The Badass Body Diet: The Breakthrough Diet and Workout for a Tight Booty, Sexy Abs, and Lean Legs (2 page)

I decided to change my habits and the way I was living. I adjusted my diet by cutting out alcohol and fried, greasy junk, and I started eating healthier food. I stopped smoking, cold turkey. This was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life, but it made me realize that if I put my mind to something positive, I could feel good and reap the rewards of accomplishment.

A few months after quitting smoking, I tried to run a mile, but my cigarette-singed lungs held me back. Running hurt and I hated it. I wanted to quit, but a friend wouldn’t let me. “It’s only a mile!” he urged. I pressed on, with more of a speed walk than a run. It took me a week to recover from that mile. Running was definitely not for me.

Many months later, a coworker convinced me to try some light gym workouts with him. At first I thought this was beyond my abilities—I was pretty much a weakling—but I gave it a try. I started out lightly. I felt awkward and embarrassed at first. Girls working out in this desert environment were rare. I fumbled around on the machines. My friend encouraged me to stick with it, and I found that my body responded with surprising speed. Results! For the first time in my life, I saw positive changes in my body. I really got into it, and eventually started to enjoy the workouts. I learned more about weight training and figured out how to push my body. I made a commitment to myself when I started to discover fitness.

I then began training with a group of Special Forces guys who literally wanted to break me. Picture this: little tiny me, at five feet, three inches, so underweight at 95 to 100 pounds that I looked anorexic. You could see the bones in my chest as clearly as on a skeleton. There I was, working out with these big husky macho soldiers! They’d put me through horrific workouts, standing over me to make sure I did every part of the workout and forcing me to finish. What would take them 15 minutes took me 30 to 45 minutes. Barely able to keep up, I was embarrassed and always the last to finish.

After a few of those grueling workouts, those guys were convinced that I’d stop showing up. But I returned every day, knowing they were waiting for me with a hell workout.

My tenacity and determination to hang in there earned their respect. But really, I learned a valuable lesson from them:
Do not give up, no matter what
. That lesson stuck with me and would become the foundation for success in my life.

Through this rigorous weight training and decent nutrition, I also discovered that I could transform myself into a person of great strength—outside and inside—by getting out of my comfort zone and taking on new challenges. I was still afraid to take risks, but I no longer allowed that fear to deter me from doing so, and I wasn’t afraid to fail.

One day, I met a marine who showed me a video of some girls doing pull-ups, squats, and power cleans. They were totally defined, sculpted, and strong. They had tight butts and flat bellies. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I wanted a body like theirs. I wanted a butt like theirs. I wanted to push myself like they did. They were CrossFit athletes. I wanted to be one of them.

And eventually, I was—and more.

THE CROSSFIT CHALLENGE

I’m a quirky person who likes to play, and CrossFit looked to me like an adult playground. There were balls to throw, sleds to pull, sandbags to carry, wooden boxes to jump on, and of course, barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, and all sorts of fun stuff to play with. A strength and conditioning program favored by police, military personnel, and elite athletes, CrossFit challenges your body at many different levels, and you can constantly change your workouts, even on a daily basis. I started my CrossFit athletic journey in 2006 and have loved every painful minute since.

CrossFit also awakened me to the importance of good nutrition—quality proteins, carbohydrates, and fats—for energy, aesthetics, and performance. I changed the way I had been eating—no more junk food, haphazard eating, and reckless nutritional choices. In order to compete successfully at the level I desired, I began to look at food as muscle fuel—something that could help me change my body composition toward more muscle and less fat, plus give me the energy to train all-out. I tightened up on my nutrition and got superserious about it. This knowledge and practice eventually led to the nutrition plans you’ll read about in this book.

I got so immersed in the CrossFit subculture that I eventually opened my own gym—called CrossFit Invoke—in Raleigh in 2010. I even decided to enter the CrossFit Games. At these events, individual competitors and teams undergo a wide variety of athletic events that include challenges such as Olympic lifts, gymnastics, running, powerlifting, rowing, rope climbs, swimming, kettlebell swings, obstacle courses, and a lot more.

In 2010, I competed in the CrossFit Sectionals and Regionals. My goals were simple: I wanted to finish every workout, and I wanted to finish in the top 50 percent. Out of sixty-three female contestants in the regionals, I placed fifth at Sectionals and twentieth at Regionals, and was proud of it.

I have competed in the CrossFit Games Open every year since then, returning to Regionals four times, the Games twice, and in countless smaller CrossFit competitions. I always enjoy my experience and have a great time with the CrossFit community. I won so many events that I soon became nationally ranked in both CrossFit events and Olympic Weightlifting, where I compete at the 53-kilo level. You wouldn’t believe it if you saw me, but I can deadlift 270 pounds. CrossFit training made me that strong.

Olympic weightlifting competition is grueling and demands tons of strength and technique. It involves performing movements called the snatch and the clean and jerk. With the snatch, you hoist a barbell off the floor in one continuous motion over your head. Next, you pull your whole body under it so that you’re standing with your elbows locked in extension with the weight overhead, then stand to finish the lift.

The clean and jerk are two movements performed in one session. With the clean, you pull the weighted barbell to your shoulders. Immediately afterward you do the jerk, by hoisting the same weight overhead and finishing in a standing position with the weight overhead.

It’s all very intense, but this style of training has given me results I wouldn’t see through any other workout program—and it was a life-changer for me. CrossFit made me an athlete.

I still compete today, and it has become a part of my life. I love competing, the preparation it takes and the lifestyle. I can’t imagine doing anything else. Winning is wonderful, but the greatest reward is inspiring others to go for a goal and realize their dreams.

NASCAR COMES CALLING

In 2012, a friend I’d met through CrossFit called and asked if I wanted to be recruited for something called NASCAR Day. Sure, why not? Another new experience. Right up my alley.

Off I went, wearing a cute little workout outfit ready to drive a car. Whoops! To my surprise, I ended up doing pit crew and didn’t drive any of the cars. I wouldn’t have gone had I known that.

For one thing, I certainly wasn’t interested in changing tires—that is, until I held the air gun and hit lug nuts for the first time. I was instantly hooked. Similar to CrossFit events, we had a competition to see how fast we could jack the car, hang a tire, and hit lug nuts. I was able to jack the car but not very well. Give me a break—it weighs more than 4,000 pounds! I was very accurate with hanging the tire, though, and when it came to hitting lug nuts, that was when I had the most fun. I nailed it. I was the only girl there and beat all the guys with my hand speed of 1.7 seconds per five lug nuts. The hand speed for NASCAR Cup is 1.2 seconds. So even on my first day, I was hitting lug nuts almost as fast as professional pit crewers. Everyone saw me do all this, but they were still shocked. They couldn’t believe this kind of performance came from a girl who stood only five feet three and weighed 118 pounds.

Pit crews are vital in every race. They’re the often-unsung behind-the-scenes people who play a pivotal part in a race car driver’s success. What the driver can’t make up on the racetrack, time-wise, that pit crew has to make up in the pits. A smooth pit stop is a well-choreographed athletic feat. Six men (before I came along) are asked to change four tires, add gasoline, and sometimes make a spring adjustment in under 15 seconds. One loose lug nut can mean catastrophe.

Pit crew members are sought out for their body type, agility, accuracy, and strength. Everyone on a pit crew is either a former pro athlete or a collegiate athlete, all incredibly skilled. I was none of the above.

Pit crewing originally wasn’t meant to be a woman’s job, but I’m no ordinary woman. I crave new challenges. I’m someone who pushes the envelope at every turn and still, a real study in contrast, as I mentioned. I love lipstick, stiletto heels—and tattoos. I have a gun tattooed on my hip to remind me of my days in Iraq and how they got me on the straight-and-narrow fitness path. I’m as girlie as they get with dresses and glam, but I’m also as ferocious as they come, with a tenacity to conquer my goal and win.

Not long afterward, I got a call from Turner Motorsport. Was I interested in pit crewing for real? With a laugh, I said that the tryout was fun, but I’d had no idea it was such a brute-force job. In absolute amazement of what came out of my mouth next, I admitted that I loved changing tires.

However, I had a full plate at the time. I was managing my CrossFit gym, coaching most of the classes, teaching bodyweight boot camps, doing fitness seminars almost every weekend, and training for CrossFit competitions. I was already a fitness celebrity and model with a lot going on. Thanks, but no thanks.

But I kept thinking about it. I started researching pit crew development and anything else I could find out about this fascinating new endeavor. I became obsessed with learning more. I hadn’t found something that fascinated me this much since I discovered CrossFit. All I could think about was pit crewing

It would be tough, for sure. CrossFit had taken me to a higher level of achievement. NASCAR could take me beyond. The idea gnawed at me. I reached the moment of, “Damn, I’ll do it.”

Eventually, I joined the Michael Waltrip Racing Team and held the distinction of being the first and only female full-time member of a NASCAR pit crew at the Cup level, the sport’s highest level of professional competition. All week, I’d be out at practice for training drills to build technique and muscle memory. We’d rehearse pit stops so that on race day we’d be as quick, strong, and focused as possible. We’d look at videotapes of our previous performance. Every pit stop is videotaped so the crews can later study time and motion. It was highly technical work, with no room for even the tiniest mistake, and I loved every minute of it.

At the racetrack, I stood poised on the pit wall, ready with my weight forward on my toes, waiting for just the right split second to spring across the lane as the car pulled into the pit box. When it decelerated toward me, I dove off the wall with a long right-legged stride to cover as much ground as fast as possible to get to the far side of the car.

I eyed the front right tire and anticipated the very instant at which the car would stop. That way, I could thrust myself onto the ground in the exact position to hit the first lug nut the moment the car stopped. With my hands moving as fast and as accurately as humanly possible, I punched my air gun over every lug nut on the front tires, ripped them off, and pounded five new lug nuts onto the new tire with absolute consistence and precision. All in around 14 seconds flat. In a sport where a split second can make all the difference, the agility and athleticism of the pit crew often decides who wins and who loses.

Pit crewing is a dangerous job, too. You’re a sitting duck in that pit box. You can be struck by another driver or even your own driver. It’s an all-out active game of chicken, but no one backs down or gets out of the way.

I lived and breathed NASCAR. If you came to my house, you’d see a garage full of training equipment and a kitchen counter strewn with lug nuts, worn gloves, duct tape to keep my knee pads on, and oil everywhere. I kept my first lug nut from my debut race at the Daytona 500. The lug nut is pink, and it’s a souvenir I treasure.

Being a NASCAR pit crew member meant everything to me, but mostly I felt I was a role model. I was showing young women everywhere that anything is possible, and that they have the opportunity to make better decisions for themselves every day of their lives. There’s plenty of room for women in this sport.

Most people carry the negative and limiting voices of childhood around with them all their lives. I’m thankful that I did not. My feelings of inadequacy made me determined to try new things, step out on unfamiliar paths, and not give up on myself. Everything I was told I couldn’t do, I’ve done. My success all came down to taking action for myself.

That’s what I’d like you to do—take action. With this book, I’m going to challenge those of you who have put off your own fitness and health for too long. If I can go from a nonathletic, out-of-shape girl—what I call a misfit—to MissFit woman, you can too. I’m here to help you.

I love to show that as a woman, you can own your body and have a complete say in how it looks. If you want that, it’s yours to take, but rewards this great do not come without effort. If you want to sit on your couch and
think
about crunches, pick up another book and be happy with your body as it is now. Otherwise, with me, you’ll venture into a fun, short, intense, and creative program that gets you in amazing shape fast!

You have the power to change your life and your body for the better every day you wake up. It’s a decision you have to work at every day: to take control of your body, and to care for yourself so you can move through the world with real confidence. The power to do that is yours to take, not anyone else’s.

You don’t have to have any previous fitness experience or sports experience to do my program. I certainly didn’t. You simply have to be willing to try and give it what you have! Along the way, start imagining how sexy you’re going to look in those booty-fitting jeans, bikini, and short shorts—and how sexy and confident you’ll feel looking in your own mirror.