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laurel — On left: In my body-building days /
On right: Most recent pic – feeling huge

I’ve been thinking about writing this blog for quite a while. I’ve been struggling with this issue since I was a teenager. I know I am not alone.

This blog won’t give you the latest weight loss secret, nor will it give you a really incredible workout. As a matter of fact, it won’t give you any answers. My hope is that it starts a conversation that needs to happen.
It’s time for me to get honest with myself and it’s time for me to get honest with others.

I need to hear about other people out there who struggle with the same issues as I do. I know I am not alone. I see it in others, I see it in my clients, I see it all over social media and I see it in my family.

My issue is my love/hate affair with my body. I can’t even tell you when or why this started. All I know is that I have fought with my body image and my weight since I started junior high school. I have no idea whether or not I was actually overweight, but that does not even matter. I thought I was overweight and thus began decades of self-loathing, countless diets and a trip to a 28 day eating disorder clinic.

laurel3 — On left: At leadership meeting, very ashamed about weight /
On right: Starting another diet

At 20 years old and after the birth of my first son, my goal was to weigh in the double digits. Imagine my elation when I tipped the scales at 99 pounds. I was on top of the world. That number meant that I was finally a success and that I was attractive.

Of course it didn’t last long. Before I knew it, I ballooned to a whopping 119 pounds. I felt like a failure. Suddenly I went from feeling attractive to feeling like a monster. I was buying a size 20 in clothes to hide my hideous body.

I only wore clothes that hid my massive frame. It was then that I sought help and entered treatment for my eating disorder. I never considered myself anorexic nor bulimic, I went because I was a straight up binge eater and my weight was out of control. Again I only weighed 119 pounds.

One of the things we had to do was exercise. I felt so hideous that my workout clothes consisted of my huge potato sack skirt that reached the floor and a huge over-sized shirt. After all, I didn’t want anyone to see how big I was.

I spent 28 days in treatment and left the same as when I went in.

laurel2 — On left: Weight down, feel great /
On right: Weight up again – note the baggy clothes

Over the past decades, I have gained and lost 20 pounds.

My biggest weight loss successes came when I was competing in bodybuilding. Those were the days. Some how I managed to stay with a strict diet for 12 weeks. I ate by the clock every 2-3 hours. My meals consisted of boiled chicken, rice, cold sweet potatoes and broccoli. It wasn’t good, but it was what I ate. Food was not longer enjoyable. I even traveled to Las Vegas on vacation for a week with my cooler full of food.

On the day of my contests, my body fat was approximately, 18% and yet I still had a wad of fat on the back of my legs. I guess I should mention that I am of Hispanic, Italian descent. We have some meaty thighs! God, how I hate them.

It took about 3-4 weeks after each contest to gain back 20 pounds. I had no idea how to transition back to normal eating. I went from a ripped, lean size 0, back to what I felt was a fat, over weight woman.

The next few years, I gained and lost 15-20 pounds through various diets and exercise plans.

Now I sit here writing this, ashamed. I am 51 years old and I’m still struggling with weight and body image.

Laurel5 — **On left: Weight up… Again / On right: Starting yet another diet…**

As fitness professional, I know better. But, first and foremost, I am a woman. I am woman who has struggled with her weight, self-image, self-esteem and body image for 40 years.

Trust me, I have done every diet out there. I have done Paleo, I have done the Whole30, I have gone off sugar, I have gone off carbs, I have detoxed, I have done Precision Nutrition, I have eaten low fat, high fat, low protein, high protein, I have kept food journals. I have counted calories and I have measured my food. I have done tons of cardio, I have lifted heavy weights…I have done it all.

I still go through the same emotions and behaviors. I lose around 7-10 pounds. I feel great. I feel attractive. I feel successful. I go shopping and buy cute clothes and wear them with pride. Then I gain the weight back. My self-esteem, body image and confidence go to hell. I go back to my baggy clothes.

So, is there a point in life and I am asking anyone who is reading this blog, in which you stop the madness and just accept who you are, accept and love your body and quit torturing yourself? Or do you continue the self-destructive mental and physical abuse?

At 51 years old, I’m tired of fighting this. I’m tired of hating and fighting with my body. I want to enjoy my life and I want to just enjoy food. Damnit, I want to eat cake and not feel like a loser and not feel judged and not feel guilty.

I know I am not alone. I have clients who have been coming to me for years who pretty much do the same. We have transformation contests with pretty amazing results. After the contest is over, they end up where they started. I have clients who, after coming for years look pretty much the same. They work hard, their health has improved tremendously, but they are still overweight. Is that so bad?

As fitness professionals, we post before and after pictures of our best client’s transformations. However, when I see group pictures of clients working out, there are some who are over weight and obese and I know those clients have been coming to those classes for a very long time. It happens in gyms, in boot camps, in Kettlebell classes and in Crossfit.

Now I know that other fitness professionals will judge me because I am fitness professional and I should look the part. What is the part? Many of my new clients, when asked what their goals are, say they want arms like mine.

One of the things I am guilty of that just adds fuel to my already low self-esteem fire is that I compare myself to other women on Facebook who are leaner and stronger. I know those are part of the issues I need to work on.

I don’t know the answers. I don’t know what to tell my clients who struggle with the same issues. When is it time to quit the madness?

Laurel4 — **On left: Weight back up, ashamed.. / On right: Diet success, feeling great**

One thing that really helps me is to understand different body types. We are all different. I will never be a skinny girl even though I have tried. My brothers and my oldest son struggle to put on weight. They are tall and thin with nice long legs. My sisters and I are short with short, muscular legs. No matter how hard I try and how lean I get, I will not have tall, lean legs. I know I can have a lean upper body, but my legs will always be and look heavier.

One of the things that help me, is the website that has pictures of some of the world’s most elite athletes. You will see they have completely different body types depending on their sport. None of them are the same.

http://reelfoto.blogspot.com/2012/08/howard-schatz-and-beverly-ornstein.html

I am not writing this blog to get pity and I am certainly not writing it to get any more advice.

If you are one of those who have never struggled with weight, or if you are one of those who have fought the weight loss battle and won, without having to fight the demons of self-loathing and constant failures, then you will never be able to wrap your head around this. As fitness professionals however, we need to understand that for some of your clients that struggle with this, we have to understand and we have to be able to help them.

Another diet, another food journal and harder workouts will not take care of the underlying emotional issues surrounding this issue.

So what are we to do?

Is quitting the madness and focusing on health instead of losing weight so bad? Do we support and affirm their efforts on improving their health or are we focused on their weight loss?

Do we refer them out for help, for counseling?

I go to counseling and have been on anti-depressants since I was a teenager. Many of our clients have never been and maybe it’s time. Do we do them a disservice by not addressing this issue?

I ask you to please share this blog in the hopes that it helps someone and starts a conversation that I think needs to happen. I really put myself out there and I would like to think I didn’t do this in vain.

***

Laurel Blackburn is an RKC Team Leader and owner of Boot Camp Fitness and Training and Tallahassee Kettlebells. Look for Laurel at www.bootcampstogo.com or www.tallahasseekettlebells.com.

At 51, she is out to prove that age is just a number. Her goal is to motivate and inspire people everywhere, both young and old that strength, flexibility and mobility can get better with age. Follow her adventures on her blog: www.SuperStrongNana.com.

I have always wondered which exercises gave me more bang for the buck. I like going to my gym and knocking out quick workouts and I don’t like to waste my time training with isolation exercises.

You can go to your local grocery store and see fitness magazines touting the best exercises. For women, it’s normally the butt and for guys, it’s biceps and chest. I always wondered how they can come up with anything new. If you read through them, the exercises are usually the same. It’s lunges for ladies and bicep curls for the guys.

I’ve been using and teaching Kettlebells for close to seven years now and it never fails, someone always asks, “Which muscle does this work”? The thing I love most about using Kettlebells for myself and my clients is that I can hit every muscle and get an incredible fat torching workout in 30 minutes or less.

But you already know that.

For several years, I have been trying to get my husband to do an Electromyography (EMG) test on me so that I could see which exercises target specific muscles the most. He kept saying that I did not want to do that because it will hurt. He tried to make me shy away by talking about how he would have to stick needles deep into my muscle bellies. I never let that deter me from finding the answers to my questions.

This past weekend I finally tied him down and we set a time. Again he told me how his patients have cried, cringed and about passed out from the pain. This time I almost changed my mind, but I was too excited to find out the answers to my questions.

Oh, I guess this would be a good time to let you know that my husband is a Neurologist. He has been practicing medicine and doing EMGs for over 21 years. I knew I was in good hands and if you can’t trust your husband to stick needles in you, whom can you trust?

We decided to this on a Sunday afternoon while the office was empty. We made a list of exercises to do and compare. Knowing that his EMG machine has better results with static movements, I decided to compare the most common exercises while holding the end part of each one in an isometric contraction. In other words, I held the hardstyle lock out of the top of a swing with needles in different muscles while Rick interpreted the data.

Keep in mind this is very basic research. In order to get numerical values and dynamic readings, we would have to find a different EMG machine.

The first thing Rick did was to place electrodes on my stomach. Then came the needle. I braced and prepared myself for pain, but was surprised to find it didn’t hurt at all.

With the needle in my abdominal muscle, I positioned myself in the hardstyle lock out of the swing. I contracted as hard as I would as if I had a Kettlebell. We knew that the lock out would be more significant if I had been doing swings with a Kettlebell.

I braced my abs as if I were taking a punch and I was breathing “behind the shield” while the contraction was recorded. With this type of EMG, you can see and hear the output of the muscle contraction. There was significant muscle activation, but not nearly as much as I had hoped for.

I then got on the ground and held a traditional crunch in the up position. The crunch lit up the machine much more than the top of the swing (don’t worry, you don’t have to do crunches to engage and activate your abs, bare with me).

The last thing I did for the abs was to hold a normal gym goer plank verses our RKC Hardstyle Plank. There was a big difference. Not much activation in the abs with the traditional plank that most people do. The HSP was clearly the winner.

So for maximum abdominal contraction; the crunch was first, the HSP was second, the swing was third and the regular person plank was last.

Next test was the glutes (here I turned off the camera). Rick had to get an extra long needle and I wasn’t sure if he was trying to tell me something. He said it was a big muscle…

For testing glute activation, I again held the top of the swing, held the bottom of a lunge, held the bottom of a deep squat and lastly performed a deadlift without weight. I got into deadlift position and contracted as if I was pulling a heavy load. The deadlift outperformed all the exercises in glute activation, then the swing, lunge and squat.

Next up was the quadriceps muscle. For this we compared a regular squat just to parallel, verses a deep squat. a pistol squat and the swing. To my surprise the most muscle activation was the down leg of a pistol squat. I was surprised because the only time my quads get sore is from doing pistol squats and I always assumed it was from the up leg. The swing was almost equal in quadriceps activation and the other squats were last.

Last but not least, Rick stuck a needle in my Lats. Again I held the top of the swing position and did an isometric lat pull down. The Lat pull down was just a head of the swing but the lats were definitely activating during the lock out at the top of the swing.

The take away is that, yes, isolating muscle groups has more activation than our Kettlebell exercises, but most of the Kettlebell exercises target ALL of the muscle groups. If you want to spend 2 hours in the gym isolating every muscle group, have at it. If you want to activate all of your muscles and get a killer calorie burn, improve endurance and torch fat, the Kettlebell swing can not be beat.

Next time your clients asks you, which muscles they are working during the swing, you can tell them, “All of them”.

Stay tuned for more EMG reports. Next time we are bringing the EMG machine to the gym to see if we can capture results while doing dynamic movements.

***

Laurel Blackburn is an RKC Team Leader and owner of Boot Camp Fitness and Training and Tallahassee Kettlebells.

Getting ready to turn 51 in June, she is out to prove that age is just a number. Her goal is to motivate and inspire people everywhere, both young and old that strength, flexibility and mobility can get better with age. Follow her adventures on her blog: www.SuperStrongNana.com

blackburn

My Weight Loss Struggle

“I was Stuck With Needles for Research.”