Relax Babe

I started 2016 with the goal of proving myself as the better X then anyone else. And I succeeded in a few things, and failed in others. But what I found was that this goal was inappropriate. I don't need to be better than anyone else but me, but the fallacy is that I will never be the best. So for 2017, I will dedicate my time to realizing my true and highest potential in giving. I will become dedicated to my health and striving to give everyone all the help to achieve their own health goals. I will become dedicated to my education and encouraging everyone else to follow their passions to the end. I will become dedicated to my friends and family, and allow myself the flexibility to provide love over hate. I want 100% of everything: I will get a PhD, I will get to 15% body fat, I will continue this blog to encourage others, I will donate my time to the DAS, Carter Blood Care, AORN, and Parkland. I will have it all. Except maybe sleep. Happy New Year y'all! <...

It took me 3 days to finish The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace by Lynn Povich. Actually, it took much longer than that, but once I get to a good spot, I stay up all night, eyes drooping, until I can no longer read, and I am anxious to pick up the book the next morning. So I started the book last week while I was procrastinating something else, and I finished the book just recently after spending hours last night flabbergasted that I had not already read this amazing book. For sure, I skipped a lot of the names and dates and who, what, where, when, but the why - that's the important part. Equality is not free. Half of the women who revolted lost marriages, if they were ever married, and I feel as though, whether or not this is a psychotic effect of my current obsessions, it is my duty to obtain a PhD quickly and change the face of nursing practice. I find it difficult to put into words what I am trying to say. But i...

Just because I thought it would be a cute title. Anyways. I wanted to go into more detail about how I figured out my macros for the day. I am going to cut like I am preparing for a show on May 1st. Bar none, there might be a show in May that I actually get to do. Either way, I get the experience. So I utilized Eric Helms' The Muscle and Strength Pyramid: Nutrition to figure out my baseline calories and macros, then Myfitnesspal to figure out my macros. Here we go. Eric says my baseline is pounds of body weight x 10 x activity level (slightly active) = 140 x 10 x 1.3 = 1820 calories/day. Cool cool, so what does that mean? He breaks up into cutting versus gaining, which only differs in the amount of grams of protein per body weight and finding a percentage of fat that works well with your diet, then the remaining calories go to carbs. As such - 154-182 g protein, 30-50 g fat, 159-293 g carbs. Okay cool cool, how do I get that? So I messed around with Myfitnesspal. Any...

Sounds pretty simple right? Today I had spare time and spent it rewriting my diet and figuring just exactly how to increase my carbs and decrease my fat for the New Year challenge. What's the New Year challenge? My personal goal to hit 15% body fat by May 1st. Why? Non-a-yas. Jk. Mostly because 15% body fat has been my overreaching goal for the past 2 years, simply unobtainable as I spend most of my days whining about being hungry, not working, working too much, or just not paying attention. Anyways. I'll write a post about the science behind my trainer Eric and Eric Helms' approach to dieting later, but for now, I want to educate you really quickly on the science behind food labels. They suck. Unless you understand them. So my fat % of my diet reaches all time highs of 40% some days. I like eggs. I like Quest bars. So I did some research today and was lucky enough to be able to sample Simply Protein bars before buying a 15 pack or deciding to switch. Back...

This morning I was grateful. I try to be grateful every morning, but this morning was especially different. Not just because I was able to wake up without an alarm, but because my body instinctively knew that I did not want to sleep in. Or maybe I'm crazy. I tried to turn over and sleep longer, aware that this would be the last time in a week, and potentially after next week not until mid-May, that I would be able to sleep without an alarm. But I could not do it. I was a little stressed that work would call me in, a little stressed that I had fallen asleep earlier without meal prepping, for whatever reason, I am grateful. I am grateful for the opportunity to work to build my dreams. I got my meal prep in before my work out, I went to my beautiful wonderful 24-hour bro gym and pumped out an awesome leg work out thanks to Neil Hill, and I even got a compliment on said pump. I am sitting here, not stressed about time, letting my hair dry, thinking about seeing my wonderful p...

This is a short post as I wrote a very long list for myself today and I am tired. It's too personal to share, however much I think it would help me to have it in writing, publicly. Based on the recommendations of Andy Frisella, MFCEO of 1st Phorm, I wrote out my ideal life. Not surprisingly, my ideal life is around 35 when I've accomplished what little I think is a huge feat at this point in my life. But that's still a lot of time to achieve more. Mostly because I listen to haters. Lol. Haters. I hate the word haters as much as I hate lol and yolo yet use them on a daily basis. #illiterate #betteradjectives I digress. I have spent my entire life in a paradox of confusion wherein I firmly believe that if I work hard, I can achieve anything (because my daddy told me so). At this point in my life, I truly believe that I can achieve half of wildest dreams, and it is entirely due to the fact that I made drastic changes in my diet, lifestyle, and support circle and found ...

    If I haven’t preached enough about self-care and self-love, I think it’s time for me to delve into priorities. See, the struggle with priorities is that only you can define them for yourself and they change like the wind.     One year ago, I would’ve told you that my priority was getting through the holidays will enough self-will to not completely destroy the mental mindset and body I had created over 12 months. This year, that is not a priority. While I still hope to not destroy myself, I know that I have spent the past 12 months gaining a new perspective wherein I have discovered and empowered my self-love to take precedence over whatever emotions of comfort I perceive holiday junk food to provide. It is not a critical action because it is now a habit.     Wow. That took 24 months. But the time passed no matter if I had created that goal and achieved it or not. Remember that.     But priorities shift and that’s an amazing...

I can’t remember when I forgot to love myself, but I can tell you it happened at a young age. Why? Because I have always been fearful. Of everything. Talking to people, wearing the wrong thing, losing items, being too talkative or being too bossy. It has taken me years of meditation and talking with others to learn that I am very self-conscious, to the point of paralysis, about every aspect of my life. I think it may be coupled with a few things, mostly my upbringing of the importance of obeying and my unparalleled passion to be useful. But my childhood environment and the values my parents instilled further pushed me into a sort of seclusion and introverted hell wherein even I did not care about my own ideas. A walking prison. When I realized I could not find myself in a man, it did not take me long to realize that nursing was the only profession for me. I lived to serve. I lived to be needed. I wanted to help if only to hear the words, "I couldn’t have done this without you...

Everybody always tells you to find what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. Technically, that's not correct, otherwise I'd be on a beach letting my mind rot. What they mean is that the work you put in will never feel boring or unwanted like the work you put in high school. And I think that's a bad comparison. I think you should work. I think you should want to work. And perhaps, someday, you'll realize what you truly want out of life and you'll make it happen (through work) and you'll get to the end and be satisfied. And that's when it's not "work" because you want to continue the struggle. Some people are truly lucky in that that purpose shows up early. I thought I was really lucky to figure out nursing was my calling before the end of high school (although it kinda shot me in the foot). And I thought I was really lucky to fall into my current position (although I went through so many rejections I almost didn't think...

People always talk about hitting rock bottom. I hit it. Everyone who is willing to make drastic changes hits it. We all need to feel desperate for change, willing to make the sacrifices of the day to make the life we want. But the difference is, is that in this desperation, we realize we are not entitled to the finished goal until we work. So I worked. I cried and I pushed and I regret a few things. But I worked. I worked off nearly 40 pounds while finishing nursing school and drinking every single chance I got. I ate less and less, hitting 1200 calories on a good day, but drinking that sugary sweet girly beer just to fall asleep. Dependency is fear. And no one likes to be afraid alone. All my friends welcomed my change, welcomed my new body, welcomed the complaining. As long as I still went out on the weekend, I was still everyone’s friend. So I graduated, lost a boyfriend due to drinking, and started working a 7/3 and found even better friends because now we all had the money to drin...

I am still in the process of making my diet work for me with 1st Phorm. Unfortunately it was so easy for me to copy and paste almost 2 years of myfitnesspal that I'm struggling to keep up and maintain sanity while changing everything in my diet. Did you know that 56 grams of tuna is 14 grams of protein and really only 54 calories?! But chicken is like, 130 calories for 24 grams of protein. I'm guestimating. And it makes sense. But in the moment I feel like I could only eat 56 grams of tuna even though 4 oz of chicken is sometimes not enough. Now I get it, why people laugh when I ask if they count macros. If every day is different, there's a little bit more time involved. I'm still on myfitnesspal, but as school takes up time and work and meal prep clash, all of my social media time is eaten up just when I want it to take off. So please, if you're so interested in my struggle: myfitnesspal maryanderson01  snapchat maanderson9 (body/booty ...

One of the most important things I have learned in the last 2 years is that restarting cannot be attached to a person, place, or thing, because those things are not constant. So I titled this fresh start, but truly the fresh start happened a couple weeks ago when I realized that I was beginning to get unhappy with my inability to stay on track. I always came up with an excuse like, "I'm living for now," but the truth is that I lost my motivation for greater things. So how did I get the motivation back? Unhappiness. Unfortunately it is not a disease nor can people around you tell you that you are unhappy. You have to be available to yourself and comprehend your emotions well enough to understand that unhappiness can be fixed - but you are the only one with the prescription. When I said no to the cake I knew I was back. My father's cake on special occasions was my last sugar craving. (Tortilla chips were the last carb craving, lost that after about 8 months at the pea...