Fit Beyond Fitness

Warrior DIVAS | Real Talk for Real Women

Hello, and Welcome to Warrior DIVAS | Real Talk for Real Women. I am your host, Angie Leigh Monroe, and yes, I said real talk for women. Yes, because you too can be a professional podcaster if you mess up your opening act. So again, let's try that; this is Angie Leigh Monroe, your host of real talk for real women. All right, we're going to have a great show today, and we're going to jump in and just a few minutes. But before we begin, I want to remind you, if you go to our DIVASImpact.com site, you can find out more about our conference coming up October 11th and 12th in Grapevine, Texas, you can buy your tickets there, learn about the speakers there, all of that fun stuff on that page. You can also listen to our podcast, watch it on YouTube, you can read our magazine, all of that is online there. And there's also great ways to partner with us. We are always looking for ways to partner with our show with our organization, and promote you as well as on the way up because when one boat rises, we all rise with the shifting of the tides, right?

So today, I'm going to talk about some stuff I don't like talking about. I'm going to be a little transparent with you. I'm going to be real raw with y'all; and don't you love my Texas accent that y'all part and raw has like four syllables in it. But this is where we're going to get to because I've got to have some truth to myself and have you ever been talking to somebody and as you're talking to them, they're going, I'm telling you this stuff because I need to hear it too. Because we both know it in our mind, but we haven't absorbed it with our heart yet. We haven't grabbed full throttle reign of what it is that's bothering us, what it is, that's giving us a hard time and this past weekend, I was at an event and I had an issue with something that had just happened. And I didn't even realize why I had the issue with what it just happened. It just started bothering me for some reason. I had my hand up most of the time through a session, asking waiting for my question to be asked, and everybody around me was getting picked. And they kept telling me they'd come back to me and they just never did and then the session ended. And I still didn't have my question answered. Normally that's just goes; water off a duck's back, doesn't bother me, doesn't split a hair with me. It's not a problem at all, but as I was raising a hand and not getting called, there was more and more frustration building. I was feeling overlooked. I was feeling unseen. I was feeling invisible, right? And there's a great book out by Nicole Johnson called The Invisible Woman. And if you've ever felt invisible in your life, I encourage you to go and read that book, and come back and comment and tell me what you think of it. It's a very short read, but it's a very powerful read. And so, as the session ended, I turned to my friend next to me. And I said, Well, maybe you can answer my question and she goes, sure, and she was very pleasant, very kind. As I started speaking, I got choked up, I was emotional, I had tears in my eyes; part of it was being mad, part of it was being frustrated and part of it, I just didn't understand what it was. And it all centered around being overlooked. How many of us have been overlooked? I have been overlooked a good part of my life, not necessarily because people intended to overlook me, but because I kept putting myself in situations to be overlooked. I would serve behind the scenes and I would want to be in the shadows serving instead of on the main stage. Even though in my heart of hearts, I wanted to be center stage and talking and sharing and empowering people like I am today. I was more comfortable in the shadows, because of some past rejection I'd had.

Now I'm telling you this because the more I stuffed the desire to be in front of the stage down and the more I hid in the shadows, there's some other things that I'm starting to develop. I started losing my self-worth, I started losing the way I saw myself as someone that was worthy of the spotlight. I mean, when we see people standing in front of a camera and stuff like that we normally see, you know, fit fashion forward, stylish, you know, not necessarily skinny, but you know, a good toned body. Unless you're thinking Oprah. I mean, Oprah had her ups and downs, but, you know, here's where we're at, we just see more people like the Kelly ripples and the Ellen's and, and people like that that are in shape in front of the camera and not as I used to call myself the blob, right? Well, the blog came from not trusting and believing that I was worthy enough to be seen.
So, I'm going to talk to you today, we're going to have a girlfriend talk. Remember, my name is Angie Leigh Monroe, and I'm your girlfriend. The girlfriend talk we're going to have today is about being fit beyond fitness. A lot of times when we're talking about getting fit and moving forward and things like that we're talking about the proper diet, the exercise, taking the right supplements, all of that stuff to get into shape, but before we can start doing that, we have to start looking on the inside. What helped us get to this situation in the first place. You know, I used to be one of those girls that could eat in the thing. I mean anything and still be underweight, totally underweight, I have been a size eight, I have been a size six, I have been all those sizes. I've been severely underweight not for lack of trying to gain weight. This matter of fact, when I joined the military, I had to put on seven pounds in a week to be able to go to boot camp, because I was underweight. But then life happened and while I dealt with some of the things, I did not deal with all of the things. And so, have you ever looked at an onion, and an onion has all these layers, and as you cut into the onion, you can see all the layers? But when life happens, think about it, that ending grows from that small little thing on the inside, and it keeps growing and adding layers as it grows, well, so does your discomfort with yourself. And you don't even know where that has come from until you're further down the road.

So, a few years ago, I went and I set with a friend of mine and I said I need I need some help peeling back the layers of this onion, and we sat there and we dealt with a lot of things. And then I added counseling into that and, and we peel back many layers, but I never quite dealt with the layer of stuff that kind of made me as I call myself. FAT. I'm not saying that in the negative and derogatory term. I'm saying that in a realistic, if you look at the medical records and things like that, I am declared morbidly obese. All right. I'm working on it, it's coming off. But I am declared morbidly obese. It's a fact, it's not something to be proud of, but it is what it is. So, as we're dealing with this, as we start looking at it, I'm having to look at what caused me to eat my feelings, because I was craving something that I felt unattainable. What happens when we go on a diet, we go on a diet, and all of a sudden, the only thing we can think of is all the foods we can't have, right? So, you know, we were laughing around the house this weekend, because we were going places and doing things and we were narrow bikinis and my husband wanted to grab a barbecue sandwich and my daughter's like, nope, mom can't have anything from here, let's go somewhere else where she can have something to eat, but not realizing it, my daughter that we could brought him pizza twice and donuts once to the house, not as a bad thing. She was feeding the twins; she was doing her own thing. But those are the things that I could have gone all day long without having any of those things, she even ordered the pizzas I don't really care for. But I could have gone that whole time without wanting any of those things until I was on the diet and when I was on the diet, it was all I could think of. So, then there's a disgruntled this and there's a yuck and you start satisfying any way you possibly can. For me that was verging on TV that was just being left busy. That was finding a way to be busy with other people's things, instead of doing the things that I knew I diligently need to be doing for my own health and wellness and I just wasn't focused on myself. There's a lot on my plate.

We talked about this all the time, so many women have a lot on their plate, your plate doesn't look like mine and mine doesn't look like the next person. But we all have things that we put on our plate every day but the thing that we forget to put on there a lot of the times is how to take care of ourselves. We've talked about it before, we'll talk about it again. But how can we look and see how to be a whole well-rounded woman, if we're not going to look at the rough parts of our life. I did a I started our Daily DIVAS Devotional here recently, and we are we just finished up the Beatitudes and the Beatitudes are found in the New Testament of the Bible called Matthew chapter five. And it's the sermon on the mount that Jesus is going and giving to the people. And as I read through the Beatitudes, there's different things they're talking about the poor in spirit, the people who mourn the people who are make those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, those that are merciful, pure of heart, the peacemakers, and those who are persecuted because of righteousness, right? So, in talking about all of those things, he is saying those people will be blessed. Well, as I read this, I saw it more of a guideline on how to live your life. Nowhere in there Did it say; be resentful of the places that you've not been called to or be resentful to the places you don't have access to. Nowhere in there does it say if you get your way all the time, you are blessed. Nowhere in there. So, as I was writing out Beatitudes, the last few times, I started writing out beauty attitude. So being fit beyond fitness, for me is talking about living a life inside that exemplifies on the outside, seeing if I am kind, if I am compassionate, if I am open and engaging to people, if I stand strong in the face of adversity for the righteousness of people, and the righteousness of God, then the rest of it will fall into place. I'm living out the calling that's calling hold on my life. Now, is this going to make me a size 10 by the time this podcast is over? Absolutely not. But what it is going to do is it's going to shift my focus from all the things that I can't be to all the things that I can be. They do a lot of these things and a lot of workshops where they tell you to do your visualization, right. So, one of the things that I've heard people talk about doing this taking a picture of your skill, and it's super imposing the number of the way you want to be on to the scale, so you can reach that desired rate, right? And there's people in baseball, that especially pitchers, right before, they're going out to pitch the game there they're running through their pitches where they want them to land in the glove where they want them to cross the plate. And they are basically visualizing where they're wanting everything to go. Architects; He visualizes with a hand drawing before you ever put anything into CAD as to what he wants the outcome to look like. We all have ways that we want to that. So how do we structurally architect our life to be one, we are fit in all areas mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, because if you think your fitness as a physical is not tied to your mental or emotional state, you're sadly mistaken. You can't just go on a diet to fix the outside, if you're not going to do anything to fix the inside. See, there's a lot of things we have to give up. It's part of the process.

We're going to talk about that in our next show, but in this one I want to focus on what is it that you have to gain? See, when I'm looking at being fit, yes, being skinny, being able to find clothes, I like to fit my body the way I like them. Being able to have energy, being able to do all those things. But the true why behind that is to be able to feel comfortable in my skin again, to be able to like myself on multiple levels, not just because of how I look, but because how I feel as a person inside and out. Because I don't know if you realize this, I know they say fat people are happy people. A lot of times we're miserable people we're just putting on the mask of being happy. There's pain that comes in the joints, that can be relieved by losing the weight, the inflammation that grows because you're feeding yourself toxic foods that goes away. When you start giving your body Whole Foods. There's Same thing with your spiritual life. If your deficit in that area, then you become more fluent of other things in your life. Like maybe your language is a little more foul, or maybe you're watching things you know, you shouldn't be watching. You know, I was talking with a friend a while back, and she was talking about watching this one show and I don't even remember the name of the show. But she was talking about watching this one show and she speaks on the road and she's a Christian woman and stuff like that. But her husband came in one night and asked her what felt she was watching. He was just appalled at what she was watching. And she explained it to me. She goes Oh, it's just all in good fun, he said. But if you are walking the walk, you should be walking you wouldn't see this as fun you would see this is tragic, because you're subjecting your mind your body and your spirit to something that you don't even agree with. And she took offense like we all do when somebody says something like that. At first, you know, she did her little and aim, aim, aim, aim, aim back at him for a little bit. But then she started thinking, when was the last time I was in my Bible. When was the last time I was feeding myself positive things? It's really easy to walk into a store and grab a coke out of the coolers right there by the register. Super easy, it's super hard to find a bottle of water. But it's really easy to find those cokes and those losses and monsters and Red Bulls. They're all right, they're readily available. It's like going into Buccee's the other day, you could go into bikinis, and the water is at one end. But in the middle, they had the fudge and the barbecue sandwiches and all that stuff. And I'm not saying all those things are bad things. But for a person who's trying to watch what they're doing, and be more observant at how they're doing it. It just wasn't a safe place to be. So being fit beyond fitness is about being mindful of where you're going, what you're engaging in, and how you're engaging in it. So, for me, one of my biggest challenges has been to stay away from fast food places. It's so convenient, right? You drive up to a box, you speak into it, you drive to a window and instant gratification, you've got food there well. The angels rejoice. And here in Texas, even though it's been sold to Chicago, we got Whataburger. So, you know who doesn't love a good Whataburger sandwich and some french fries and a large coke. I mean, come on, it's amazing. Then you've got all sorts of sandwich shops, you can drive through, you've got taco stands, you can drive through all these places for instant gratification.

But don't you want more than instant gratification, because here's the thing, people that are giving given stuff instantly, don't really appreciate it as much as those that had to work for it. You know, I struggled from time to time about just wanting things handed to me. But I'm telling you in that struggle, I have also just desired the breakthrough. Not that we wouldn't have had a story to tell. But to have a breakthrough in a place where we could say, Wow, we did all these steps. And this happened. And there is a sense of accomplishment for doing it, right? 2016 - 2017 I lost 100 pounds; I did great. Lost 100 pounds. Unfortunately, I gained a large part of part of that back. Because I couldn’t follow that diet. Exactly what that diet did follow all the checkboxes, do all that stuff. But I didn't do the hard work. I didn't look internally at to what inside of me was mentally and emotionally deficit. See, when you go to the doctor, and they take your blood, and they tell you that you your deficit on these vitamins, and these hormones and all that stuff, they can give you the supplements, you need to get back into place to get your body back chemically balanced, right? Same thing goes with a diet. If you're looking at yourself, mentally and emotionally and getting fit. The diet is just the food portion of it, there's so much more, you have to take a look at and go. This is how I need to get fixed. I need to heal relationships, I need to stop stuffing and suppressing my emotions, I need to stop looking for food to occupy my board space. If I'm bored, go out for a walk, drink a bottle of water, do something that shifts where my focus is on the negative and shift it back to the positive.

All these things are things that I am right now in the thick of learning. These are things that were instilled in me by my friend Wendy Pett. Now I'm going to tell you about Wendy pet here in a minute. But she is the one this past weekend that looked at me and said, I hear you, I see you and I feel what you're talking about. Because we've all had those moments where we felt overlooked, like the light that we wanted to be in was shining past us, not on us. It's not that we all want to be in the limelight, but there is something in our lives that we want to be excellent at. And for me, I loved my energetic life, the one that I used to go and play and do things with the kids and coach, cheerleading, and do things like that. I loved that. I want to get back to that girl. That girl that was laughing all the time and having all sorts of energy without pain. That's the type of girl I want to get to. But as we go through this, we're going to be dealing with some of the stuff that is just the yuck and, in the military, we say embrace the suck, to get to where you want to be. So, embrace the suck to get to the success. So that's what we're going to do today we're going to start embracing the suck. I've been on this journey again to losing weight, but not just losing weight, getting fit mind, body, soul and spirit for a little over a week now. And in that process, I can tell you the transformation is already huge. The weight is not even the biggest focus on this, just that opening experience of who I am, who I wanted to be, where I allowed myself to hide, and why I allowed myself to hide and not feel worthy in those moments has been eye opening.

So I want to encourage us to have this dialogue over on our divas who make an impact group page and keep talking about what are the things that you need to see brought into the proper alignment brought into a fit lifestyle for you whether it's mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually fit, what is it that you need to get healthy in, because we're going to start talking about that. And as I told you, I had my friend Wendy Pett to thank for this. Wendy Pett is the CEO of get visibly fit, mind body, and soul. She has a visibly fit TV show that's on multiple channels, parables TV, uplift channel, and she helps promote health and fitness philosophies, and is a featured contributor for the diet.com magazine. She's also an author and an all-around genuine person. So that's a little short bio, of a woman that I cannot even describe how fabulous she is. She has a meal plan that she can take you on, but she doesn't just take you on the meal plan. She takes you on a change of life, a change of perspective, a change of mindset and as she does this, she helps to encourage and empower you to break through those self-limiting beliefs to break through some of those things that are holding you back. We are going to have her start writing for our magazine. She's going to be featured on our website and the upcoming month as well. So, stay tuned for more information from Wendy Pett. She is an EVERYDAY DIVA changing people's lives day in and day out. So again, I want to thank you for letting me be real with you this week and I hope that some of you out there felt connected to this message in a way that you'll be willing to reach out and connect with us. You can find us in our DIVAS Impact group; DIVAS who make an impact on Facebook or you can email us at [e-mail], but until next time. I want to remind you to always be a diva and make an impact and we'll see you next time. Bye now.