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Hi, my name is Naomi, and I use to be a member of the Clean Plate Club.
(Insert lackluster greeting in unison, here.)
I earned my stripes young gaining my “good eater” badge at family gatherings whenever my father decided to take me. It was important for me to impress the family I rarely saw and to let them know that in their absence, I was still fulfilling the family name. That as a Bullock, though my mother resembled Charlize Theron, I could still eat like them. Little did they know I would train at home using my mother’s affliction for bacon and butter as practice for the barbecue big leagues. I would hose down a round of firsts, knowing it was merely a doorway to seconds, and never savoring the moment or meal. The congratulatory pats on the head, the whispered comments of disbelief that the only half white relative at the gathering had put away more than most of the men, were signs of acceptance. I remember once being challenged by my father’s mother, who never missed a chance to dig at her sons poor choices in women, even the one he decided to have child with. As expected, a passing family memeber had noticed my plate running low on one side: an immediate call to action.
“You want some more baby girl?” she had asked heartily.
“Oh no, she doesn’t eat like the rest of us,” my grandmother interjected. “She eats that valley girl food,” her mouth Grinched up, curling at the tips as she sat two feet away.
“Actually, that’s her second plate of food,” my father quipped sharply at her as he walked by. Then slowly, for full effect, I piled a threatening amount of three cheese mac onto my wilting spork, shoveled in my mouth, and grinned at her through cheddar chunked gums.
To me, to eat, was to be black enough. I over consumed to overcompensate and my generally balanced diet quickly turned. Broccoli with cheese soon became cheese with broccoli. Then, just cheese. At times I would eat certain foods like stuffing or mashed potatoes, just for the gravy. Had it been acceptable to use the dressing boat as a coffee mug, I would have gladly done so at a full table.
Time passed and my lethargy towards physical activity grew in tandem with my sedentary lifestyle. At sixteen, I joined the track team for a month, just to get a gym waiver. As fate would have it, I became a Nike marathoner at 17 and then fell tragically ill to a liver threatening strain of Mono at 18. Or so the waiver’s said. I graduated on time and overweight.
“With great alcohol,comes great responsibility” said no freshman ever. Consumed by the fear of gaining the dreaded freshman fifteen , I tried to avoid the dairy soaked hot dishes, Fried Fish Fridays and beer braised brats of my new Wisconsin school. Needless to say I got big.
I got 5’5, 200 pounds big.
By the end of my second year I had dedicated myself to a Creative Writing degree and was accepted into the McNair Scholars program where I spent a summer on campus completing undergraduate research. I read, I researched, I wrote, I raged, I ripped up, and I re wrote again for weeks. In between piecing together the longest paper of my undergraduate life, I made time to “hit” the gym. I would sit on a the stationary bike, flip through a Cosmo, and wait until the moisture made me uncomfortable which usually occurred around twenty six minutes. I would then promptly punish my lower back with ten minutes of poorly preformed abdominal moves and call it a day. Then it was back to the dorm to fight the peg of my creative brain back into an academic hole.
Mid summer, my research hit a bump where the nearest location of my most necessary piece of literature was located across the equator and meridian, in a New Zealand library. The online copy was too expensive for the recently underfunded program to purchase, but I desperatley needed the piece.
“So your saying you can buy it online?” my cohort colleague had prompted as I explained my problem aloud.
“I’m saying it can be bought online. I on the other hand, am broke.”
“Well if it’s online, some geeked out scholar probably torrented it already,”I waited. “Torrent, as in you can search the document as a .zip or .bit file and download it,” I waited. “For free.” The rarest of all undergraduate vocabulary.
Spending the night spiraling down a rabbit hole of internet files, I had gotten curious about the hype of the Insanity program. On June 23rd, exactly one month before my twentieth birthday I decided to switch up my workout. Honestly what had happened was I had felt lazy, and seeing that the “Fit Test” on the Insanity program was only 20 minutes, I decided to settle for that as my workout for the day. I put on the workout bra I had found in one of the communal campus clothing exchange bins, managed to fit myself into a pair of shorts from my 5th grade basketball league (I had been big for a while now) and without shoes, headed downstairs into an unused common room. For the next twenty minutes I thoroughly blacked out lost in a sea of sweat, tears and motion, pounding the floor with a vigor I never knew I possessed. The video ended and I crumpled into a crippled mess onto soaked carpet. I wasn’t entierly sure what had just happened to my being or if it was even still intact, but what I did know is that I had just awoken a force. I had proven to myself that I could do what I thought was the impossible. I no longer had an excuse to ever give anything less again.
Two weeks went by and I was down 10 pounds. My roommate noticed.
Two months went by and I was down 30 pounds. My cohort noticed.
Two years and one semester in Prague later I was down 70 pounds.
Everyone noticed.
Needless to say,I have wholeheartedly adopted a life of fitness. It has become my daily source of triumph, knowing that every morning I will present myself with the challenge of battling and conquering my own mind. I am constantly asked what my secret is, but the secret is: there are no secrets. There is only hard work, patience, and a dedication to the self that requires a daily commitment and renewal. From the beginning of my fitness journey I have since had the honor of helping my mother beat diabetes by guiding her fitness fight; she is down over 60 pounds and has reclaimed her life.
From being invited to join one of the few female football teams in the America, the New York Sharks, to acquiring the respect of my fitness professional peers, my life of fitness has been nothing short of an adventure. Having found the confidence and strength to stand proudly in a male dominated industry, with the will to constantly better myself, and the desire to share these tools with everyone I meet so that they may have their own revelations, has been the driving force behind my desire to become a household name in fitness.
I am working hard to educate myself on all aspects of fitness, still torrenting as much information as possible in order to make it to the next step. I believe where there is a will, there is a way, but I realize that sometimes there is equal strength in asking for help as there is in offering it. Though I can download the textbooks, visit the libraries daily, and consult my peers in the industry, certifications are something you must prove you’ve earned, which means paying for and passing the nationally recognized tests. I am searching for support in building my fitness dream so that I may one day give it all back by being one of the most credible and respected personal trainers in the field and my first step is educating myself on a multitude of fitness modalities through certifications in order to broaden my scope of information through expeiriential learning.
Through fitness I have found the confidence, empowerment and self acceptance I once searched for in seconds and thirds at the table. I believe that education is a currency meant to be continuously circulated. Everything I learn, I plan to teach back to my future clients and trainees because I believe that it is in that initial moment of revelation, where we realize our full potential and let go of our fear of success, that we may finally savor our first bite of life.
(Insert lackluster greeting in unison, here.)
I earned my stripes young gaining my “good eater” badge at family gatherings whenever my father decided to take me. It was important for me to impress the family I rarely saw and to let them know that in their absence, I was still fulfilling the family name. That as a Bullock, though my mother resembled Charlize Theron, I could still eat like them. Little did they know I would train at home using my mother’s affliction for bacon and butter as practice for the barbecue big leagues. I would hose down a round of firsts, knowing it was merely a doorway to seconds, and never savoring the moment or meal. The congratulatory pats on the head, the whispered comments of disbelief that the only half white relative at the gathering had put away more than most of the men, were signs of acceptance. I remember once being challenged by my father’s mother, who never missed a chance to dig at her sons poor choices in women, even the one he decided to have child with. As expected, a passing family memeber had noticed my plate running low on one side: an immediate call to action.
“You want some more baby girl?” she had asked heartily.
“Oh no, she doesn’t eat like the rest of us,” my grandmother interjected. “She eats that valley girl food,” her mouth Grinched up, curling at the tips as she sat two feet away.
“Actually, that’s her second plate of food,” my father quipped sharply at her as he walked by. Then slowly, for full effect, I piled a threatening amount of three cheese mac onto my wilting spork, shoveled in my mouth, and grinned at her through cheddar chunked gums.
To me, to eat, was to be black enough. I over consumed to overcompensate and my generally balanced diet quickly turned. Broccoli with cheese soon became cheese with broccoli. Then, just cheese. At times I would eat certain foods like stuffing or mashed potatoes, just for the gravy. Had it been acceptable to use the dressing boat as a coffee mug, I would have gladly done so at a full table.
Time passed and my lethargy towards physical activity grew in tandem with my sedentary lifestyle. At sixteen, I joined the track team for a month, just to get a gym waiver. As fate would have it, I became a Nike marathoner at 17 and then fell tragically ill to a liver threatening strain of Mono at 18. Or so the waiver’s said. I graduated on time and overweight.
“With great alcohol,comes great responsibility” said no freshman ever. Consumed by the fear of gaining the dreaded freshman fifteen , I tried to avoid the dairy soaked hot dishes, Fried Fish Fridays and beer braised brats of my new Wisconsin school. Needless to say I got big.
I got 5’5, 200 pounds big.
By the end of my second year I had dedicated myself to a Creative Writing degree and was accepted into the McNair Scholars program where I spent a summer on campus completing undergraduate research. I read, I researched, I wrote, I raged, I ripped up, and I re wrote again for weeks. In between piecing together the longest paper of my undergraduate life, I made time to “hit” the gym. I would sit on a the stationary bike, flip through a Cosmo, and wait until the moisture made me uncomfortable which usually occurred around twenty six minutes. I would then promptly punish my lower back with ten minutes of poorly preformed abdominal moves and call it a day. Then it was back to the dorm to fight the peg of my creative brain back into an academic hole.
Mid summer, my research hit a bump where the nearest location of my most necessary piece of literature was located across the equator and meridian, in a New Zealand library. The online copy was too expensive for the recently underfunded program to purchase, but I desperatley needed the piece.
“So your saying you can buy it online?” my cohort colleague had prompted as I explained my problem aloud.
“I’m saying it can be bought online. I on the other hand, am broke.”
“Well if it’s online, some geeked out scholar probably torrented it already,”I waited. “Torrent, as in you can search the document as a .zip or .bit file and download it,” I waited. “For free.” The rarest of all undergraduate vocabulary.
Spending the night spiraling down a rabbit hole of internet files, I had gotten curious about the hype of the Insanity program. On June 23rd, exactly one month before my twentieth birthday I decided to switch up my workout. Honestly what had happened was I had felt lazy, and seeing that the “Fit Test” on the Insanity program was only 20 minutes, I decided to settle for that as my workout for the day. I put on the workout bra I had found in one of the communal campus clothing exchange bins, managed to fit myself into a pair of shorts from my 5th grade basketball league (I had been big for a while now) and without shoes, headed downstairs into an unused common room. For the next twenty minutes I thoroughly blacked out lost in a sea of sweat, tears and motion, pounding the floor with a vigor I never knew I possessed. The video ended and I crumpled into a crippled mess onto soaked carpet. I wasn’t entierly sure what had just happened to my being or if it was even still intact, but what I did know is that I had just awoken a force. I had proven to myself that I could do what I thought was the impossible. I no longer had an excuse to ever give anything less again.
Two weeks went by and I was down 10 pounds. My roommate noticed.
Two months went by and I was down 30 pounds. My cohort noticed.
Two years and one semester in Prague later I was down 70 pounds.
Everyone noticed.
Needless to say,I have wholeheartedly adopted a life of fitness. It has become my daily source of triumph, knowing that every morning I will present myself with the challenge of battling and conquering my own mind. I am constantly asked what my secret is, but the secret is: there are no secrets. There is only hard work, patience, and a dedication to the self that requires a daily commitment and renewal. From the beginning of my fitness journey I have since had the honor of helping my mother beat diabetes by guiding her fitness fight; she is down over 60 pounds and has reclaimed her life.
From being invited to join one of the few female football teams in the America, the New York Sharks, to acquiring the respect of my fitness professional peers, my life of fitness has been nothing short of an adventure. Having found the confidence and strength to stand proudly in a male dominated industry, with the will to constantly better myself, and the desire to share these tools with everyone I meet so that they may have their own revelations, has been the driving force behind my desire to become a household name in fitness.
I am working hard to educate myself on all aspects of fitness, still torrenting as much information as possible in order to make it to the next step. I believe where there is a will, there is a way, but I realize that sometimes there is equal strength in asking for help as there is in offering it. Though I can download the textbooks, visit the libraries daily, and consult my peers in the industry, certifications are something you must prove you’ve earned, which means paying for and passing the nationally recognized tests. I am searching for support in building my fitness dream so that I may one day give it all back by being one of the most credible and respected personal trainers in the field and my first step is educating myself on a multitude of fitness modalities through certifications in order to broaden my scope of information through expeiriential learning.
Through fitness I have found the confidence, empowerment and self acceptance I once searched for in seconds and thirds at the table. I believe that education is a currency meant to be continuously circulated. Everything I learn, I plan to teach back to my future clients and trainees because I believe that it is in that initial moment of revelation, where we realize our full potential and let go of our fear of success, that we may finally savor our first bite of life.
Organizer
Naomi Bauxprey Lime
Organizer
Los Angeles, CA
