It wasn’t until Teresa Thompson learned to forget the idea of losing weight that she began making gains in her physical and mental health, the Laramie woman said.
The University of Wyoming graduate student in nursing, registered nurse and mother of a 5-year-old placed second Aug. 3 in the 2014 Wyoming Open Professional Division, a fitness competition in Cheyenne.
A year-and-a-half ago, the 31-year-old couldn’t have imagined she could place in such a physically rigorous competition.
The two-day event involved snatching barbells over her head, sprinting, tossing medicine balls, lunges, burpees, walking handstands and more.
Before joining Hybrid Athletics, a USA Weightlifting club in south Laramie, Thompson’s fitness goals centered on vanity, she said. She wanted to lose weight.
Ironically, her weight constantly fluctuated, and she struggled with what she called a “negative body image” — a distorted perception of what the ideal body should look like.
Today, Thompson sees fitness in a different light. To explain, she likes to quote a poster:
“In essence, I used to diet and exercise; now I eat and train,” Thompson said. “I don’t worry about that vanity stuff anymore, and I look better and I feel better and I’m healthier than I’ve ever been, mentally and physically.”
But getting to that point took time, Thompson said, not just because of the physical work — it was difficult to change deeply rooted perceptions in her mind.
“You can’t change psychological behaviors overnight,” she said.
Grant Statton, owner and operator of Hybrid Athletics and Thompson’s coach, worked with Thompson to change her perceptions, pointing out that eating and training with weights alongside cardiovascular training would lead to better overall health.
“There’s a scientific aspect to convincing people, because it really is better for them,” Statton said.
He told Thompson dieting too hard could turn her body catabolic: it would hold on to fat while cannibalizing her muscles.
“If you really want to lose weight, you’ve got to be in a metabolic state, where your body is building muscles and using your fat stores to fuel that process,” he said. “So, a lot of people are just digging themselves a hole with diet and exercise.”
In other words, Statton convinced Thompson that if she wanted to see changes in her body, she needed to “feed the machine.”
And feed the machine she did.
She trained six days a week, often twice daily, and focused on eating healthy. In the process, she ended up losing 40 pounds and replacing much of the fat with muscle.
“If you set yourself performance goals, the body will follow along,” Statton said. “If you say, ‘I’m going to run and run and run because I want a number on the scale to go down or I want to fit into my skinny jeans,’ it’s not a healthy way to do it.”
During this time, Thompson worked at Ivinson Memorial Hospital as a registered nurse and as a research assistant at UW, as well as juggling graduate school work and raising her son.
She said she finds time to train by organizing her schedule and sticking with her commitment.
“This is a priority like brushing my teeth,” she said. “I don’t skip it. It’s a part of my life.”
Nearly a full week after placing second in the competition, Thompson said she’s still sore.
She plans to continue setting goals, pushing her body and mind. For 2015, Thompson hopes to make it to the fitness regional competition, where she could advance to the 2015 CrossFit Games Open. She also hopes to make the USAW National Competition for Olympic weightlifting.
Thompson said she gained the confidence to push herself for such competitions through her new outlook on training.
“It shifted me to think about it as an opportunity to find the maximum potential in my body, physically and emotionally, because all of this in here carries over in my life, and I’m a stronger person because of it,” she said.
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