Catching up

Ok so I literally went M.I.A these past few months.  A lot has happened- including my first competition of the year which was the big sky championships on April 20th.  I was excited because I actually placed this time!! I was even more excited that a friend had placed too!  I had placed first and she had placed 3rd.  I have done 2 other competitions- one in 2011 and one in 2012 and I had placed 10th and 6th in those competitions.  So I was so excited!  I was pretty hard on myself though- because so far I have always gone into these competitions never feeling 100% ready.  I always have felt like I needed to improve on something.  For this competition I felt like I could have come in a little bit tighter - especially in my midsection.  This is all diet however.  I find that it helps extremely to eliminate all sweets, including any and all kinds of artificial sweetener including gum.  I find that it makes me crave more sweet things- so it helps me to just eliminate it all.  Now- this is not easy and it definitely takes some time.  But I know what I need to do for next time.

Here are a few pics from the show.  The first picture is of me and two other bikini gals on my team.  The second picture is of me and my friend, Alanna, who placed third at the show.  I really love getting dolled up and hair done and all just for the show!  Because most of the time- I look far from this on a daily basis.  Gym clothes on literally all the time (except when I'm working) and I'm lucky if I have makeup on my face and matching socks.

I really loved my red suit too!  Big thanks to CJ elite for the beautiful suit.  Now I had originally planned to do a much bigger show- two weeks after this one but again I wasn't feeling ready and my anxiety got the best of me and I decided to drop out of the show literally a day before it was supposed to happen.  Did I regret this decision?? Yes. I should have just gone through and done the show.  Well - lesson learned.  I'll have a goal of doing the show next spring.

So fast forward to now and I am getting ready for training for my next show.  This show will be the Fort Lauderdale cup in fort Lauderdale Florida on October 19th.  I have fallen off of track as far as dieting goes - I had finals with school and I am on a sort of vacation visiting my husband at the moment.  But that is no excuse to just stop and halt everything.  I really have a dream of obtaining my pro card one day- and I know that the bikini division is getting to be a harder and harder division to compete in because more girls are starting to do it.  This is no excuse to throw in the towel and give up. It just means that I will have to put my time into this sport and keep working at it.  Nothing worth earning is ever easy.  Winners never quit and quitters never win.  So anyways, I'm going to try and keep blogging as a way to keep myself motivated these next few months.  Please follow me along my journey.

Getting Ready for the next Competition

Ok- so I am exactly 4 weeks out today from my first show of the season.  It is to be the npc Big sky championships in Missoula Montana.  Yikes- I am nervous and excited and I have been an emotional wreck this last week.  I am a human biology major going to school full time and working and working out 2 times a day.  Well- I am not superwoman by any means and having all of this on a person's plate is so stressful.  I have decided to drop 2 of the classes I am taking because I just cannot do everything.  My reasonings for this are:
1) This is a lifestyle choice for me- I enjoy working out- that is "ME" time and for me this is important. Yes I do bikini competitions, and yes they are expensive- but this is a part of my lifestyle now and I wouldn't change it to go back to the way I was.
2)  Human Biology major= pre medicine major.  Even though I have no intentions of going to medical school.  Basically in a nutshell. Due to the fact I am a senior- I am also taking the more upper level and more difficult classes that take a lot of effort to even pass, let alone get an A or a B.  The classes are competitive - and let's face it I am smart - but I have never had a science/math mind.  It is always something that I have struggled at.  So for me to be this kind of major is huge even for me to have gotten this far- but graduating with a 2.5 doesn't look that good and it doesn't exactly give me the edge that I  need if I were to do something else later down the road educational wise.  (I haven't really decided what I want to be yet when I grow up).  My parents stopped supporting me a long time ago- so I have been going to school on my own, paying all of my own bills including car payment, rent, etc.  So yes, I have to work while going to school.  Most pre-med majors don't.  They have plenty of support from parents- the kind of support that I don't have- so I have to make the best of what I have.
3) I have to work.  I have to work to support the bills I have to pay and to support this new lifestyle of mine.  Let's face it- I need to eat!! and Eating for me costs about $100/week.  Now that is expensive- but it is healthy food.  I will never feel guilty for buying food- especially when it's good food.  Food that will prevent medical costs of being overweight and eating unhealthily if I were to choose not to live this way.

So there you have it my reasonings.  Not only that but I have been going to school since 2007 (holy smokes) -so it has been a while that I have been going and I am more than ready to graduate but I need to graduate with a semi decent GPA too.  So this is just how it has to be and I am fine with that.  I am not quitting- I am just able to focus more on 2-3 classes at a time, instead of 4 or 5.

Now with that being said- back to my competition rant.  I am getting excited for this competition because I did this competition last year and I happened to place 6th.  I was upset with my placing (to actually place it is top 5- they get the trophies!)- But that doesn't mean I just throw everything in and quit.  because ultimately it is about improving from last time.  Have I improved?  Well- I think so.  It is hard to  know for sure because you see yourself everyday and the weight that the scale reads is really just a number.  I am weighing about the same that I did this time last year- but I feel as though I look different than I did then.  So hopefully my hard work that I have been putting in the gym will pay off.  I guess I shall see when the time comes- but I will keep in mind that as long as I improve from show to show- and in my mind then that is all I need.

I am also so excited to see the other girls that are on my team that will be there.  Yes, I may be competing against a couple of them- but this sport is a different kind of sport in that you are being judged on how you look against how other girls look.  And these other team members of mine are also on their own personal "Get Fit" journeys of their own too.

background- everyone starts somewhere

So I have never actually blogged before.  I have read plenty of them- mostly about fellow bikini competitors and their struggles and inspirations and all that they have gone through.  I have decided that I will start this just for me as a way to see where I've started and how far i've come since then.

So for background, I am a student at the University of Montana.  I am currently a super senior- I hopefully with my fingers crossed will graduate the end of this fall with a bachelor's degree in Biology. I have no idea what really got me to even want to get a degree in Biology, to be perfectly honest.  It's probably because my husband really wanted me to do medical school- which I have no inclination to do.  I think at the time when I had started back in school I was half thinking of doing Physician assistant school - but I don't even know what to think about that anymore either.  I've had a hard time really deciding what I want to do.  I've worked as a Certified nurse aide for ten years now- and I am just beginning to wonder if working in healthcare is really for me.  I have debated on going on to get my master's degree in Nutrition- which sounds so much more appealing to me now, but I guess it will all come down to what I can get into once I am done with my Biology degree.

I come from a small town in Plentywood Montana.  Yeah- its in the middle of nowhere it being almost Canada and North Dakota at the same time.  I grew up with 2 sisters.  When I was in high school- I never liked living there, in fact I hated it.  I was so glad to be able to go to college and that I was able to be free of my parents who liked to keep my sisters and I pretty sheltered.  This did not work to my advantage when I first started school. I went a little bit overboard, with the drinking and partying and of course my grades had started to drop.  I ended up with basically straight C's and a W my first year of school.  Anyways, along with the drinking and partying comes the weight gain.  I have always been on the small side- weighing only 110 pounds in high school and being only 5'5".  When I hit 125 pounds I started to get sad and I wanted to figure out a way to start to get into shape.  At this same point in time, however, my mother decided that since I did so bad in school my first year, she was no longer going to help me pay for it.  She was no longer going to take out loans for me to go.  So, I decided to join the army as a way to hit 2 birds with one stone.  What was I thinking?

Anyways long story short my so called plan did not work out the way I had wanted it to.  I ended up fracturing my pelvis not only once, but twice while I was there- and my weight was always so up and down too.  the army has horrible nutrition strategies:  carbs on top of carbs on top of carbs.  All the bigger guys there would lose weight, and all the smaller people (like me) generally would gain weight.  The reason why I had fractured my pelvis was because I had relatively little muscle mass and I had gone from doing absolutely nothing as far as physical activity goes to carrying around a very heavy rucksack and an M16 I had no interest in even shooting.  Anyways, 9 months later I was back home in Missoula, wondering what's next and looking for a job and planning on going back to school.

I didn't start working out until a little over a year ago when my husband had left for Iraq.  I really liked the idea of working out and eating healthy, but I didn't really realize how much work it actually is!
Eating macaroni and cheese and pizza almost everyday really won't get you fit.  I found out the hard way that both diet and exercise go hand and hand.  I wouldn't get the results that I had wanted unless I did both.  I decided to try my hand at doing bikini competitions as a motivator to help me to get into shape.  This was the start of the new me, and everyone has to start somewhere.