Training with purpose. How I changed my mentality to achieve results.

I  used to always be asked why I train, why I go to the gym? 'Wouldn't you rather spend the time doing other things, you're always at the gym Robyn!'.

Then one day back in 2012 a guy approached me at the gym and asked me. You train so hard Robyn, are you happy with the results you're getting? I gave a blank look, actually more of a 'how dare you' look as he was implying I was looking the same all the time.

It was at that point where I really questioned why I was going to the gym. Was it habit? Was it to counteract the copious amounts of food I used to eat? Was training yielding results? I had no real purpose, it just became so embedded in my routine. Finish work, go gym.

My food back then didn't compliment my training and my training never complimented my food. I definitely always ate more than I should have and just ate according to hunger, not a goal.

It was that moment when I started noticing other people's training behaviours at the gym. The cardio bunnies, the ego lifters, the socialisers, the bench hoggers and the list goes on. Did anyone here have a purpose? Was everyone's goal to be 'healthy and fit 'or were they too counteracting the copious amounts of food they were eating.

It was then months later I was encouraged to 'compete'. I had no idea what that was at the time, all I knew was to follow my coaches diet and training protocols for 12 weeks and I would look 'good' for stage. So here I was eating and training with purpose.

Everything I did had meaning and headed towards a goal and I enjoyed every moment of it. The discipline, the hunger, the intensity, the focus.. it truly reminded of what it was like being an athlete again back when I used to be an elite basketball-er.

WOW, is this what it feels like to really train with purpose?! 12 weeks had past, I jumped on stage and there I was reaching my goal and then tomorrow came. Was there no purpose to training anymore? I reached my goal and here I was stuck, back to where I started. Even though I was praised so much I just got skinny, entered the wrong category and had digestion issues. Is this what training with purpose ultimately meant. To restrict your life and live tunnel visioned until your goal was reached?

Four weeks later I moved to Dubai and started to shift the way I thought about health and fitness discovering the true mean of a healthy and fit lifestyle.

I started to incorporate the following 4 things:

Removing the end date:
I found that I was always put an end date to my gym and nutritional efforts. It was either a holiday, show, event etc.. An end date no longer exists and suprisingly I managed to effortlessly achieve consistency.

Ceased the negative thoughts and self-worthless conversation:
I stopped talking to myself every time I looked in the mirror. I realised I was mentally abusing myself and grabbing fat bits wishing it was gone. I was always so mean to myself and even at my lean stages in life I would still find areas to criticise. The bullying stopped.

Stopped the comparisons:
No more comparing myself to those around me and to those that I would follow online. We all have a different genetic make-up and I will never look like anyone and better yet no will will ever look like me!

No more food restrictions:
The more I placed food restrictions the more it led to self sabotaging behaviour and endless binging. If I feel like chocolate I eat it, I don't 'reward' myself with food, I learnt to love myself and my choices.

As Lorna Jane preaches: Move. Nourish. Believe.

Beating PCOS - Real food is my medicine

POLYCYSTIC OVARIAN SYNDROME, three words that impacted my life... for the better.

I have recently been diagnosed with PCOS, a very common condition among us women that isn't spoken of much. I think I always knew in the back of my mind that it was this, our self diagnosis Google ways.

Over the years I have had irregular menstrual cycles, epic bloating and laser hair removal wasn't as effective as it should have been.

My biggest symptom was my bloat, it was very embarrassing and not only was it embarrassing it kept me very unsocial as I literally did not fit into anything. Most outings were food or drink outings and I knew I could not consume anything as I felt I would explode. 

Recently, post comp I ate more processed sugars than I should have. Psychologically it wasn't easy getting back on track as I could now eat anything I wanted with no restrictions. I found that after my first show I was much more lost and had developed this unhealthy relationship with food which I thankfully grasped better the second time round.

My situation at the time also didn't help. I live alone in Dubai, was in the transition of finding a new job and my grandma passed away, so all these environmental factors triggered emotional binge eating habits. The condition accelerated my weight gain post comp, my symptoms amplified from abs to bloat in a matter of hours and here I was feeling back at square one.

When I finally mentally got on top of things I started to clean up my diet and paid attention to my body experimenting with different kinds of food. I found that anything high in sugar (something that spiked my insulin) triggered my bloat and this was no ordinary bloat.. 

I now reveal the bloat..

BEHOLD! I look 6 months pregnant I know..

When this kept happened I frantically Google'd to see if anyone too had this symptom and I barely found anything. I decided to then post on my personal Facebook page to see if anyone else was dealing with these horrible symptoms and condition, particularly athletes competing as we have to work 10x harder then anyone else, pretty much felt like I was pushing water up a hill! I came across two Athletes in Australia Tamika Webber and Sarah Ting who openly talk about this, not to mention a lot of friends who messaged saying they were also dealing with this!

WOW is all I could say. I received so many messages and after I posted the above picture on my Facebook Fan Page, my inbox was flooded with women saying they too have that symptom but find it so embarrassing and never speak of it.

Now everyone wants to know the cure.. but unfortunately there isn't, it's something we have to manage, to be more in tune with our body. Our body is more sensitive to carbohydrates so I had to be more conscious of what I ate and the timing of my meals, all of a sudden I was eating like an athlete, not even prepping for show. Had high protein/high fat breakfast, small meals throughout the day and carbs around training. What? The solution was eat like an athlete? All of a sudden I was dieting without dieting and it didn't feel like comp prep but more a way of life as I knew I would pay the price with a bloat! Was my diagnosis really bad news? I guess not, it truly taught me the whole element of 'balance' and a healthy 'lifestyle', it's a blessing in disguise and if you are readying this too then I hope you too find the positivity to push forward.

Yours truly,

PCOS Warrior

The real difference between my naturally lean friends and I

We all have that one friend that eats whatever they want and always stays lean. That one friend you try and keep up with when eating but find that you gain weight and she doesn't.
For me this was my best friend. God bless her and he small physique and flat stomach but I was always frustrated with how my diet was so much more clean yet I was the chunky one and to make it all worse she never worked out! Genetics you say? Sure it played a role but surely we all heard the 'it will catch up to her when she is older', and did it? NO! she still looks amazing.

Why ow why I think to myself! These naturally thin people don't understand the fat struggles I go through, or the mental discussions I have with the my inner demons. My frustrations became worse when I started to meet those competing who were naturally thin prior and all I could think of was that they have no idea what fat struggles are, the forever yo-yo dieting, that bulge over the jeans, back fat squeezing through that strapless bra, that bloated belly after every meal and that self sabotaging binge that would happen ow so very often! For comp prep diet you had to eat more? and you found that hard? Really!! poor you...
I found that losing weight was much easier and maintaining was the hardest. All these struggles I go through while my bestie sat there downing a pack of Tim Tams.

Time and time again I would meet these effortlessly lean people and where I once silently cursed at their genetics I started to appreciate the following six habits:

1. They enjoy food but don't obsess over it.
Lean people tend to have a healthy attitude towards food. They eat when they're hungry, sometimes for pleasure, but generally not for emotional reasons. They aren't impulsive. They don’t feel guilty after eating sweets or snacks and never try to hide their eating from others.

2. Food isn't always at the forefront of their minds.
Because these people let themselves enjoy and don't obsess over food, it's not always at the forefront of their minds. Lean people don’t tend to snack throughout the day and often go many, many hours between meals. Effectively some lean people practice intermittent fasting by accident.

3. They don't diet.
It's so rare to see naturally lean people obsess, weigh, pinch and measure themselves or actively try to lose or manage their weight. Maybe this is because they don't need to, but I also think it speaks to an ability to trust and listen to their own bodies when it comes to eating habits.

4. They eat slowly.
This isn’t always true but rarely do you see a lean person scoffing down their food like a wild boar. Fast eating is typically the realm of the overweight.

5. They delay gratification.

For example during an event there is usually an hour cocktail party serving hors d’oeuvre before the three-course sit down meal. Lean people acknowledge that there is a big meal awaiting them so they take it easy on these calorific hors d’oeuvre. They delay gratification.

6. They have a positive body image.
Dieting "success" is an elusive and often futile goal. When you most desperately yearn for success is when you are the least likely to achieve it. By contrast, when you relax and make peace with yourself and your current situation success tends to find you.

There are many things I could have learnt from my naturally lean best friend but instead I was despising her for her notoriously fast metabolism.

So cheers to all you naturally lean people! Raise your glasses while I raise my bottle of water...

Flexible dieting and why I started

When I think of the word flexible next to the word dieting I start to get a little anxious. How flexible is flexible? Can one really diet and still enjoy the greater range of food out there and still achieve their health and fitness goals?

Prior to this concept of dieting I would always follow a meal and workout plan with this expectation in my head of what I would look like in the time frame I allowed myself, usually being the famous '12 week' transformation concept that we all are marketed by the fitness industry.

I know when I see a transformation picture the first thing that comes to mind is 'How long did it take them'?. We are all eager to see results fast but we forget progress has many factors and we are all different.

Factors such as:

Dieting compliance
Dieting history
Hormones
Lifestyle/stress
Genetics
Etc..

The problem with knowing a particular progress timeline of others is that we tend to compare our own personal journey to that of theirs. Not taking into account all of the factors which make each timeline unique to a specific individual.

Through learning my own body and developing a greater understanding of food for fuel and the concept of macronutrients, I've now taken 'the plunge' you could say into becoming a flexible dieter. It took me a good 12months to fully understand my body and many times is was through failure and yo-yo dieting and I always found it easier to lose the weight than maintain. I had this belief that when I lost the weight I was invincible and could eat whatever I wanted! Yea, um that didn't exactly go to plan...

My experience with many diets led me to believe some foods are good for you & some foods are bad for you. That the way you lost weight was determined by the foods you cut out of your diet and so on.

Chicken + Brown Rice = Good. Ice Cream + Cake = Bad.

“Eat clean” (two words despised by the flexible dieting community) used to be my mantra. Until now. Flexible dieting has been recently gaining momentum as a revolutionary new way of eating. Even the google search of flexible dieting has increased as people are now recognising this way of dieting is more sustainable. 

Is it harder? To an extent yes as you now become accountable for what you eat, tracking your food ensuring you're reaching your macronutrient goals and not blowing out your daily calorie intake. One should also note it doesn't endorse only eating 'bad foods', it still aims at encouraging you to eat nutrient dense food but also allowing for the 'flexibility' when needed.

It's been 2 weeks since I have started and there are days where I excessively ate however looking back at each day I can assess what food my body actually needed and what emotion sparked the need to eat and make changes accordingly.

Wish me luck! Time for me to go eat Nutella.. What?! Yea that's right, it fits my macro goals today...

Beat the binge this Easter

As Easter approaches near all one can think about is the copious amounts of food you're going to eat.
Now I'm all for this theory of balance and celebrations like this always tip the scale. What you plan for never happens, you find yourself eating that spread of food, drinking alcohol, then eating chocolate, cake, ice cream etc.. and oh my! you're flooded with negative self punishing thoughts..

Below are TWO simple things I do to avoid this feeling:

1) Keep your serving sizes minimal. Why? I find that when I have more on my plate I tend to eat it regardless and not listen to my stomach. When your servings are small and you eat at a slower pace you can actually listen to your body responding and if you're still hungry go for seconds and then pace the sweets. Have a few of course! Don't deprive yourself.

2) Post Easter plan. By plan I don't mean thinking about how you're going to make up for all the food and alcohol you consumed. By plan I mean that 'self agreement' of going back to your routine and not spiralling out of control. I usually refer to this a self sabotage, the 'oh I messed up my eating well routine so might as well just keep eating and eating'. Be strong and put your thoughts back into action.

ACCEPT that you're going to eat and enjoy your weekend and then KNOW that you are going back to plan.

It never fails.

Forward momentum - when everything happens for a reason

I used to be well annoyed with the saying 'Everything happens for a reason'.

Every time any event happens in your life we are surrounded by that saying. I used to find it so sappy and more importantly I never thought the sentiment was true. Some things just happen, there is no rhyme or reason to them. They just happen.

But the more I thought about it the more I realised I was wrong.
My real turning point was a few years ago after reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho which I can't recommend enough. It's one of those novels that manage to make you escape and reflect on seeking to attain the unattainable, much like Don Quixote who dreamed the impossible dream.

It seems that this quote is always resorted to when either good things happen or when your friends are condoling you about something, trying give you that uplifting speech that there is light at the end of the tunnel when really you want to bury head in the ground.

Leaving a lot behind and taking that leap of faith I have met many people along the way, some which were just a passing and many that will forever impact my life.
My recent encounter of a selfless act of a friend, also an IFBB Pro with no desire to receive anything in return supported/funded the remainder of my fitness modelling competition to ensure I compete.
Many athletes want to be associated with a brand, want to be perceived as wanted by a corporate organisation but life is much more simpler than that. You get what you give and the universe makes sure of that.

I'd much rather be sponsored by an angel.

"When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it"
 ~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Taking the leap.. Will I make the jump?

No doubt we dream about moving to a foreign location and freeing ourselves from our mundane routines. As human beings we have the potential to disentangle ourselves from old habits and have the capacity to wake up and live consciously yet we also have a strong inclination to stay asleep.

It’s as if we are always at a crossroad, continuously choosing which way to go. Moment by moment we can choose to go toward further clarity and happiness or toward confusion and pain.

We hold onto this greater faith that gives us hope that everything is happening for a reason, that our spiritual connection to the greater universe will lead us to something better, that everything that we didn't receive was not meant for us. That when God takes away something from our hand, he isn't punishing us, he is merely emptying our hands to receive something better.

Moving away from home was one of the biggest spiritual decisions I've ever made. I moved away from family and friends and always live in fear that that's the last time I will see their face, that I'm missing out on valuable irreplaceable time but I took that leap of faith and followed that inner instinct and here I am in Dubai 'livin' that dream', that dream of moving to a foreign country freeing myself from old habits.

Will I make the jump? I don't know, that's what I'm here to discover...

The pursuit of perfection

Yes, we can all agree that Social Media plays quite a large role of what society considers to be perfect. We sit and scroll through our Facebook and Instagram feeds comparing ourselves to every image we see. "Oh, I'd love to have that body", "Oh imagine I had a house that house". The scary yet most exciting thing is that we can have anything we want. Yes, anything. If we want that house we can work hard to be able to afford it and if we want that body and we make the choices that we know will contribute to a healthier you.

So what's the problem? Problem is are we ever satisfied? Is there always something we want more, is what we are working towards ever enough?
I am no different, I am sucked into the digital world, this selective hub of images and words spoken by people I have never met. I sit and get inspired and convince myself that I'm going to make a change. But how long does that motivation really last? What really turns motivation into habit?

It took me a while to really convince myself that I was capable of changing my body. How does one enjoy food without guilt? How do we really find 'that balance'? Am I going to always have this unhealthy relationship with food? All these questions circulate in my head and I came to the conclusion that what's not perfect is the perception YOU have.

Yes YOU. I too contribute to what society portrays as the ideal body. The one thing I have learnt to do is love my body and with this I keep my social media images as realistic as possible. I recall starting this fitness journey & I was forever desperate trying to find images of what bodybuilders and fitness models looked like prior to their journey or even a realistic day shot but it was all filled with images of past photo shoots. Why? Because they too fear judgement.

So I leave you with this thought...

"The scale can only give you a numerical reflection of your relationship with gravity. It cannot measure beauty, talent, purpose, life force, possibility, strength or love. Don't give the scale more power than it has earned."
-Steve Marabali

Diet? What diet? I'm Lebanese, we don't diet...

Having a middle eastern background, growing up we were always taught to finish our plates especially at family gatherings. That if we didn't finish it was 'haram' as there were less fortunate people in the world and we were taking our food for granted (sounds dramatic right).

Our servings weren't of the ordinary size, they were over-flowing with food and not only did we finish what we were given we would always go for seconds. It didn't just stop at seconds, the desserts and fruit then came out and we taught ourselves to force these treats down as it was too delicious to pass by.

Portion control? What portion control.. It was devour as much as you could until you couldn't breath and felt the need to lie down to help aide digestion. I talk like this is the past middle eastern behaviour but truth is it still happens, I still attend family gatherings and get overwhelmed by the amount of food.

If your origins aren't from an ethnic background you probably find this hard to comprehend. The biggest struggle I had "eating well" was the feeling that I was continually missing out. Every time I visited friends or relatives I was greeted with a treat, chocolate, nuts or whatever it may be and perceived as unsocial if I didn't consume it.

Embarking on a healthy lifestyle where I manage my portion controls and say 'no' once in a while was the most liberating choice I have made. Taking a step back and building a routine of fuelling my body and eating to train rather than dieting and exercising has really allowed me to enjoy these family moments where I'm not forever bloated and filled with guilt. Do I still indulge? Hell yea, I'd never give up such precious family time.

Fill my plate please! I don't diet.. I'm fuelling my body for that epic workout that's about to happen.