Um, hi, meet Miss America. Obviously, the girl looks smokin’ in both pix. However in the one on the right, she’s worked hard to lose weight (which is great if that’s what she wanted!).

But I love two things about how she looks on the right. One, she is not a waif. She’s womanly, she doesn’t have a “perfect” body, she looks super healthy. Two, she got that way by eating right and doing….CROSSFIT!

I just makes me think….this is what strong girls do. No, you do not have to do Crossfit to be a strong girl but…it’s a non-girly workout that makes you FEEL strong. And it’s made me feel less concerned with being skinny and more concerned with being strong.

According to her boyfriend: 

“She did not want to be rail-thin,” Maynard said. “She did it the right way: She did a lot of CrossFit, and she just ate a lot better.”

When I go to my Crossfit box, I see all shapes and sizes. Actually, I recently returned to Trident Crossfit, where I first fell in love with the sport. As I re-entered the gym this week, I saw a ton of familiar faces and not surprisingly, many of those who had started back when I did were looking much leaner! It was really encouraging, actually!

The only body type I really don’t see much of at crossfit is waifish thin. I know there are a minority of women out there born with this body type so I don’t want to demean it. However, if you start doing Crossfit religiously, that fat or “skinny fat” as my family likes to say, will transform into something fierce.

Miss America Mallory Hagan, says her favorite move is wall balls (NOT my favorite) but it certainly is one that works several areas. I’m kind of partial to slamballs even though they can be killer!

Like so many girls, I have succumbed to the disease of “cardiooverload” where it always felt like I could never run enough miles or spend enough minutes on the treadmill. Crossfit really cured me of this problem — showing me that through hard work, I can get a damn good work out in 25 minutes. I’ve no doubt many women in beauty pageants have also relied on over exercise and disordered eating habits to stay thin. With a workout like Crossfit, it becomes about something more and proves that you are more than a thousand burned calories.