We left off on the last post about what ultimately led me to compete. To be honest, once I started learning how to build muscle by lifting weights and doing resistance training in the gym, and more importantly once I started seeing the changes in my body, I was hooked! To me, lifting as a woman is empowering. It builds more than just muscles. It brings confidence, and relieves stress. When I’m in the gym, everything else good and bad in my life or day fades away. It’s just me and my tunes, and my rep, and the mind / muscle connection. I discovered quickly what “failing out on a rep” meant and fell in love. The feeling of pushing myself to get through a tough set challenged me like nothing else had before. I could feel myself getting stronger, and since I was recording and logging my workouts (I just used a journal, but Shane has a cool app called Fitocracy), I could see my improvements week by week too.
A lot of people ask me how I started, how I figured out how to work out, how I went from being clueless to being able to confidently walk into a gym (we joined LA Fitness Memorial Day weekend 2014, which was really my FIRST gym membership ever) and know what I was doing. I’m kind of a nerd at heart, and to be honest, I started researching online and just kept Googling, reading, Youtubing, and Pinteresting. There is a TON of great information and numerous articles available to you online. As I mentioned in my last post, Bodybuilding.com is a great place to start. The sources are credible, and there are awesome videos for form, training plans, etc. all right there at the click of a mouse. I credit Jamie Eason’s Live Fit program on the site for really laying my foundation of weight training.
The more I trained (that’s what we gymrats call working out), the more I absolutely grew to crave it. I wanted to know more and learn more about this whole new world. Beginning around January of 2014, and continuing through the spring and summer, I was eating clean 90% of the time and training 5-6 days a week. I dropped my bootcamp membership in May, and dropped 10 pounds in 10 weeks when I began lifting 5 days a week instead of 3. The bootcamp was fantastic, but I built more muscle by lifting heavy and often. I now know that the muscle was burning fat, hence the weight loss. I really wasn’t doing a lot of cardio at that point. As far as nutrition goes, I was eating 6 meals a day, but wasn’t sure that I was getting the right macros, etc. I was aiming for a lot of protein, and clean, “whole” foods, but I also now know I wasn’t really eating the right combination of macros to really build muscle. Don’t worry, I’ll do several posts later on what I eat and what “clean eating” really means.
Now, back to the question of what made me decide to compete… As of late summer of 2014, I had been reading Oxygen and Muscle & Fitness Hers magazines for about a year (I started reading them before I got serious about lifting), and I had seen girls in those magazines that just looked amazing. They had the toned, muscular yet feminine look I was after! I started seeing a trend that most of them were “competitors”, and I began to research things like the NPC (National Physique Committee—the largest and “grand daddy” of all Bodybuilding Federations), Figure, Bikini, Competition Prep, and I got very curious about the process and the whole competition experience. I loved clean eating and working out, and had made it a lifestyle at this point, and competing would be the pinnacle of putting those two pieces together into a pretty extreme form, getting in peak physical condition, while competing against myself and fellow women to ultimately do something few others can say that they have done. I was excited and nervous as hell at the mere THOUGHT of doing this. Me, a BODYBUILDER?!?!? I had only been lifting for six months!
I did more research, read more articles, talked to an acquaintance of mine (now a good friend, teammate, and mentor, Tonya!) who was also getting ready to compete and decided that I needed to see this in action. Because I would be turning 30 soon, I wanted a goal to work towards, a challenge, something that could push me out of my comfort zone. I loved this lifestyle and wanted to take it to the next level. And to look AMAZING after a 12-week process, well, that would just be the icing on the cake! Shane was totally on board, too. We went to our first Bodybuilding competition in September of 2014, and I knew the second that I walked in and saw the tables of Quest Bars, friendly people with protein shakers in hand, supplement reps, meal preppers, sparkles, tans, and smiles, that I had found a crowd who “got” my obsession with this lifestyle. I was surrounded by girly-girls who loved to lift too. Before I went to the show, I knew that one of two things was going to happen—either I would run towards the hills, or I would think to myself, dammit give me some stripper heels, some more muscle, and put me on that stage! As you all know, I obviously chose to get up on that stage and to rock it!
Till next time!
-Mere