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!