Fitness Tips With Megan Bursey

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I recently had a chance to ask Megan Bursey a bunch of questions about her fitness journey. Megan is a life long athlete who recently turned to fitness competitions and scored a first in her division and first overall in her very first show, Musclemania’s Fitness Texas Championships in Forth Worth!

Q: What inspired or motivated you to continue to pursue fitness the way you have?

Megan: I have always been a very active and athletic person all my life. It is rare that I do not look for some way to compete in any hobby I pick up and had always thought about competing in the fitness arena but never really committed to the process.

When I tipped the scales a few months ago at 158 pounds at the doctors, I decided I needed to lose some weight and ultimately it was a good time to get into the competitive arena!

Q: What advice would you give to someone who’s struggling to stay motivated, keep positive and stick to a proper nutrition and exercise program, especially someone who may not have a positive role model around? After all, most of us are surrounded every day by a lot more negativity than we are positive people. It can be tough to break away from that.

Megan: I struggled with this a lot when I first began training. So many people are unaware of what they say and how they say it. Often times they do not understand what it is you are trying to do or are jealous of it or ashamed of their own inability to accomplish a goal and therefore project their emotions onto you (Editor’s note: This is so sad, but unfortunately true. Sometimes our friends and family are our worst enemies when it comes to making changes in our lives).

It can be such a simple statement or a look that can make you feel inadequate or insecure about yourself. It is so important to remember why you are doing what you are doing.

Committing to the process of losing weight is not easy, whether its five pounds or ten or twenty or if you are competing or not.

None of it is easy and it has to be a desire to change from within and for yourself or you will not really commit to the work it takes. I am lucky and was able to find a trainer who believed in me and worked with me everyday to stay focused and positive.

If you can find that one person who will stand by you and push you, then that can be all it takes. If you can’t find a trainer, then maybe a group fitness instructor or a fellow gym attendee that you see all the time, get online and chat with others who are working to change their lives.

There are forums and venues out there for everyone to get support, but do not get bogged down by the negative people who are projecting their own insecurities on you.

Pretty soon you will feel so amazing and proud of how far you have come that those comments won’t bother you so much anymore.

Q: One thing I’d like for you to address because I feel it’s a big one with women, is weight training. Even nowadays, a lot of women shy away from weight training because they don’t want to look like Arnold. If they train at all, it’s with the tiny pink weights and they never even break a sweat.

You’ve developed a gorgeous, sexy, lean hard body and you couldn’t have done it without weights. What do you say to these women to get them to not just train with weights but train hard and make it an important part of their overall program?

Megan: Weight training is an integral part of my workout routine. I personally love the way lifting makes me feel. I feel strong and sexy and lean. I love pushing my body and seeing the fantastic results that adding weights can bring.

I do understand how women are afraid of weight training, and when you hear “bodybuilding” the immediate reaction is size or mass. It doesn’t have to mean that.

Women can increase their metabolism and add definition to their physiques with light to moderate weight and high reps. I usually do anywhere from 15-20 reps of a given set three times through and in doing so have actually lost some of the mass I used to have and achieved a leaner sexier look.

Q: What’s the biggest mistake you made when you started and how did you correct it?

Megan: I think the biggest mistake I made is one that many people make and that was with my diet. I was eating better but still had too many carbs and sugars in my diet.

I find diet to be the area where too many people fall short. They workout hard, but do not follow the right kind of diet and do not see results they want. My trainer put me on a stricter diet and I bought a food scale.

Weighing everything I ate really helped me gain an understanding of portions and being on stricter diet kept me from straying.

Q: What do you think is the most important thing or skill you’ve learned with regard to health and fitness?

Megan: Diet. Hands down. When I started this process of training I really had no idea what I was eating. I ate pretty healthy anyway but I was never aware of how many carbs or grams of fat and sugar were in the “healthy” foods I was consuming.

It is amazing when you look at the nutritional information of foods and realize that you are actually consuming much more than the “serving” on the box says. It has taken some time, but I am learning what to eat and what not to eat to maintain the figure I worked so hard for.

Q: What are some common pitfalls you feel people can stumble upon and how do you help them avoid these obstacles?

Megan: I see people stumble on dieting most of all. They eat what they believe to be “healthy” foods, that in fact are not, or they eat more than they should or at the wrong time of day, or they take drastic measure when they should start small.

Change is not easy and too many people try to do too much too soon and then they don’t stick with it. Starting small with realistic modifications to your diet and exercise program are the only ways to stay with it.

As far as the diet goes, for me it was starting with weaning myself off sugar. I learned how to drink tea without sugar; cut back on my creamer in coffee until eventually I have learned to enjoy black coffee.

Try not to order dessert and fill up on veggies at dinner. Cut back on the alcohol intake. I never believed in a food scale before, but I tell people all the time now to get one and use it.

Actually getting accustom to what a proper portion of food is will change the way you look at meals and how you eat them.

It is unrealistic to think that you can wake up one day and say I am never going to eat sugar again or have a piece of pizza. I mean there are some people who may be able to do this, but not any I know.

Try to stick to plan, but if you fall off on a meal, it is not the end of the world, just get right back on track. Try to stick to your plan during the week and allow yourself one meal on the weekends to indulge in that piece of cake.

Pretty soon you will find it becomes routine and it won’t be so hard to turn down those temptations that surround us all!

Q: Moving forward and knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently with your own journey, if anything?

Megan: Honestly, I would not have done anything different. Working as hard as I did and going through the exhaustion and frustration really made my competition and win mean that much more to me.

I truly believe that everything happens for a reason and having worked so hard showed me I could do it. Even though I am in the “off season” right now I am not letting all that hard work go to waste and sticking close to my diet and training schedule so that I do not fall back into the old habits.

Q: The most common excuse I hear from people who don’t eat right or train is that they don’t have the time. What advice do you have for people who use ‘lack of time’ as an excuse to eat poorly and avoid exercise?

Megan: It is definitely easier to eat bad in our society. It is cheap and convenient to go through a drive through, but long term it is much harder to stay healthy behaving this way.

Everyone is busy and you have to make time for what is important. If being healthy and living a long and active life is something that is important to you, then you have to find the time in the day to do it.

You can always get up a little earlier in the morning and hit the gym or go for a walk. It is all about making a decision to commit to being healthy.

Q: What’s a typical day for you when it comes to training and nutrition?

Megan: My training looks like this:

5:30 am – Protein Shake (Pre-Workout)
6:00 am – 6:45am Sprints
7:30 am – Breakfast
8:00 am – WORK
10:30 – Mid-Morning Meal
12:00 pm – HOME TO WALK MY DOG
1:00 pm – Lunch
4:00 pm – Afternoon Meal
5:00 pm – HIT THE GYM FROM WORK
5:00- 7:00 Workout
7:00 pm Post workout Shake
8:00 pm-Dinner
9:00 pm Bed

My meals are pretty much the same and include 4oz of protein and veggies. My breakfast when I am training is the only meal that contains oats or cream of rice for carbs.

When I am not training meal number two includes 4oz or brown rice or sweet potato . In the off season I also do not train in the mornings.

Q: How are you able to consistently fit them into your busy schedule?

Megan: I find that you make time for what is important. Honestly training just becomes part of my schedule and routine. I try to pre-plan my meals and food for the week and hit the grocery store and do my errands on Sunday.

Inevitably it seems like I always make another trip back to the store mid-week for something.. but I try to plan as best I can.

Q: What do you think are the keys to becoming successful, whether it’s competing or losing 15 pounds of fat?

Megan: I think consistency is the key. Obviously people tend to start something and then stop and then start again.. whether it is diet or exercise or both.

If you stay consistent with your diet and exercise then the weight will come off. I see too many people exercise, then go to Taco Bell and eat only to go back to the gym and workout again and then eat fish for dinner thinking that the fast food meal they had can be undone.

Stay the course with a consistent meal and exercise plan and the weight will come off.. same with competing, if you stay consistent with your work and diet the results will speak for themselves.

Q: What’s one of the things you find most challenging about what you do?

Megan: I think the most challenging aspect to me is finding the time in the day to do everything you want to do and the energy to do it.

When I am training I want to spend time with my friends and family, but am so tired at the end of the day and my day starts so early that it is hard to find the time and energy to actually make that happen.

I know it can be tough on them, but I am very blessed because each and every one of my friends is so supportive of my goals and after seeing me at my first show and the results, they are more behind me than ever, which definitely helps drive me a little more.

Q: What are your future plans?

Megan: To continue training and working hard in and out of the gym. I have come so far and look forward to wherever this road takes me. I competed in a Musclemania show for the first time and am looking to try my hand at some NPC shows in 2012.

I am continuing the hard work in the off season and hopefully it will pay off next year. I have definitely learned through training that you cannot control anything other than yourself and if I give each day all I can, then I can be proud of the result, no matter what it is.