This picture from the lagoon was taken back in September of 2009, the year before I started training for my first Fitness Model show. I was 38 years old, and had been doing Bikram yoga almost every day for about 8 years, and absolutely loved what it had done for my body and for my peace of mind. I remember this particular moment in time. I felt like I was in the best shape of my life. I had been struggling a little with getting older, but spending time on the beautiful beaches of Tulum, and playing in the ocean, and doing my yoga on the beach, had been a wonderful experience. I felt flexible, lean and deeply happy. However, when I returned to Boston, I started to feel disatisfied with how I was looking. I enrolled in the Natural Gourmet Institute and moved to New York City for 5 months where I was sequestered in school all day long. With only enough time at night to practice the beginner’s class, I started to feel achy and bloated, and I didn’t like how my behind was starting to lose it’s ba-dunk! When I graduated as a chef, I landed an intense and crazy internship at Boston’s No.9 Park restaurant, where I worked 13 hours a day on the line, getting screamed at from start to finish. Talk about high cortisol levels. I cried pretty much every day. The guy in charge of training me absolutely hated me from the get-go and bullied me to the point where I seriously wanted to turn him into foie gras, or at least his South Boston liver. Yes, Hell’s Kitchen really is the reality of the restaurant world…! In the first month of work, I went to see a friend of mine compete at a Fitness Atlantic show in Boston, and seeing how much she had transformed her body, and how happy she was, piqued my interest in doing a show myself. I felt like lifting weights with a clear goal in mind would be just what I needed to get to the “next level” and make turning 40 not-so-scary!
It turned out to be the next best decision I made for my health. The chronic hamstring pain I had been experiencing my entire yoga practice finally went away when I started strengthening my legs with dead-lifts and hamstring curls. My core and back got phenomenally strong, and I was able to do locust pose with my legs straight over my head, something I had been struggling at for 6 years. And my derriere finally started obeying my mental messages to resist the pull of gravity. Most importantly, serious weight-lifting balanced out all the flexibility work I had been focused on and gave my entire body an integration and vitality that had been sorely missing. As an added advantage it was great to expose myself to new people, new ideas about health, and a new lifestyle. I have to admit that I’ve learned a lot more about nutrition and human physiology in my last 2 years of weight-training than I did when I was solely focused on yoga. Though you do have to sift through the information, there is a lot of scientifically researched and empirically proven ideas that have brought me the health and strength that I now enjoy…I will always do both now that I know how great they go together.
This second picture was snapped two days ago, and it was when I was feeling terribly bloated. There’s been a sudden change in the weather here in Mumbai and now it’s incredibly hot and humid, so I’m holding on to more water, at least it feels like I’m holding on to a ton of water. It’s funny how your of “lean” and “bloated” can change so much. I’m sure now that if I woke up looking like the girl in the first picture I would feel horrified at how “soft” I was looking. Where were all my cuts? Where was the leg and abdominal separations that I was now accustomed to? Even deep in my off-season, as I am now, I wouldn’t trade bodies for the world. My current feeling of strength and vibrancy, and the great comraderie I enjoy at the gym, are priceless. When I compare these pictures I realize how far I’ve come and how important it is to enjoy the process and not get caught up in unrealistic or unforgiving expectations. Reality check: I want to continue to do these competitions to keep raising my personal bar and improving my health, but I certainly don’t want to waste energy being ungrateful for how hard my body and mind have been working for me these past 2 years. It takes a long time of hard, continuous work to change your body composition, and each step of the way is necessary. You can’t skip a step, and you have to maintain perspective and be in it for the long haul. When I showed my coach this picture he laughed at me, literally! ‘Bloated’, ‘off point’, ‘getting flabby’? Don’t think so! So I thought I’d put this little post up to show some of you who are on this path too, that lifting weights is worth it, even if your number one goal is yoga and balance, and that if are on the road of training for shows, keep your head on straight! Appreciate how far you’ve come. Keep a time line and chart your progress. Remember that there will be plateaus, you will have those bloated days, or injury, but over the long haul you absolutely have to stay humble and appreciate that spark in you that is trying to improve yourself, and stay the course no matter what your sometimes crazy mind is telling you. Always keep in mind as well that all the good habits you’re building will ultimately determine how you’re going to be enjoying the aging process! While it’s good to want to look better in a bikini, my overall goals are to increase my sense of peace and well-being, to improve my intuition and knowledge of how to take better care of myself, and to keep investing in my future. My real role models are women like Emmy Cleaves and Johanna QUAAS who are out there doing some pretty amazing things well into their eighties. I hope that’s going to be me…I hope it will be you too…!
Good night from Mumbai,
love Michelle
