Bikini Prep – 21 Weeks Out – No Pretending

I have a little pet peeve, and it’s called pretenders. You know those people, when you ask how their day is going, and they say “great!!!” and they are crying inside. Kind of like, when you ask, “How was Disney?” for 7 nights in July, and they say “Sooooo fun!” and you know they are straight lying.

So throughout this bikini prep process, I vowed to myself and to my coach that I would not be a pretender.

The hard part about not being a pretender is that you actually have to tell the truth and to feel uncomfortable feelings, and to say things to yourself and out loud to your husband on the couch during the Next Food Network Star like, “I feel like a failure.” And that is how week 1 felt for me.

So instead of pretending that I absolutely killed it this week, I will just be honest and tell you that it was really, really, really hard. And last night I was questioning everything.

Now the photo you see below is actually me not pretending, because I will tell you that I did absolutely crush it in the gym. I am following a program that my coach created for me called FORTITUDE. It’s no coincidence that the word fortitude means: courage in pain or adversity. The basis of the program is that you lift the same muscle groups each day for 5-6 days in different ways, so that at the end of the week all of the muscle groups are crying.

For instance, maybe on day 1, you do 5 sets of leg extensions – 3 warm up sets and 2 working sets with much heavier weight. One day 3, you do leg extensions again, but this time just one pump set of 30. You are hitting your legs and glutes each day, just at a different intensity. Let’s just say that the end of the week called for a full body massage and some help down the stairs. I loved it. LOVED it. But I am weird like that.

As you know, training your body is only part of this process to get to the stage. You have to train your mind, and you have to eat to perform. Before I started training, I was maintaining my weight at around 2000 calories per day, sometimes closer to 2100 depending on my exercise level that day. So when I got my macros for week 1, I was more than slightly concerned at the 1715 that I was tasked with. I could crush that by meal 4 easy. It was also an adjustment to go from eating 60g of fat per day to around 30g. Much less of all of my favorite fats: avocados, nut butters and red meat. I was determined to give it my best shot. I could NOT fail in week 1, right?! So off I went into the week, burning close to 14,000 just by living and exercising in my normal routine. Not counting things like the afterburn post workout (about 100 calories per day) and my normal life living and chores around the house, carrying Gianna, grocery shopping, etc. So I was burning a total of 16,000 and eating a total of 12,000. It was really hard. I was hungry. I was cranky. I failed. I overate some days. I beat myself up. I didn’t think about quitting, but I really was not sure if I had it in me to keep going.

But I vowed NOT TO PRETEND.

So this morning, I gave it straight to my coach. I didn’t tell him my week was “great!!!!!” because it was anything but great. I was honest. I was open. I was vulnerable. And he told me that the point of week 1 was to see what my body would do – how it would react, and we would all learn from week 1.

The result: MORE FOOD. More carbs. More protein, More fats. Praise the Lord.

I am ready for week 2. More ready than ever.

So when someone asks you how you’re doing today, think of this post. Take off the mask and just be real.

I’m off to crush it.