"Because I am FAT"

I see more blogs on being skinny, not eating, purging and just plain obsession with being bone skinny than I do on being fit and healthy. It makes me so very sad. I understand where these girls, women are coming from as I have been there and lived it, but I just wish there was a way to reach them and let them know that there is a better way to get what they want. There is a way to obtain the body they want without robbing their beauty inside and out by killing themselves slowing. In fact most might see that they can obtain a much better body the fit healthy way. 

Their one and only goal is getting skinny not matter the cost. The cost being your looks, your beauty, your life. If they only knew by going the more healthy route they could have the same thing and be fit, thin and healthy and not have to suffer anymore. The hard thing is to get them to see what everyone else is seeing, what you and I see. When you're in this disease you don't see what everyone else is seeing when they look at you. You only see that you're fat, you're ugly and each day you suffer to try to change that by starving and hurting yourself from the inside out. If only I had the magic word to snap them out of it and get them to see their real selves and know that they don't have to suffer anymore.

When you're so far deep in this disease you don't care that your hair is thinning and falling out. Your nails a brittle and your skin is sallow and yellow. You're so cold even in the dead of summer. Your body aches and your stomach is sore all the time. You are so far gone you don't want food anymore and that's when it hurts to even eat so you don't eat. The ones who purge are loosing and rotting their teeth from the acid coming up when they purge. They are purging so much, some purge up to 10x a day and the acid from purging is just too much and rots their teeth. The throat lining is torn as well as the esophagus. Purging causes dehydration, abdominal pain and cramping, bloating, and constipation. The body cannot handle the large quantities of food taken at one time. The body does not know what to do with such a large amount of food and must work overtime to compensate for the extreme increase of food it’s receiving. The purging must then be performed in order to rid the body of the massive amount of food that is just received.

  Both anorexia and bulimia are ugly diseases and there are similarities as the side effects to your looks and overall health are the same and more worse both can cause your heart to beat irregular and even fail. One difference is someone who is bulimic can be over weight due to the enormous amounts of food going in and out of their body every day. The body is so confused that it can back fire and cause weight gain. Anorexics do anything and everything to be skinny and they don't eat or eat very little to barely survive. Both diseases abuse laxatives to rid their bodies of excess to obtain their goal of being thin. This too can back fire as your body gets used to the laxatives and will go into survival mode and hold weight. There are actual motivational sites, blogs that help you on becoming Anorexic and Bulimic and that is what saddens me the most. Teaching someone how to starve, suffer and eventually kill themselves should be illegal. Yet you cannot stop someones free will. Especially if they are determined to be skinny, bone thin and don't know any other way but the wrong way to do it. They will even kill themselves for it.

My hope is that these women, young girls and even men can be reached one by one before it's too late. Be taught and shown the right way to obtain what they want. Show them that they don't have to always feel bad and suffer to be what they feel is being thin and beautiful. Teach them that there is a much better way that they can still have the beautiful, thin body they want but be overall healthy inside and out. Be happy doing it and living it and eventually loving themselves for it.

"Fit ✿ Strong ✿ Beautiful"

In reference to my post on eating disorders this week...I’m not knocking those who want to be skinny…All us women of all ages want that! To be skinny and beautiful, fit into cute clothes and wear a sexy bikini to the beach. It just saddens me to see it done to an extreme of possibly losing ones life in the process and having such devastating side effects that cannot be corrected. I survived my eating disorder that almost killed me at 69 pounds. I totally get wanting to be skinny.. I just found a better, healthier way to be skinny, thin, fit and healthy. My only wish is for today’s women to be smarter about being skinny and do it the healthy fit way. I guarantee you will be amazed at how good your body will look and feel if you go the fit, healthy route. You can get there the same and without putting you beautiful body in harms way in the process. Just reach out and grab a hold of being alive, happy and healthy. Don’t be afraid to ask for help…It’s out there for you, you just need to reach for it and ask. God Bless all of you in your journey & quest for your most perfect body. I hope it is Fit, Strong, healthy and Beautiful! Just remember you are already #Beautiful =) ✿

"Stop Trying 2 Be Skinny"

There are too many women trying to be super skinny no matter what the cost it may have or long term effects on their body. Eating disorders are no joke and very serious. I just did a post this week on "Fit vs Skinny" and how the eating disorder Anorexia Nervosa almost took my life. There are actual online sites that teach us how to be super skinny. These Pro-Ana sites are basically teaching us how to get an eating disorder and how to be skinny by using so many unhealthy tricks that are so harmful to our bodies in so many ways. Visiting these Pro-Ana sites made me extremely sad and very concerned for both women and men who think it's not a big deal. They continue to look for more ways and use diet products to obtain a unhealthy skinny body. They're not seeing it as unhealthy or dangerous to their bodies and continue to harm themselves.

There are too many women trying to be super skinny no matter what the cost it may have or long term effects on their body. Eating disorders are no joke and very serious. I just did a post this week on "Fit vs Skinny" and how the eating disorder Anorexia Nervosa almost took my life. There are actual online sites that teach us how to be super skinny. These Pro-Ana sites are basically teaching us how to get an eating disorder and how to be skinny by using so many unhealthy tricks that are so harmful to our bodies in so many ways. Visiting these Pro-Ana sites made me extremely sad and very concerned for both women and men who think it's not a big deal. They continue to look for more ways and use diet products to obtain a unhealthy skinny body. They're not seeing it as unhealthy or dangerous to their bodies and continue to harm themselves. 

I had a chat conversation with a 17 year old girl that is sharing with the world on her blog that she only cares about being skinny. She among others are promoting Anorexia and Bulimia. She notes in here blog profile that she has an eating disorder and lists the side effects she's experiencing. Clumps of hair falling out, cold shivers, rotting teeth due to vomiting. The rotting teeth come from Bulimia and she claims she both starves and purges her food. In a lot of cases with Bulimia alone...The purging of one's food will have the reverse effect they're striving for and will only make you hold on and even gain weight. The body is in such shock from the binging and purging it just holds on the weight as a protection mechanism. In my own personal case I only starved myself or barely ate so my body had nothing to hold on to and I became emaciated.

While talking to this one girl she ended up reading my blog post on my experience with Anorexia and thought it would help others but not her. She was too set in her ways and had a goal to make her body as skinny as possible. She didn't care that the binging and then the purging of her food was rotting her teeth out. She didn't care that her hair was falling out and her skin was breaking out. All from malnutrition for both eating disorders Anorexia and Bulimia. She thanked me for my time and suggestions but asked me to move on to someone else that wanted to be helped. She said...that she only cared about summer coming up soon and she wanted be super skinny to fit in a bikini. Now how sad it that? You can only try to help others, if the person isn't ready to be helped or can't even acknowledge that they have a problem, a eating disorder that could be killing them. It can be very hard to help them or show them a better alternative if they aren't ready to admit to themselves that they have a eating disorder. I can only hope that they're as lucky as I was and have a loved one be honest and real with them and make them see their real self. See and realize what they are doing to their bodies inside and out. Let them know that what they're doing is not the way to go and can possible end their life. Show them a better way and help them find a healthier way to get that fit, thin body they want so desperately... through a life style change. Eating clean and working out can give them a much better body image that will keep them healthy and fit for life. ✿

"Being Fit vs Being Skinny"

It seems being skinny is still a growing obsession in young women today. To get that skinny body women will do just about anything. They will do so many unhealthy things to their beautiful bodies to obtain that skinny look. It's quite sad and very tragic to me to see so much of this on weight loss blogs today. The main goal is not to get fit and healthy, it is to get skinny whatever the cost. I don't think these women know at what cost they will face down the road when they chose this route to be skinny.

 

I am a survivor of the eating disorder Anorexia Nervosa and at the time I suffered from it I didn't know it had a name or was even a disease. It's no joke and the effects you put your body through to be skinny will have a permanent effect on you and your body for the rest of your life. I took it to the extreme of it being life threatening and at my lowest weight I was 17 and graduating high school at 71 pounds at 5'3. I was small, but at 71 pounds I became almost nothing. I was super skinny, but not so beautiful as my brother pointed out to me. This starving disease robs you of your beauty over time. You don't realize it because you can only see that your fat in the mirror when you look at yourself. You don't see the real you when your suffering from this disease.

  

The visual side effects from this ugly disease is... thinning and loss of hair, bad, sallow toned skin. Your bones start to show through your skin. Body bruises easily and your nails won't grow. You lose your period due to stress and low body fat. Your always cold and your stomach is always sore and aching from hunger. Your body is not getting the proper nutrition it needs to survive let alone look good, so you begin to start wasting away right in front of everyone eyes except your own. You cannot see it nor accept it as your main goal is just being super skinny and you're never satisfied so you keep losing more weight to fuel your desire to be skinny. You've gone past the point of obtaining a thin beautiful body. There is no beauty in being unhealthy, skinny and falling apart.

My salvation was my brother introducing me to the beautiful iron and teaching me how to sculpt my body and be strong, fit and healthy. While I was suffering from this disease I was still an athlete as I was a competitive swimmer and I also loved to run long distance. I wish I had treated my body better so that I could of been at my very best and seen my true potential as a competitive swimmer and runner. I would do anywhere from 3500-5000 yards at swim practice 6 days a week and run 3-5 miles sometimes twice daily on just a apple and glass of milk. I was lucky as I always did great in competition because I have the heart and drive of a competitor, but I could of been better, much greater as a athlete if I had known then what I know now. I would of taken better care of my body and feed it what it needed to thrive and excel... not be skinny and under nourished.

  

I was able to see my potential when I turned to being fit and healthy and sculpting my body with weight lifting. I knew that all the hard work and sacrifice I gave to my training would never show if I continued to starve and deplete my body as I had been doing for so many years. I had to come to terms with adding weight to my body and knowing it was okay and I was going to make myself look and be fit, healthy and beautiful inside as well as outside. I was in control of my body in a whole different way and it took a lot of time and learning to love myself enough to want better for me.

My hope is for other young women to skip a lot of these bad experiences I went through for years and start taking control of their own body in a positive healthy, fit way. They need to realize and know that being fit is so much more appealing and healthy then being skinny and unhealthy. If they can see a thin, fit body verses a skinny, unhealthy body I'm most positive they will want to put their time and energy in to being fit and healthy.  Being skinny and unhealthy takes so much time and energy. Put all that energy towards a healthy fit body and stop the never ending spiral and suffering of this disease and become the person you were meant to be. Healthy, fit, beautiful and a Champion!

 ✿

" No Pills ...Exercise Fights the Blues"

  Ever wonder why you feel so good after working out? It’s not just your imagination at play – psychologists and exercise physiologists have found that exercise may actually work as well as drugs for treating depression. A Duke University study tested this theory by recruiting 156 men and women age 50 and older who suffered from major depression. They split the study participants into two groups. One group walked or jogged for 30 minutes three days a week, while another group simply took the antidepressant Zoloft.

 

At the end of four months, both groups improved dramatically. But the real surprise came when the researchers checked back in with the participants six months later. Thirty-eight percent of the Zoloft group had fallen back into depression, compared to only 8% of the exercise group. So I say, when you’re feeling blue, just throw on your walking shoes!

Over a year and half ago my son had a seizure in front of me which he almost died from. I gave him mouth to mouth to get him breathing after he stop breathing from the seizure. The ambulance came and took him to the hospital. He went into a coma for the next 24 hours. A week later the doctors still didn't know what caused this one time seizure, but they diagnosed with a active form of bipolar depression. Because of the brutal way my husband, my son's father was taken from us when my son was young. This tragic loss has cause major delayed reactions in him that are now surfacing because of this great loss to him and to us as a family. 

They immediately gave me a prescription for pills to give him twice daily. Not a believer in taking pills I was extremely torn. We decided to try it and I gave him the pills as prescribed twice daily. It only took two days till my son said he hated how they made him feel and made tired and he was too tired to workout. I had just started training him with weights now that he was 14 years old. Of course the doctor said it would take time to adjust the doze and asked me to up the doze to three times daily for the next few weeks. 

  I refused to follow the doctor's instructions. My son and I agreed that I would keep training him with weights and kicking his ass in the gym and that would be his form of medication. He began to focus on his goals for school and other dreams he has for himself. He was dedicated to training and working out every day. It made him feel alive and better than he had ever felt. Of course the doctor's felt the change in my son was due to the medication they prescribed for him. They had no idea that he had stopped taking the medication on the third day and we started our own form of medication. This medication is called training your ass off and feeding your body and soul with exercise rather than with pills to fix a problem.

It's been almost two years now and my son has not had any more seizures and he is more happy and full of energy and life. I do believe in my son's case that going the route we did was much better and healthier for him than stuffing him daily with pills that only made him feel lazy, sad and disconnected to life in general. I think there is a place for medication in certain circumstances. I do feel a quick fix is always used to any form of depression and most always a pill is prescribe to take. I can only go on my experience with my son and in his case exercise and having a daily workout schedule is what made him heal. His body and mind thrived over these few years and he's become motivated and has great drive daily and for his future. The alternative route we took has made him in to the healthy, fit happy young man he is today.

✿ 

Self Pity ~

Self-Pity
I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.    D. H. Lawrence

 

This is one of my all time favorite movies... It's only a movie, but shows how strong we can really be. Never feel sorry for or pity ourselves! 
You do what you have to do to get by in life. You don't waste time or energy on feeling sorry for yourself, because it does little to no good. Just fight back!

David vs Goliath "Gold Gym Natural Bodybuilding Classic"

David vs Goliath 

I was the smallest competitor of this show and I was the last one standing next to the heavy weight winner. This show they did away with having a middle weight class and split the women in two categories... Light weight class, heavy weight class. After winning the light weight class, I then had to pose down next to the heavy weight winner. It was a great experience for me. The heavy weight winner and I were very similar in our body structures except she was just larger than me. She did end up winning the overall title that year. 
This gave me the incentive to go harder for my next competition to win my first overall title. I knew I needed to get bigger to be able to beat the middle and heavy weight class winners for the overall title. This is what I did indeed. I trained hard for following year to enter another bodybuilding competition bigger and more defined, ripped and ready to take the overall title. This was the year I beat the middle and heavy weight winners for the overall title. To make it a much sweeter win for me I also won the overall best poser award. At that time I didn't know it yet, but I was almost 4 months pregnant winning that overall title.. Sweet it was!
Never think you are too small or not good enough to go against the bigger competitors. Yes, taller and larger framed women have more of advantage to win overall, but it is also harder for larger women to fill out their entire frame. So train hard and focus on your own body, large or small and make it the best it can be. Just know, there are those sweet times that history repeats itself and little "David" conquers big "Goliath!

"Dead in my Tracks"

  How a tremendous tragedy and grief changed my life and stopped me "dead in my tracks"
My late husband Kenny was always such a huge part of my fitness life. He was the very reason I got a chance to be on the cover and in the pages of Muscle Magazine ~ My brother Dana was also there day in and day out training with me, giving me the drive to train hard, to never say "I can't" and to always believe in myself. My late husband was also there day in and day out. He gave me the love and support in every way to follow my fitness dreams. He believed in me even when I didn't always believe in myself. My husband would always be amazed and sometimes a little jealous how I always managed to fit my training in my day. No matter what came up during a specific day to make it tougher on me to fit my weight training in. I would always find a way. Even with two young children and two jobs and one job being our own business. Then taking care of my husband and our home never stopped me from doing my training. He once said to me... I don't think there is anything in this world that could or will stop you from training! I agreed with him. Training was very important to me and training once saved my life and I wasn't about to go back to that place. I continued to train and love every single day of it.

My husband will never know it or maybe he does now. There was something far greater than my will or my fight to keep training day in and day out. This  something was a great tragedy and it did stop me, it stopped me "dead in my tracks" It was the senseless murder of my beloved husband Kenny.

 A month prior to this tragedy we were in Las Vegas for my calender shoot with Bob Kennedy from Muscle Magazine. I brought our two children with us and we made it a family vacation. We had not had a family vacation ever because of our business. Being invited to do this calender shoot gave me the opportunity to bring my husband and our two children with me. Bob Kennedy was kind enough to put us up in a beautiful suite at the Bellagio Hotel. It was simply amazing to have my family with me to share this experience. Being a simple girl from the Hawaiian islands now in Las Vegas shooting a Muscle Magazine Calender with Bob Kennedy as the photographer. It was the time of my life and a time I will never forget.

Too soon my life was to drastically change and there was nothing I could do about it. About a month after returning from my Las Vegas calender shoot my sweet husband was shot six times in cold blood at our place of business. That day everything changed for me, for our two children and my whole family. It was a very sad, cold day in Hawaii. A day that still burns inside of me till today.

I tried very hard to still train and keep up with my fitness lifestyle. It was important to me and I had just done so many amazing things in that year for me to let it all go. It was hard going in the gym and facing people. No one knew what to say or they would say the wrong things. Then the pity and the sad looks people would give me. I could feel it and it just hurt me too much. One day I was training and I just couldn't continue working out. I dropped the weights down and grabbed my towel, my water bottle and walked out of the gym and to my car. I looked back at the place I loved to go to so much and knew I wasn't going to return..

Sadly I found out there was one thing that could stop me from my training and from my fitness life style. This was it and it was a strong pain inside of me and I didn't care in the least about walking away. Loss and grief stopped my training and stopped my life. I was alive but dead inside. For the following years after that day leaving the gym I had to gain the strength to fight back and it was harder than I thought it would be. Little did I know then that it would take me a few years and a lot of fighting back to feel good about my life again. To feel good in my own skin again. This wasn't like fighting my eating disorder, Anorexia. That too, I  fought hard when I first began weight lifting. There was no one that could help me with this fight. I needed to face and fight it alone. I wanted my life back and I wanted some peace inside of me.

Fighting sadness and the grief was a much harder feat than anything I have faced or may face in the future. It would take everything I had and then some to fight to get myself and my life back on track again. To find the peace I was looking for so desperately.

So fight back is what I did, and I am still fighting...