What does it take to run an Instagram account and blog? A LOT. Waaaay more than I knew when I started.
I had no idea when I started FLATCHESTFLATABS back in April that I would be spending 3-5 hours per day working on my account. Whether that be writing posts, taking pictures, brainstorming ideas, responding to comments, answering DMs, interacting with other accounts, etc. I did not know that running this account would become my life. I love doing this. I love interacting with the rest of the fitness community. I love inspiring others and motivating them to actually start what they've always wanted to do. But, there's also a lot of stress involved, especially over the past semester of school. Trying to balance school AND family AND my own fitness AND this account is rough, and it's taken a bit of a toll. I couldn’t be more grateful for each and every one of you for encouraging me every day! As much effort as it takes, thank you for giving me that work and the confidence that comes along with it. But here’s the sad part: School starts up again in less than two weeks. Don’t get me wrong--school is NOT the sad part. I love school and honestly, I’m a student far more than I’m an athlete. Academics always have and always will take precedence in my life. That’s one reason why starting next week, this account and blog will be taking a backseat. I promise I WILL get back to this account, but it may not be for another few months...or a year...or two. And besides, there's another reason for backing off—I'm still a minor. While most of you are incredibly sweet and constantly wishing me the best, trying to be a fitness influencer at fifteen also brings in its fair share of people you probably understand I don't want to interact with. So in addition to my inactivity for mental health reasons and to concentrate on school, I also want to wait until I'm a little bit older before I'm fully active again. I might post here and there, and I might not, but I will DEFINITELY be back when I'm 18. Thank you all again for sticking with me this far, and I hope that you will continue to stick with me while I make my mental health a priority and put this extra stressor in the backseat for a while. Here are some belated show pictures (the professional ones just came in) and I'll see you all on the other side! -Hannah :)
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Since my show, I’ve put on roughly 7 pounds. This doesn’t seem like that much, but it’s certainly not something I’m proud of. I can tell in both how I look and how I feel that the weight I’ve put on has not been the right weight. It’s probably mostly water, but I’m sure there’s more than a little bit of fat too. As much as I’ve enjoyed the past few months, I don’t think this can be my lifestyle. I’ve been attempting a mini “bulking season” but honestly I’m so uncomfortable with myself that I can’t keep going with this. In order to feel confident, I need to be lean, even if it takes a whole lot longer to put muscle on by doing it that way.
My New Year’s resolution is to start cutting again. Nothing intense or restrictive, but just something to make myself feel comfortable and proud again. But this “New Year’s” resolution doesn’t actually start today. It starts on January 7th when I go back to school. Right now, I’m still on break, and I’m going to enjoy it. I won’t go too crazy, but I’m also not going to change my calories yet. I will still be 100% consistent and as accurate as I can until then, just not as restrictive. But on that day, it’s on. I may just limit my calories, or stop counting those from exercise, or I might change the way I’m tracking my food (grams of macronutrients instead of calories and percents). We’ll see when the time comes and I’ll experiment a little bit until I find something sustainable that I’m happy with. Yesterday was not a good food day. I went out for brunch, and then had a high-calorie, fatty dinner. Instead of stopping eating, I figured, “It’s New Year’s Eve” and kept going by munching (which I could not accurately track). I also didn’t work out. But you know what, that’s one day. The fact that going out of my net calories or straying this far from my macros is a rare occasion shows that I haven’t totally gone off the rails. And there’s no way I will let myself get there. Another goal for the year: go easy on myself. I hold myself to really high expectations that are almost impossible to meet. I try as hard as I can, but perfection isn’t always possible. I need to learn how to not feel guilty for things that don’t even really matter. Going along with that, I need to learn to stress less. It’s not good for my mind or my body, and it only hinders my progress in the end. When setting your New Year's resolutions, I suggest trying to find things that will make a difference in your life, but that are also do-able. The more you feel like you can accomplish your goals, the more likely they are to get done. Take it one step at a time, pushing yourself just a little bit further until you get to where you want to be. Happy New Year, guys, see you in 2019! -Hannah :) Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and there are a few options for what you can do when surrounded with food:
Option 1: Stick to your diet and avoid most of the food Obviously, this option is very restrictive and would NOT be my first choice. Sure, you can feel good about staying strong while everyone else is eating crap, BUT it's not going to be good for you mentally in the long run. Think, you're going to be surrounded by all of this delicious-smelling food, that you KNOW tastes amazing, and by friends and family EATING and ENJOYING it. Not only does this put a huge damper on the holiday season, but it's also going to give you cravings. Whether you fill those cravings tomorrow, when you say "screw it" or you fill them over the next few weeks, in then end, you'll probably give in and feel awful about going off of your diet (I know I would). So let's move on to the next option. Option 2: IIFYM (If It Fits Your Macros) You guys probably know by now how much I LOVE IIFYM. You can work in all of your favorite foods without the stress or the guilt. But here's the thing. This works great on regular occasions, when you're trying to fit in one meal or snack here and there, but it probably doesn't work as well on a day like tomorrow. To fit more than a normal day's worth of calories into a single meal, you'd need to do A LOT of extra cardio. But wait, then your macros are still off. So you'd need to also eat quite a bit of extra protein in order to still follow your daily macronutrient percentage ranges. Which means even MORE calories and MORE cardio! That's really just not feasible all for one day when you're already probably busy and trying to enjoy yourself. You could eat lower calories on the surrounding days, do the cardio a little bit at a time throughout the week, and eat a higher protein percentage during the rest of your meals, and that works, for sure. It's still quite a bit of work and makes the holiday much less enjoyable, but it is do-able if you space it out and plan. But for a one-day, high-calorie day like Thanksgiving, it's still not my first choice. Option 3: Just enjoy and don't worry about it The third option, and the one that I am going with, is to just ENJOY. No matter what I do, I'm going to be doing a lot of guesstimating. And if I want to have a good day with my family, I don't want to stress. This happens once a year, so really, it's not going to affect me in the long run. Of course, you still don't want to say "Well, since I don't care what I eat today, I might as well eat more than I would on a normal Thanksgiving and completely go all out"—you still want to be somewhat cognizant—but strictly watching every calorie is just going to make the holiday unenjoyable. Your physical health is important, but so is your mental health, and one should not be sacrificed for the other, which is why for days like these, I like to follow option 3. I made myself a promise today to just ENJOY. I don’t need to stress about overeating, especially not if I’m going to overeat no matter what. So, yes, I “entered my food,” but I entered it as “thanksgiving crap” to just encompass the whole load. One day won’t kill me, especially not if it spikes my metabolism and my mood. Plus, I'll a GREAT, long, heavy lifting session tomorrow to make good use of (some of) the extra calories. So LIVE A LITTLE and enjoy your thanksgiving because a HAPPY thanksgiving is a HEALTHY thanksgiving! -Hannah :) Some of you have been asking, “what’s next?” and “are you going to compete again?” and although the answers to the questions aren’t entirely clear yet, I do have an idea of what the future holds for me. Right now, I’m starting a “bulking” season. I don’t totally know what this entails, but I do know that I will be allowing myself to put on a little bit of fat in exchange for a lot more muscle. That way, the next time I cut down--whether in 3 months or 3 years--I will be in much better shape than I was this time around. As far as competing again goes, I would love to! I think I have so much potential that I’m ready to unlock, however, I likely won’t be competing again for a long while. Prep was really hard on my family, especially since there were two of us doing it, and it caused a lot of rifts. It has been decided that I am not allowed to compete again until after I have left the house. That’s 2.5 years from now, so if I am competing again, it won’t be until then. But that’s certainly a lot of time to make some big improvements!
-Hannah :) I said I would never do this again all the way up until yesterday. Now, I’m not so sure. I feel like I have a lot of potential if I take a long off season and build up some muscle. Prep is brutal but the show-day high may be worth it.
I want to give a huge shoutout to my dad. He competed in 6 classes and brought back 6 pieces of hardware. He worked so hard and went through so much to accomplish this and I’m incredibly proud of everything he’s done. Thank you to my mom also for being a huge motivation to me, always being the one to relieve my prep-related stress, and doing so much to help me get ready for this show. And then there’s my trainer, Mike Marconi, who I clearly couldn’t have done this without. He was the one who saw the potential in me and knew exactly how to bring it out. My posing coach, Annie Gregory is the one who gave me my stage presence. When I first went to her, my posing was horrid. I had no clue what I was doing. I couldn’t have done this without her either. And of course, she competed yesterday as well, and won Overall, so a huge congrats to her for all of her efforts! This really was a great experience, and even though I was tired, hungry, and not in the best of moods (an understatement) for a good portion of prep, I think in the end it may have been worth it. I learned new things about myself, about what I could do and how far I would go to accomplish my goals. And that's pretty dang far. I gained a new sense of confidence, not just in my physical body, but also in my mental state. While I knew I had a lot of drive before, I can clearly see my determination now and my ability to stay consistent and keep working toward something when I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. I tend to be a pretty humble person, but after what I just accomplished, I'm not going to lie, I think I'm pretty awesome and that I just proved it. Whether or not I will compete again is not certain, but I have been told that I need to wait at least until I'm out of the house (dealing with hangry Hannah is NOT fun and I totally understand that). And I think that's for the better because it will allow me to put on some more muscle (maybe if I actually do a "bulking season" rather than trying to gain muscle while ALSO staying lean, I'll be able to actually make some big improvements during off-season) and be even more prepared for the next time I wish to compete. Plus, of course, time to get a job to actually help PAY for the competition—another important factor contributing to when and if I do this again. Anyway, to sum this all up, I'm feeling INCREDIBLE right now—physically, mentally, emotionally, whatever else there is—and cannot wait to go shove my face with the foods I've been missing out on for four months ;). -Hannah :) Post-Pre-Judging Thoughts:
I’m feeling so happy about my performance right now! There’s nothing I can do about the length of time I’ve been lifting, but today was the day to show off. And I did just that. I think that my stage presence was incredible and even though I could have looked better, I don’t think I could have done much better as far as confidence goes. 4.5 hours until finals! Post-Finals Thoughts: I feel so beyond incredible right now. I don’t care that I got 3 hours of sleep and have been running on adrenaline all day, that I have strange seemingly irremovable dark tan spots everywhere, or that my stomach is so full with a burger, fries, and ice cream that it’s about ready to explode. I am ECSTATIC! I placed 1st (duh, I was the only one) in teen figure and 5th in novice figure (which is pretty good considering I’ve been lifting for less than 2 years and I was up against people much older than me with much more experience). I’m not sure if I can keep my eyes open for one more single second, so I’ll give you more details in the morning, but as of right now, I am feeling AMAZING and so, so proud of myself, my dad, and everyone else who participated. ❤️ -Hannah L :) I've been very busy lately between preparing for my show and keeping up with school, but one of those is about to end. TOMORROW is my contest! I'm so incredibly excited to get up on stage and show the world what I've worked so hard for the past four months—and to a greater extent, two years—of my life. Here's where I'm at right now in the process: -No deodorant -No underwear -No makeup -Sticky orange spray tan -Peeing into a cup -Running on 1140 calories BUT it’s all worth it because I know that tomorrow I’ll KILL IT on stage! 💪🏻 I’m so ready to do this thing! -Hannah :) I can’t believe that in less than four weeks, I’m going to be up on stage taking part in a fitness competition at the age of 15. I never would have imagined that I would be able to stay this dedicated to something and sacrifice so much. Less than two years ago, I had never strength trained a day in my life. I had never watched my diet or considered the effect of everything I was putting in my mouth. But now here I am. And I’ve learned that although it can be hard at times--and by “hard” I mean completely and absolutely brutal on both mind and body,--I’m getting through it. I’m pushing through until the end, reaching toward success. If I’ve learned one thing from this experience, it’s that I’m capable of so much more than I ever thought possible. But it’s not over yet! In these last 25 days, I’m going to stay strong and confident until the end. Because now, it’s crunch time💪🏻🔥 -Hannah :) LOOK AT THIS PROGRESS! Day 1 (top) vs Day 27 (bottom). I'm still far from contest-ready, but I'm definitely improving.
Here's your daily reminder that practice makes perfect (well, better anyway). -Hannah :) When I was in my AP Microeconomics class this morning, we were talking about the basics of economics, and it reminded me of my fitness journey. Mainly that there’s always a tradeoff. There is no such thing as “free.” Something can be “zero price,” as in not worth money, but it can’t be “zero cost.” EVERYTHING has a cost. Often, that cost is just “time”. We have to give up a certain amount of our time in order to get what we want. But I’ve talked so much about setting priorities recently that I’m not going to do it again. Instead, I’m going to talk about a different tradeoff: future investment vs immediate gratification.
I’m not going to pretend that I enjoy working out or eating healthy. Sure, sometimes I find working out fun or I feel like eating clean foods. But honestly, most of the time it sucks. I put myself through it because I’m interested in the long term. By investing my time and energy now, I’m creating a happier, healthier, and probably longer future for myself. I’m willing to give up afternoon TV time for a difficult workout and a delicious pizza for chicken breast and broccoli. But that’s the tradeoff, and to me, it's worth it. You can choose to invest in your future, live entirely in the now, or do something in the middle. That’s up to you, but one thing to remember is that there is ALWAYS a cost. Nothing comes for free, so set your goals and figure out what you’re willing to do in order to get there. Then, you WILL be successful! -Hannah :) |
AuthorMy name is Hannah Lehrfeld and I am a high school student with a strong passion for fitness. Archives
January 2019
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