the best of it's kind available.  You input the amount you eat and find the food in their database (or add your own) and it calculates daily/weekly carb intake, calorie intake, how many calories you have to burn to lose __ pounds per week, etc.  Basically, it takes all the hassle out of doing it yourself that us dieters know is long and monotonous!  I had to use it for one of my nutrition courses and I have found it much more useful than just a school tool.