How I Got in the Best Shape of My Life: Twin Mom Turned Bodybuilder

Standing naked in a small upright tent, freezing my tookus off while I bend over and stick my good bits out so that another woman can make sure the spray tan goes on evenly I begin to reflect on what brought me to that moment.  I was getting ready for my very first bodybuilding competition as a bikini athlete.  I was excited, nervous, and wondering a little bit about what in the world I had gotten myself in to.  What I DID know was that I felt great and was in the best shape of my life, and that includes those young twenties post-college years before kids where you’re supposed to be at your peak.  I was proud of myself for diving into something totally new and a little scary.  No matter the outcome I knew that I was happy I made the decision to give this sport a try.  I had been able to nurture a passion I had always had as well as discover new passions that would set me on a journey to new friends, goals of turning pro, and the best career path I could ever hope for.  But before I go on let’s backtrack a bit and let me explain how I got to that naked moment of reflection in that cold little tent.

 

Married and working: The pre-prego years

I was working full time as an orthopedic physical therapist seeing 10-13 patients in a day and usually felt pretty dang tired when I got home.  Although, looking back now after having my twins I realize…I didn’t truly KNOW tired!  Needless to say, it took me a little while to feel ready to add regular exercise into my weekly routine.  I found a website that does daily circuit interval workouts with minimal equipment that I could easily do at home in usually 20 mins or less.  I loved it!  My workouts were relatively quick and I didn’t have to spend all day at the gym.  I also started noticing some strength gains.  In addition to that, I did a bit of what I call “poor man’s” CrossFit.  Ultimately this was me joining my brother-in-law and some of his buddies in a makeshift CrossFit style gym they had put together in a warehouse attached to his workplace.  One of the guys would come up with the workout and I would meet them there on Saturday mornings.  Some might call me crazy but, I really looked forward to those Saturdays!

I was feeling strong and healthy but I was also eating whatever the heck I wanted.  This usually meant I was “watching” what I ate most of the time but definitely indulging in lots of treats including wine, cheese, sweets, and more wine. Though I tried to eat healthy, I had no real direction in what I was eating or how to properly fuel my body for exercise.  I would have a protein shake right after my workout and thought that was enough for the day.  I know now that I was definitely NOT getting enough protein.  That being said, I was happy with where I was and I felt fit and healthy.  However, I did want to have a more muscular shape and noticed my workouts started to plateau in my progress.  I wasn’t sure exactly how I wanted to change my workout but I also wasn’t that concerned.  By this time we wanted to start a family and I was more concerned with getting pregnant than I was about my workouts.

 

Pregnant…Holy S#%T with TWINS

 

Yup…This happened!  We were very excited, of course, but I was also nervous about being pregnant and also about having twins.  I thought I would be a super healthy fit pregnant badass chick.  Turns out that was not as easy as I thought it would be for a couple different reasons.  First, I was just nervous about exercising.  This was ALL in my head, as I was told by my OBGYN that it was fine.  However, it wasn’t easy for us to get pregnant so I was just worried something would happen.  I did try some light weight training and walking early on but ended up finding I was having a lot of SI (sacroiliac) and low back pain.  This is very common due to the pregnancy hormones creating a lot of laxity in the joints around the pelvis…for obvious reasons!  As the babies got bigger so did my SI pain.  My interest and motivation waned as time went on and my biggest concern was just growing healthy babies.

To add to my increased deconditioning I was put on bedrest for the last 6 weeks due to concerns for delivering early.  As much as we all dream of being told to lay down on the couch and DO NOTHING, it was only fun for about 2 days and then it got old really fast!  I filled the time with reading, crocheting blankets for the kiddos and A LOT of Netflix.  I got caught up on just about every series I had ever wanted to watch.  At 35 weeks and 5 days of pregnancy, the babies made their entrance and our whole world changed.

 

Twin Mom Life

As many would expect, the first 6 months were a complete blur!  I am someone that likes routine and, as many fellow moms out there know, life with newborns is anything BUT routine.  My focus was trying to get sleep and feed these babies.  I had to pump because they did not take to breastfeeding, so I felt like I was either feeding a baby or pumping.  Somewhere between that, I was trying to sleep and maybe think about doing some kind of housework.  I definitely didn’t feel like I had much extra time to fit in any kind of exercise.  Even if I did have time, I was just not interested or motivated to do so.  I felt like I was just trying to stay afloat and not go crazy.  When I was medically cleared for exercise I tried a circuit style workouts but had no consistency.  I had a hard time figuring out timing between babies napping, needing to be fed and my needing to pump so that I could feed them the next time.  Needless to say, my routine was a mess and I did not feel like myself.

 

About 6 months in I finally found a doable routine and started a more structured workout.  By now it was spring so it was warm enough to exercise outside in my makeshift garage gym.  It felt good to be exercising again.  I began to see some strength come back and see my body start to come back together but not completely.  I still didn’t feel like I was back to myself again.  What I wasn’t doing was paying any attention to what I was eating.  In fact, I was doing the opposite and still using the excuse of breastfeeding to eat anything I wanted.  I was frustrated because I was exercising regularly again but felt my progress was stagnant.  During this time, I was also trying to figure out my new role.  I was a busy active physical therapist with a career and now I was a stay at home mom struggling to find her new identity.  I started to desire a goal to work towards that didn’t have anything to do with kiddos.  My life was consumed by children, giving them everything they needed and deserved.  I was happy to do so but was also starting to feel a like my personal identity was getting lost.

 

A Bikini Athlete?

 

This started out as something to cross off my bucket list.  As I mentioned, I was in a stage of my life where I was craving accomplishment outside of the immense responsibility of keeping my babies alive!  An old boyfriend back in college did a bodybuilding competition and had loosely suggested I should try it since I loved weight lifting as well as improving my physique.  The idea at the time seemed ridiculous to me.  I could not at all picture myself with enough confidence to prance around on stage in a small bikini.  Not to mention the ridged structure and the nutrition side of it completely scared me.  I had no idea what eating for a bodybuilding competition looked like but I was pretty sure it wasn’t cereal, which is what I lived on in college.  For some reason, despite being a new mom, it just felt like the right time to try this.  After much deliberation, I decided that I never wanted to look back at my life with any regrets.  Now that I made the decision to do this it was time to find a great coach and start getting my mind wrapped around the idea of wearing 5” heels in a bikini on stage while being judged!  What was I thinking?

I did find a great coach through a friend of mine.  She is long distance so we did everything via emails and phone calls.  We decided on starting right away to allow for a long prep and for me to get used to tracking my food and working out 5 days a week.  The workouts excited me but the food bit scared me.  I have never once tracked what I ate or had to be restrictive in any way.  Discipline has always been one of my strengths so I knew I could do it but it was more about how much I would suffer.  I’m not going to lie, for me, the first month was tough.  Tracking food for me was totally new and there was a large learning curve.  I definitely felt hungry for a while but, I did get used to it all and found ways to eat things I enjoyed so that I didn’t feel like I was totally missing out.  It also forced me to become a lot more experimental with my food choices and find alternative ways to eat what I liked but with less fat or carbs.  I also had to find several different ways to get protein since I do not like eating chicken all day! (who does?)

 

Getting to the Best Shape of My Life!

 

After starting my training, I realized how much I loved learning about this sport.  Educating myself became another aspect of my training.  Whether it was a podcast, a website, an ebook, or an industry leader to social media, I was interested.  I became fascinated with the science behind flexible dieting and program design.  I wanted to read and learn more and began to realize the passion I had for the fitness industry.  Through my own experience with dieting and tracking my food, I was able to learn so much about nutrition.  So much more than I was ever able to learn in college.   I understood how to fuel my workouts with my food and how important it is to eat enough protein.  I learned how macros were calculated and how they change over the course of a dieting phase and then an offseason or bulking phase.  This new passion consumed me and I couldn’t get enough.

 

I finally started to see my strength come back and seeing the muscularity I had always wanted.  It felt pretty bad ass to keep increasing my squat and deadlift weight!  I was using my 1 rep max to do progressive overload training.  This allowed me to compare each training block to objectively see my strength improvements.  I was doing the traditional strength training I had started back in college and loved so much.  But this time it was more structured and with a purpose!  Now with my background in exercise science and physical therapy I was able to go deeper in understanding the concepts behind program design.  I felt like the dormant little gymrat living inside of me was finally able to come to the surface!

 

It wasn’t all puppy dogs and rainbows though.  I did have to work through several emotional ups and downs through this process.  I did have to say no to many things and remember that my goals were bigger than that dinner out.  Through all of that, I stayed on track with my workout and my nutrition and it certainly paid off.  I won my first show qualifying me for a national level show and I was hooked!  Not because I won (well that certainly was nice) but because I really felt like I had found something that challenged me in many different ways and I feel like it opened up so many doors for me.  Competing gave me the confidence to start pursuing other paths in the fitness industry that I might not otherwise have found or had the confidence to do so.

 

This whole journey was not about “showing off” on stage.  It was about all the hard work and dedication that happened long before stepping on that stage.  This was about the transformation of my mind learning what I was really capable of and giving me more confidence to pursue what I want.  As well as the transformation of my body giving me the physical strength I wanted to be the active mommy I dreamed of and also have something I get to do for myself each day.  I have gone on to compete in several seasons now but for me, that first show will always have a special place in my heart.  Yes, I will always think that standing naked in front of a stranger bending over to show them my good bits to check your tan is WEIRD as all get out!  But it’s one of the kooky things about this sport that I also kind of love.  It is a unique sport, that, if grounded in your purpose and your self-worth, can be extremely rewarding.

 

I’m so thankful that I made the decision to go for it and try something that scared me.  I would never have guessed that it would lead me to where I am now.  Now I get to take what I have learned through these experiences and help you all become your best selves.  Not everyone wants to step on stage, nor should they feel they have too, but it’s all about whatever that “best self” means to you!

 

Until next time my friends…stay happy, healthy and fit!