Mental Strength

If you want muscles, strength, and endurance you must workout. You must work the muscles frequently and for a set period of time if you want the body to take shape. You may not be able to see the muscle or fitness if it's overshadowed by too much fat, but the muscle will grow and will be seen once the fat is lost. Even if you cannot see your efforts, you can breath, climb, and move easier than when you don't workout at all. Depending on how hard you workout and how long you workout your body can achieve amazing results. Those results may be long lasting or short lived, and will be determined by your mental state of mind. 

Mental Strength is not developed in the same way as physical strength.

Running yourself ragged into the ground with a million errands, chores, and the endless shitload of responsibilities for family, friends, and colleagues makes the body fatigued. If the body is tired it will not have enough energy to endure consistency or focus. It will also be too exhausted to make good nutritional choices. 

At this pace, a person may last a short period of time being able to achieve all these tasks and still be able to eat well and workout regularly, but it will end in one way or another. 
Either the body will continue on this road and develop some obsessive compulsive traits, a short temper, or other mental deficiency, or the body will shut down and stop all this crazy making activity. You may end up feeling sabotaged by your efforts achieving only failure -perhaps once more. 

Many will think that the failure came from not knowing which exercises to do, how long to exercise, or what to eat or perhaps a complete loss on how to achieve any of this at all. Most will seek external confirmation by going to a weight loss clinic of some sort,  or seek advise from a friend who said the results came by way of what you already knew and did, but somehow everything got confused in your mind, and that confusion ended up in frustration or depression and failure. 

Realize that the body is not designed to take that much stress if you don't know how to manage it all. People who are able to take on a vast amount of work and be accomplished are not made overnight. They have been trained well over time from when they were a child or they eventually got the magic key later on in life of how to do it all, but have been well practiced, that it seemed to everybody else, that it came naturally. 

Mental strength is gathered from the calm, the quiet, and the peace purposely carved out of each day. If the day is full of running around and being bothered by one person or another, there has to be a purposeful attempt to shut it all down, so that you may gather the strength you need to endure the demands a sound nutrition and exercise program will require. 

...This topic is loaded with so much to say that I will continue on another day.


"When all else fails, do nothing"

RsmKettleGirl

Bikini Pictures

Posing Suits:
My timing is a little off! I know I was supposed to post pictures a long time ago, but did not. Sorry.
Anyway, here are the two posing suits that I was contemplating. I decided to return the green one. The green one didn't fit correctly. It felt too big. I know, it doesn't look it, but it didn't hold me as well as the purple one. I put them on first thing in the morning, so I am not wearing any make-up and my hair is not brushed, just quickly put into a ponytail.

I have yet to put on the make-up I intend to wear. Now that I have 6 weeks left until the competition, I will start practicing my posing. Remember, I am going into a bikini competition, so the muscle definition doesn't have to be as extreme as a figure competitor. Figure competitors show absolutely every stitch of muscle. It's a very different category. Bikini competitors have to look fit, but should be shapely. Too much definition could have one lose the competition. Since it will be my first competition and first time trying to get fit to this level, I thought I would start out with what I consider an easier level.

This next 6 weeks of nutrition and exercise is extremely important to maintain. Even though I go through my ups and downs emotionally, because of feeling hungry at times or tired, I think I've grown and learned so much along the way about being able to endure. Finding new ways to cope and calm my nerves and frustration has made me happier, not just because my body is fit, but because my mind feels stronger.
Taking myself through this process of learning and practicing to be consistent and persistent has made me see that I am capable of dealing with just about anything that comes my way.

"Dieting"  or getting "really fit" does not seem so much about losing weight as it is about gaining new freedoms. I think the freedoms I have gained are all mental. Mentally I'm tougher, but more relaxed. I am more at peace and my thoughts about what I can do are broadened by the strength I've gained from going the distance and not giving in at any point. I don't feel distracted or feel sucked in by my desires to have something I want just because I can (let's say if we are talking about a desert or good smelling popcorn at the theatre).

In addition, for the number of times I have just ran on the treadmill when I didn't want to or put my all into a kettlebell or weight training session when I wasn't feeling "it", I think that I have always felt better when I did what I was supposed to do in spite of my "feelings".

I had to stick the tag of the bathing suit inside the front..so it looks a little weird, huh?