More importantly, though, is the reason I’m logged in and posting now!

In just 7 weeks, I’ll be competing in my very first fitness competition! (Trumpets blaring, angels singing - is that the theme song from 2001: A Space Odyssey I hear???)

It’s true – I’m going to almost literally and figuratively bare all on a stage in front of hundreds of people – on purpose!

I mean, let’s face it. I’ve lost the weight. I’ve done the personal trainer thing.

I needed more of a challenge.

I needed to know what I was genetically capable of.

I needed to see just what I could do. I’ve never tried anything like this before!

So, until October 9th, I’m watching every single scrap of food I put in my mouth (yes, even more than before), I’m in the gym 6 days a week (calm down – only 4 of those days involve lifting weights), and I plan on charting my progress along the way.

Got questions? Wanna know what I’m doing? Make sure you RSS this blog and for heaven’s sake keep coming back to see how I’m doing.

I officially started my new nutrition program on Thursday and my new workouts started this morning (at 7am – BRUTAL!)

I’ll answer any questions you send my way. I look forward to hearing what you’re curious about and, as always - keep those success stories coming. They’re so motivating! I love em!

She said, “I’m going to adopt. I can’t handle doing that to my body,” Michaels told the magazine. “Also, when you rescue something, it’s like rescuing a part of yourself.”

The controversy surrounds the part of the comment about “doing that to my body”. One side of the arguement says that there are women who get back into shape every day from being pregnant. Flipping through the pages of Oxygen magazine proves that!

The other side of the arguement says that Jillian’s body is part of her job. She has to be in uber-great shape for credibility. To train people. To gain new customers.

So what do you think? Take the poll below and let me know:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

A boy of about 10 was playing in the woods behind his house one summer when he noticed a caterpillar inching its way along a tree branch. The boy carefully picked up the caterpillar and took it in the house to show his father.

The boy’s dad got a jar, a stick, and some leaves to keep the caterpillar in. The boy kept the insect in his room and watched it with fascination.

One morning, the caterpillar was gone, replaced by an odd-shaped cottonball-like substance. The boy asked his dad who told him that the caterpillar was changing into a beautiful butterfly and for the boy to be patient. “Your patience will be rewarded”, the father said.

Several days later the boy awoke to find the caterpillar struggling to release itself from the cocoon. The butterfly seemed to be having a very difficult time. So the boy pulled out his pocket knife and carefully cut a slit in the cocoon, allowing the butterfly to get out easily.

However, to the boy’s surprise, the butterfly didn’t fly away. It didn’t even leave the ground!

When the boy asked his father about the butterfly, the father shook his head and said, “The butterfly’s struggle to release itself from the cocoon is also what gives its wings the strength they need to fly. By not allowing the butterfly to struggle and free itself on its own, the butterfly’s wings are weak and cannot support its weight to take off. As a result, it cannot take care of itself and will die.”

Often times, our own struggles are what make us stronger, give us the ability to soar when we didn’t know it was possible. In the gym, lifting weights actually creates tiny tears in the muscle. As the body heals these tears, the muscle grows stronger.

We need to experience change, pain, and struggle in order to become the beautiful butterflies God created us to be.

We started the day at home with a great breakfast at 8am – standard in my house. (Stay with me, I’m going somewhere with this.)

But by the time we met up with my family and the rest of the church members, it was almost 1:30pm. My kids and I were STARVING (and way off my normal ‘eat every 2-3 hour’ schedule).

The food choices were either mayonnaise-based chicken salad, burgers, or other standard Cracker Barrel – type fare.

Because it was a special occasion, I went with my all-time favorite – Country Fried Steak. I ordered the gravy on the side (so I could control the amount on each bite) and had green beans on the side as well.

When my steak came, there was about 10oz of meat on my plate. WHOA! I knew I needed about 3-4oz, so I cut it in half, then in half again. I lightly dipped each bite in the gravy and made sure to eat my green beans.

I know it seems like a waste, but if I’m full and am physically satisfied, isn’t that the point?

When I ordered, someone at the table said, “Wow. I can’t believe the weight loss expert ordered that.”

I replied, “I eat the way I’m suppose to 90% of the time so I can eat the way I want to the 0ther 10% of the time.”

“That sounds boring” was the reply. (More on that in a minute!)

By the end of the day, we’d all had ice cream, followed by more than a few bites of chocolate from a Russell Stover’s chocolate box.

After eating my 2nd or 3rd piece of chocolate, someone commented “Man, Rachel. You’re really going off your diet today, huh?”

They missed the whole point of what I teach.

#1: I’m not on a diet. I eat healthy and correctly. There’s no deadline on when I’ll stop eating the proper types and amounts of food. This is the rest of my life we’re talking about.

#2: Eating great food is never boring. I eat tacos, spaghetti, and everything else they eat. I just find lower-fat ways to create it (check out the January edition of my newsletter, Beautiful Curves for the Just-Like-Taco-Bell tacos!)

#3: I could have eaten the entire box of chocolates and not gained a pound. NOT because I’d work it off in the gym on Monday (I work to tone my muscles, not lose weight). NOT because I have some kind of super-human metabolism. Because I know that eating like that ONCE didn’t make me a fat 210-lb cow. Eating like that DAILY did. ONCE won’t kill me. DAILY will. ONCE is a nice treat. DAILY is an addiction.

The whole point of losing weight the way I show you in my book, What if You Were Thin, is to teach you how to lose weight permanently (and safely) without silly pills or unrealistic eating plans.

If you wanna eat an entire box of Russell Stover’s chocolate and not worry about gaining a pound, I’d seriously suggest you get your copy of my book (now on sale for $1.00!) and learn how to REALLY enjoy life one bite at a time!

Here’s the whole story: http://www.torontosun.com/life/healthandfitness/2010/02/04/12856111.html

The problem then became when she returned home and started self-medicating with food. She got pregnant and the article says, “she had no choice but to abandon her two- to three-hour daily workouts and strict diet that had her husband concerned she was “scared of food.”

UGH! When are we (men and women) going to realize that this isn’t a marathon! Losing weight isn’t a challenge or a contest that, once you “win” you can go back to eating Dunkin or Krispy Kreme! The “win” comes EVERY DAY in the way that you feel, look, act.

The way your clothes fit.
The way you can interact with your kids.
The ability to check back into life!

It wasn’t the Biggest Loser’s fault that this lady gained her weight back. They never claimed to show her how to keep the weight off permanently (I DO, by the way - even guarantee it).

This is a “reality show” and that’s all you can view it as. It’s not a diet. It’s not real life. People don’t workout 3 and 4 hours a day. They don’t restrict themselves to the caloric intake that some people in Ethiopia would be shocked to hear about.

If you don’t make your healthy life changes a habit, they won’t stick.

If you’re ready to do something about your weight once and for all and haven’t gotten my book yet, I urge you to do so right now. In fact, you can check out the book AND get an unlimited 30-day pass to check out my members-only Support site all at the same time (not bad for less than $20)!

Ready to get ready for summer and beyond? Click these words to get started on your path to amazing health and a killer beach body!

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Learn how to live your own Five-Star Life:

WARNING, people, I’M ON A TIRADE HERE!

I just found this article today about a woman who’s goal is to be the “World’s Fattest Woman”  – AND (get this) if she can’t achieve that goal, at the very least to be the “World’s Fattest Mom”.

http://specials.msn.com/A-List/Becoming-worlds-fattest-woman.aspx?cp-documentid=23664683&imageindex=1&gt1=36010

What makes it all the more sad is that in the article, she’s standing in the picture with her DAUGHTER! What a role model this woman is!

Imagine! Her goal is to sit around and eat as much as she can all day long. There’s no monetary compensation for this. There’s certainly no health benefit for this (and I’d wager if her insurance company found out about her little “goal”, they’d drop her in heartbeat…AND I WOULDN’T BLAME THEM!!!)

The article even says (quite proudly) that she can’t go more than 20 feet without getting winded.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

“I’m gonna sound like your mom” ALERT: There are people in other countries who literally don’t have enough food to feed their whole family and your GOAL is to be the World’s Fattest Woman???

If she’s eating what Michael Phelps does when he’s training (and as a Michael Phelps fan, I know this statistic) – that means she’s eating over 20,000 calories A DAY!

And my favorite part? I’m probably PAYING for her to get this way! I don’t imagine that once she gets to be “too fat to work” (assuming she isn’t already at over 600 pounds) that she’s gonna sit around and not have her hand out, expecting the rest of the US to foot the bill for her LOFTY GOAL!

And I haven’t even talked about her daughter yet! I don’t even wanna think about the psychological trauma that comes with watching your mom purposefully and intentionally eat herself to death! What does that say to you, as a child? That you aren’t worth living as long as possible to watch grow up? To see have kids of your own?

Is this honestly what its come to? Is she the exception or the rule?

When are we, as a nation and as a GLOBE gonna stand up and say, “Not only are my children worth living longer for, but I AM TOO! I don’t wanna do this to my body and I don’t want my family to have to bury me before my time!”

Guys, it’s time to take care of our bodies and truly treat them as the Temple they were created to be! Otherwise, you wind up like this piece of trash, collecting taxpayer dollars to live out some whim she came up with in order to justify her size (and yes, I called her trash).

Unacceptable!

Y’see, this weekend, my webguy updated our hosting (in Rachel-terms, “the stuff that puts What if You Were Thin on the internet”). He said something about switching to Linux…blah, blah, blah. My eyes glazed over and I assumed he was talking about magic.

Until Monday.

When my email box was literally bursting at the seams with people who couldn’t log into the site to get all the great videos, newsletters, and how-to workout tutorials that beckoned them from the other side.

I think my webguy took about 3 years off my life!

For a while, the site was down. Then when he got it up, no one could login. Then when they could login, none of the videos would play, none of the pages worked…

Ugh. It makes me want to go back to bed just thinking about it.

At any rate, if you’re one of the many who tried logging on and couldn’t, I apologize. The site is working now and my webguy has been diligently fixing every single link on the site (and that’s a LOT).

You can login with your username and password as if nothing had happened.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about – WHAT ROCK DO YOU LIVE UNDER? Tell ya what, you can see every single video, how-to workout tutorial, audio celebrity interview, newsletter and more for just $1.00:

http://www.whatifyouwerethin.com/?page_id=504

Don’t go spreading this around, though. It’s just for right now while I’m still recovering from the heart attack I had on Monday. Once I can get level-headed again, I’ll change my mind.

Better hurry while I’m still loopy!

And as always, if there are certain struggles, issues, or temptations you’re dealing with, you can always let me know at rachel@racheldyoung.com and tell me all about it. I’m always listening and look forward to hearing from you soon!

To your weight loss success,
Rachel Young
PS – No, I didn’t fire the webguy…yet. I’m kinda married to him. But one more stunt like this weekend and I MAY consider it! HA!

And they want it to be fun and exciting.

But “newsletters” evoke images of Wall St. Journal types who sit around with black smudges on their fingertips from turning a boring, ol’ newsletter.

Not the fun and exciting customers I have, to be sure!

So I sat down and learned a few things, played around with a few techniques and finishes..and voila! I’ve turned my drab ol’ newsletter into the very first edition of Beautiful Curves Magazine! (Cue the angels singing and halo-like lighting effects!)

Click these words to download a FREE copy of the February edition of Beautiful Curves Magazine! (The PDF will open automatically when you click the words)

Now – the big question:

Why do you care?

Well, for starters, who says weight loss has to be boring and mundane? Why can’t it be exciting and fun, like you?

Second – I realized that, while $20 a month is a small price to pay for the large amount of information my Members-Only clients receive each month, that I could do more, be better, and give unselfishly. So why not?

Third, I’m read/viewed/listened to in over 5 countries now. I think I can turn out something better than a cheap-looking newsletter to truly be the World Class Organization I know What if You Were Thin is!

So enjoy, new reader! My hope is that you’ll take advantage of a very generous offer on page 9 and give us a test drive to lose a full dress or pants size in less than a month for only $1.00! (Check out page 9 for more details)

Happy reading and lemme know your thoughts! I’m always listening and look forward to hearing from you soon!