Candy

No respect!

I was off work on Friday, and on Monday I came in to find this!

Look closely at the picture above, it is my “No Candy Zone” sign on my office door….but taped to it are two of my favorites!

2 Tootsie Rolls!

When i arrived at work Monday morning, I went to slip my key into my office door and there they were, staring me right in the face!

It's almost like a fire pull station, you know: "In case of emergency, break glass" and in this situation you just rip the tootsies from the tape in an emergency.

I accused John when I saw him first the in the morning, because he stops by every single morning and tells me a joke, he's always telling me to put some meat on my bones and generally teases me every opportunity, but he said it wasn’t him, that means it was probably someone on my staff. When I find out who did it, I will let you know.

I left them there all day and they drove me crazy, I wanted to eat them every single time I walked by, but then I think they actually helped me to consciously make sure I did NOT eat them! I shall leave them there all month.

Thought you might like to see what I have to put up with at work!

Motivation

"Between you and every goal that you wish to achieve, there is a series of obstacles, and the bigger the goal, the bigger the obstacles. Your decision to be, have and do something out of the ordinary entails facing difficulties and challenges that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else."

~ Brian Tracy

You are never a loser until you quit trying.

~ Unknown

"Never consider the possibility of failure; as long as you persist, you will be successful."

~ Brian Tracy

"It's not the critic that counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or whether the doer of deeds could have done them better...The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust, and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and often comes up short again and again. Who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause. And who, if at best in the end, knows the triumph of higher treatment and high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his soul shall never be with those cold and timid ones, who know neither victory nor defeat."

~Theodore Roosevelt

“True, if you fight, there is always a chance you might lose. But if you do not fight, you can never win.” 

~ Taylor E. Bennet

“When we can't dream any longer we die.” 

~ Emma Goldman

October, Month of Candy

October, month of candy.

I love chocolate and caramel. LOVE IT! I bet a lot of you don’t know that, huh? I just happen to be a stubborn cuss and I want to look ripped (or as ripped as possible) year round so I generally refrain from it.

When I buy chocolate for myself I have a couple favorites (just in case you ere wondering):

Affordable and available:  Jo’s Dark Chocolate Salted Caramels. 2 come in a package at Peet’s Coffee and they cost $1.79.

Extravagant and not as easy to obtain: Recchiuti Confections Fleur de Sel Caramels. 16 to a box at the Ferry Plaza Market in San Francisco and they cost $23.00. (oh and each one is a ¼ the size of a Jo’s).

But it’s October and that means Halloween. Monica has a HUGE bowl of chocolates by her desk, and I really have no reason to even walk over by her desk, but I found myself there 6 times the other day.

6 friggin times. Here is the bowl and it’s not a small one!

Fun size

Who the hell came up with that stupid name? When you are feeling fat do think of yourself as “Fun Sized” ???!!

NO!

Sugar messes with me big time. Chocolate, alcohol, white processed foods, they are all sugar and they all make me look puffy, loose skinned and generally tired. Sugar is probably the most deadly thing you can put into your body (besides smoking).

Give me a big fatty steak, or a pile of yams or a bucket of vegetables and I look great the next day. Feed me sugar and all hell breaks loose- in a matter of hours. Not only do I feel awful but I start to look it too.

I think that I have a pretty good eye for health- I can look at someone and tell if they are a generally healthy person just by the state of their skin and eyes, (do they have big puffy bags or dark circles under their eyes?, is their skin red and blotchy or dry and flakey?); the way they carry themselves, how they sound, how they move.  

If you paid attention, you could probably do the same, but you probably don’t even look at people like that, I do all the time because it’s a quirky little habit of mine. 

Take a look at a heavy drinker, and by that I mean anyone who drinks alcohol on a daily basis. Or look at someone who is obese due to the garbage they ingest day in and day out, they cannot even move right. Someone who doesn’t drink much water, their skin is not springy and the color is off.

None of them look so hot do they? Pained is what I see.

Sugar makes me feel like that, so I try to avoid it, but it tastes so darn good!

I made this sign and posted it in my office door, I had to so I could keep the sugar out! There are a few well meaning people in my office who drop by with candy for me, they know what I like and they save it for me. Sometimes, if I don’t shut my door and leave, I come back to several on the desk…dammit!

I find that my biggest challenges are overcome when I keep them in the forefront of my mind, like writing down my food in a journal, recording my training, using my Gymboss on the spin bike to make sure I go long and hard enough.

So avoiding candy will be easier when I see my sign and others do too. it's on my door and here on the window next to the door, right below the football schedule for San Jose State University.

Wish me strength and willpower- and I will do the same for you.

I don’t have a program (or the knowledge) to make the red circle over the words, so my sign is not as sophisticated as it could be, but it does the trick and I have a link here if you want to print one out for your work area or home. If you happen to be a graphic whiz, I would love to have a proper one, send it my way!

Below is a little video about sugar (Email subscribers will need to navigate directly to the blog to view this video).

Do You Compete? (Real Feats of Strength profile)

“Do you compete?”  I remember the first time I heard the question and really had no idea what it meant.  Here is the definition from Merriam-Webster

com·pete

 intransitive verb \kəm-ˈpēt\

com·pet·ed  com·pet·ing

Definition of COMPETE

: to strive consciously or unconsciously for an objective (as position, profit, or a prize) : be in a state of rivalry <competing teams> <companies competing for customers>

Examples of COMPETE

1. Thousands of applicants are competing for the same job.
2. She competed against students from around the country.
3. We are competing with companies that are twice our size.
4. Did you compete in the track meet on Saturday?
5. The radio and the television were both on, competing for our attention.

Origin of COMPETE

Late Latin competere to seek together, from Latin, to come together, agree, be suitable, from com- + petere to go to, seek

Related to COMPETE

Synonyms: battle, contend, face off, fight, race, rival, vie

Related Words: challenge, engage, play; jockey, jostle, maneuver; go out, try out; train, work

Just like any other word, the meaning can change depending on the context with which it is used. It means many different things, especially when you consider the synonyms and the related words, so it depends on how you look at it doesn’t it? To me, and to most women I know who compete, it is really a competition with ourselves.

Oh, sure we all want to get out there on stage and win a trophy, we want to be acknowledged as the best, or one of the best, but do you really think that the 5 minutes up on stage is the “thrill” that keeps us going? That we work day in and day out just for that? 

If you told me that the “reward” I would receive for getting up every day at 4:00am to lift weights, to diet most of my life, to refrain from alcohol and sweets, to make time for cardio after work when I am tired, was the “pleasure of being at an all day and night long competition waiting to stand and pose on stage for a few minutes to win a plastic trophy” I think I would politely decline your offer!

No, is just another small piece of the very detailed puzzle that comprises my life. I am not sure if I can even tell you why I compete, but I can tell you how it all started!

Quite some time ago I was contacted by Joe, the moderator from Real Feats of Strength, he asked if I would do an online interview for his site and of course I said I would love to. But it had so many questions, and he wanted many details that I let it lie for ages. He would email me every few months to ask if I had finished, and I always intended to but then ran out of time, I am a very busy person!

I finally finished and he promptly published it on his site. 

Many people find those of us who “compete” a curiosity - why do we do what we do? What motivates us?  What pushes us? How did we get started? It comes up at almost every social gathering I attend, and it is really such a long story for all of us. Sometimes I shorten the story, sometimes I elaborate, I love telling stories but have to really be in the mood.

Please take a minute to read my RFOS Athlete profile, I think you may find it interesting! 

If you would like to be featured, contact Joe at Real Feats of Strength, and tell him that I sent you!

Motivation

All glory comes from daring to begin.

- Eugene F. Ware

Don't be discouraged. It's often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock.

-Unknown

Don't look where you fall, but where you slipped. 

- African Proverb

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. 

- C. S. Lewis

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning. 

- Ivy Baker Priest

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. 

- Winston Churchill

No yesterdays are ever wasted for those who give themselves to today. 

- Brendan Francis

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything. 

- Napoleon Hill

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth... not going all the way, and not starting. 

- Buddha

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

- E.M. Forster

The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat. - -Napoleon Hill

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. 

- Albert Einstein

Size, Perceptions and Self Acceptance

My son came home from college this past weekend, the first time we have seen him in 5 weeks. It was great to see him but also hectic, we had a lot to fit in, he was sick and needed to go to urgent care for anti-biotics and of course, he had to spend time with friends too.

Sunday morning I slept in as usual and then went to Gold's to train my back, I love Sundays I can usually spend all the time I want to and it's never crowded, everyone seems to take Sundays off. This Sunday I had an appointment at 9:00 so I was under a bit of a time constraint, but I fit most everything in.

My Sundays take so long because of all of my chin ups - It takes me about 45 minutes just for those!

It's also harvest so David had to pick the grapes from the yard without me and then after I got home, we loaded them into Moby to take to Jay's for crushing. No one had much time for cooking, eating or anything. Once Cooper left at 1:00 we still had more to do, so we ended up going out for a very early dinner (lunch for David) at The Table in Willow Glen.

We arrived early, they weren't open yet so we wandered down the street and David slipped into a restaurant to use the bathroom. I stayed outside and was waiting and I hear a "hey you, come here and give me a hug!" I turn around and there, holding open the restaurant door is Mark Baz, my very first trainer! 

I went over and gave him a hug, I hadn't seen him in years and he led me inside to meet his girlfriend who was sitting at their table by the window. 

We chatted for a while about what was going on with our kids (he and I have boys the same age), about our current lives and things in general. He told Kyra about how we met, and when he first met me I couldn't lift a 15 pound dumbbell, then he said he got me up to 65 pounds, and he was right, I had forgotten! Here is a picture taken many, many years ago when I trained with him.

Kyra wanted to know how I got arms like mine. I said "lifting lots of heavy weights!" We talked about what we were doing and I mentioned my hamstring injury, and I got up to demonstrate a Romanian Deadlift. I sat down and Kyra said "wait- stand up and turn around!" I did and she pointed to my butt. "That's what I want, how do you get that?!" I laughed and told her that I had asked Roy just yesterday when my butt blew up like it is now- it all of a sudden got big and round. Like BIG. Roy said he had noticed it Friday himself. I mean it's BIG, it almost requires it's own zip code.

Then Baz told Kyra a story that I had forgotten from so long ago. He said that I had always demonstrated "the pencil test". If you could take a pencil and place it under your butt cheek, above your hamstring (the glute/hamstring tie in) and it stayed there, you were fat. Your butt fat should not hold up the pencil! I tried this when I got home, the pencil fell immediately to the ground. 

I laughed, I had forgotten about this and told him it was like to the towel test for men. 

We left and went to dinner and as we sat at the table I told David that it was odd. When I am at the gym, I really don't get a second glance, except maybe from people who don't come there often, but when I go out say to a restaurant, people stare at me, why?

He said I am a freak! He said no normal person looks like me. I know he is not trying to hurt my feelings at all, he is just trying to get me to see myself the way others do. They see a freak, Seriously...I told him I am not big, I don't look like a bodybuilder, but he said to a regular person, I do! I look like a bodybuilder! 

It bothers me and it doesn't, I suppose it depends on my mood and what's going on. The more I thought about it, the more I realized why I am so comfortable in the gym, you see, I belong there, I am with people like myself.

Obviously we are all different, but we have similar goals and aspirations, we want to improve our bodies, our health and it means a lot to us. We take the time necessary to actually get up off the couch and go to the gym; we make an effort to eat healthy foods instead of the easy and somewhat tasty garbage.

And I realized for the first time that this is one reason why I enjoy competing, I am with people just like myself.  Don’t misunderstand me, I embrace diversity, I enjoy people of all different walks of life, but I also like being around “my own kind”, fellow competitors.

I understand that many people are curious and they cannot help but stare at others who appear different, so although I don’t feel out of place out in public, I do feel the stares, and sometimes it is annoying and I wish they would stop, I am not a freak in a freak show.

The other morning I as reading Facebook posts and Bret Contreras posted this video, and it all clicked.  At one point in my adult, weight training life I felt like the little girl dressed as the Bumblebee, but now, I am finally with other Bumblebees, it’s a happy and joyous feeling.

Email subscribers will need to navigate directly to the blog to view this video.

Motivation

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is  more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded  genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.  Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has  solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”

Calvin Coolidge

“What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not?  And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the  mistakes you possibly can without drowning - and some of them many times over -  what do you find? That you can swim? Well - life is just the same as learning to swim!  Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live!”

Alfred Adler

“Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles,  discouragement, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak”

Thomas Carlyle

“Some guys they just give up living, others start dying little by little piece by piece, some guys come home from work and wash up, and go racing in the streets." Bruce Springsteen

“So as sure as the sun will shine, I'm gonna get my share now of what's mine And then the harder they come the harder they'll fall, one and all.” Jimmy Cliff