It's So Simple

I can't make any excuses for my lack of exercise and yoga practice even though I want to. I just haven't been keeping up with it even though I have all the time in the world. It's probably been a month since I've done either and this weekend I realized that it's not acceptable for me to be living the way I am. This half-ass life. 

Start. Stop. Start. Stop. See Results. Stop. Take 5 Steps Back. Start Over. It's a vicious, vicious cycle. 

Tonight I started back with my yoga, if you remember I started doing yoga to be able to perform the splits and before I stopped I made significant progress in my stretching so I was a little worried that I would be back at square one. I wasn't thank God! Yoga is tough if you don't know so I was dreading having to start all over and work my way back up, but luckily only a few stretches are slightly off. What I really need to be doing is adding a few new stretches into my routine, and keep it up forever. 

Tomorrow comes the gym and weight lifting. I lost a lot of weight from eating healthy and exercising (go figure) because it really is that simple. What I also lost was my ass, it didn't bother me that other people were talking about my lack of ass but it bothered me because my ass really did disappear. It was the flattest I have ever seen it in my life. I was not okay with that because it was already minuscule. So, I've been stuffing my face for the past month and I gained my booty back...along with flabby arms and a flabby belly. It's summertime and I need to be in a bikini ASAP, which means I need to be in a gym asap. Also, along with the unwanted flab came the sickness. You are what you eat, if you eat unhealthy food you will be/feel unhealthy. Everyday I feel uncomfortable and sick, my skin looks bad and my nails are weak. Crazy right? Tomorrow I will continue stuffing my face, but only with healthy real foods. The first day back in the gym is going to kick my ass, but my ass and the rest of my body needs it. 

I never wanted to grow up and be this inconsistent woman with no sense of routine or structure. For a little while I believed that people with sporadic lives with no day to day plans were cool, but I realize now that a productive successful life needs order, structure and routine. So here I go, holding myself to a higher standard and thanking myself for it everyday. 

-Namaste

Naturally Thin

I've had this blog topic in my queue for quite some time now and today more than any seems like the perfect time to post on this subject. I've been working on lifestyle changes in every aspect of my life. I decided I need to eat healthy & clean (especially since diabetes runs in my family), exercise more, take care of my skin, hair, mind, everything! I've even been putting in the effort to dress better at work. My staple outfit for work used to be leggings/ jeggings with and over-sized sweater and riding boots. It was simple and easy so I rocked that look almost everyday. Lately I've been dressing to impress so now my coworkers have begun to take notice...of my body. Last week I received a few questions as to WHY I'm losing so much weight. I answer truthfully "I'm just changing my eating habits". Then I received a comment from a male coworker who said to me "You losing all that weight, you know men in Atl like the women thick". You know because you have to live your life the way the majority of men want you to, otherwise you're going to be left out in the cold. 

This morning I was getting dressed for work, pulled on my bootleg jeans, a white slouchy tee, a black biker zip up shirt (left open) and my pointy toe black boots. I was was going for a rocker style and I thought I looked great today, I was feeling myself. When I got to work I was confronted by most everyone in my office about how skinny I've become. Apparently I lost 50 pounds in 2 weeks because people just noticed I lost weight and they seem to have a big problem with it. I had ignorant rude questions of "concern" like "are you eating?", "is everything okay?".  All the way to the rude comments such as "You have a white girl ass now/ maybe you should get booty shots/she lost all her lady parts/don't fall apart!" I was annoyed and pissed that these overweight and unhealthy MEN had so much to say about my looks. 

The big kicker for me was when 2 of the managers were in their office talking when I walked by and I was called in to talk about my recent weight loss. I have never in my life been so attacked because of the way I looked, they just wouldn't let up. When I stepped in the office the one manager said to me, "turn around and show him (the other manager) how much weight you've lost in your butt." I replied "Are you fucking kidding me? No!" The other manager asks me whats going on with my weight and I begin to tell him about how I'm starting to eat healthy and how I cut out certain foods, I was just going on and on praying that this would kill the questions. When I left his office I walked the long hall back to my desk thinking that everyone now was looking at me wondering what was wrong with me and why this black girl was choosing to be thin. As soon as my flat ass hit my chair I thought to myself "Why the fuck are you explaining yourself to these people?" 

I refuse to explain myself and my weight to another person EVER AGAIN. I've been doing this shit since I was a child and I'm over it. The next time someone says something to me I'm going to kindly reply "I don't want to talk about it" aka "mind your got damn business". If you know me, you know I would never starve myself or harm my body so if I'm healthy and happy and SKINNY then you need to press on. I've never been fat or overweight in my life. My size fluctuates between thin and skinny, that's the range my body has. I'm sure if I let myself go completely I could become overweight, we all can. I wouldn't let myself go to that extent because I'm happy with my size. 

I weighed 115 pounds all through high school and used to get teased about my weight all the time. I once begged my doctor to give me something to help me gain weight...her reply to me was "Girls KILL themselves to be your size, you need to be grateful". Well when you put it like that. Even when I was a little girl I remember my Nana would make me drink Ensure with every meal to fatten me up, I was 6 years old. Since the age of 6 I have been explaining to people why I'm so small. In black culture thin women are not deemed attractive, so if you're a black thin woman...that's a problem. You need to eat a sandwich, cornbread, ham-hocks, meatloaf, fried chicken, everything in site so you don't.look.like.that. When I was a teen I would go to my friends house or their grandparents house and I would get the same reaction from everyone "Oh baby, you need to eat something, get some meat on those bones." I'm full. 

This has follwed me around my whole life, I thought as an adult it would be over. I recently went from thin and unhealthy to thin and healthy...society would like me as the former. Though had somewhat of booty, it was sloppy and came along with a nice fluffy tummy that was hidden behind clothes. The tummy was accompanied by some A cup boobies that became one with side fat underneath my arms, which would blend with the back fat that I would have to tuck under my bra so the back of my shirts wouldn't look so lumpy. 

 Before and after pictures from unhealthy to healthy.

 Before (with a very padded bra): April 2012 / After: January 2013

People would say I have body dysmorphia and none of that is true or that there is nothing wrong with that, but when they are doing the same thing as me everyday (trying to hide back fat and muffin tops) it's different because I'm smaller. It's not. Fat is fat, whether you're skinny or big. Of course, OF COURSE I would love to wake up tomorrow with a body like Kim K but that's not who God made me to be. I WILL NOT apologize for that anymore, I can't spend my days explaining to people why I look the way I do. I've spent my life doing so already. 

I'm naturally thin along with millions of other black women, get over it. I have a slight head cold today and when I got home from work I didn't feel like eating dinner, I just wanted to lay down but then the voices came to my head about how skinny I was and I thought "Oh no I must eat something so I don't lose anymore weight". Do you see how the negative words of others can effect someone else's life? It's called bullying, yeah I throw jabs back best believe, but I never throw them first because I know what they can do. I looked at myself in the mirror long and hard today and I decided that I LOVE my body. I'm not going to start eating like a pig or become unhealthy again just to please others who do nothing for me. 

You have one life to live and you live it the way you want, you weigh the amount you want, you have as little or as much muscle as you want, dress how you want, wear your hair how you want. Don't let anyone tell you what you should look like. Telling someone they need to gain weight is the same as telling someone they need to lose weight. Either way you're telling them how YOU think they should look. It's not up to anyone else to decide what you should look like. 

Be yourself at all times! That's an order! 

Stallion Booty VS. Donkey Booty

If you watch the foolishness that is The Real Housewives of Atlanta then you know about the battle of the booty's. If you don't watch I commend you and here's a quick breakdown of what's going on. Mrs. Phaedra Parks and her husband Apollo decided to make a fitness video focusing on getting your booty round, tight and high...like a donkey. They asked their friend Ms. Kenya Moore to produce the film, Kenya began working on the basic set up of production so she could give Phaedra and Apollo and estimate of cost. Phaedra did not like the price and was not willing to pay Kenya on the back end of video sales if they decided to go through with the deal. Shady and tacky as hell but that's not what I'm here to talk about today. Kenya was upset with Phaedra as she should have been, but instead of moving on and taking it as a business deal gone sour, Kenya decided to STEAL PHAEDRA'S IDEA and come out with her own fitness dvd!! WHAT!?!?!

This is a classic case of grown woman not knowing who she is.

A lot of women and I mean grown women over the age of 25 are still trying to figure out who they are. When you are still trying to figure out who you are life can get messy because you make choices based off your own insecurities. Kenya Moore is a beautiful woman, acne and all she is gorgeous but after watching her on the show her looks faded with each episode. Her insecurities make her extremely unattractive and immature. Stealing a friends idea, dream and passion is an childish move. I admit there were times in my life where I wanted to make certain career moves just because my friend was doing it. It's not that I shared that same dream but I didn't know who I was yet to know certain things weren't for me. Seeing my friends succeed made me want what they had...envy. Even today, my co-workers girlfriend announced that she was training to be a NPC Bikini Athlete (a fitness bikini model & competitor) and I grew jealous for about 5 minutes. When I get jealous over other peoples accomplishments I have to stop myself and think "Is that something I want to do?" If you answer honestly, the answer is usually no because you already know what you want to do with your life! If the answer is honestly yes that's what you want to do, then you need to ask them how they got there and work at it.

But if your answer is no you need to be happy for others successes, then go back to creating your own success story. I have no desire to be a bikini competitor, never have, never will. So why was I jealous? Because I have specific fitness goals that I want to obtain and someone else is reaching their own goals before me. My jealousy was all about me, I need to work harder to be where I desire to be. Competing on stage is not my thing. I've always wanted to dabble in fitness modeling and promotional work so my focus and energy should be in that lane, not in hers. Am I hating like Kenya is on Phaedra? Absolutely not, unlike Kenya I support her and hope she wins first place. This is because I've learned who I am and I've figured out what I want out of life. I'm thankful to God that I've learned this early in life and not in my 40's. Kenya had no desire to have her own fitness video until Phaedra did her wrong, she is doing it out of pure jealousy, competition and greed...which is why she is more likely to fail. When she focuses on her own talents and passions her success will grow. Then she wont be known as a biter aka copycat!

If you don't know who you are yet, take the time to figure it out. It is the most important thing you can do for yourself and your life. You might have to step away from outside influences and friends a little bit so you can take some time to be with just you. Even if you know who you are and are secure with yourself you will still have moments of jealousy, everyone does. But you need to be mature enough to know when to take a step back to figure out why you're jealous. Assess the situation, figure out your problem, fix it and move on.

Know who you are, don't be a Stallion pretending to be a Donkey. 

PGC 2013: Challenge #2: Yoga

Somewhere between boredom and insanity I fell in love with yoga. Not actually practicing yoga but looking at pictures of people doing yoga. I've taken a yoga class or two before and thought it was the best thing ever, oh my gosh I have to do it again and again and again! Yeah, that enthusiasm wore off real quick, I haven't stepped into a yoga class in years. I was on my fitness Tumblr a few weeks ago and I saw a post on "Yoga for the Splits", I never thought about training my body to do the splits; I thought either you were born that way or not. I was not but I envied those naughty girls who were. So I began the simple stretches every night and I noticed progress. I stopped doing it for some reason that I can't remember, oh yeah that's right I quit everything duh! This year I'm not going to be a quitter damn-it! Not only do I want to be able to do the splits by the end of the year, I want to master one more yoga pose. I look at pictures of yogis everyday and I'm in awe at what they have trained their bodies to do. I often forget that they TRAINED to get that way. It takes strength and (eventual) flexibility along with proper training and stretching to be good at yoga. That mess is hard! Men can laugh and joke about it all they want, but yoga takes super baby Jesus strength to master.

So besides the splits:

I want to try and master one of the following poses:

I'm not sure which one I want to pick but they are all advanced and definitely a challenge, so wish me luck!