The Power of Progress

There's an idea I want to share that seems to have smacked me in the face several times over the last week or so.

here it is plain and simple:

WE WERE NOT CREATED PHYSICALLY EQUAL

I know what you're thinking. "uh...I'm pretty sure I already knew that..."
But did you, really?

I swear this is exactly what her calves look like!

I have a perfect example of this. I'm 5"11, and because my legs are quite long, it has been a struggle my entire life to get any kind of muscle definition in them. My calves remain tiny no matter how much I jump rope or how many calf presses I do. By contrast, my best friend is 5"2 and has the most beautifully defined legs I've ever seen. She hasn't done anything extraordinary to deserve them - they were simply given to her as part of her genetics! My friend and I went to the gym together right before I took her to the MTC, and we decided to do a couple of leg exercises. Of course I expected her to be able to lift way more than me, and I teased her about it before we started. Much to my surprise, however, I ended up lifting nearly double the weight she did on every exercise! What is with that? Every day I see women with beautifully defined calves, and consciously I think, wow, I wish I had calves like that, I wonder what she does to have calves like that!! But subconsciously I'm pretty sure my thoughts look something more like this:

"She has better calves than me, therefore, she is more fit than me, therefore, she is more beautiful than me, therefore, I am of less worth than her."

This is ridiculous, right? She is NOT worth more than me simply because her calves are bigger. But that's what my brain tells me when I see a physical trait someone else has that I don't have.
The problem with this thinking is that it is disabling, demotivating, depressing, and most of all, wrong. 

Remember the parable of the talents?

The Master gave a different amount of talents to each of his servants. The one who was given five talents went out and traded with them, doubled what he was given, and returned with ten. The Master was pleased and rewarded him accordingly. The one who was given two talents also returned with double, and even though he still brought back less total talents than the first, he received the same reward. The last servant was only given one talent, and because he was too afraid to lose it, he dug a hole, buried it, and did not try to increase his number of talents. When he returned with the one talent, the Master was very disappointed and even took the talent from him and gave it to the servant who already had ten.

Alma 34:33 says, "And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so many witnesses, therefore, I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed."

Notice Alma did not say, "if we do not end up better than our fellow brethren while in this life..." he said, "if we do not improve our time..."

So what am I trying to get at here?
What do calves and talents and Book of Mormon heroes have to do with anything?

I want to expand on what I said earlier. We were not created physically equal, because God didn't want it that way. He gave us bodies as a gift, with the expectation that we would use them in the best way possible to learn and grow while we're here on this earth. He provided us with the opportunity for progress, and PROGRESS is what is important. Even more than that, INDIVIDUAL PROGRESS is what's the most important.

If ten runners each begin the race at a different starting point, it is impossible to tell who is ahead or behind by simply looking at where the runners are on the track relative to each other. That is why it is completely useless to try and compare ourselves to others. We are each on our own individual journey, and if we want to please ourselves and God, we have to remember that it's not about where we are now or where we started, it's about how far we've come. I can measure my own progress by looking only at myself and no one else.

So yeah, don't go to the gym and feel bad because there are people who look slimmer or lift more or have better calves than you. They don't matter! What matters is that you use the talents you've been given and "improve upon them". There is power in progress!

P.S. I know when it comes to specific competitions like swimsuit at Miss Idaho it is important to realize what we will be up against so that we can know where to set our goals. But I decided that once I've determined to reach those goals, every workout I accomplish and nutritious meal I eat will be for the purpose of attaining those goals FOR MYSELF, not so I can look at one of my competitors and say, I'm more fit than her. I want to feel good in knowing how far I've come, and that I have taken the body I was given and improved upon it. That is a million times more valuable to me than knowing my dress size is smaller than someone elses :)

Eat those pancakes! The good way :)

 One thing I will definitely say I miss since starting the ketogenic diet OR the paleo diet has been pancakes. Straight up flour fried in a pan and topped with liquid sugar. Yeah they're definitely not the best for you (full of toxins and insulin-raising carbs) but they sure are yummy! So I decided I wanted to find a way to still enjoy my pancakes and not feel guilty about destroying my body while I'm at it...

And now we have another grain-free, low-carb recipe. This one is not my own, but it's too good not to share!

1/2c unsweetened applesauce
1/2c nut butter (I use almond butter)
2 eggs
1/4 tsp cinammon
1/4 tsp vanilla

Mix all the ingredients together until the batter is uniform, then pour a glop on the frying pan on medium heat and cook until the bubbles on top pop and stay popped. Then flip and finish cooking! Makes about six medium sized pancakes.

I like to eat my pancakes with a little applesauce on top (mixed with about two drops of vanilla stevia and some cinammon) SO DELICIOUS!!!

Holiday Health Havoc

Just so ya'll know, I'm competing in Miss Idaho in July, and I decided this year that if nothing else, I am going to try and win the swimsuit competition. This is no small feat - I was blown away last year by the level of fitness my competitors achieved, and I realized that even though weighing 140 at a height of 5"11 was not overweight by any means, I was nowhere near what I needed to be in terms of lean muscle mass and body fat percentage. I simply could not compete.

Here are some state winners at the Miss America competition...yeah...they look good

It wasn't just the fact that I probably scored lower than the other contestants when it came to swimsuit that makes me so keen to pick winning this specific area of competition as the ultimate goal. I remember arriving at NNU where the competition was held two days before the actual performance and immediately feeling extremely intimidated by the other girls. I found myself looking them up and down, comparing their bodies to mine, and even though I hadn't seen their talents yet or heard them speak in public I started having serious doubts about whether I had a chance at the title or not. I spent the rest of the week feeling down about myself and losing confidence every time we practiced our walking patterns in swimsuit or evening gown. I then went into my interview feeling less confident than ever and I ended up bombing the dang thing and screwing over my chance to be hired for my ultimate dream job. Talent didn't go any better, and my parents told me there was something missing in my eyes when I came out on stage for swimsuit and evening gown. I know now it was complete lack of confidence.

There is something to be said for loving and accepting your body just the way it is. In general I believe in this principle. However, I also believe in progress and challenging myself to do hard things. We should never fully accept ourselves the way we are, because then we would never be motivated to improve! When it comes to the Miss Idaho competition, I want to pull out all the stops. I'm going to give it everything I have, because I want to look back on my preparation with no regrets and no excuses. Swimsuit, fortunately, is the one area of competition that is completely under my control. Even with massive amounts of preparation, I may bomb my interview again, or forget my piano solo in the middle of the performance, or say something really stupid onstage, or the judges just might not be feeling me that night. But no matter what happens my body will still be exactly how I prepared it to be. There's no stopping it. And I want to enter the competition feeling confident that even if everything else goes wrong I will still be able to show the judges how dang hard I worked to live a healthy lifestyle and sculpt my body into the lean, attractive silhouette it was meant to be.

I also know that being confident in that area will spread across to each of the other areas of competition. If I can spend the week before the performance relaxed and focused on the competition at hand instead of sizing up the other girls and being all worried that I'll look fat onstage, everything will go smoother and I know I'll have a better experience.

That being said, I made a goal to lose 20 lbs by January 18th. I want to have this out of the way early so I'm not crash dieting a month before Miss Idaho. At the time I made the goal, I had exactly two months to complete it. Now its the week after thanksgiving and I've gained two pounds and lost a week of my precious time. Dieting over the holidays is freaking hard, and twenty pounds in two months was going to be difficult anyway, but add thanksgiving, christmas, and new years on top of that and I've got a goal that's nearly impossible to achieve!

A good friend gave me some advice that I really needed the other day:  "It is such a mental game in our heads, I did let myself relax for thanksgiving and I ate anything I wanted on Thursday, then today I had the hardest time stopping. Which I didn't, I ate horrible again today. I think that feeling you described in your post of not wanting to do anything we should be doing is the consequence of being dedicated for a long time, then letting our mental game guard down. I am determined to not gain back all that I have lost, so I am going to go to bed, shake this off and wake up in the morning back to my old routine of accomplishing all I can in a day with eating right and exercising. So that's my long version comment to your post. It's ok to have a lazy day, tomorrows a new day"

She's totally right, tomorrow IS a new day. And I just need to take things one day at a time. I'm not going to worry about Christmas or New Years. I'm just going to feel proud of myself for eating right and exercising today and get prepped to do it again tomorrow. When I think about eating paleo from now until January 18th, I get discouraged and feel like I probably wont be able to do it. But I know I can finish today on the paleo diet. And I know I can probably do it again tomorrow. And that's all I need. If I can stay on top of this mental game I know I will be able to reach my goals :) PS: I will be posting "before" pictures soon so you can follow my progress too!