I understand why last week sucked balls. For the men reading this blog, you might just want to skip this paragraph altogether, you have been warned. For the last month I have been on a new birth control and this pill made my body go insane. I was breaking out, I gained weight, my boobs got bigger (Robert didn’t mind that!), I was depressed and to cap it all off I basically had my period for 4 weeks. It wasn’t a flow for the 4 weeks, but for 2 of the 4, it wasn’t just spotting. It got to the point that I called my doctor back in Canada to make sure that I wasn’t having abnormal side-effects. Four days later she called me back to say that my body is “readjusting”. Well, the week that was hard as heck was technically the week before my period (not that I knew what was happening in my body cause it was so out of whack). So, mystery solved!!!

This week has been really good!! I went into my workout on Monday super focused and that turned into a really great workout! I have been struggling with the running aspect of boot camp–I was only able to job so far, which is only half of what the ladies do there. And being of the competitive person I am, I want to be able to run with the rest of them. On Monday I was able to run almost the entire way, keeping up with all the other ladies! It was such a great feeling. I am also getting really good at kicking my own ass when I workout. When the instructor tells us to work at our own pace, I found myself striving to go further, to work through the pain and not to give up.

I am going to end this blog post with a quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger, as I think I it’s inspiring and aptly puts the drive to break down your body to build a new one:

“A beginner does eight repetitions of a certain exercise with his maximum weight on the barbell. As soon as it hurts, he thinks about stopping. I work beyond this point, which means I tell my mind that as soon as it starts aching it is growing. Growing is something unusual for the body when you are over eighteen. The body isn’t used to ten, eleven, or twelve reps with a maximum weight. Then I do ten or fifteen sets of this in a row. No human body was ever prepared for this and suddenly it is making itself grow to handle this new challenge, growing through this pain area. Experiencing this pain in my muscles and aching and going on is my challenge. The last three or four reps is what makes the muscles grow. This area of pain divides a champion from someone who is not a champion. That’s what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no matter what happens. I have no fear of fainting. I do squats until I fall over and pass out. So what? It’s not going to kill me. I wake up five minutes later and I’m OK. A lot of other athletes are afraid of this. So they don’t pass out. They don’t go on.”