Yo Yo Yo Yohimbine
Now that I’m prepping for the next show I’m trying to focus on getting a little leaner.
In some ways this seems crazy because I am already the leanest I have ever (been as an adult).
As a kid I was skinny. I was so skinny I was teased about it by other kids…and adults. I remember going to the shoe store with my mom when they had actual shoe salespeople that would walk around, measure your feet and pull shoes from a back room for you to try on.
After attempting shoe after shoe that fit me length-wise but all seemed too wide, the guy joked, “You need to eat a lot of mashed potatoes and then hop up and down so they can go to your feet.”
Extended family made comments often about being too skinny or a beanpole, and one of my Greek friends had a grandmother that walked up to me with a handful of potato chips, muttered something in Greek and tried to get me to eat them.
Later on, as a 7th grader, when some of the girls were just developing breasts and butts and hips, I overheard a really cute boy comment that my body went straight up and down and my legs went right into my back with not butt.
I wasn’t self-conscious about my body yet, but little by little these comments began to add up.
I wanted breasts. I wanted hips. I wanted to be shapely.
But here I am now, an adult, and trying desperately to lose fat, lose weight, even though currently the number on the scale is sitting right around where it was when I was about 14 years old.
One supplement my coach recommended a couple of months ago was yohimbine.
He remarked that some people feel a little jittery or anxious with it and one Google search had me brushing the idea off. But now, I am so close to show, and he brings it up again.
What the hell, I think. If it doesn’t go well Ill just stop it.
I feel compelled to insert something here about me not recommending ANY supplement to anyone reading this. Do your own research and check with your medical providers.
So I ordered it.
In high school I was a cheerleader, and every year we would go to cheerleading camp. Every year our team would do alright, but not great. We were mediocre cheerleaders and would look on at some of the teams being super peppy and super loud with wide smiles on their faces. I remebber hearing of someone taking Vivarin, a caffieine pill to “pep themselves up” and so I quietly suggested we try it one nght before our final competition.
We walked over as a team to the nearest drug store and bought a couple of boxes. Some girls took 4 or 5, some took 8. This was — wholly — a terrible idea. Bouncing off the walls is an understatement. We were giggly, we missed all of our marks, we couldn’t start at the same time.
We were a mess.
This is how I feel taking this stuff. Maybe it’s not quite like taking 7 caffeine pills but it is something like that. Mostly I feel like I don’t want to sit still. And also, coffee seems to exacerbate the wired feel — coffee, my last vice in this prep.
So I’m still taking it, albeit temporarily for now. I have about three weeks until the next competition and then I think I might do another build. For now, I keep chipping away at the layer of fat on my hamstrings and glutes, the places that don’t want to shed anymore of me.
24 DAYS I wrote on a Post-it note, and stuck on my computer monitor. It’s rounding the corner fast, although in some ways not fast enough.