Great Expectations

Yesterday I spent a few minutes speaking with Kelly at the gym. She's training for her own event and let me tell you...she is CUT! Her body is looking so hard. I was uber impressed! She wanted to look at my body and see how I am developing.

She took a look at my shoulders; they are developing and I'm seeing a ton of definition. She wants to add more shoulder exercises to create a "cap" and more back exercises to broaden out. She then looked at my quads and wants to create a "V" shape with those muscles. (When I stand with my legs together the quads should come in to the knees at a V) I really need to learn the names of these muscles! LOL! My calves and I have a very difficult relationship. I just do not have those gorgeous calve muscles, Kelly says, "its genetic" and there isn't really much I can do about it, but I'm going to up my weights and work them a little harder. We'll see if that makes much difference.

I think that the hardest thing for me has been that my expectations are just so high. I see pictures of competitors and fitness models and I just think that if I work out hard enough I'll look like them (now). In reality it takes YEARS to develop those bodies. Kelly said to me yesterday, to make that kind of transformation, I would need to be serious about training for a good TWO YEARS!

Every once in a while, I really start to doubt my efforts. I was telling Kelly yesterday, "I just don't want to get up there and make a fool of myself." She assured me that I won't. She said that in the novice competitions I will see a wide range of muscle development. I haven't been doing this very long at all and my body is not seasoned. I've got "baby muscles". Cute :::eye roll::: Ok, no sarcasm allowed; I just feel frustrated with my body in that I'm not seeing the progress I want to see (now). There's that pesty problem with patience.

Ok, so let me think about my progress:

I've lost over 30lbs in 8 months
I've gone from a size 8 to a size 2
I can run a 5K in under 30 minutes (where before it took me over 40)
I can do a REAL PUSH UP!!!!
I'm eating healthier and feeding my family better
I never miss a workout and totally enjoy it
I help motivate others and encourage my friends and family to live healthier

Not bad! I just need to be patient. BLAH! I have 17 weeks until competition day. I can do this! That's a lot of time to work on my body. Kelly says that I'm doing the work, now I just need to keep up the motivation! I can do this! I can do this! I need to have realistic expectations and know that I'm just starting out. I have to look back and see where I've come from and realize that I'm pushing myself and the progress is THERE!