Lady Lifter Spotlight: Alexandra B!

I love hearing about lifting ladies, and love even more reading about them! So when I ran across Alex’s blog, I loved her always-fun, bubbly, positive attitude and her motivation to eat clean and train hard, despite balancing a full-time class load studying marine biology. You can read a bit more about her below, but be sure to check out her blog as it is full of uplifting stories (and tons of super clean mostly-paleo recipes!)

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Name: Alexandra B.

Blog: www.freckledlifter.wordpress.com

Instagram: @zandra0212

Location: Texas!

Age: 20

What types of physical activity do you enjoy? My main true love is HEAVY, low rep weight lifting, but I also love long walks on the beach, swimming, and biking. I’ve recently fallen in love with hiking/mountain climbing as well after climbing the Half Dome in Yosemite over the summer! BEST HIKE EVER!!!

How did you get started in weight lifting? It’s actually a pretty crazy story. Back in 2009, I was going through my senior year of high school. Everything was great until I lost my best friend to a life of partying, sex, and drugs. I was already stressed out about graduation, college applications, and the future, so losing my closest friend was hard. Stress made me develop an eating disorder and I got down to a REALLY unhealthy weight.
I realized what harm I was doing to my body when my family and I went to one of those anatomy “Body World” exhibits in February 2010. Passing by a mirror, I saw what I had become–I resembled the preserved people in the exhibit! Mortified, I started doing research on healthy ways to gain weight because I was sick of “punishing” myself with restriction of food. I discovered bodybuilding.com and was immediately inspired by athletes like Erin Stern and Dana Linn Bailey. They were STRONG, healthy and badass chicks, not frail, depressed girls. My new goal was to gain muscle and fuel my body in a way that would get me results. So, I buried myself in nutrition and weight training books, bought a tub of whey protein, and started out with a simple full body 3-day split. I’ve been loving it ever since! Now I work with a bodybuilding coach that’s fine tuning everything to help me reach my ultimate goal: gain enough mass to compete in a figure show!

Favorite workout or lift? I really love chin ups, upright rows, and pendlay rows. But I think my all time fave has to be SQUATS of all types!! 😀 You just feel so powerful when you bust out that last rep!

Piece of advice for new lifters or those reluctant to try:
#1 Don’t be afraid!! You won’t get bulky, you won’t look manly, you’ll feel AWESOME
#2 Everyone’s gotta start somewhere.
#3 You don’t need a full gym membership to get results—I workout at home with a barbell, plates, pullup bar, bench, and a homemade squat rack!
#4 Goals ARE achievable!!!