Single. Saved. Satisfied?

Let’s face it. We live in a world where being single is some terrible condition that no one wants. Every time we see family members that we haven’t seen in a while the first thing they ask is “So are …

Preparing for the next stage in life!

Getting ready to begin the next chapter of my life! I FINALLY get to go to “real college”!!! I spent my freshman year locked down on a military base and my sophomore year at home so even though I am a junior I have never had the opportunity to experience campus life at a university. So as you can imagine I am really really excited!!

Even with all of my excitement I can’t help but worry that I will lose myself again. Living for Christ as a 20 year old college student is about as against the grain as it gets. I can’t help but to look back on what my life was like before Christ. TERRIBLE. I was a hot flaming mess of brokenness. I was caught up in a terrible downward spiral that neither myself or my family knew how to get me out of. I realized that something was really really wrong when I found myself in a jail cell and didn’t even care that I was there. Shortly after that, everything that was left in my life crumbled and I was left on my butt with no one to blame but myself.

I share all this to say that I fear falling back into that life. I NEVER want to be there again. For me, sharing my story keeps me from allowing the enemy to put shame and self hate into my soul. I am REDEEMED and He has set me FREE!!!

I also want to encourage anyone who thinks that they are too far gone to come back to Jesus. Exactly a year from the day I was arrested I was on a mission trip in Nicaragua doing more than I ever thought possible to show God’s love.

God displays his strength in our weaknesses. He can AND will use the most terrible of circumstances in ways that bring glory to His kingdom and bring joy to you! I pray that my rant ( this post was more for my sanity than anything else) blesses you and reminds you how awesome our God is.

Becoming a Proverbs 31 Kind Of Woman

After coming across a few articles on the characteristics of a godly woman I decided to go straight to the source itself. Proverbs 31. This chapter gives the ultimate description of what it takes to be an All Star quality wife. It’s so easy for us to read passages like this and brush them aside deeming them “old school” and not relevant to the modern day wife. And while there are quite a few things that don’t sit well with a woman’s pride, we have to look past what we think and really focus on what God thinks. Society will tell us that it’s weak for a woman to submit to her husband but God says that’s exactly what marriage is SUPPOSED to look like. Most of the characteristics described in Proverbs 31 go against the grain of today’s woman….which I feel like is part of the reason why marriages are not working today.
Anyways, I have made it one of my goals this year to become the type of woman that is described in Proverbs 31. As Christian women we should be striving to become women of undeniable character who love and serve our families, friends, community’s, and churches so that when the time comes we are ready to love and serve our husbands.

Journey To my First Bikini Competition-The Condensed Version

 

Hey ya’ll!! I have a lot of people asking me what made me decide to become a bikini competitor and what prep for the show was like. Preparing for the show was definitely one of the most challenging things I have ever done: And I went through freshman year at the Air force Academy so my standard of hard is pretty high.

To start from the beginning, the year 2012 was terrible for me. Almost everything that could have gone wrong did. I struggled with depression for quite a while and could never seem to pull myself out of the black hole. Further adding to my downfall was a sexual assault that was the straw that broke this camels back. Looking back, I’m not sure how I ever made it out of that time. My life went into a spiral of one bad decision after the other and I ended up leaving school and moving back home. At the time, I felt like the ultimate failure because no college kid wants to move back home and have to depend on their parents for everything. The first semester I was home I had no job and did not go to school. I had a lot of time to sit and think about all that had gone on in the last year. Slowly but surely I got back into going to church regularly and reading my bible. I realized that if I ever wanted to heal from all the hurt I was going to have to start from the very beginning. 

To close out the end of  a terrible year I had shoulder surgery in October and knee surgery in December. I have always been very active and ran track in high school and college so being down for so long was really hard for me. Coming out of basic I weighed 112 which is the heaviest I’ve ever weighed and at the end of 2012 I weighed 94 lbs. It was so bad that even my leggings were saggy. I hated how I looked/felt so as soon as I  was cleared I got my butt back in the gym. I started by just doing what I know how to do…explosive and power leg movements. I did somuch research on http://www.bodybuilding.com/ which is a GREAT tool!! I started noticing a trend in the types of workouts I was attracted to. not so surprisingly I fell in love with the bikini girl physique.

I mean how can you not love  this!!!

 

Anyways, I started training the way that bikini girls train. I gained about 10 lbs which brought me back to a healthy weight.

 

 

I went back and forth on whether I wanted to actually compete or if I just wanted to look like I compete. Competing is an expensive sport and being a 20 yr old college kid I wasn’t sure I could do it. One day I decided to email Steve Payne, owner of House Of Payne Personal Training in Lilburn, Ga. Went in for a consultation and started training right away. After I was with Steve for about 3 weeks, the opportunity to register for a show came up. He felt like I was ready to compete and that I would place.The 2 weeks between deciding to do the show and the actual show day were crazy with preparations! I will admit that most of those days I was like what am i doing?! But as soon as I stepped on that stage all of the hard work and stress was so worth it! I placed 1st place in my class and had the most amazing time with some great girls!

 

Some on stage and backstage shots!

 

My Coach Steve Payne (House of Payne Personal Training) and I

Competing without friends who understand the lifestyle is going to make it 10 times harder and more stressful. Thankful I made so many great friends!

 

 

Exercising through the FLU

Should you train while sick??

FitVal

Hi guys! I am officially less than a week out from my national competition!

I haven’t written in a while because I have been sick. It started Tuesday after teaching classes. I started feeling VERY tired and sore all over, I thought it might be overtraining, but just didn’t feel right. Something was telling me it was the flu… I asked my husband if he thought I had a fever, too lazy to find a thermometer I decided to use his touch for the judgement, and he confirmed it for me. Basically I spent the rest of the day in bed.

I asked my coach if she thought I should still try to go to the gym and she recommended that I stay home. 2 days and a lot of dayquil later, I felt pretty much back to normal, but a LOT weaker in my workouts. It was really disheartening…

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A breakfast Adventure!

So I always see a lot of clean eaters coming up with these awesome ways to jazz up their food. I don’t have that “creative with food” gene so I usually stick with the typical oatmeal,egg whites, and fruit for breakfast and chicken/fish with brown rice and a veggie for lunch/dinner. Nothin fancy about my food. This morning I felt inspired, partly by being tired of sitting in bed. I decided to try and make some protein pancakes and I must say that they are pretty tasty!! They’re not pretty at all and there are definitely some improvements to be made but it’s a good start!

Ingredients:
1/2 cup oats
1 large egg white
1 large egg
1scoop of whey protein(I used muscle milk vanilla)
1/4 tsp of almond extract(I used vanilla)
1/4 cup almond milk

-and some other things for the icing that I didn’t make. I used powdered sugar instead of the icing just because that’s how I usually eat my pancakes.

Full recipe and directions can be found at www. Rippedrecipes.com

Now don’t judge they don’t look that great but I promise they taste good!

There is always an alternative

I LOVE RAMEN NOODLES! I cannot explain why but I could eat them every single day. I love them in the bag and I love them in the cup. Unfortunately, they’re so terrible for you. They have over a thousand milligrams of salt. And we all know that excessive salt consumption leads to a multitude of illnesses. The first link is the nutrition facts for noddles in the bag…but that’s only if you only eat half the block! The bottom link is the nutrition label for cup o noodles. Terrible right?!?!

I’m all about enjoying food so I’ve been slowly switching out the things i love for healthier cleaner options. I found some chicken and vegetable soup from the Dekalb Farmers Market and it is very comparable to chicken flavored noodles. The flavor is the broth was a little lacking but I added just a little Cajun seasoning and it turned out great!!

Stop falling for the fitness lies!

Literally every single time I get on Pinterest or Instagram I see all of these pictures of skinny white girls with nice butts/abs with captions like “Do this routine everyday for 5 minutes to look like this”. And over and over again I see people pinning this stuff and wasting their time! Let me just clear up one thing….THE GIRLS IN THE PICTURES DID NOT DO 500 SQUATS EVERYDAY FOR A WEEK TO LOOK LIKE THAT! Having achieved the type of physique that a lot of people are looking for (I’m not bragging it’s a just a fact) I can tell you that not one day in my life have I ever done one of those “30 day squat challenges” or “Brazilian butt workout”. I think what sells most women on these little workouts are that they come across as a quick and easy way to get bikini ready. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. If you want a butt worth mentioning you better squat. You want abs, you better stop dirty forking, and if you want “toned” arms you better go lift some weights. Nothing worth having comes easy and trying to find the easy way out is a sure way to not see progress. As the saying goes, “don’t be disappointed by the results you didn’t get from the work you didn’t do”.