My Next Endeavor, Updated

Yup, I am still training. Training for the body competition that I announced at the beginning of the year and that I decided to conquer for the new year (you can check out this post from April that explains the competition). So here are a few updates for those that are curious. And it is going. Just very, very slowly.

First off, I am not tackling this goal in a year. How naive I was to actually think I could do that! Second, I absolutely do need to completely overhaul my diet in order to tackle this goal. Am I ready to do that? And third, this goal requires me to change my life around it. Treat it like a second job. Alter my lifestyle and habits. Recently, I have found that there is no way around that in order to really change your body. I’ve tried. So to all of those girlies worried about bulking up if they lift a little heavier, I assure you, it’s not that easy! I wish it was!

Heads up, this is a long post. A post without any pictures. It’s just the thoughts that have been swirling around in my head. Now that I am a few months into my official training with a coach, I have so many conflicted feelings about this not-so-little goal of mine. I have started and stopped and restarted again. I have thought about quitting altogether. But as of today, I am still at it.

I’M IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL.

I set out to compete this November. Yes, this month. Like right now! And now that it actually is November, this is just laughable. I cannot even believe I put that on myself. Not only did the busy spring and kid-filled summer just not allow me to be able to devote myself to the gym, I have learned that it takes a heck of a lot of time for a 43 year old female to build the kind of muscle needed to just get up on that stage, amateur or not!

I hired a coach in September when the kids (all three of them) went back to school full time (the fact that I decided to then get a puppy in September is another conversation). I needed someone to tell me exactly what I should be doing every day to bring me closer to this goal. I needed someone to guide me with both my workouts, as well as my food. I needed the professional advice. I needed the accountability. And I would also come to find out that I needed the “therapy” of a coach - someone who has been through it before and understands why you are so damn stressed out about the gym and macros.

I also joined a real gym, La Maison Health and Fitness Club in Wayne. This gym has every machine I could need to get my body competition ready. I love it here. It’s not overcrowded. The Matrix machines and equipment are brand new and state of the art. The members aren’t your typical gym rats and are super sweet (especially the older gentleman that tells me I have the best smile every time I see him). And the trainers are friendly, accessible and helpful on the floor. La Maison also has so many group fitness classes that I have to walk past every day because I am grinding in the basement of the gym. (Seriously, go take a tour and partake in a free week from November 13-19 because this place has so much more than I imagined). It had been at least 10+ years since I had really stepped foot in a full service gym (other than to get to the group fitness room), and even then I was mostly using the cardio machines. Over the summer, I used a few different, outside trainers to learn about gym equipment… like what it is and how to use it! I am telling you, I started from scratch with this goal.

Sadly, I gave up most of my cardio and cut back on my studio workouts. Although I still try to get to one studio a week because working out alone in the gym, day in and day out, can get pretty boring. Podcasts help, but I still crave the community aspect of group fitness classes. And I have a duty to you all to report on all of the awesome classes out there, right?!

I work with my coach virtually, and I am still not sure how I feel about that. We use one app to communicate. And I get my daily workouts on that app. I love that part. It keeps me focused and gives me a plan for the week. My coach checks in weekly via a word doc, where she wants to know about digestion, how I felt that week, and what I was proud of. I’ll admit that I am not great about completing this form every week. I have so many questions since I am a newbie, and I do get frustrated about the virtual aspect of coaching. But I am told this is how it is. I am finally getting a call with her this week after two months of nothing but typed correspondence. And because she lives in the Philadelphia area, I can even workout with her in person occasionally, which might be helpful.

I’m also supposed to upload pictures into the app, but I have avoided this piece altogether after my initial photos. As much as I video myself for Instagram, I hate these bikini progress pictures. There never seems to be a good time to take a bikini progress picture… at least that’s what I tell myself. I prefer to see my progress in the mirrors at the gym, and as the numbers on the weights increase.

This leads me to what I am proud of. This is a question on my weekly check-in sheet with my coach. Every week, I have to share something I am proud of. At first I thought this was silly… and challenging. But as I force myself to come up with something new each week, I find it really helpful. These statements of pride stay with me for weeks after I put pen to paper, as I tackle the monotony of hitting the weights five days a week. Wanna know some of the things that have brought me pride: being able to navigate in the sea of new-to-me gym equipment; figuring out a new piece of equipment on my own; being one of the only females lifting on the floor every day; increasing the weights that I lift; seeing my shoulder muscles pop a little; making it to the gym despite life’s obstacles; taking time off because of life’s obstacles and being ok with it (that was this week).

DIET IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS THE WEIGHTS.

With this goal, I wanted to see if I could compete without completely changing my diet. Food is a big part of my life. I love food. It’s social. Heck, my husband and I base our vacations around it. Case in point, we just booked our family’s Disney trip and getting the dining reservations is just as important for us as booking the rides. Food makes me feel good. Food allows me to do all of my fitness finding. Prior to training, I rarely ate breakfast before I worked out. Prior to training, I ate a nutrient dense lunch, consisting of a huge salad which was largely vegetables (chickpeas and maybe tofu were the only sources of protein). Prior to training, I generally ate what my family was eating for dinner with some minor lower calorie modifications. Prior to training, I never thought twice about a piece of cake, an extra glass of wine, or adding fatty avocado to literally everything I ate. I ate a clean, vegetable focused diet but never really deprived myself. I skipped meals if I was on the go and too busy to eat. I eliminated bread and grains and rice and other complex carbs as much as possible.

This diet worked for me with my lifestyle and helped me keep the body I wanted. But, I absolutely cannot build muscle with this diet. I quickly learned a few things. I was not eating nearly enough. Skipping meals is not an option. Adding protein rich snacks is a must. I also should be adding massive amounts of protein every time I sit down to eat. I’m talking about adding 3 sausage links to my eggs for breakfast. Adding turkey and pepperoni and an egg to the chickpeas in my salad. One cannot build the kind of muscle to compete without adding more protein than you even think possible. I haven’t been able to hit my protein number yet. And I’m lucky that I eat meat because I have no clue how vegetarians do this! I’m also supposed to drink a protein shake every day but it’s not fun to drink my calories.

Here is something else I quickly learned, I need to eat breakfast in order to workout in the morning. I need the energy to lift. And then I need to eat protein within 30 minutes of lifting. So now the girl who didn’t eat breakfast all of the time, is eating two breakfasts!

All of this extra food and protein in the building muscle phase amounts to something unexpected and very unwelcome for me… Gaining weight. Yup, I may be exercising six days a week, but I am gaining weight. I am told this is part of the process. I’ve always been slim, but being lean will not result in muscles. And I struggle with this a lot. I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t. I want to get there but who wants to pack on the LB’s? Not this girl.

I spent a lot of time in this post talking about the food component. That’s because it plays a huge role in competing and cannot be avoided. This has been the biggest challenge for me. I don’t like to diet. I have never weighed or tracked my food before. It just doesn’t sit well with me to become so food consumed. Also, I don’t have the time to prepare and track my meals like this. I was told to meal prep on the weekends, but I have three young kids so the weekends aren’t exactly my down time. Also, the thought of reheating meat on Wednesday that was cooked on Sunday makes me absolutely nauseous. Like I said before, I enjoy eating and this does not sound enjoyable.

Food can be complicated for so many reasons. Many women who compete ruin their metabolism and their hormones. Some can’t even have children because of the damage done. I will not do anything so extreme to my body, or my mind, as it relates to food. I knew I was going to hate the food part of this goal… and I do. While I have a coach who has some food background, I have recently decided to seek extra, outside help in this department. So stay tuned. You know I’ll report back.

AM I READY TO CHANGE MY LIFE AROUND THIS GOAL?

Fitness is part of my life and now it’s part of my job. I like it that way. Fitness is not my entire life. I am very busy mom with three young kids and a husband who works in another state. Most of my blog articles are written between the hours of 5 and 7 am. I workout and create content during the day when the kids are at school. Come 3 pm on, it’s all about the kids until I fall asleep, sometimes before at least one of them. And my weekends… well, you know what weekends are like if you have kids. I tell you all of this to get a glimpse into my life. There is not much wiggle room to add more fitness or food preparation. But I may have to. Last year, training for a marathon was very different and more easily fit into my life. I ran my shorter runs during the week and my longer runs on Saturdays. But even taking 3-4 hours to run on a Saturday only happened for a few months. This goal has a much longer timeline. This goal will require more time out of my day as I progress. This goal will likely require me to adjust my life and my family’s life. Can I do that? Do I want to do that? I still don’t know.

I have not attached a competition date to my goal yet. I’m dealing with the unknown for me, so to put a date on it will just cause more stress. There are so many local competitions that I will compete when I am ready. I will progress to the next step when I am ready. And this timeline is one I can live with right now. When I set out to compete in a bikini competition, my main goal was to see if I could transform my body in a healthy, non-obsessive way, without altering my life too much. And now that I am a few months in, whether that can be done is still TBD. I’ll know if and when I get up on that stage..

I leave you with this one photo. See that arm right there - that muscle was not there before. And that is proof that I actually am getting somewhere with all of my training and diet changes so far. So it is working, just very slowly. And so I push on.