Corporate Woman by Day, Fitness Freak by Night

I live your average, everyday corporate lifestyle between the hours of 8:30 am and 5:00 pm.  During competition prep season, I like to prep my meals for the week on Sunday evening.  I grab my containers, which contains my lunch, snacks, protein shake, another meal, and an extra meal just in case I do not make it home for dinner, and off to work I go.  I usually take up the most room in the refrigerator at work, and I’m ok with that.  I would try to remain inconspicuous and act as if I’m not the owners of all the food containers but, ideally, my initials are conveniently marked on the corners of each container.  My brilliant idea, so no one would suddenly feel the urge to “eat healthy” and snag my food.  Nonetheless, I’m eyeballed each time I step into the kitchen.  No one can understand how someone of my stature, 5’8, 130 lbs, could put away all that food in 8 hours.  “Oh, what ya got there?” “Moving in, are we?”  I avoid the glaring eyes and cute comments and proceed to the refrigerator to stock my food.  I have found that if I tuck my food away in the food crisper drawers, no one notices.  When it’s time to eat, my reminder goes off, and off to the kitchen or my desk drawer I go.  Whenever I’m meeting in someone’s office, my mental clock goes off and I have to ask the time.  If it is feeding time, I politely but hungrily say, “It’s time to feed the beast.  Excuse me.”  And I leave. 

I had a hard time coming to grips with the fact I had to eat every 3 hours, and be ok with it.  I did not eat that much regularly so I wasn’t sure how I would be able to do this during work hours.  I am fairly busy at work and I have been known to skip a meal or two, but I did not think my healthy lifestyle and my work lifestyle could co-exist.  I tried to eat healthy at work, substituting cookies and chips for fruit and veggies, and I thought that was enough.  I was so very wrong.  If I did not eat on a schedule, every 3 hours, it showed in the gym and posing practice, and I could not let that show on stage.  Not to mention the fact I was a bit self-conscious about bringing in so much food and hogging space in the fridge, and also smelling up our kitchen with my fish (I do not microwave my fish), eggs, or vinegar salad dressing.  That changed.  A colleague came to visit our office from another office one day and she confessed to me, after we both shunned the cupcakes and cookies my job had on display in our break room, that she too was a fitness competitor and showed me that she had packed a whole day’s worth of food in her cooler.  I couldn’t believe it.  Not only did she look amazing but she didn’t let her busy schedule or comments from anyone stop her from bringing in her competition prep meals.  I said right then and there I would not be ashamed of bringing in a cooler and truck loads of food into work.  I wouldn’t care how it looked, how awful it smelled, I was going to bring in my food and eat on a schedule. 

After 5:00 pm, it’s beast mode in the gym time.  The makeup, corporate-pleasant attitude and corporate casual attire are stripped.  My hair gets pulled in a pony-tail, covered up by a hat, tights or shorts on, sneakers, and a grizzly bear is before you ready to do some damage.  If I really wanted to be dramatic, I would put some of that black paint under my eyes, but that’s a little extra.  If I’m on schedule, I have my snack or protein shake while I’m there.  If I did not eat, I’m something of a handful with my trainer, or anyone for that matter.  If some of my work associates or even some clients saw me in the gym, they probably would not recognize me or would be very shocked to see hidden under all of the corporate clothes, this “skinny chick” has muscles.  I am extremely focused when working out.  There are times when I “zone out”.  I’m talking no one else is in the room, it’s just me and the weights.  My trainer isn’t even there, just a voice in the distance. 

When I’m focused and on a schedule, I feel much more content.  For those who think you cannot balance work life with a healthy lifestyle, I’m here to tell you that is false.  You can, if you really want to. It takes finding what works for you and setting a strict schedule for yourself, and ultimately sticking to it.  I had a hard time managing stress at work because there were times it would spill over to my workouts.  I found when I eat, take my breaks when I’m supposed to, decompress when I have to, do not skip meals, and work hard in the gym, I’m able to handle things much better.  Try it out and you’ll definitely see it works.

The Joys of Being an Ectomorph; My Body Type

As I've stated in earlier posts, I am an ectomorph.  I was not made known of this until I started taking fitness more seriously and got into fitness modeling.  At that point, it was important to learn my body. I couldn't figure out why I could not gain weight or keep muscle, no matter how much I ate, how much I lifted, and how much I prayed for the weight gain (exaggerating).  I dismissed it and said it must be genetic, so I better eat all I can now because when I get older it is not going to be the same.  This was easy to do, but being that I was now competing and showing off my body against other females who could pack on more muscle in a day than I could in a month made me more alert and wanting to know more about my body and what I needed to do to gain size.

The basics: an ectomorph body type is lean/skinny, less muscle mass, small bones and joints, high metabolism, and essentially, everyone hates you because you are this way.  Maybe not so much the latter, but not much of a stretch.  Because your body is already lean you have sort of an edge in the competition, but not by much.  You still have to gain and maintain muscle mass.  This is probably the hardest part. 


Because our bodies naturally burn a lot of calories and our metabolism is high, ectomorphs are advised to keep cardio training at a minimum.  Cardio is still essential, but it can include certain types of cardio workouts such as circuit training or HIIT style (kettle bell swings, push ups, sprints, etc.).  These should be kept to at least 30 minutes. Workouts such as dead lift, lateral pulls, jump squats with the bar, dumbbell curls, calf raisers, bench press, squats (the list goes on and on) are vital in muscle growth, in addition to eating the right nutrients and supplement intake (amino acid, protein shake, creatin).  Some are against ectomorphs taking supplements because our bodies do not need it.  However, if you are in a sport like body building or just want to gain it is essential in getting them into your system because of how it works consistently with your workouts and dieting.  At least for me it does.

One other challenge I continued running into was eating.  I did not know what to eat, how to eat, when to eat, etc.  All I knew was that I had to eat properly because my brain has been trained that when your body feasts on improper eating habits (fried fatty foods, high sodium, high glucose, fructose, sucrose, dextrose...sugar) it will suffer and the end results, at least the ones I've seen in my family, are not good.  My mother suffers from high blood pressure which has resulted in her having multiple strokes.  I saw this and immediately wanted to change my eating habits and maintain an active, healthy lifestyle.  Everything comes with a price.  Literally.  The price of organic vs. non organic is about $5, and that is not an exaggeration from the stores I shop at.  Or taking organic out of the equation, a box of cookies at $2.50 vs. a bag of kale chips at $5.60.  Seriously, if you don't grow your own foods you're liable to go broke if you live on a budget and trying to eat healthy.  This is a sacrifice I was willing to make for competing.  The key to remember for ectomorphs is we can essentially eat what we want, in moderation of course, but smart and healthy.  Breaking up large meals into smaller portion sized meals throughout the day is beneficial.

 

At the end of the day, ectomorphs are rare and unique in true form.  While our bodies, for the most part, appear lean and lanky, there are tricks of the trade to learn in order to even out our body, and by that I mean shaping it into a form that suits us.  My form consists of tightness and definition, one that I am proud to say took hard work to develop, so naturally I cannot go back to the way I was just to start over again.

When will the aching stop?

I've been working out non-stop for roughly a year.  Before then, my workouts consisted of an aerobic class here, a yoga class there, pole dancing to spice it up and kick boxing, just to throw in a little variety.  Nothing ever stuck.  But once I turned my life over to complete fitness and decided I needed to workout on a more consistent basis, I hired a trainer and got serious.  At that time, I didn't have enough motivation to workout myself, so getting a trainer seemed to be the most logical thing to do.  I knew my body would ache for awhile because I was just starting out and my trainer felt I could take it because of my boyish frame and athletic build (giggle).  There would be days where my arms wouldn't move.  They would lock at the joints and my muscles were extremely tight.  Other days my legs were weak as water and I had a hitch in my giddy-up.  It literally felt like my body ached from my eye lids to my toenails.  As the weeks went by and my body became more susceptible to the workouts, the aches and pains gradually wore off.

Now that I'm in fitness modeling, the workouts are more grueling, intense and rigorous.  The days where my arms were unmovable and I wreaked of Tiger Balm were upon me once again.  I couldn't figure it out.  I thought since I was becoming more fit and active that I wouldn't have to feel as much pain as I did when I first began working out.  But I realized that I've only been doing this a year and the weights my trainer put on me were increasing. Nonetheless, Tiger Balm is readily by my bedside and I stay soaking in a hot bath on those particular days. 

I couldn't help but think, so this is what it's like to be an athlete? It hurts like hell but I guess if I'm going to be a part of this life the aching won't stop for a while.  I think I can get used to that.  It hurts so good, but I would never tell my trainer...

In the not-so beginning.....

The way I viewed my body is the way most people view a three tiered wedding cake adorned with diamonds and jewels, or a classic piece of artwork hung in the finest museums for all to marvel.  I figured because I was in my roaring twenties, a size four, 135 lbs soaking wet, tall, lean and mean, that my body was something to be mesmerized by and praised.  I was oh so wrong!

My friends and I liked taking beach trips and I would say to myself, "Dre Dre, if some people can walk out here with everything exposed and nothing left to the imagination why can't you?"  So I used what God gave me and my parents enabled and strutted.  Every surface my feet touched down on became my runway.  Oh I was lean and mean all right, but I had the softest, squishiest looking body that was point and laugh worthy.  I had no definition to my body.  And my belly took on a life of its own and became known to me as 'Biscuit' because of my love and obsession for bread. "Yeast will make you bigger," they said.  Ha!  The only place it made me bigger was my belly.  But that didn't matter.  I saw a svelte looking twenty-something with a wiggly booty, stick legs and pigeon toes.  And my goodness I loved a full body picture!  I couldn't stay out of the camera. 

I reflect on all of this now, looking at the progression my body has made thus far compared to how my body looked then, and I have to shake my head and laugh.  My personal trainer put it to me in a way that made me fall on the floor laughing but also made me think.  He said I held the most fat in my back and my stomach and called me a chubby skinny girl.  Ok, that's an oxymoron.  How in the world can I be classified as skinny but then be considered chubby?  But when I thought about it more, it made sense.  This is definitely no offense to anyone but I did have chubby girl tendencies.  I hid Hawaiian bread under my seat and would eat it freely when I was at a stop light.  Or I'd eat chips and salsa right before a yoga class.  I'd even eat a loaded chicken burritos after pole-dancing class and act like I just ate a light salad.  I can go on and on.

There are many contributing factors that play a part in my body transformation but it had to start with transforming my entire thought process and what my idea of a good looking body really is.  I had so many people tell me that I looked good and there was nothing wrong with me.  I was tall and skinny so I could get away with just about anything.  I started believing this and lived my life accordingly.  It took me reprogramming my mind to reprogram my image.  It started inward and progressed outwardly. 

This journey I've been on in transforming my body and lifestyle to a more healthier state has been bumpy, aggravating, hungry, hard and comical, all the more reason to share with others that may be able to relate or inspire.