Second place 1: Kristen M

Dear Mistress Krista,

I feel a little strange saying this (mainly because I’m uncomfortable tooting my own horn…I prefer to avoid being the center of attention), but I’d like to share my story with you as part of your Stumptuous Fitness Model contest.

My journey of self-reclamation began in January 2007. I was smack in the middle of what I now affectionately call The Great Insanity: a six-month period of clinical depression brought on by accumulated disappointments, emotional upheavals, and obsessive self-reflection and criticism. I had grown to loathe my job as a grant writer for a local non-profit agency. One of my oldest and dearest friends met the love of his life in September 2006; he moved to Rhode Island with his new partner in November of that same year. That was akin to a spiritual amputation for me. He had been the last of my really close friends in the area where I lived. For someone who is fairly reserved and not prone to trust easily, meeting new people and making new friends can be difficult for me. Damn my introverted tendencies! I also hated the area where I lived. I had grown up there and had sworn that after I graduated from high school, I would never go back. Needless to say, things did not go according to plan and I found myself back in my hometown after finishing graduate school.

I was not happy.

Being a contemplative, introverted type, I began to think about my unhappiness. I thought about how all my friends had somehow done the impossible and escaped the black hole of our hometown. I thought about how I was the only one left and how alone and friendless I felt. I thought about how all my friends had found someone—and more importantly, a good someone—to love and be loved by, while I was still the stalwart single girl. I though about how lonely that made me feel. I thought about how emotionally exhausted I was and how nice it would have been to have someone else’s strength to bolster me. In the past, I had always been able to handle whatever life threw at me. (Not always graciously or gracefully, but I always made it through whatever the situation was.) I was battle-tested and resilient and knew how to take care of myself, thank you very much. But the cumulative effects of the disappointments and emotional upheavals I endured during 2006 finally took their toll on me. Each time life knocked me down, it took a little longer for me to get back up and I never quite recovered the emotional footing I’d had previously. By year’s end, my physical and emotional strength was spent, my defenses totally shattered. I was hurting badly but didn’t know how to make myself better. I felt defeated. Numb. I didn’t know if I had the strength to pull myself out of the depression and, quite frankly, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to. I gradually withdrew into myself, effectively shutting out my family and friends. Activities that I once loved no longer held any appeal for me. I even dropped out of my kung-fu class, which until that point had been a source of pure pleasure for me. Full of boys whom I adored and who thought it was pretty darn cool to finally have a girl in class again, it was one of the few outlets I had to help keep me sane.

Outside the physical release of my kung-fu class, my main coping mechanism for the shit pile year that was 2006 was an old favorite: food. I was the queen of emotional eating. Dissatisfied with your job? Have a Snickers; it satisfies. Self-confidence non-existent? Feeling like a failure in every aspect of your life? No worries! Duncan Hines cake mixes make cake baking practically foolproof, and you can’t beat the tasty end result. Feeling lonely, friendless, unloved, and generally unfulfilled? Hershey’s has Hugs if you’re aching for them. Food was my constant: it never disappointed me, gave me a hard time, or broke my heart. Alone and hurting, with the continuous loop of my failures and disappointments playing in my head, food was my preferred means of self-medication. Some people drink, some turn to drugs. I ate. By the end of the year, the results of my self-medication were evident. My backside had reached epic proportions. Images of my fat ass and ballooning jean size added themselves to the criticism loop in my head, feeding my self-loathing, low self-esteem, and lost self-confidence. I didn’t recognize the defeated, listless, bloated person whose dull eyes stared back at me from the mirror every morning. I disgusted myself.

At the end of January 2007, I’d had enough. Somewhere within me lurked enough of my old spunky self to realize that drastic measures were in order. My former college roommate was in much the same situation, so we formed our own Biggest Loser Club and endeavored to get fit, whatever that meant to us personally. Slowly, very slowly, my little inner warrior got up, dusted herself off, rummaged around for her sword and shield, clapped her helmet on, and got ready for some serious ass-whupping business.

First on the list: kitchen cleansing. Armed with a large garbage bag, I emptied my cabinets, refrigerator, and freezer of anything that was clearly over-processed. You know what I’m talking about: foods that have the word “enriched” before half the ingredients listed on the back. I chucked sodas, cookies, freezer-burned microwave dinners, and every last bit of chocolate in my house. (That last one was painful. I took a brief moment to mourn.) I renounced fast food. Eating out became a once-a-month treat instead of a twice-a-week practice. I began planning my weekly meals, buying more fresh fruits and vegetables, watching my portion sizes, and paying attention to my macronutrient intake. I discovered what I had known all along: I like to put the right things in my mouth. I enjoy healthy food. But I had gotten lazy and allowed the appearance of convenience in processed foods to lead me astray.

Next up: a shiny new exercise routine. No more would I be a lazy, couch-loving slug! I committed to walking 4 nights a week, for at least 2 miles per session. (Obviously, I don’t believe in easing into new routines.) I re-entered my kung-fu class, which took up another 2 nights per week and had the additional benefit of lots of body-weight only exercises. I won’t lie to you—I thought I would die that first month. Talk about a shock to the system. But I persevered and saw steady improvements in my stamina and strength. My depression also started to lift as the exercise helped to change my body and stabilize my moods. It took another two months, but by the end of March 2007 I had clawed my way out of the emotional abyss of the previous six months. And I had done it without the use of medications. By channeling my frustrations and using them to fuel my exercise, I avoided falling back into my destructive pattern of binge eating.
I stuck to my new lifestyle changes until August 2007. On August 5, I tested for and received the second-level sash in my kung-fu system. By that time I had lost fifty-five pounds—five pounds shy of my original sixty-pound weight-loss goal. Week after week after my test I would stare at the scale, silently cursing those last stubborn five pounds, and week after week they continued to mock me. I walked harder, faster, and for longer distances. I trimmed calories from my daily intake. I attended my kung-fu class three nights a week. In short, I busted my ass…to no avail. My body steadfastly refused to drop those last five pounds. My little inner warrior began contemplating the merits of sacrificing some of the neighborhood feral cats to a long-forgotten god (or several, if that was what it would take to make those last five pounds go away). Not wanting to be labeled as the Neighborhood Psycho and thrown in jail for cruelty to animals, I settled on a less messy, more animal friendly plan to force my body from its adapted comfort zone.

I decided to start weightlifting.

And I don’t mean squatting with cute little pink five-pound weights. I wanted to learn how to squat with a loaded barbell across my back, damnit! I went on a tear searching for good, reliable information regarding weightlifting exercises and how to develop a routine. I bought and read the second edition of Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore. I poured over the training and nutrition pages on Stumptuous.com, Exrx.net, and other similar sites. I read weightlifting blogs. I revamped my nutrition program to support my eventual weightlifting routine.

Around the same time as I immersed myself in this sea of weightlifting information, my kung-fu class underwent a major transition. My instructor of three years announced plans to move to California. Uncertainty regarding the future of class ruled for a few months, but resolved itself when an upper-ranking student (one of the few with enough rank to teach) moved back to town for job-related reasons. We all breathed a sigh of relief; class was saved. In an added bit of serendipity, our new instructor had been an avid weightlifter since high school. His younger brother held (and to my knowledge, still holds) all kinds of junior powerlifting records. Perfect. I asked him if I could bounce some ideas off of him regarding a weightlifting routine. Imagine my surprise when, at our next class, he handed me a routine he’d developed for me and took time after class to demonstrate the exercises for me.

Kristen demonstrates her OL form.

With that, I was off and running. Armed with a barbell for squats, a pair of adjustable dumbbells, and a yoga ball that served as my bench, I began lifting twice a week. I remember rolling out of bed the day after my first weightlifting workout and laughing because I felt like I’d been squashed by a giant. My entire body was sore and I was delighted. Aside from the soreness, which passed surprisingly quickly, I felt great. From that day on, I was hooked. Over the next several months, I progressively increased the weight I lifted during the large compound exercises like the squat and the bench press. I also made good, if slower, progress in smaller isolation exercises. I loved the way my body adapted to the stresses I put it under, and I always got a little giddy when I was able to increase my work set weight. And, of course, it didn’t hurt that I could see the results of weightlifting in my physique. I had muscle again! Everywhere! Even in my back! And those last stubborn five pounds? They fell away, along with a lot more weight. It was amazing.

Another amazing thing happened during my first few months of weightlifting. As my technique improved and the weight I could lift increased, my self-confidence (which was practically non-existent due to the crumminess of the previous two years) slowly returned and the hurts, self-criticisms, and obsessive reflection that occupied so much of my headspace slowly fell away, too: the girls at the gym who called me butch and unfeminine for lifting heavier weights. All the years I hated my body because I never measured up to the airbrushed flawlessness of the latest “feminine idea,” whatever the hell that meant at the time. The horrible old bat working as a department store cashier who, when I showed her a dress and asked if the store had it in a larger size, looked me up and down and in her best withering tone said, “Oh no, dear. This designer doesn’t work in sizes larger than this. Maybe you should try the plus size department.” (I needed a size 12.) The last boy who broke my heart.

As of this writing, I have lost a total of seventy-five pounds. I attend my kung-fu class twice a week and am working toward my third-level sash. Three times a week I perform a full-body weightlifting routine. I just bought an Olympic weightlifting set and am happily learning to deadlift and clean, taught by the same chap who designed my original routine and who has patiently endured my questions and requests ranging from “Hey, could you check my squat form?” to “I’m supposed to lift my elbows how high in the rack position? Is the bar supposed to roll back onto my throat and block my airway?” to, most recently, “Where can I find five-pound plastic practice weights for my weight set?” He might just be humoring me because he thinks I’m crazy, but I’m okay with that. And somewhere in there I manage to squeeze in some cardio/conditioning work, although that’s something I admittedly need to do more of.

I’ve come a long way from that dark place of December 2006, and I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. Friends, family, and co-workers now ask for my advice regarding weight loss, diet, and weightlifting; several have even expressed an interest in learning how to lift free weights. Most often, however, they talk to me about their own struggles with weight loss because I they know I can relate. I’ve found, though, that self-perception takes a surprisingly long time to catch up to reality. I know what the scale says. I can see the results of my efforts in my physique and feel it in my overall health. When I look in the mirror I sometimes still see the person I was seventy-five pounds ago. I’m still a bit too melancholic and contemplative at times and I haven’t been able to shed the obsessive self-reflection and self-criticism that began my downward spiral in the first place. Those character traits (flaws?) may always be with me. Unlike a year ago, however, instead of turning that energy inward and devolving into self-destructive binge eating, I’ve learned to channel it into other, self-affirming activities. I may always be slightly melancholic and contemplative, but the self-criticism will never control me again. I’ve learned how to diffuse it.

First place 2: Rachel

When the judges were hashing out the winners, Leah made a passionate argument in favour of Rachel, saying “Holy shit! This is a woman who OWNS herself.” Well hell, I’m convinced.

—————-

“I think of fitness as the state of choosing health and hope and vitality over lapsing into stagnation, complacency, and despair.”

I think this is a conscious choice and it is the fundamental one we make many times a day in terms of how we interact with the world and how we conduct our lives. That said, I think of myself as a model of fitness in that I continue to make positive choices in spite of obstacles.

My list of challenges goes like this: 2-pack-a-day Camels habit from the age of 14 to twenty-six. High school drug addict. Got sober at 18. Smoked and ate like crap through college and grad school. Got married, started cool career. First pregnancy took me to 200-plus pounds. I only lost 11 when the baby was born, much to my surprise. In the meantime, I quit my awesome comic-book editing job to take care of my son. Post-partum depression, loss of identity ensued. Marriage suffered from new baby stress and its own inherent defects. It took me the next few years to drop all that weight and learn how to eat mindfully, something I still struggle with on an almost hourly basis.

Started running, despite a lifelong disposition to laziness. Started yoga, even though I thought it looked a little silly. Had second baby, gained only 45 pounds. Delivered naturally, thanks to “silly” yoga. OM-ed my way through the contractions, which everyone thought terrifically amusing. That was the hardest thing I’d ever done and I was really proud and thrilled that I’d been able to see it through. Baby was vibrant and alert and happy, and I felt terrific, no PP depression.

Started running races, put in all my training miles behind a baby jogger. I am a TERRIBLE runner—slow, ungainly, hate breathing hard. Started running marathons when my oldest son was diagnosed with autism. His condition would set the course for my life over the next few years. Ran a few years of marathons, always came in close to last, but I loved finishing.

Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Couldn’t run anymore. Joining a gym was prohibitively expensive for the ones that provide childcare. Yoga everyday gets boring. I began a year of dietary restrictions, chelation therapy, getting all the mercury out of my mouth, monthly RA flareups that were very painful and took a while to learn to predict what would set them off. Not being able to run, my it’s-free-and-I-can-bring-the-kids workout, was devastating. No mini accomplishments once or twice a month with a long run or event. No 30 minute quickie calorie-blasting workouts. Just yoga, and fasting, and dental work, and IV chelation, and more yoga, and trying to meditate every day even though I totally suck at it. While holding a full-time job and raising two kids and navigating special services for my special needs kid and trying to stay married and sane and, you know, still be a NICE person…

Now I do whatever I can, whenever I can. My alarm is set for 4:50 am. Most mornings, I manage to get up at 5:15-ish, get in twenty to thirty minutes of kundalini, or a kickboxing video, or some hatha yoga. DVD sare my new best friends. I walk the dogs, run up stairs, drop and do pushups or lunges. I try to swim laps (tho’ I hate getting my face wet, I sputter and flop like a cat so I have to do the backstroke) at the local community center a couple of times a month.

Over this last year, I’ve gained a few pounds, I’m no longer as trim as I was when I was running (slogging) distances, I don’t have as much strength as I did, but my RA seems to have gone into remission, as I was recently able to run with my Westie, Angus, for a 3 and a half mile loop (Howard the Pug is not allowed on runs, as it would probably kill him) and I had no pain. It took me about 50 minutes, but it was a mild rainy Portland day and I can’t express how lovely it was to be able to do it again. I haven’t had a flareup in a few months. I decided to join our local bouldering gym, since it’s something I can do with the kids and they love it. So I do what I can every day, even if some days it means accepting the fact that I’m not going to have the chance to squeeze in any kind of workout and that in itself is not going to “strike me fat.”

So in spite of being almost eating-disordered in my thinking about food and weight gain and my inner dialogue of control/lack of control around food; in spite of feeling like I haven’t the time or the energy to stay fit; in spite of feeling constantly like I am just not cut out to be one of those in-shape people; I do keep showing up and making that choice.

[MK note: check out that sweeeet KISS tshirt!]

And I have the gift of a great best friend with whom I speak on the phone daily. We remind each other how good we feel when we just go do SOMETHING positive and healthful, whether it’s taking the dogs on a poop walk in the rain, or doing five sun salutes in the dining room between sets of laundry, or making the choice to eat organic dark chocolate instead of Taco Bell when we need a fix. So, my long-ass response to your contest is a way of maybe making another connection in my network, a positive gesture toward strengthening my commitment to choosing health and positivity.

Thank you for your site; it is really important to know there is support for living healthfully. Especially in a culture that makes this such a complicated and often difficult choice! Even if the length of this response disqualifies me for the contest, please feel free to use any of it if you think it will help someone else.

Best,

Rachel M

First place 1: Deb

Awright, let’s get the party started for this week with one of the first-place winners: Deb.

“Running has helped me fall back in love with myself”

Hello Krista and Strong Grrrls,

Pick me, pick me to be the Stumptuous Fitness Model! Given my big transformation, people have been encouraging me to enter
before-and-after contests, but most of them are so cheezy and have nothing to do with fitness, I have shied away. So when I read about
‘no bikini shots unless you are climbing a mountain in it’ for this contest, I thought, ‘this is perfect for me’.

So this is my story. On July 17, 2003, exactly 6 months to my 40th birthday, I was carrying 222 lbs. on my 5′5′ frame. I was increasingly sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. Doing fun things with my three kids like tobogganing were daunting because I was so out of
shape, and the vicious circle of lack of fitness, discouragement, inactivity/overeating and overworking had me absolutely stuck. Life
had definitely become a spectator sport. I had tried for 20 years to lose weight primarily to look or even ‘be’ good, but this motivation
always fizzled, leading to desperate unsustainable plans, and/or resentful rebellion. As a mom and a psychologist, I felt more and more uneasy about not walking the talk re good self-care and wellness. Finally my health risks and feeling like crud loomed large enough with
this big birthday approaching for me to try yet again, but from a different perspective — one of reclaiming and caring for my self and
well-being.

I had my work cut out for me on all fronts. Fitness-wise I was so deconditioned that walking for 30 minutes every other day was
ambitious; the Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walking could have hired me given the various ways I had to hobble home to vary the pain on these early walks. Even worse than the physical pain was the waking up to facing how out of shape I had become, and cultivating the patience and willingness to begin where I was, and accept the slow way out, workout by workout, rather than giving up. Walking out in public was a challenge; I remember on one walk with a friend when a young man hailed us from his carload of buddies as ‘fat sluts!’… luckily my mouth was not as slow as my body, and I yelled back ‘we’re not sluts’… but it stung. No wonder so many heavier women stay inside not moving their bodies. Bah!

On the food front, I knew from dozens of attempts that restrictive dieting was a recipe for cycles of miserable deprivation and miserable overeating, and that this process needed to be something I could keep up for the months and years to lose weight, and then forever to keep the weight off. For the first time in so long, I began to tune in to my inner senses of hunger, appetite, fullness, and satisfaction, and to nourish myself accordingly. I began to think of food primarily as fuel, but fuel that could still taste good and be satisfying… to my
tastebuds. Food could also still be fun… but I cultivated a very discriminating sense of what was ’splurge-worthy’ like Elaine in
Seinfeld deciding if and when someone was worth one of her stockpiled contraceptive sponges. Bit by bit, I broke up with food as ‘friend’ – and found other ways to comfort myself, as well as lighten theworkload that was a major driver of my need to numb out so often. I learned to learn from slip ups, and get back on track a.s.a.p. over and over. And this all continues, to this day.

My fitness started to improve, and exercise became less daunting, and eventually even a little fun. Using a treadmill to be able to easily
increase increments of minutes walking at higher and lower speeds, I gradually began to jog during some intervals. I started doing some
machine weights at a women’s only gym where I developed more and more confidence in my body and began to feel stronger. The weight was coming off. I measured myself every month, especially around my waist, which was dangerously over 40 inches at the start. I entered a road race, and while I did not beat Beethoven (run 8 km in the 50 minutes it takes for a symphony to be played), I was so happy to be off the
sidelines and in the throng!

My identity was shifting towards a more capable and athletic me, coming home to my body and its powers after a long long expatriation.
I started going to a coed gym, lifting free weights with some personal training, and attending spinning classes… what an endorphin high
those were (and are)! I was hooked! I was asked to join a women’s athletic group of runners and triathletes (See Jane Tri) who meets
once a month to eat cookies, laugh and talk about sport in our lives. My initial reply was ‘but I am not an athlete’… she retorted, rather
pithily, ‘well, you sure exercise a lot!’. I went, and started to blossom even more fully into my new sense of self with a great group
of kindred spirits… we are all middle-aged, mostly moms, and equally happy to celebrate the moxie of someone sidestroking their way through their first tiny triathlon to the incredible travails of sinewy Ironwomen and marathoners. We love to talk about lessons from sport: the goal setting, the commitment, the finding ways to fit it in, the triumphs and disasters. I am totally inspired within this group, and
with other dear friends from the gym, to hold fitness as fundamentally about wellness and capacity, not appearance, otherwise a potentially lonely challenge in this shallow world.

I ended up losing 85 lbs all told by close to the 2 year mark, by which point fitness had become truly foundational to my life. I have
always worked full-time, and have a busy family life, but I schedule time for my workouts faithfully, flexing to go out a few mornings a
week to swim at 6 am, a few lunch times to do a spin class, and other varied times to run, do yoga and lift weights. Eating well has become second nature, as have little habits like taking a cooler to hotels to help keep me feeling normal when away from home, packing lunches, getting out grocery shopping when staples like lowfat yogurt are low. Re travel, I also workout wherever I am… running, in particular, is a very portable sport!

Indeed, I am in love with running, and running has helped me fall back in love with myself. Here is something I wrote that expresses this:

running

you’ll not know my running
in how far or how fast,
don’t ask of miles and minutes –
numerals cannot speak

of chipmunks scattering
and sunshine strobing
in bursts of delight
across my leafy path,

of leapings over puddles
with grand landings
of boyish triumph
or splattered laughter,

of gallivanting along
with wag-worthy tailwinds,
gobsmackingly impressive
the inevitable other way,

of some steps so languid
I could be floating naked,
and others as resolute
as a summoned midwife’s,

of the syncopated swing
from haunch to loin
of my longest bones,
hypnotic and true,

of my belly’s undulations
to rhythms my ribs
have concertina’d by heart
since before I breathed air.

Well you wanted to know about accomplishments. Mostly, I consider moving into and fiercely and flexibly maintaining my fit lifestyle for
almost five years now to be my best accomplishment. I am strong for hauling groceries and laundry in my ‘activities of daily living’ as well as for skiing and dancing til the wee hours in my ‘activities of sweet opportunity’. I have more energy at 44 than I have had in decades!

In terms of events, I have gone on to whoop Beethoven’s ass several times, as well as run three half-marathons and one full marathon. The marathon, last fall in Toronto, was an intense experience with many ups and downs. I ended up slightly dehydrated, with some nausea and insanely sore quads in the last half despite my faithful training…requiring me to move to Plan B (and C… and… ) re finishing times… indeed, by the end, I was walking and jogging from hydrant to pole to sign, quite bonked, but I finished, very tired but even more proud.

I have also been participating in local triathlons. I set out for my first race with a little bow stuck to my bike handle bars to remind me
of the gift of wellness and regained ability, full of eagerness and anxiety, especially given the torrential rains that day. Well luck was
not on my side, and I ended up with a flat tire I could not change halfway through the ride. I so wanted to finish though, that I got a
lift back to the transition area and did the run anyway, feeling totally triumphant despite my disqualification (”doping” was the
rumour I tried to spread when people saw the DSQ in the results, but without much luck). I was hooked, and have gone on to make triathlons a great way to ensure cross training and upper body strengthening through swimming, as well as be part of that fantastic community of kickass female athletes.

Within my fitness communities, I am inspired to give back. People comment on how ‘nice’ I am at races because I have shared my
celebratory focus with them. In my spin classes, women have said ‘I was dogging it, but then I looked over at you digging in, hammering
away with a big smile on your face, and thought, I can do it too’. I have given a body image workshop at my gym, and a retreat for See Jane Tri. I am in the middle of getting qualified to teach group fitness, specifically spinning, and can hardly wait to be able to DJ, yell
words like ‘awesome’, and bring my love of zany fun into this heart-rate-in-your-eyeballs workout!

Professionally, I have begun working with overweight and deconditioned women in my roles as a psychologist and life coach (a new aspect of my quest to help people change their lives that has had me back in school, part-time, with Integral Coaching Canada for the past two
years). I cannot express to you how happy I am when a client, who has often had a crappy sense of their body and its capacities since
childhood, finds their unique way into movement and aliveness in their body as a vessel and vehicle for their selves… bike-riding like a
kid again, solo salsa dancing in their living room, hiking! I feel like I know the worlds of both unfit/discouraged and fit/capable, and
can, therefore, usher and nudge and guide people from one to the other with huge compassion and optimism that it can be done. I will continue to work in this field; I would like to move into even larger scale work in the future by giving talks at Can Fit Pro to trainers/
instructors, workshops for women, develop a website, maybe even write a workbook. I am scared of most of these new ventures, but my fitness experiences over the past five years have given me more willingness to be a wobbly beginner, and to hang in to make things happen. Courage is not the absence of fear, it is doing things despite fear.

On a small scale, but the one that matters so much to me, I am proud of being a great role model to my kids, especially my daughters. One of them was once discouraged that she could not do the monkey bars like her twin brother… I was able to tell her about starting where
you are and steadily progressing with determined baby steps with total credibility, because I had done so, and she knew it. My other daughter is a fierce basketball player – I am so thankful for this wellspring of confidence in her body as capable and athletic in the midst of her teen years when so many lose their way. I hope them seeing me grimy, sweaty, injured, joyful, digging in with my imperfect wonderful body, and taking time away from them for recharging myself through sport, will help them both stay grounded and well as they grow into fabulous strong women.

So Krista and grrrls, if you are looking for one wrinkly, grinning, determined, big-hearted chick as a model for fitness as all about
function, fun and feeling damn good, look no further!

Cheers, and thanks for your website and this opportunity!

Deb
Photos of Deb >>

And the winners are…

Wow! What an amazing collection of entries you folks submitted! We literally laughed and cried over them. We argued passionately in defense of our favourites. I even had to call in The Hebrew Hammer as Judge #5 before it ended up in a a hair-pulling, yo-momma-insulting, folding-chair-whacking-I-can’t-believe-the-ref-is-allowing-this Jerry-Springer-style bar fight. We ended up with a three-way tie for second place, so we said what the hell — let’s give out three second place spots. We also made up some awards for people we felt deserved a little extra shout out.

In the end, we were inspired and humbled by all of them.

So it is with great excitement that I present the list of finalists in the first-ever Stumptuous Fitness Model contest. You did me proud, grrls.

First place

Deb T and Rachel M

Second place

Kristen M, Jill K and Toby W

Third place

Grace R and Martha

HONOURABLE MENTIONS AND SHOUT-OUTS WE MADE UP 

We felt some of the entries should get recognition even though they didn’t win. So we came up with other categories of honourable mention.

The “You Go Girl” Award

Allyson S - Alaina said, “Allyson gets a special ‘you go girl’ for starting recently but really having a great attitude.”

The “When Life Hands You Crap, Make Crapenade” Award

Beth K, Li, and Kate T - for staring into the face of some really sucky life challenges and muddling through

The “Kicks Ass in Style” Award

Ingrid W - for being both fit and faaaabulous

The “Gym Teacher I Totally Wish I’d Had” Award

Jennifer F and Avril B - for setting great examples and spreading the love to their martial arts students

Over the weeks to come I’ll be putting up each finalist’s entry. Each week will be a dose of inspiration. Y’all come back now, y’hear?

Judge #5: The Hebrew Hammer

Exciting drama at Camp Stumptuous! After some vigorous arguments among the four of us, we had to call in a tiebreaker to help us pick the winners! Yes ladies, your entries were just that good!

So please welcome Judge #5, Tami aka “The Hebrew Hammer”. (BTW, if you don’t get the reference, check out the movie site here.) I first met Tami when we were negotiating the use of the squat cage at our gym. As I was adjusting the bar, a muscular, cheerful woman approached me. “How much are you going to squat?” she asked. I think she figured she’d need to go do something else while I cranked out 100 “toning” reps of featherweighted 1/4 butt bounces. I told her the weight. “Not bad,” she said, and we agreed that we could do business.

Turns out that Tami has made a pretty amazing transformation of her own! (She’ll have to enter the 2009 contest, I guess.) She’s about to go to nationals for judo, and has started a women-only judo class, which I am currently loving. By day she teaches special needs kids as well as Hebrew. She says she went from being over 200 pounds, drinking, smoking, bad relationships, and fast food to losing 40 pounds, being the provincial champ, eating good food, and training 6 days a week. Along with some spectacular injuries such as a broken nose, torn foot ligaments, thumb dislocation, etc. she also tells me that she has severe anemia and needs transfusions in order to keep going, crazy asthma as well as arthritis, and colitis… but she insists “none of that shit gets in the way though!!” She was recently featured as our gym’s success story, and her club has named a judo throw after her — “Tami’s Otoshi”. On top of all that, she is incredibly funny, generous with her time (she volunteers to teach), and a hell of a tough lady.

Judge #3: Leah

Leah says that she would prefer not to have a nickname, and just to fight as “Leah”. She says she wants her name alone to strike fear into the hearts of her opponents. But I have given her lots of little pet names anyway. One of them is Anaconda, for the way that she will carefully and calmly encircle her opponent before they realize — too late — that suddenly, inextricably, their own arms are cutting off their airway.

Leah is the best loser I have ever met. By this I do not mean that she often loses. She kicks my ass on a regular basis, and the two of us are like Mozart and Salieri, continually trying to find the other’s weakness and revise the game plan. It’s my goal to be like her, careful, sly, wisely cunning. She is a wonderful technician: watching her grapple is like watching a surgically precise instructional video. Even the way she holds her feet is elegant. Her rear naked chokes are like some kind of Renaissance painting establishing the Platonic ideal of murderous grace.

No, what I mean is that Leah’s incredible generosity of spirit has taught me how to admire my opponents for the skills and talents they bring; how to respect and encourage them to challenge me. What basically defines Leah’s personal coolness is a single moment: at a competition, she was getting crushed by a highly skilled opponent; instead of pouting about losing, or freaking out, Leah used her remaining oxygen to gasp at the woman, with a big astonished grin, “You’re awesome!” Even while getting her ribcage crushed into a cube, Leah is a class act.

Leah on top, about to work her anaconda magic.

Judge #2: Killer Kayla

Judge #2 is my littlest sister, Killer Kayla, or as I like to call her, Baby K. Do not let the adorable face fool you. This grrl is tough as nails.

I used to laff at cheerleaders, until she joined her high school’s cheerleading team years ago, and I discovered that cheerleading these days involves acrobatic aerial stunts with only tiny teenage girls as safety nets. She’s played on an all-male lacrosse team (in case you don’t know much about lacrosse, it makes hockey’s brutality look like a Three Stooges limp-wristed slap fight). She’s kickboxed. Frankly, she got the few jock genes in the family.

But what continues to amaze and inspire me is that she’s fought her way back from being literally bedridden by a debilitating chronic disease to graduating university with an A average, running half marathons (in the Canadian winter, no less!) and considering grad school with the goal of helping other women with invisible disabilities. This kid puts the fabulous in feminist.

Meet your judges

Although my website is an enlightened despotism, I felt it fair to get a second (third, and fourth) opinion on which lucky ladies should become the first-ever Stumptuous Fitness Models.
There were too many outstanding entries to choose on my own, so I enlisted the able assistance of three of my favourite asskicking grrls. Let’s meet them!

Judge #1 is, of course, my excellent sidekick and henchlady, OMGBFF A, better known as Alaina, aka “Machine”, fresh from her gold-medal victory at the Arnolds grappling championships in Ohio.

As a scrawny nebbish child, Alaina was constantly getting the snot kicked out of her, so she took up martial arts. As a scrawny, nebbish adult, Alaina took up bodybuilding and packed on a bunch of muscle and self-confidence. Last year we started Brazilian jiu jitsu classes together. Nine months later, she’s got a nice collection of medals.

Along the way from scrawny to brawny, she’s also run, kicked, cycled, climbed and punched. I assure you that her nickname is well earned and you do not want to be on the business end of her fist. Despite her killer instincts she is a vocal supporter of women’s grappling, and can usually be found at tournaments making new friends… before she armbars them into oblivion, anyway.

Alaina (standing) hanging around with black belt Felicia Oh.

There she is… Miss Stumptuous Fitness…

Hi folks, and welcome to the Stumptuous Fitness Model contest results for 2008! Here, I’ll be posting the contest results, stories, and pics for your enjoyment and inspiration. Some great entries, so check back soon!