Health Is Beautiful

So, my wonderful blog readers, it looks like I may have some ‘splaining to do! If any of you follow me on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, you likely saw the mass posting of pictures that occurred late last night. Sorry to blow up your news feeds, but I was pretty darn excited! I placed second in the Muscle Beach Fall Classic! Why might that sound familiar to you? Well, it was the very first show I did last year! And what a difference a year makes! I placed last one year ago, and this year, I placed second (out of a huge height class! There were close to 20 of us in my height class alone!), which qualified me for provincials again next year! (June 21, 2014! Be there!)

Second place!

My very first competition hardware!

What a difference a year makes!

You may have wondered why I didn’t post anything about this prep online. No “3 weeks out” or anything like that. Well, the reason is that I didn’t see it as “__ weeks out”! Although I made my final decision to compete just last week (barely making the cutoff to register without a late fee!), it had been something I’d been thinking about for a while. When I competed last year, I came off the contest and—still under Layne’s incredible guidance—reverse dieted (that is, I slowly increased my intake of carbs and fats to really help bolster my metabolic rate). Looking at pictures from that time, I think I looked better a few months after the contest than I did on competition day! I wondered if that would happen again this time. And since I was up less than a pound than I weighed at Nationals in mid-August, I figured why not!

Another reason I decided to compete was that I wanted to prove a point. All too often, people look at these kinds of fitness/physique shows as unhealthy. Indeed, if you troll Instagram for long enough, you’ll start to think that preparing for a bikini competition involves starving yourself for months on end (surviving on asparagus and tilapia, followed by a weekly binge), hours of endless cardio on a stepmill (fasted, of course!), and a peak week involving a worrying amount of water (10 L a day!). I’ve never wanted to prepare for a competition like this, and I never have (this was one major reason I chose to work with Layne). There is a better way, and I wanted to prove it.

One thing that really pushed me toward competing yesterday was an IFBB pro’s comment on Facebook last week. Someone had posted a photo shoot opportunity in two weeks that was almost guaranteed to be published in a fitness magazine (I thought about doing it, but it was a little pricey for me). Although she posted a few weeks back that she prided herself on gaining just a few pounds post-contest (5 lb), she lamented that she couldn’t do the shoot on such short notice. Wait—so she was incredibly lean on stage and supposedly gained just a few pounds since then (which likely did her body good and just replenished the fluids in her cells!) but still didn’t feel confident enough to take a few pictures? Was low self-esteem the issue (her stage presence suggests otherwise!)? Did she just need a reality check? Did these few pounds (which, if they were just a few pounds, she could lose in two weeks if she was desperate to) suddenly change her from being one of the fittest girls in the world to being out of photo shoot condition?

I’ll admit, I might have understood where she was coming from as I waited at the athletes meeting on Friday evening. I felt like an imposter in that room. Everyone there had been through weeks of restriction and hard work and hadn’t had a sip of water since that morning or afternoon. And here I was, sipping my peppermint tea after putting back more calories that day than some of these girls probably ate in two. Even though looks-wise, I more than fit in, I still doubted whether I should be there. On the other hand, this also strengthened my resolve to compete. I wanted to show people that it is possible to compete (and do well!) without severe restriction and self-harm.  After all, at a competition, we are judged on our total package and appearance and not on how much we suffered!

I keep hearing and reading about these girls who proclaim “It’s not a diet! It’s a lifestyle!”

While I wholeheartedly agree with this, the girls posting this stuff are usually the ones suffering through hours of cardio and restricted food choices (I guess this mantra helps curb hunger!). On the other side of things are the successful fitness models, who are pretty much photo shoot ready year-round (notice I specified the successful ones!). Yo-yo dieting from the “on” season to the “off” season is not only unpleasant (who wants to fluctuate 20 lb throughout a year??) and unhealthy, but it doesn’t have to be like that! With the help of a few key players, the fitness industry seems to be changing, and I definitely want to do my part!

So, second place! I’m working with Layne in the offseason, and we’ve reverse dieted so that I’m eating more than 200 g of carbs and 45 g of fat. I’m eating over 1 700 calories a day and weigh less than a pound more than I did at Nationals (give or take a few!). I’m *supposed* to do eight high-intensity intervals twice a week (so two 20-minute cardio sessions), but in reality, I usually skip it in favour of another date with the weights (although I did manage to get my cardio in once this month! On Thursday, I figured I should at least do one session!). My macros (or calories, if you prefer) are steady every day, I eat salt with abandon (and I love me some salt!), I’ve never cut or loaded water in my entire life, and I feel healthy. Clearly, the judges yesterday saw that too! Health is beautiful. NEVER sacrifice your health for anything, especially something as insignificant as a trophy or plaque (although I am quite proud of my plaque!). If anyone is thinking about competing, appreciate that it’s a long process, and keep your priorities in order; we are worth more than what we look like. Slow and steady really does win the race—or at least second place!

Food Freedom

This week, I wanted to blog about something that I’ve become especially aware of lately. I’m sure many of you have heard the “fitspirational” saying “Do not reward yourself with food. You are not a dog” that’s been going around lately.

This really struck a chord with me because we are SURROUNDED by advertising that tells us that food is a reward (see photo) and live in a culture that accepts this approach.

At the gym, I recently overheard two women talking about how they “earned” a hot dog at the company barbeque because they worked out. A week later, they mused how they rewarded themselves with two glasses of wine after their workout. Even on a recent Jillian Michaels podcast (yes, my guilty pleasure is out: I listen to her podcasts and have even listened to one of her audiobooks!), she made a comment to someone about maintenance in which she described it as “being allowed to eat more.”

Do we live in a culture of such deprivation that we have to allow ourselves to eat? That we need permission to indulge in the occasional (well, what should be occasional) unhealthy food, and that we have to earn it?

We are so focused on what we cannot have that we overlook what we can have. Food and diet are choices. No one makes the rules about what we can or cannot eat! I think the idea of permission is bound to fail because we will instinctively want to rebel against it. If there’s something we are not “allowed” to have, we will gravitate toward it. Like the forbidden fruit, if people are forced into categorizing food as good and bad, eventually, they will give in to temptation (and it won’t stop at an apple!). This black-and-white approach to food sets people up to failure not just for this reason, but because it takes away a person’s control. If someone doesn’t eat something just because they feel they’re not allowed to, that person is not making the conscious choice to eat something that will benefit his or her body. How many times has someone declined a sweet treat with the words “I really shouldn’t” when the words this person should be saying are “I choose not to”? On a separate podcast (I may have a slight podcast obsession), I heard another saying that I think is so true (and I apologize for using so many quotes, but I think they can sometimes summarize my thoughts better than I can myself!):

Nothing tastes as good as free will.

This is a spin on the popular “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” (which I think it just anorexia condensed into a sentence). To have choice is to have power. This quote came up when discussing how to encourage children to eat their vegetables. Simply by giving kids the choice between eating carrots or broccoli (or whatever other vegetable), the kids were more inclined to eat a vegetable because they felt that they had some control over what they were eating. If simply told to eat carrots, kids resisted. If we, as adults, were to remove our restrictions around what we feel we “can” and “cannot” eat, would this not have the same effect?

Along similar lines, I constantly see magazines that claim to have recipes for “guilt-free” foods (see photo).

Why does guilt need to be associated with food to begin with? What purpose does guilt serve in someone’s approach to their diet? Can anything constructive come from feeling guilty? (With regard to diet or anything else in life, really) If anything, guilt simply depresses us, and for people who deal with emotional eating, all this does is spur on these out-of-control binges (which then leads to more binging, and on and on). The best-case scenario is that guilt encourages someone to make a healthier choice, but is this really the ideal motivation? Are people really happy making a choice based on avoiding a negative emotion? Wouldn’t it be more constructive to make a choice based on a positive outcome? Instead of “guilt-free,” couldn’t we use words like “fresh” or “healthy” to describe these foods? I know it sounds less sexy to the masochists among us, but let’s get rid of the negative associations!

I know the emotions associated with food run deep, but I think a lot can be achieved by removing these negative feelings from our food choices. Food should never be associated with guilt or shame, regardless of how unhealthy they are. Food should also not be seen as a “reward”; no one “earns” diabetes or hypertension, regardless of how hard the workout! Illness does not benefit anyone! We all have the free will to choose the foods that will nurture the body we have or are working toward. The freedom of choice removes the shackles of guilt and permission and gives us the power to control our own health. Eat for your own well-being because (last cheesy quote here!) you’re worth it!