The Change Behind Change

     I'm 8.5 weeks into my first coached fatloss program, and I'm very excited by my changing body and improved fitness levels. I'm harder, tighter, and stronger than I've ever been in my life. Even my sometimes-critical mom notices, she and my father saw me for the first time in 6 weeks last weekend and both kept calling me "skinny".

     (That actually stuck in my craw a little, I'm by NO MEANS skinny, and I kept having my mom poke parts of me to see they were in fact muscularly hard, not skinnyfat. I realized they just didn't have the vocabulary to describe my changing physique accurately, so used "skinny" instead of lean, svelte, cut, whatever.) I told my mom, proudly, "I haven't been this size since Junior High!" She responded, "Sarah, I don't know if you were ever this size. You certainly weren't this SHAPE." Which was intended as a compliment about how I look now, not a dig at how I looked then. (See, sometimes I AM capable of reading intent, not just responding to the words that were said. Sensitivity. I'm learning it.)

     Apart from the changes I'm seeing in my own body, I'm beginning to notice the positives in my own plan (again, thanks to the expertise of Robin Romero and Prissy Sassy Fitness) compared with the circular thinking and results of my previous weight-loss attempts. 

Here's me, pre-weight loss. Approximately 180lbs, on the right, there. 

What I was doing wrong:

Skipping meals to "save calories"

Avoiding "carbs" in the form of grains, and starches like potato

Cardio Guilt: If I ate something "bad" I'd do "extra cardio" to "burn it off"

Not being consistent, I'd stick to something for a week, MAYBE two, before returning to previous habits.

Never kicked alcohol to the curb. 

Weekend Setbacks: I'd be on-plan all week, Monday-Friday, then Friday night through Sunday night it was a free-for-all. Not a cheat meal, not a cheat day, a FREE FOR ALL weekend, which would more than undo any dietary progress I'd made during the week.

     Even when I was lifting heavy and exercising like a maniac (on Jamie Eason's Live Fit Trainer) I didn't lose fat consistently because of the above failures. Now, keep in mind, any exercise, any heavy lifting, those are steps forward. A very out of shape person can lose weight by making small tweaks in their diet or exercise levels. I, however, was at a point where I was cardiovascularly fit, and just was carrying around fat because I was eating wrong to lose it.

What I'm doing right, with guidance:

1.) Eating more small meals throughout the day. 

There is much debate in the diet/bodybuilding world as to whether this makes any difference in metabolism, as claimed by some. I don't know if it does or not, what it does for me is keeps me eating specific foods in specific amounts throughout the day, which staves off hunger and cravings, and stops me from being too hungry leading to a BINGE.

2.) Drinking a gallon of water or more per day.

Drinking water helps you lose fat. Period. Do it. You're made up of water. So are your muscles. WATER, just do it.

3.) I'm sticking to the meal plan. 

Sometimes I get one cheat meal a week. I'm not deviating from what I'm told to do, and I've been doing it for over 8 weeks. This has gotten me results. Consistency. Continual consistency gets results.

4.) Moderate cardio, heavy lifting.

When I say heavy lifting, I don't mean picking up your 7 year old kid during a tantrum. I mean 5+ days a week in a gym, lifting enough weight that by my 10th rep whatever body part is trembling with exertion and is almost unable to maintain form. It's a joy to finish a set of hip thrusters and feel my glute muscles scream in agony. THIS is what is meant by pain=progress.

     Seriously, that's about it. And knowing all this, seeing the differences in my body, it is really beginning to drive me batsh*t when I see friends doing the same circular failings I did when I didn't know any better. All those literal YEARS of dieting or deprivation, for NOTHING. It was so frustrating, to put forth all this effort and sacrifice for weeks on end, only to return to the former state, former weight, and not understand why permanent change wasn't happening for me. I'd explain it away with genetics, with "set weight point", any other myth I chose to believe to justify my stagnation. 

     If you're trying to lose weight, or lose fat, and you're doing it for the x-teenth time and experiencing the same issues you have in the past, TRY SOMETHING NEW. Don't perpetuate the cycle that leads to failure, TRY SOMETHING NEW. 

<Something new? Change. Over on the left, top, is my body 8 and 7 weeks ago. On the bottom is my body as of last Saturday (and a couple weeks back in the jeans. Yes, that is the same pair of jeans worn in both photos.) My body is changing. I'm not using tricks, photoshop, or anything else. These pics can also be seen on my Sarah4fitness profile on bodybuilding dot com, or facebook.>

    

   There is a LOT of misinformation out there, from fad diets (that includes you, Dr. Atkins, CARBS AREN'T THE DEVIL) to gimmicks (can you say pregnancy hormone starvation diet?), to seriously destructive methods of calorie counting like the damn My Fitness Pal app, which teaches you to obsess over the calorie count, and guesstimate what you're burning, and then to EAT MORE to "fill in" the calorie deficit.... NO NO NO. Such a detrimental app in the hands of someone who hasn't been fully educated on what EXACTLY your body really needs to lose fat. 

     Anyway, I'm trying hard not to preach. I'm trying hard not to poke people I see on Facebook or in my real life who keep hopping on the weight-loss carousel for a ride, rather than hopping OFF it in favor of a life change. I just continue on my own path, quietly (for the most part) hoping that when others are ready for true fat loss success, that they'll ask me how I did it, so I can direct them to help. Or hey, if they wait a little longer, until I'm certified as a trainer myself, so I can help them directly. Everyone deserves to have the body they want, and everyone can have it. They need the right tools.

Fighting Illusions, Keep it Real!

     Insecurity is an epidemic among women, regarding their body image. From a very young age, we are conditioned to attach self-worth to our physical image, and we are constantly barraged with the message that we, as we are, are not good enough. I'm going to share something really personal, and embarrassing:

     When I was in first grade, I remember noticing that my legs and arms were larger than some other girls in my class. I couldn't do anything about this, but already "knew" at that age that bigger wasn't better. My tummy was round, too, not protrusive or abnormal for that age, but it wasn't flat. Sometimes it would touch my shirts. It didn't look like the kids or women on tv, so even in first grade, I began to suck in my little 6 year old belly so I'd look thinner. Six. Years. Old. I had already internalized the message that my body in its natural state wasn't right, wasn't good enough. I kept at it, too, holding in my stomach as hard as I could as often as I could remember for most of my childhood, in public. (It surely strengthened my abs, I'll say that, but what did it do to my self-esteem?)
     I remember vividly, when I was 13, at summer camp, a girl told me she envied how flat my stomach was. I felt so proud, that my little trick had worked. She thought I was thin! (The heartbreaking part of that moment is that I was never a fat child, or teen. I was never even pudgy. I was strong, but my mental image of myself was so drastically distorted that I saw myself as a fat girl, when in fact, I was lean, see me at that age on the right.)

     Without delving into the social and media implications of these statements, I think it's fair to say these statements affect many of us, and I do not claim to be an exception. It is incredibly difficult to see ourselves honestly, let alone share ourselves with others.  I still struggle to stand naked in front of a mirror without sucking in my stomach, or flexing some part of my body to maintain the image I like to have of myself.

     Imagine then, the struggle I had against my own insecurities, as I was asked by my coaches to take "before" pictures, of my body in its current natural state, without sucking in, or manipulative posing, or any tricks to appear "better" than I am. I trust my coaches. I trust their confidence, I trust their expertise, and I trusted them to take me to a different physical place. NOT giving them the honest me would have been a disservice to them, and to myself as part of my journey. A clear and honest starting point is essential to my development, and I knew that, so I sucked it up, and let it out, and stood in full lighting without a tan, or sucking in, or anything, in my littlest bikini to show my coaches what they were working with.

     Okay, so I did it. I sent out honest pictures to my coaches. I even took more and posted them publicly as part of a BSN Summer Shred contest, telling myself it's OKAY to look "crappy" in my before photos, that's the whole point, so you can improve heartily from that point.

     The next big mental challenge was my check-in photos. One part of me was totally confident in my coaching, and my own dedication to the plan I was given, and that progress would happen naturally as my coaches ran my program they way the know best. Another part of me was scared. Is scared. Will continue to be scared that my progress is slower than my peers. That my body isn't changing the way it should be, at the speed my coaches (or others!) would expect. Every time I send out a progress update, I quake inside, fearing that even by the end of my 12 week period, I won't have made the kind of progress I've seen in others' progress photos.

     Some of my coaches' clients have posted progress pictures, and they're AMAZING. Waists have been whittled, thighs have shrunk, and butts have become beautiful, round little melons of awesomeness. I do not see these changes in myself. Even more intimidating, these described changes have happened QUICKLY for others, and I don't see the same rate of change in me. This is scary. This is intimidating. This makes the insecure little 6 year old in me want to suck in that belly, flex those ab muscles, tan my hide and tweak my poses in my photos to try to achieve the visual differences I see in others.

     I won't do it, though. I'd be cheating. I'd be cheating ONLY myself. My coaches aren't dumb. They know their sh*t. They can tell differences in lighting, in posing. They know what sucking in looks like. They know all the tricks, because if *I* know them, I know they know them. WE ALL know what a sucking-in-photo-manipulation looks like, because we've ALL done stuff like that to make our facebooks better, to improve our myspaces, or our avatars on whatever social media we give a damn about. We've untagged ourselves in candids that showed our unflattering angles. We may not know the extent of photoshop retouching done on any given magazine cover or ad, but we sure as hell know how to tweak ourselves to make ourselves look "our best," and those tricks are easy to spot when any other amateur is workin' 'em.

     So I won't cheat. I'll keep on progressing at my little snail pace. The point is I'm progressing, and I'm being honest with myself and my coaches, because anything else will hinder my progress more than a momentary ego boost of "Hey, lookit THIS progress pic compared to week 1! It's AMAZING!!!" I want to be AMAZING for real, not AMAZING at manipulation. I want to be able to walk around a beach in my tiny bikini, and NOT be sucking in, ever again. I want to focus on the beauty around me, not how I look at any given moment.
     Earnest change, honest change, is the real change I want to see in myself, for myself. Being cheated on is one of the worst feelings in the world, and I won't do that to myself. I'm focused on overcoming my insecurities, rather than hiding them, and that will make all the difference.