Listen to Reach Your Goals

I must confess, it's taken me years to hone in my listening skills and I still don't always listen, especially when I have my mind made up or if I think the person speaking has no clue what they're talking about. That being said, I think one of the keys to being a good athlete is listening to your coaches and those people trying to make you better. Case in point, I listen to what James tells me to do to get better at CrossFit and I start accomplishing things that I couldn't do before, like pull ups. I also listen to Jamie from Max Muscle in Cool Springs and follow the food plan he wrote for me and I drop 5% body fat in less than two months.

I am by no means saying that I am perfect in my eating or working out...there are days where I want to eat my weight in pizza and ice cream and sleep in and skip the gym, but I usually find some sort of way to get my ass out of bed and try to stay on track with my eating. I found if I'm still hungry after I eat my pre-determined meal, I'll grab a spoonful of peanut butter, make an extra slice of bacon or eat a pack of Sharkies (organic sport fruit chews), but I refused to keep crap in my house because I literally have very little self control when amazing-but-bad-for-you foods are within arms reach. I also help curb those daily cravings by cheating once or twice a week. This past week was my brother's birthday so I had myself a giant slice of ice cream cake on Wednesday and then I had a bowl of ice cream last night, but I immediately get back on track because that's what Jamie and James told me to do.

Only fill your shopping cart up with the good stuff like bacon, peanut butter, avocado, fish and grass fed beef!

I also want to confess that I was a skeptic about this whole CrossFit thing when I first started. I come from a world where quantity is king and you stare at the bottom of the pool for hours, sit on your bike until you can't feel your ass and run until you're borderline delusional to see results, so when I started changing things up and working out for less than an hour a day, I was like, uh nope, no way am I going to see results by doing just a workout that can last for less than thirty minutes. WRONG. Besides dropping 5% body weight and being able to bust out a bunch of pull ups on command, I have also added 25 pounds to my back squat PR, 10 pounds to my strict press PR and just overall become more fit.

I still have a long way to go in terms of my strength and my short term goal is to get to 15-16% body fat by June 1 and then see where I can safely go from there. I am very thankful for my coaches and their wealth of knowledge that they share with me everyday, as well as their encouragement. A lot of times, they're the reason why I get my ass out of bed, especially when they send text messages asking where you are, and 9 times out of 10, it's easier to just go workout then come up with an excuse on why you were lazy.

Let's also for 2.5 seconds talk about the CrossFit makes women "bulky" rumor that most people buy into, which is crap. Yes, there are some super muscular girls that compete in the CrossFit Games, and a lot of them are short and have gymnastics backgrounds, so pack a bunch of muscle onto their short frame and they look jacked, but 99% of people women who do CrossFit aren't going to make it to the games and aren't going to look "bulky" by doing a WOD 3-4 times week. I mean what woman in their right mind wouldn't want to look like Camille LeBlanc? I'd take abs/arms for days and strong legs over the skinny/fat look please.

In my dreams I'll look like this when I workout