Let me start this by saying that I have always been really physically active. I have always played sports or run or walked or biked. But, despite all of those efforts and a good athletic build, if you develop a certain lifestyle in college (or any time in life) whether it be with what you eat or drink and/or how much or little you exercise, you are going to gain weight, It's that simple. And that's exactly what I did. Apparently I had gained that "freshman 15" in college, except really it was the "senior 15." I am pretty sure I weighed at least 143 at one point, which for someone who is 5'1 and 1/2" that is A LOT.
Well, the beginning of my 5th year, I got pretty sick. I was dealing with sinus issues all the time, ended up having sinus surgery, etc. In the process, I lost a good deal of weight--like about 25 pounds. I decided after that that I wanted to keep the weight off, but in a healthy way. So I got back to the gym, did a few weights here and there, but mainly tons and tons of cardio. Well, all of that year, I maintained about 125, but in trying to get back down to 120, I could not. I was at a plateau.
So, I asked a friend of mine, Hope Payne, for advice, and she told me to start doing a lot more weight training and a lot less cardio.
I did just that and immediately began seeing results. By the summer of '08, I was at about 118. Well, I kept at the weights and the cardio (more weights/less cardio), and before I knew it, I was doing pull-ups, real dips, lots of push-ups, and just feeling really strong in general. People at the gym were noticing and had seen the change over the years.
In the meantime, I had been researching a lot about weight training and bodybuilding on bodybuilding.com. I knew Lucy Thrasher from the gym and from teaching her son at FIS and developed an interest in this whole figure competition stuff--not to mention, I got inspired by seeing all the transformations on bodybuilding.com. I kept thinking, if those ladies can do that, I can too!!!
I mentioned it to a few people and they would encourage me to pursue, especially knowing the progress I had made over the last couple of years, keeping most all of that college weight OFF. I kept pushing it aside, though, because Lucy was really the only person I knew around Fayetteville who did the competitions and I wanted to get myself in a good enough point that it would not be tons and tons of weight that I would have to lose in order to compete.
Well, these past few months I have been feeling pretty confident and have been in one of those "seize the moment" moods. So I decided that now is the best time ever to see if figure competing is something I would want to do. I thought, "I just need to try one. If I like it, great, I have found a new interest. If I don't, then I can say I am that much stronger for having gone through all the hard work to get there."
So I contacted Lucy Thrasher a few weeks ago who got me in touch with Josh Hyaduck, a personal trainer at LA Fitness in McDonough. She sent me his phone number and before I knew it, we had scheduled a time to meet, I had a new gym membership, new trainer, and a show to get ready for!!!
I am loving every minute of the training so far. Josh is really pushing me and between the workouts and the diet, I can already see changes/results. That is pretty exciting. It's pretty overwhelming when I read articles about the posing and everything else you have to do in order to prepare, but for now, I'm taking it one day, one week at a time. I will keep you posted as often as I can!!!
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