And just like that, we're back on Sister Circle Live and we're joined by two of the most instrumental people in my competition prep process. You've seen this guy here a few times before. He's an IFBB classic, fizzy, pro, competitive, and my prep coach, Katie Wilson, and making her sister Circle Live debut is my posing coach. Oh, yes. I have a special figure pro, Ashley Sparks. I'm so glad that both of you are here today. Yes. Wow, guys. Oh, my God. It's all my girls. I'm going to be here. I'm going to be here. I'm going to be here. I'm going to be here. I'm going to be here. Okay. So Katie, now I've been came down from 236, by the time I hit the stage, I was a smooth in Rashan's words, about 179. What was the strategy you implemented to kickstart my weight loss? Okay, then, and told me up for the competition stage. So basically, from beginning to end, because I wasn't like, 12-week prep. Yeah, yeah. It was a little different. So kind of how Rashan taught on, we broke it up in small goals. So the first one was the album. And when she talked about, she was like, maybe I want to do a show when she first reached out, but I want to focus on the album first. So I said, well, that's our first goal. It wasn't necessarily a number of mouth, but we wanted to look good for pictures. Then after that, she was like, okay, I look pretty good. And now we can kind of gear it up. So then, we were slowly just trying to get to a manageable weight, so we can actually start a prep. Then we went to Africa, and we had some other... Childs. So it was really just trying to steadily lose, not fast weight loss, but at the same time, fight throughout the obstacles that we had come to fruition. So it was small goals, though. That's the easy way to do it. If I tell her from the jump at 236, say, hey, we got to lose 75 pounds. That's intimidating. Yeah, that is. But if I say we got to lose 10 pounds here, or get stronger here, it's a lot more tangible to make it happen. That was a whole strategy. Yeah, that's good. So Ashley, what was your motivation in becoming a fitness competitor, and what were some of the barriers that you had to break through and to be accepted as an African-American woman at sport? Right. Actually, I started as a bikini competitor. I got into 2014, as well. I actually did my first show. After that show, I was really, really small. And I was like, I really want to lift away. I want some muscles. So that's actually when I started shaping my body and molding my body to become a figure competitor. And those barriers. Talk to me about the barriers that you had to break. Right. So you have, just like Selina, spoke about as far as your diet, as far as cardio, sacrifice. Sacrifice, stand consistent. And they're really big factor. And it being consistent and lifting, eating, and also finding that balance. Mm-hmm. Most competitors is hard to find balance because you have a life outside of competing. So she's a mom. And so it's really, really, I would say that would be the barriers is finding balance. But I think what Kwa was asking too was like, to be accepted when you're on stage. And when you're in the, because I experienced some interesting things we can talk about later, child. But as a black woman, woman in this sport, what are some of the things that you come up against? Because of being a black woman, or physique, you know, like our legs and stuff like that. Right. So as a black woman, we have problems with our legs and our glutes. That's one of the two problems. Which problems? Which problems? As far as coming down. We hold a lot of fat in that area. Or we may hold a lot of muscle in that area. So it's actually hard to come down upper body. We can do that all day. That's the easy part. So it's just actually staying consistent with the cardio and actually high intensity training to make sure you can, you know, mold the, mold your legs into the way they need to be. And also symmetry. It's not a weight loss contest. It's all about symmetry. Your upper body has to match your lower body. Your glutes, everything has to align together. And that's the part that takes up August. Well, Coach Katie, Selena was in the figure category in our competition. Yep. So what does, what does that mean? What does it entail? A long time win. You can say, yeah, yeah. You can say on the post people, like, oh, she's bodybuilding. So it's many different categories on the bodybuilding. You got bikini, which is the smaller kind of more petite girls. Figure is a small waist, a nice V-tap or a nice wide back, which she has naturally. So now we were just kind of bringing it down to kind of sculpt it to what it is. Then you have physique. Those are the women that kind of pose kind of like I do. Women's physique. And then you have women bodybuilding, which is the biggest. They have a lot of muscle. So those are the four different categories. Oh, that's good. That's good. And posing, Ashley. How important is posing because she had a whole coach to do learn how to do the pose. But it's a thing, though. Talk to us about that. And that's actually one of the hardest parts. She'll leave. So you would need to give yourself eight weeks sometimes longer. It just depends on how fast that your body, and you can able to practice and adapt to that. It definitely takes some time for that. Wow. Well, I know you want to publicly give them thanks again. Well, I just want to say without you guys, I could not have done this. I love you. I thank you so much. I can't wait to do the second one. Yes. Well, my next one. Because I want to say them second. Uh-huh. And remember, new storiesälel. You gonna catch up tonight at the same fishansas also. So you know that a piece of land is gonna Wildman team, so, and it starts playing around with that friendship, which, I just want to thank you all. This is a first time I'm reminded of your slides.