Confidence and The Mental Edge

Last week, my head wasn't in the game. I was losing confidence and spiraling. Old words "You're not an athlete" spoken to me years ago kept repeating in my mind as I struggled through my posing practice. It was the middle of the night and I got into a hyper focus of practicing my routine over and over again. Videoing, then watching, then videoing, then watching. Such a short routine, but such a difficult thing for me to perfect.

Seven weeks out from my first competition and I was starting to doubt the legitimacies of my abilities. I felt old, wrinkled, and uncoordinated. I was fearful I was going to get on stage and make a fool out of myself. I was holding on to old beliefs that I was not an athlete, and therefore, did not belong in a competitive spotlight. The Rebecca that says "age is just a number" and "we can do hard things" and "it's never too late to try something new" had simply disappeared from view.

My posing coach Annie recognized right away that I was blindly walking towards a deep, dark, cavernous hole that contained no ladder nor other way out if fallen into. She kindly reached out to check in and help me nip my spiral in the bud before it was too late.

I was in a trance-like, automaton state not even realizing the emotions I was feeling from past traumas associated with my lack of athleticism as a youth and young adult. Growing up in inner city Chicago and then Manhattan, I didn't have the usual exposure to youth sports that are typical with suburban children. By the time we moved to Tucson and I started high school, my peers were way ahead of me in their athletic skill sets. I joined a volleyball team my freshman year of high school for a short time but it was clear early on that I had not been spending years volleying like my fellow teammates.

Aside from playing racquetball with my dad and his friends during high school, then in pick up games at my college recreation center, my participation in athletics was limited. It wasn't until after my children were born and in school that I decided to take on the challenge of running a half marathon, which kickstarted my adult athletic career.

With the start of some serious negative self-talk last week, I had forgotten that I have been in this space before wondering if I would be able to perform only to come out the other side having achieved the very goals that once seemed unsurmountable.

I'm still a newbie in the bodybuilding world. The first bodybuilding show I'll ever attend will be one in which I am competing. But I have been a newbie in sport before. And, if my life extends long enough, God willing, I'll be a newbie again.

This week I'm in a much better head space. I'm remembering the Rebecca who was not blessed with tremendous genetic ability yet fought her way to a Boston Marathon qualification and completion. I'm harnessing the energy of the Rebecca that learned how to ride horses in her 40s and went on to compete in 50 and 75 mile endurance horse races with top ten placings.

This week it dawned on me that I have a track record of ending decades of my life with huge athletic goals. My first marathon was in my transition from age 29 to 30. Horses were my goal for age 39 to 40. And now as I'm rounding out my 4th decade of life, I'll be competing on stage in an itsy bitty teeny weenie velvet red bejeweled bikini.

It's different. The sport of bodybuilding. It's not about who crosses a finish line first. It's not just about speed and grit. There is grit and dedication and focus and perseverance to get to competition day. But it's also about poise, presentation, finess, and confidence. It's about being meticulous in all aspects of living, not just in the gym. It's about the many hours of hard work being packaged up and put under a spotlight for individual and comparative analysis. It's about being willing on my own terms with the support and guidance of my coach to work towards meeting a specific set of physical criterion predetermined by others.

To do this requires intense, long term physical and nutritional training and execution. To do this well also requires long term mental training. Included in this are things like sleep, sunlight, and some form of mental training like meditation or visualization. If the mental and psychological side of this sport is not attended to, the physical and nutritional requirements are liable to be negatively impacted. Fatigue, illness, injury are just a few things that can stop progress in its tracks if one does not pay close attention to their body and their mind. Self-doubt and lack of confidence can play a massive role in recovery during training and prep and wreak havoc on posing practice and performance on stage. 

The majority of our work has been done to get my body to be ready for stage. My weight is holding steady and we are at the point of tweaking and fine tuning. But just like with posing, the mental side of this sport is often underestimated by new and maybe even seasoned competitors. I momentarily forgot this last week. With a reminder from Annie to jolt me out of my downward motion, I now remember this critical component. 

I have fallen into a routine with my plan. After working with Coach Chantel for almost a year, I have learned how to (mostly) execute on her plans for me. She feels I'm ready for this competition and I have placed my absolute trust into her. Because of her coaching and guidance, I have gotten so much better at setting my meals ahead of time and sticking really close to them to hit my macro targets. I'm so much better at water intake, which honestly, if you know me, has always been a huge struggle. My remaining six weeks will be focused on getting my head in the game and making this the best possible experience for me through mental training and visualization.

In the book, The Mental Edge - Maximize Your Sports Potential with the Mind-Body Connection, author Kenneth Baum states the following:

"Over the years, I've discovered that every change in your mental or emotional state is accompanied by a corresponding shift in your physical state. So a key part of the Mental Edge is learning to minimize your mind's distracting and counterproductive messages and signals to your body."

I've proven to MYSELF before that I am an athlete. And I will prove it to myself again. I've put in the work. I've done my weekly check ins every single week for almost a year. I belong on stage for me. Yes, I'll be competing against others, but this competition will also serve as a thank you to my body for bringing the best of myself that I can bring in this moment. And to honor THIS body for the tremendous amount of work it has been able to endure.

Competition day will be a day of celebration - no matter what the results! As long as I remember this, I'll be able to shut off the noise around me.

Here's to six more weeks before Comp Day!

To Dye or Not to Dye - Is Hair Really the Issue?

I dropped to a new low weight today since summer of 2022 of 113.2 lbs. It won’t be long before I’m at the lowest weight I have ever been since my food restriction phase in high school. Those were some of the darkest days of my life besides the first couple of years after my divorce…

The hardest part of having ADHD to me is this notion that I HAVE to set multiple massive goals for myself and constantly be running. The intense amount of pressure I place on myself to always be striving is as innate a part of me as cravings for food, sleep, sex, or connection.

Part of it stems from the sheer excitement I get at the thought of working towards a big goal. I get an idea (or several ideas) and they just HAVE to get done. They become an all encompassing target. If something stands in my way, it ends up like a house within a tornado being uprooted and thrown to the side. I become a tornado fixated on one goal.

I feel I HAVE to be like this. Because if I am not, the alternative is going back to that little girl who used to sit in front of computer games or on the couch in front of the TV for hours and hours and hours whilst being oblivious to all that was going on around me.

I need novel, competitive, challenging things in my life to engage my mind and keep me moving. If I cannot find novelty, competition or challenge in an activity, then I’m rendered back to the couch in a state of catatonia.

All my life I have struggled with moderation. I’m either on or I’m off. I’m in or I’m out. I'm drinking every night or I'm abstaining from alcohol altogether. I'm either tracking every single calorie I eat or I'm tracking nothing. I’m really happy and communicative and joyful or I’m a sobbing ball of dough in my bed.

An interesting thing I have learned about ADHD this past year is that those of us with it tend to do extremely well in life when we are juggling multiple balls at the same time. We thrive in the space of vibrancy and activity. So many times, others have told me to scale things back and make room for fewer passions. The problem is as soon as I create space for emptiness, it is immediately filled again. My brain does not know how to leave a space empty. Or if I do this, I become sad and downtrodden. I am at my best if I am working towards more that one goal at a time.

The problem is there is a limit to how many balls one can manage in the air at the same time. Energy levels are not infinite. How does one find the right balance when juggling so much at once? How many balls are just the right number before they all come crashing down?

Life is ever-changing. The pathway to our goals ebbs and flows as we work towards them. Just when we think we have the right balance, something may enter outside of our control to alter that balance.

This is the space in which I find myself now.

I have so many goals in front of me that I want to all be achieved (or at least working towards) at the same time. The following is an abbreviated, yes abbreviated, list of my current goals:

• Prepare for bikini bodybuilding competition in April 
• Train my primary horse to compete in 50 mile endurance rides 
• Train my other horses to go at least 25 mile distances or long trail rides 
• Learn Spanish with consistent Duolingo practice 
• Maintain a financial budget and work towards debt expulsion and larger savings 
• Find a home for everything within my home and discard remaining items 
• Read 24 books in 2024 (actually way more because I’m in 2 book clubs and currently have 7 items checked out of the library plus 4 more that I just bought on Amazon) 
• Get back to learning how to play the piano better. (Remember the keyboard I bought several months ago?)
• Organize my entire history of photos and create photo books of every year from the time my children were born til now. (I signed up and paid for a Photo Project course and Membership to teach me skills to do this.) 
• Somehow find a way to maintain relationships with my spouse, family and friends in the midst of all of this 
• Design, fund, and build our patio and porch 
• Fund and coordinate painting the outside of our home and property buildings 
• Design, fund, and landscape our property 
• Learn how to drive Trevor’s truck pulling my LQ without destroying anything or hurting anyone in the process 
• Write a book 
• Keep a blog 
• Start a podcast 
• Keep my job
• Figure out how to best celebrate my upcoming 50th birthday

This list is not complete.

A friend told me yesterday that I’m really hard on myself. Oh, is that ever an understatement. It is something I have worked on my whole entire life.

What people don’t see much of are my down times. The times when I’m irritable and don’t know how to get moving. The times when I want to quit and just say what the hell or WHO the hell am I doing this all for? The times when I want to burrow myself in a hole and hope the world forgets that I exist.

I’ve bounced back much quicker from these lows this past year. As I have learned about myself and the impact having ADHD has on my perception of things, I have been able to reframe many of my thoughts. I have learned that not everyone has these same thoughts or perspectives. (That was honestly a shocker.) That my thoughts are just thoughts and they do not reflect my worth or who I am as a person. I have learned that my thoughts or perspective are often very skewed.

Today, I’m really struggling. I have lost 11% of my body weight in less than 3 months. By the time I reach my goal for my bodybuilding competition, I’ll end losing about 15% of my body weight.

Honestly, the food restriction hasn’t been as hard as I thought. Don't get me wrong. It's not easy by any means. It's just not the hardest part of all of this. It is, however, harder on Trevor than I imagined it would be. Sometimes he likes to show his love by preparing food for me. Not being able to do so, since I need to weigh out every morsel that goes into my mouth, seems to be harder on him than it has been on me.

Though I am starting to have more cravings for certain foods I enjoy, I had those cravings before starting my bulk followed by prep processes. The hardest part of prep is that while I have more time now due to less time spent preparing and eating food, I have considerably less energy. My sleep is always a challenge working night shift, but it’s even more disrupted now.

There are minimal criteria things I need to get done in a day including working, lifting, cardio, eating, and sleeping. And when there is no energy or motivation to get even those things done or if I don’t get proper sleep and rest, all my other things become much harder to do.

I have learned that my mood is greatly impacted both by less sleep and less time spent in the sunshine. The combination of my energy being lower along with the colder weather this week has kept me from riding my horses the way I had planned to on my off days. It’s seriously amazing how time spent outdoors with my horses lifts my mood.

I also have felt significantly colder since losing body fat. I often find myself chilled to the bone despite having multiple layers of clothing on. I didn’t anticipate this. I should have. But I didn’t.

I knew I would have challenges entering the sport of bikini bodybuilding. I knew it would be very expensive. I knew the sport encouraged women to conform to a certain look when competing. I knew that not doing so would likely hinder their placing. I knew that this included things that have nothing to do with the performance level of building muscle and dieting down to reveal and showcase that muscle. I knew that many (if not most) women competing in NPC bodybuilding take steroids.

I have chosen to fit the mold with my plans to wear the heels, the jewelry, the makeup, the hair extensions, the blinged out suit on competition day. I have chosen to spend the money to do all these things and travel to another state and pay for the airfare, the host hotel, the expensive entry fees and show date tickets for my sister and husband to attend. I’ve succumbed to the fact that this is a misogynistic sport that rewards the top male bodybuilders with significant amounts more money than their top female counterparts. I am aware that I will never recoup the money that I spend on this goal and that I need to be ok with just doing it for myself.

I internally debated all of these things before making the leap to commit to this goal and decided to push forward with it anyway. My sister asked me early on why I wouldn’t want to save all my money and just train and diet down on my own and then have a photoshoot and go on a vacation once I reached my goal look.

The problem is I’m not a person that can do that. Definitely not right now and maybe not ever. I need to have a big goal with lots of accountability along the way to reach it. It needs to be novel, competitive, and challenging in order to capture my attention enough to do it. I talked to her about my struggles yesterday and rhetorically asked her why am I like this? Why can’t I just do like she suggested and spend my time and money going on fun weekend trips with her or with Trevor?

She said that I like to do hard things. She’s not wrong except for we should probably change the words from “I like to” to “I feel compelled to”. Compelled is much more accurate of a phrase.

The place where I find myself now though is one in which I have come to a crossroads. It’s funny that when the discussion came up with friends and family about steroids, I was able to draw a line in the sands and say no to that piece. I’m committed to seeing what I can do with my body naturally.

But when discussion came up this week about ignoring the fact that I am aging by hiding my gray hair - either by dyeing it or by wearing a wig to cover it up, my heels found themselves digging into the proverbial sand. Several years ago, I bleached my hair blonde because my hair constantly looked like a skunk with my gray roots growing faster than I could keep up with the cost and time of salon appointments. I thought if I bleached my hair, it would blend better with the grays.

Well bleaching dark brown hair to blonde and not keeping up with maintenance still looks like crap. The cool silver of my grays still looked terrible against the yellow of my blonde. But now I also had to contend with the dryness, brittleness, and breakage associated with having bleach blonde hair.

In 2020, with covid shutting down many salons, I finally made the decision to let my hair go gray. I worked with my hairdresser after the salons reopened to make the transition to gray. I’m here to tell you that there are several ways to make this transition, but none of them are easy or quick decisions to make. One could just shave their head and let the grays grow in which is super quick and physically easy. But that was too hard of an emotional decision to make for me and was off the table.

So instead, my hairdresser spent months highlighting parts then low lighting parts and toning my hair each time to blend the grays on top with the natural browns of the bottom of my hair. As a result, each time I get my hair freshly toned, I surprisingly received many compliments from people on it. And now with it being messed with less often, it has grown to lengths I have never seen it grow to before! My hair was always so destroyed from perms (I grew up in the 80s after all) and from color that the question was always how much of it to chop off to not look like crap. Now the goal is how long can I get it while still not being annoyed by long hair.

I guess the idea of not embracing the concept of an aging woman still performing at a high enough level to get on stage to showcase her work is the limit for me. My biggest personal goals since my diagnosis of ADHD in February 2023 are ones involving self-discovery and self-acceptance. And what I want to share with others both in person, on social media, and in my blogs are my challenges and how I personally am working to overcome them. I love hearing about the challenges people, particularly women, have and how they work to overcome them. It's what I want to base my someday, maybe podcast on. I want to live in this social connection space of shared inspiration and growth.

I wonder what message it sends to cover up my gray hair, which will make me look like someone else. Someone who is not Rebecca. Rebecca can lift weights and still look like herself. Rebecca can bulk up and diet down and still look like herself. Rebecca can put on makeup and still look (mostly) like herself. (I suppose this one is debatable but with the stage lighting I don’t think I would look like myself without makeup either.)

What is it about my hair that throws things out of balance for me and makes me question all that I am doing? Why is THIS of all the lines to cross the one that has stopped me in my tracks? Is it timing? Is it because the discussion came up during a time when I made a big drop in food and weight and also had less sleep? Is my perception and perspective skewed as a result? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Am I just being dramatic over nothing? Why dig my heels in so deep?

But also I think, what happened to my rebel self that has the chutzpah to say I don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks or whether or not I win. I’m paying the money regardless and no one really truly cares in the end, right?

Why do I suddenly care that this decision will likely impact the judges’ perception and ranking of me? Why is hair so important? Or is hair just a focal point metaphor for something much larger?

Am I really more worried about how this is all will impact my relationship with food? My relationships with loved ones? My relationship with myself? Am I going to lose the essence of ME that I've worked so hard to find? Or is it something else entirely?

I don't know the answer. All I know is that I finally got 12 hours of sleep last night to slightly make up for a massive sleep deficit. And I need to go about my day while I sit on all of this for a bit.

Try Something Every Day That Scares You

Anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC) is the area in red

Caption from published image:
Brain structures implicated in ADHD. Interacting neural regions have been implicated ADHD. In particular, the dorsal anterior midcingulate cortex (daMCC(, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), parietal cortex, striatum, and cerebellum - all key elements of cognitive/attention networks - have also been found to display functional abnormalities in multiple studies of ADHD. (1)

Rebecca climbing rocks next to Beaver Falls in Havasupai

Terri in our cold plunge

My friend Terri says, “You should try something every day that scares you.”

I hosted ladies’ night in my home last night. Rock climbing has been one of my "things that scares me" this year, but hosting was the thing that scared me yesterday.

Until I met this friend group, I have never hosted people in my home so much in my life! My ex-husband was not super social so most of our mutual activities were centered around family. This meant limiting hosting to special occasions such as birthdays and holidays. My current husband Trevor doesn’t enjoy going out to events often, but seems to really thrive on hosting. Thing is, he is away on a hunting trip so I didn’t have him by my side to help me or to keep me focused and on task.

One of the biggest compliments my mom has given me repeatedly throughout my life is that she is so impressed by my ability to strike up a conversation with virtually anyone, anywhere, at anytime. Ever since I was in grade school, I have always been able to find some commonality with anyone I meet regardless of their age, gender, social status, occupation, disability, ethnicity, or belief system. I attribute this a lot to the manner in which I grew up having been born in Singapore and lived my early life in Indonesia. But that’s a story for another time…

Whenever my mom gives me this compliment, she follows it with an example of a time I have done this such as when I found a way to communicate with a group of deaf teenagers at a local bicycling event when I was in college. I have never thought of this as a special skill though. And I’m only reminded that not everyone is able to do this when my mom reminds me.

This friend group of mine is a fairly new one. One I'd venture to say I crashed into. Michele was my next door neighbor when I first moved to the west side of Phoenix metropolitan area in 2018. She and I are the same age and I'm so glad to have built a friendship with her before moving several miles away to live on our little mini farm.

Michele had an existing long-standing friend group from the time she lived in Portland. One by one, her friends moved to Arizona. October marks the one year anniversary of my meeting Terri, a most interesting and amazing human being. Debbie, the third of their trio, moved here this summer and we met when we all went to see the movie Barbie. I'm so fortunate that they seem to be just as good at sparking conversation with me as I am with them. We are blessed to have Michele as our anchor so I now get to be a member of our newly formed quad squad.

(As an aside, Trevor is invited to all ladies' nights and participated up until the start of the Golden Bachelor season. It's not really his thing and that's ok. But our 4 gals and a guy group always have tons of laughs. Now back to my blog...)

An area that has always been hard for me, however, is organizing my stuff and general time management. This includes decluttering and finding a home for all of my belongings. It has been a lifelong goal that still has not been achieved. Meanwhile, the 3 friends I was hosting are extraordinarily organized women. They have everything in their homes put away when not in use and are always ready early for the holidays, exemplified by the fact that their Halloween and Fall decorations have been up since September. Meanwhile, I have a single orange candle that has been on display since last October when I bought it.

So you can imagine how hosting friends, especially these friends, in my home can be challenging. I needed to:

• Clean my home
• Or at least the common areas like the guest bathroom, kitchen, and living room
• Plan dinner and get the essential groceries
• Keeping in mind that one friend is a vegetarian, one friend has food allergies, one friend can eat anything, and I’m on a protein focused lean bulking eating plan
• Be ready by 5 pm when they arrive
• This included trying on the 7 Halloween costumes Michele loaned me a month ago so I could select one for this year and return the rest.

At 4:30 pm, I was FaceTiming my beloved sister and frantically trying on 7 different Halloween costumes to see which one she and I liked the best. I was invited to a Halloween party and Michele loaned me 7 of her many costumes to try a month ago. I intended on trying them on that first week and returning the ones I wasn't planning on wearing but procrastination is a bitch so here we were. Thank you to my sister Ruth for being on call in that moment and helping me! You are a gem!

By 4:40 pm, I texted our friend group chat a picture of myself wearing the one I selected.

By 5 pm, I was dressed in part of the Halloween costume I chose (the part that was my own clothing), halfway through cooking black bean and sweet potato chili, and I had only the tomatoes for the tomato salad chopped. (Yes, there were more ingredients yet to add.)

The rest of the Halloween costumes I had tried on were strewn all over my bed and the remaining clutter from around my home was tucked into piles on the flat surface in my bedroom.

But the bathroom was clean, the common areas were mostly tidied, and the Halloween costumes were sorted with their respective bags. Music was playing on our google home system, and best of all, delicious aromas from my chili were already wafting into the air.

My friends arrived just before 5:30 pm. I was grateful for the extra time and thought they might have done that on purpose for me knowing I am always running just a few minutes behind schedule. But alas, it was friend number 3 that had a last minute forgotten errand to run that delayed them. Phew! I’m not the only one!! (BTWs, I'm not always late, but neither am I always on time.)

Earlier in the day I asked my friends if they wanted to get right to eating dinner or if they wanted to try our cold plunge first. Trevor and I have been on a quest in the last couple of years to improve our physical and mental health. We want to feel good and be happy so we strive to find all the ways that can help us do just that. One area that has gained popularity particularly with recently backed scientific research showing its physical and mental health benefits is engaging in the activity of cold plunging. My bodybuilding coach added this early on as one of the activities I should do. So my ever talented husband built one for us!

My friends think the world of Trevor and his talents, but cold plunging is not for everyone so I wasn’t sure what they would say. Terri had never tried it but is down for trying almost anything. Michele had tried one at the gym that I assured her was way colder than we had ours set for, so she was in. Debbie knew all the benefits but had zero interest in jumping in a cold plunge. Rather, she kindly offered to hand us our towels after. Thanks Debbie!

In deciding whether or not to take a pre-dinner cold plunge, Terri reminded all of us that we should try something every day that scares us. It is this act of challenging us that makes us more resilient. Also, in a recent Huberman Lab podcast titled “How to Increase Your Tenacity and Willpower”, Dr. Andrew Huberman discusses how there is one single area of the brain that seems to be the primary if not sole area responsible for tenacity and willpower. This is the anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC).

In the behavior change realm, there is much discussion about how willpower is a limited resource. Because of this, one should not rely solely on willpower and motivation to get things done. Rather, the better route to take is to go for consistency and frequent action and increasing habit formation. Things that you just DO whether you are motivated to do them or not. I have read about several psychological scientific experiments and theories that focus on behaviors around motivation and having a growth mindset beginning with a book called The Growth Mindset written by Carol Dweck in 2007. Now with this podcast episode, I’m learning more of the neuroscience behind motivation or, more specifically, tenacity and willpower.

In recent years, I have also read quite a bit about the dopaminergic pathway. This is the pathway in the brain responsible for movement, executive functions, and anticipation of reward. It requires the neurotransmitter dopamine (the one that is reduced in individuals with ADHD) and involves several different areas of the brain. But I have never read about the role the anterior mid-cingulate cortex plays in tenacity and willpower.

Dr. Huberman's podcast episode goes into a lot of neuroscience background to describe this part of the brain before getting into the meat of what everyone wants to know.

The bottom line is that indeed it seems to be possible to increase your tenacity and willpower. This is extremely exciting to me. The way to do this is by doing the thing you don't want to do or by resisting the thing you do want to do. This seems to be analogous to the way one exercises a muscle by stressing it out in order to allow it to grow.

How exciting it is that merely by doing something that scares or challenges you, you are able to increase the ability to do more of the things that scare you?! Or by resisting the things you want to do, you will thereby be able to increase the ability to resist those things in the future.

I have known this to be true, but understanding that there is science behind this seems to provide an increased sense of agency and control over our own lives. This is exactly the aim of the Huberman Lab podcast and I'm grateful for the knowledge he provides through his free sharing of information. 

My friend Terri is indeed a wise woman with her comment that one should do something every day that scares them. And also it doesn’t just have to be something scary. Dr. Huberman recommends “forcing yourself to do some micro-sucks”. These are little things that you don’t want to do. Exercising the aMCC in that way can increase your tenacity and willpower bit by bit. Another way to do this is to “participate in endeavors with no endpoint" by placing yourself into "novel environments where you are just curious and learning”.

It was definitely a micro-suck for me to plan out a dinner and prepare for ladies’ night in my home. I'd venture to say a macro-suck given how much I don't like cleaning toilets.

But it was a most amazing night with 3 wonderfully entertaining women!! Three of us did a cold-plunge then followed it up with a delicious chili dinner, fresh cherry tomato salad and warm French bread. We watched the next episode of The Golden Bachelor with mature women respectfully (mostly) competing for the attention and love of one widowed senior bachelor followed by the less mature but fun to watch behavior of the young men and women on Bachelor in Paradise.

The best part of all is my friends loved the chili and we all had second servings. In fact, Terri said it was the best chili she has ever had. I’m already ready to challenge my aMCC again by having them over for another ladies’ night of fun and laughter!

In the meantime...tonight the thing I'm going to do that scares me is go to a Halloween party dressed up in a costume where the only person I know for sure will be there is the host of the party who will be very busy with...well...hosting. And from his description of the amount of food and decorations they will have, I'm quite certain it's going to be a big party. 

If you would like to read the highlights of the Huberman Lab podcast episode discussed above, you can find it at Podcast Notes.

Or access the direct episode page at How to Increase Your Willpower & Tenacity.

Reference for brain image photo:

1. Bush, G. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Attention Networks. Neuropsychopharmacol35, 278–300 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2009.120

Masking Fear and Overwhelm - A Metaphor

Some days, the feelings of complete inadequacy combined with exhaustion from masking roll in like waves that are just a bit too tall for me to jump over...

It’s as if I were facing the shore posing for a photo when suddenly I’m pummeled out of nowhere from behind and slammed to the ground. My body slides along the ocean floor with rocks and sand scraping my legs as my feet scramble to gain footing whilst the remnants of the wave take their hold and pull me into deeper waters. I never see it coming...

Sure I’m taking a risk, but I love the challenge, don’t I? I have everything under control, right? I’m not that far away from shore, am I??

Of course I think this. Why else would I be standing there thigh deep in the water smiling at a camera with my sun-kissed cheeks and my dry, wavy hair blowing behind me in the wind?

Thing is, like life, the wave does not consult me before doing what waves do. Waves ebb and flow. Life ebbs and flows. Emotions ebb and flow. 

I’m not ready for that wave. I don't have to be. I've been down this road before. I'm prepared this time. But the wave has other plans, yet somehow I'm surprised. And boy, do I ever struggle. Because once one wave comes, what do you think happens next? As I try desperately to get my footing back on the ground beneath me, the next wave comes and knocks me right back down. And the next wave and the next. They come so fast I barely have time to reach the surface to inhale before the next one hits.

I was only thigh deep!! How on earth did this happen? Again? I swore it would be different this time. I KNOW there will be waves. I’m in the damn ocean. Of course there are waves! I CHOSE to go to the beach. I CHOSE to get in the water.

Last time I got in deeper…to my chest…and ya, this happened, sure. But this time, I was prepared for it. I only went in thigh deep. How did I get here? How am I feeling the massive poundage of water above me churning me head over heels over head like a washing machine until I no longer know which way is up??

I wasn’t trying to tempt fate. I was at the water’s edge for God sakes. How did this happen? How do I climb out? How do I push myself up for a breath as I scramble and claw my way along the ocean floor back to the safety of shore?

But…

Somehow I do. Somehow I end up chest down on the shoreline with tangled hair, sand in my eyes, saltwater in my throat, bathing suit disheveled, gasping for air, pretending that what happened was just a little kerfuffle and not, in fact, a near drowning, grateful for escaping the depths of the ocean, and once again swearing I will never go back in the water.

And then I do. Go in the water. It calls to me with its beauty. Its mystery. Its promise of fun and renewal and adventure. And I swear THIS time it will be different. I will carry an even bigger smile on my face.

This time, I won’t have to pretend I know what I’m doing.

This time, I will know how far to go in to stay safe and protected.

This time, I will be able to stay in control…

(Waves rumbling………)

Embrace the Suck

And so it begins…

It is my first day off after my first full week of overnight shifts. I have a tingle in my throat, it feels full, my head feels heavy, my ears have a slight ringing in them, and I’m acutely more sensitive to strong smells that threaten to bring on the headache that is knocking at the door of my frontal lobe.

Years of training for marathons and ultramarathons have taught me the importance of our immune system and the many things that can impact our ability to stay healthy. More specifically, I’m referring to my ability to recognize when I am opening myself up to succumbing to an acute viral illness.

It took me 10 tries of running marathons to finally achieve a Boston qualifying time. I remember one of those tries was in the Fall of 2007. I was commuting daily from the Phoenix area to Tucson for pharmacy school and had two school aged children at home. I had been training so hard all Fall to run the Tucson Marathon. It was Wednesday, 4 days before the race, and Peyton threw up in her bed in the night. She was 7 years old and I found her sitting up and crying in her bed with vomitus all over her Disney princess nightgown. It was everywhere. In her bedding and mixed all in her hair. I carried her to the bathtub. Being that she was 7 and heavier than toddler weight, I could not keep her at an arms length distance. I washed her body and pulled chunks of food from dinner out of her shoulder length locks, threw her bedding in the washer and tucked her back into bed.

I’m guessing you can figure out what came next…

By Friday night, I was the sickest I had ever been in my entire life. My bathroom became my bedroom for the night as I alternated between the choice of sitting on the toilet or on the floor in front of it. When my stomach wasn’t retching and my guts weren’t squeezing the ever living daylight out of my insides, I was vacillating between feeling like my bones were literally made of ice or sweating so profusely that I wondered how it could possibly ever be winter anywhere. I have never in my life felt that death would be a relief from suffering until that night. And I thought it many times over until the morning sunlight arrived and I finally defervesced.

If you have ever had an acute gastrointestinal illness (aka: stomach bug), you will understand exactly the feeling of sheer exhaustion that ensued. It was now Saturday morning, and I was supposed to be preparing to drive down to Tucson for the race. You can imagine my disappointment when I realized that even leaving my home without actively working on rehydrating myself was an asinine thought to entertain.

I have had a number of times in my life where I was actively preparing for months on end for an athletic competition. And each time I got sick during the preparation months, I learned more about my body. While it was for sure near impossible to have prevented getting that GI bug from my daughter short of decontaminating her while wearing a hazmat suit, there are definitely signs in my body I have learned to recognize to alert me to the fact that my immune system is becoming fragile. Any time it is fragile, I open myself up to allowing a viral illness to takes it’s hold on me.

Those who know me know that I don’t take athletic training lightly. I struggle with rest. I struggle with slowing down my mind and taking time to do things like sit and read a book or work on my photo project. (My photo project which has barely even been started. Super need a dedicated body double for that one to get kicked off the ground! But that’s a topic for another day.)

But when I start to feel a certain constellation of symptoms, I pay attention. I pay attention because if I don’t immediately make changes, I WILL get sick. But if I intervene right away, I have a narrow chance of being able to turn things around and minimize my downtime. I want to get back to training hard as fast as I possibly can. But life doesn’t always give us what we want. Sometimes our bodies send us messages that if we don’t do something different on our own, we will be dragged kicking and screaming to do something different by way of sidelining us to the couch unable to even get up for a snack.

I, personally, like to live my life by choice. I don’t want to be dragged kicking and screaming into an illness against my will. Yes, it is absolutely unavoidable at times. Yes, even if we do everything right. But in the instances where I can influence my body’s ability to rebound before that point, I will accept the opportunity to do so.

I think sometimes people misinterpret the common saying “no pain, no gain” to mean they should continue to train into and during injury or into and during illness. Unless you are actively IN a competition and this is the only way to win, this not the best strategy if you want to improve. I’d also argue that if you intend on continuing after a competition, it still is not the best strategy.

This saying is obviously more appropriately referring to the acceptable and anticipated pain of pushing your body to improve. Pushing your muscles to failure or near failure to break them down in order to rebuild. But maybe for those of us who enjoy training so much, “pain” represents the mental pain associated with taking a step back when needed. Taking that rest day. Skipping the gym when you feel on the brink of getting sick. Drinking more water. Taking extra vitamin C and zinc. Fueling your body with high quality foods and less sugar. Skipping the caffeine or drinking it early in the day to ensure sleep is not affected. Avoiding that alcoholic beverage that will only serve to create even more cracks in your body’s immunity.

So back to today. I only had two nights in the last week of work where I slept more than 7 hours and four nights with less than 6 hours of sleep. I continued to train. Now my body is sending me those signals that I need to proceed with caution. And so today I am listening.

Less dramatically and more specifically speaking, I still shortened my sleep and woke up at 2 pm so as to attempt to flip my schedule back to daytime, skipped caffeine, took a 6 minute “cold” plunge (71 degrees), spent 40 minutes outside laying out in the sun reading and spending quiet time with my sweet horses who missed me, took the day off from the gym, I’m hydrating, increasing vitamins, fueling my body with good food (dang, I wanted pizza today to celebrate my first week, but decided that was a bad idea), and I’m writing this blog post. I’m doing very light chores like dishes and have no other expectations of myself except for getting into bed by 7:30 pm, reading the Throne of Glass using my 90% blue light blocking glasses, and getting some freaking sleep.

Here’s hoping I successfully flip my schedule back to traditional daytime living!  

Accepting Compliments is Hard

Yesterday I was working out using the cable machine at the gym. So that I did not have to adjust the cable bar between the top and the bottom settings on one side of the machine for my alternating exercises, I was using both sides of the machine. As I was finishing up one of my exercises, I noticed a man had come over to the area but had turned around to walk away looking a wee bit forlorn. Based on his body language, it was clear that he had wanted to use one of the sides of the machine. I caught his attention, and offered up one of the cables to him, saying that I didn’t need both. When he asked if I was sure I said, “Yeah, I was just being lazy. I didn’t want to have to move the cable bar up and down”. He thanked me and proceeded to perform his exercises.

After I had gotten through another set, he said, “It’s funny what you consider lazy” referring to my comment about using two sides of the cable machine so I did not have to adjust the cable bar up and down. He said, “You’re the hardest working person in here! It’s really inspiring”. I smiled meekly and said “I have big goals”. (Picture Garth’s smile from Wayne’s World after his crazy good drum solo when he says “I like to play”.)

You see, when I go into the gym, I put my music on and get into the zone. I forget that other people can and do see me. Or if I remember, I pretend they can’t like a toddler that covers their eyes and thinks it makes them disappear. (Thank you AirPods and loud music for helping to serve this purpose for me!)

His comment brought me back into reality. And then I remembered conversations I’ve had with my son where he said sometimes it’s hard for him (and lots of humans, frankly) to simply accept a compliment without excusing it away or minimizing it somehow. It’s so hard to just say, “Thank you. That’s very kind of you to say!”

It’s much easier to give compliments than to receive them for both my son, and for me. That memory fortunately popped into my brain in time and I had the opportunity to add on a quick “Thank you. I appreciate that”.

I recently shared a post from another Instagram page talking about how the words we use are important, particularly the words we use about ourselves. And yet here I was referring to myself as lazy when I was 50 minutes into a solid and hard strength training session. I think I do this because I don’t want to come off as conceited or as a person that’s taking up too much space in this world. But while it’s absolutely important to share, and we don’t need to use two machines at once when the gym is busy, we also don’t need to excuse ourselves for taking up space in a world that we all live in together. It was a good reminder to practice accepting compliments gracefully rather than feeling as though they are somehow undeserved. I DO work hard. I DO put forth effort. And I’m NOT LAZY despite the fact that  I have used that word to describe myself so many times in my past. 

So today I say THANK YOU to the kind stranger at the gym who complimented me on my effort. It made me work that much harder on the last two sets of my workout and I left the gym with a smile on my face.

May this also be a reminder to my friends today that it’s OK to say thanks when someone compliments you and to not feel as though you should dismiss it. And a special thank you to my son for the many conversations we have had around this topic as he himself has learned how to graciously accept compliments in his own life.

Much love, friends!

Today is Day One...Again. And that's a-ok.

TODAY IS DAY ONE!! Again. And it won't be my last day one.

"I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -- Thomas Edison

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts." -- Winston Churchill

These two quotes embody the idea of having a growth mindset.

I don't know about you, but when I fail at something, I can easily get hung up on negative self-talk that sounds like:

"I don't know why you thought that you could do this."

or

"This is really hard, Rebecca. Maybe it isn't for you. Maybe you don't want it bad enough."

It's hard when we don't follow habits and targets that we set for ourselves. It's easy to just quit when things get challenging or when we mess up. What's harder is starting over. Especially when we have to start over again and again and again.

There are lots of ways to work towards establishing a new habit. And many folks tout the benefits of a "don't break the chain" kind of mindset implying that if you mess up even one day then you have somehow failed at your goals and, even worse, some imply that you have failed as a human being.

But I'm here to tell you that I mess up. All. The. Freaking. Time. I could take the approach that I suck at doing the things that I need to do to reach my goal like meet my protein, lifting, cardio, sleep, or water goals when I miss one or more of them.

Orrrrr. I can remind myself that I'm early in this game in the grand scheme of things having only started seriously lifting less than 2 years ago. I can remind myself that the amount of executive function tasks and time commitment that it takes to meet ALL of these habit goals every single day while still attending to everything and everyone else in my life are MASSIVE. I can remind myself that little changes every day add up over the long haul. 

Today is day one again because I overate on calories and drank alcohol yesterday, I didn't move my body, I hardly had any water, and I didn't get enough sleep. Today is also day one because it is the day I decided to go all in on this goal and hire a competitive bikini bodybuilding coach.

I've resisted doing this for long time now and was beating myself up quite a bit for being so resistant but also for feeling inadequate about finding it challenging to do all of this on my own. 

On the coaching application, I was asked quite a few questions that made me take pause and realize a number of things including my biggest limiting factors.

Some of these limiting factors include:

1. Faith in my abilities to accomplish this goal. This goal takes tons of mental work and executive functioning tasks! 

Solution - I never thought I'd be able to run a marathon, let alone qualify for the Boston Marathon or run Rim to Rim to Rim. I reminded myself that I did these things though by running little by little and building knowledge, skills and confidence. Learning a new sport or skill takes a lot of time. This is normal. Set backs are going to happen. Resilience and persistence are what will get me to my goal.

2. Committing 100% to this goal and putting an actual date on the calendar.

Solution - There is a local show on October 7th and I'm available that day. I'm committing today to give this goal an actual shot.

3. Perceived lack of outside support and accountability. With running, I had an amazing friend group where I used to live. These friends held me accountable for showing up to training runs and encouraged me to sign up for races. They were always there for me when I had questions and helped with writing training programs, nutrition, race day details and so much more. I don't have any close friends where I live that compete in bikini bodybuilding and that's hard.

Solution - I have a great friend who lives in Tucson who competes and she communicates with me all the time through Marco Polo and text. She shares her knowledge with me. She shares her life stuff with me. And she checks in with me regularly to help me with accountability.

I'm hiring a coach who's job is literally to hold me accountable for all the many little habits involved.

I have a few gym friends, including my former personal trainer, who help me with accountability by just being there, shooting the shit with me, and looking for me to show up regularly.

I have an incredible husband who supports me in anything I do as long as I still make time for us. He promised to keep helping me with meal prep and reminding me of my habits when I get sidetracked (which happens often).

And, finally, my sister already marked her calendar with my show date so she can cheer me on from the audience!

4. Money.

Solution - This isn't a cheap sport. Period. But if I want it bad enough, I'll work overtime to cover the costs or spend less money on damn planners! (God, I love a beautiful planner. They are so full of hope and opportunity!)

I've spent some time in the last several months also feeling "less than" because I haven't jumped into a competition sooner. I feel like I've been a lot of talk and not a lot of action. But while filling out that application I realized a few more things and then gave myself some grace...

First and foremost, I may be old enough for reading glasses for my presbyopia, but I'm still damn young in this sport in terms of years of training.

My First Year of Strength Training (Starting June 2021):

I signed up with Lifetime Fitness for my 47th birthday and literally started with a single 30 minute personal training session once a week in June 2021. And if you ask my trainer Werner, he will confirm that this is indeed all the time I spent in the gym early on. I was still running occasionally and my goals were two-fold: be able to do a body weight pull-up and establish a routine of lifting regularly. By October or November, I was lifting 3 days a week with him and 1-2 on my own. And I hit that pull-up goal by then too!

Early in this first year, my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer. This was incredibly hard for me emotionally. I was terrified for her and for her teenage boys. She is my one and old sibling. She is my biggest supporter and my best friend in the whole world. She is my baby sister.

I always knew she had incredible physical endurance and strength and is hella strong mentally. She freaking qualified for the Boston Marathon the December after giving birth to twins via c-section in May earlier that same year. All because I told her she simply HAD to qualify then so that she and I could run Boston together because I didn't know if I had it in me to ever qualify again. (Some sister I am! Haha.)

She handled her diagnosis and everything that went with it with the most incredible mindset of anyone I know. She is my hero and I'm so glad that she is on the other side now of that rough journey. (Knock on a shit ton of wood that it stays this way!!)

In this same time frame, I sold my home and Trevor and I lived in his toy hauler for a month or so with a dog, bunny, and cat while we finished making the house on his property livable. This, in the middle of the Arizona summer. Meanwhile, I was also studying for the Pediatric Pharmacotherapy Board Certification exam, which I passed in October 2021. Trevor transitioned out of his full time job to go out on his own in November. We got covid in January. And I did several endurance horse races this year as well.

My Second Year of Strength Training (Starting June 2022):

I had a year of personal training under my belt and a pretty solid lifting routine so I transitioned out of personal training to an online lifestyle coach. I did my first real mini cut before going to Europe with Trevor for a couple of weeks, which threw things off. I didn't get back into a good nutrition routine before traveling to Tucson in September to help my dad after his knee surgery. I was getting used to eating fewer calories with a weekly "cheat meal". And in this process, I learned that language and changing my routines matter a ton for my mindset.

Not tracking and calling meals cheat meals led me to developing a scarcity mindset around those meals. I felt like I had better eat anything and everything even if I was full or it wasn't my favorite food because I wasn't going to get another cheat meal until the following week. I learned that for me personally, I'm better off acknowledging (and continuing to track) everything that I'm eating than to pretend that it didn't happen.

A large part of my "why" of doing this to begin with is to develop/maintain a healthy relationship with food, to appreciate what my body is able to do for me, and to make alcohol small or non-existent in my life again. (I went years without drinking when I was training for road races.) Appreciating that I can ease up on my rigidity while acknowledging that it is happening by tracking and being mindful of my variance in plan helps keep my mental fortitude in check. I refuse to lose myself in this process and I took a step back on the nutrition side of things at that time to examine what was actually happening versus what I wanted to happen.

During this entire time, I was also writing a continuing education chapter for an Emergency Medicine focused book for board certified pharmacists. This extracurricular activity on top of no PTO from work for 6 months due to being so short-staffed, working Thanksgiving and Christmas, and picking up extra shifts at work about did me in.

All of these goings on (and the knowledge that ADHD has a genetic component) is what led me to a psychiatric evaluation and ultimately a diagnosis of ADHD. That discovery and then my quest to learn everything about ADHD and how to restructure, review and reframe my entire life put a concentrated effort on nutrition on hold for a bit. Though I never fully stopped trying to reach my targets...

All this to say again that I'm relatively new to bodybuilding even if I'm not knew to athletic endeavors so it's going to take me time and some failures along the path to my goal. I had unexpected stressors that popped in my life, as we all inevitably, do and resilience is what matters more than being 100% perfect.

The process of stepping back and getting curious enough to examine all the factors that are in play help provide a framework to determine what works and what doesn't for us as individuals. Thinking that we can follow someone else's plan or a cookie cutter plan will likely not work. We are all different in what works for us and fuels us. Reflecting and evaluating can then lead us to make revisions that can help us get to where we want to go. Looking back takes time and I don't do it often enough. But every time I do, I learn something new that I can then apply moving forward.

Throughout my whole life, I have bounced from passion to passion, hobby to hobby often not fully embracing one before jumping to another. I was...check that...I am...honestly, a bit scared that I'll lose the fire I have around lifting before I reach this goal of fully going through the process and getting on the stage. I love and appreciate my body in a way that I never have before and I don't want to lose this. I don't want to quit and move on. And in order to keep this fire burning, I need a goal. I need a competition. I need a date on the calendar to target. I need a countdown. I need a purpose. I need it to stay interesting.

I'm done with my chapter and the one horse race that matched up with my work schedule this year got moved to a weekend I work. This will hopefully allow me to focus on this goal for the next 24 weeks. 24 short and important weeks.

And so here we are! Day One everyone! The day that I am embracing actually setting a target date and hiring someone to help me with all of it so that I can take a lot of the executive functioning tasks off my plate.

I can simply execute and then have the rest of the time I would otherwise spend hemming and hawing about how to do this or that and put it towards my many other goals and passions! Organizing my entire house and horse stuff. Organizing my photos. Spending time with the hubs and my loved ones. Riding my horses (within the confines of my training plan through August). Climbing for bravery sake. And reading.

My consult with my potential coach is on Thursday. Wish me luck and I'll keep you all posted! If I feel she's a match, then my good friend and I will be on the same team with the same coach, which will make this adventure all the sweeter.