The Year of the Lean Beast

Good Morning Friends. Happy Saturday to you!

So happy I can say it’s Saturday and not Sunday. I took a nap yesterday in the evening and when I woke up I started thinking oh no tomorrow is Sunday already, I need to take out my meats to thaw for meal prep. After a few minutes of realizing where I was I thought “It’s ONLY Friday!”. Every time I nap I get so disoriented! Does this happen to anyone else? One time I napped in my room and rushed out of bed and started putting on scrubs, then I realized okay I’ve been to work and it’s the afternoon…

Moving on to the real purpose of this blog post…. PROGRESS!

When I started my blog over a year ago, I had just started getting serious about lifting. I was definitely a cardio bunny and my body showed it. 

Of course everyone wanted to know how I managed my “slim down”. My starting point varied. I was always on a “diet” it seemed, but I wasn’t smart about labels and wasn’t educated on what was really good for me. Like most people that diet, I just went off of what society said you needed to eat to be skinny. That means “fat free” or “sugar free” diets. Now I look at those labels and it blows my mind. Loaded with sodium to give things flavor, loaded with sugars, and highly processed. I try to avoid these things as much as possible now. It does damage to the body and I work too darn hard to have some chemicals mess it up!

So back to my starting point. I was a BIG time yo-yo dieter as I’ve talked about before. Here’s a little outline to give you an idea:

• Highschool 1999-2002 weight started creeping up. At my highest I was around 150 I’d guess. I’m 5’2 1/2”.

Unfortunately, I’ve ALWAYS carried weight in my face. I’m just one of those people. Remember that wallpaper Mom? 

• 2002-2003 Senior year of high school I started working out, I was tiny and probably around 115-120 lbs, but no muscle

• College 2003-2006 A healthy regular weight. I was around 130-140 at any given time, but had problem areas.

The bubble TV in the background!

Oh to be that young again!

The part that is hard for me to talk about:

• College 2006-2007 I really started working out, became a fitness instructor and killed myself to be thin. Enter typical college stereotype here. I would workout 3-4 hours a day, and starved myself down to nothing. This is my BIGGEST regret in life. It 100% ruined my metabolism. I was cranky, tired, and always hungry. I looked forward to Thursday nights when I would eat a big bowl of Jell-O.   I really changed from week to week. I’ll never forget one night I was taking an aerobics class that one of my co-workers was teaching and I looked in the mirror and said “I can’t believe this is me”. I had bones jutting out every which way. I had a HUGE thigh gap and when I walked in a room I would get stares. I also made my parents extremely worried about me. Another huge regret. So I’m sorry Mom and Dad. I will blame it on being young and dumb. When I did eat “normal” again I would put on weight so fast as if I went to McDonalds for weeks straight and ate nothing but Big Macs, when in reality I was eating salads, baked chips, and fruit.

 I don’t really have many pictures from this time period. Only me in baggy clothes. 

• 2007-2009 The minute I graduated I started eating. I bet I gained 25 pounds in one summer because my metabolism was shot. I was working at a medical office and hated life, but I knew I had to do it for PA school applications. I rarely worked out anymore. This period might have been the heaviest, I felt very uncomfortable.

• 2009-2011 PA school Before I started PA school I started running again and dropped down to around 130. Slowly over those 2 years my weight creeped back up. Stress and not watching labels again. I did keep up my workouts most of year one, but when year 2 came it was hit and miss. Year 2 was when I put on more of the weight and probably got to around 155 or 160.

• 2011-2012. I started working out regular again since I was in the real world and working nights. I would do long gym sessions in the afternoon and then straight to work at 6:00pm. I did hit a plateau around March of 2012 to about July and was around 135 for this period. In late summer I did some research and started working out less than ever before and incorporating lifts into my workouts. This made the change for me and I was dropping pounds fast. I also turned vegetarian and it kept me pretty slim.

• Late 2012 I started my blog! I was a “skinny minnie” and wanted to gain more muscle so for the new year I decided to nix being a vegetarian and add in more protein to my diet.

• 2013- 2014 1 year later I’m still what I’d consider a “skinny minnie” but I’m fit! I’m happy. I’m healthy. And I’m really proud of my progress. I fluctuate from time to time, but that is life. This is the longest I have kept with it and I guarantee I am not going back to the crazy cardio bunny or yo-yo dieter eating all those chemicals! I only plan on getter stronger.

• TODAY

This top I’m wearing? Well yes, that would be a senior year of college top! What’s that they say? Strong is the new skinny! Sometimes I wear these articles of clothing to remind me how far I’ve come.

So now that we are in 2014, I have big plans for myself! I only want to push my body further and I can’t wait to see how I will change 1 year from now. I call 2014 the year of the ‘lean beast’ because that’s what I plan on being. No starvation diets, just hard work by eating clean and lifting heavy.

I hope this post motivated you, or at the least let you see that every one struggles in life. We have ups and downs, aren’t smart about things, make crazy stupid decisions, but then see the light and become better than ever! Maybe you are out there reading this saying “gosh this is me, I need to change”, if so I hope you do 🙂

XOXO With a Cherry On Top,

-Minnie

P.S. I ALWAYS welcome e-mails if you have questions and do not want to comment below.