TedX speech is finally up! 4 months later!

[skully]

Check it out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcVGhSOCLZI

[fitoverforty]

That was great! Loved it. Your enthusiasm and genuine care and concern over making a difference and effecting a change in how people think about fitness and healthy eating really shined through.

[Boss Man]

I found that funny when you talked about Women using Ab Crunch Machines for 30 minutes. A minor exaggeration shall we say, but never the less, it caught the room .

I wanted to say, I have never felt more proud of you than I do right now.

I believed that the skittish, self loathing, emotionally all over the place teenager you were, when you first came here about 3 years ago, was a person that could overcome a lot if not all of what they felt or believed about themselves and the world around them.

What I have seen is someone that looks physically strong, accomplished, beautiful, intelligent and able to impart their feelings and express themselves with great diction, clarity and assurity, not with nervousness, uncertainty and fear of being misunderstood.

I saw someone who could speak from the heart and come across as sincere, not pushy or trying to force people to think about something, with shock and awe tactics, but who can tell it like it is, without being harsh and brutal.

I think you actually discussed the social stigma about females and how strength makes them look, really well, because there's too much bullcrap and mythology surrounding it and when you read comments like I did one time on another site, about someones mother saying stay off weights, or you'll end up becoming a Lesbian with a beard, it dumbfounds me sometimes how people can live in some kind of fuzzy logic, other worldy bubble, as if they're practically away with the fairies on the outskirts of la-la land, eating butterscotch clouds and having marshmallow dreams .

You truly and honestly have matured into a wonderful and highly capable young Lady journalist and I use the word Lady with absolute certainty .

I'm sending you a BIG, BIG PAT ON THE BACK, because YOU , yes YOU, are an absolute human success story and an absolute inspiration and rolemodel to others.

You have continued to prove the belief I had in you was never wasted and to walk out on that stage and be as funny, articulate, relaxed and straight to the point, takes some heart, courage and intestinal fortitude, I admit I occasionally thought couldn't be a part of you, to perhaps quite to the extent you've demonstrated.

Did you actually get any nerves, or are you normally so laid back you're practically horizontal?

I want to tell you again Amna, I am incredibly proud of you for how you have changed your life and I hope you can continue to do the things you want and be successful and happy, because you really deserve it and I hope we can continue to be a small part of your progress in life, because we as a community don't support people up to a point, we can support people for life, in any and all goals and I will never stop wanting to see what you can do next and next again and again etc.

CONGRATULATIONS on everything you have done thus far and GOOD LUCK with everything you continue to do.

On that evidence, perhaps a true star is born. only time will tell.

BE proud of yourself, because you DEFINITELY deserve to be.

BRILLIANT presentation misses, really, really AMAZING!!!!! and so are YOU.

.

[skully]

Oh bossman! you're making ME BLUSH! Actually in gym I hav seen women in the abs machine for half an hour on a phone - the culture here is much worse in gyms that in the US, trust me. Women come to an all-women gym just to look good and match thei clothers, with their make-up and what not!

I was soooo damn nervous! =P, what are you saying! I honestly almost backed out of it, but thought you know it would be stupid to do that amd just went ahead with it and did best at that time, and yeah i am quite ladiback in real life =D!

i still have a long way to go, i have reached a point where what I am doing now is giving me maintainence kind of results nothing else, need to up training, diet again, introduce new meals to diet, eliminate a few and so on.

Thank you, esp here, the culture of weightlifting for women is non-existent and I want to push more women into it. I am so physically small, I am not going to get much bigger because I lift more, I learned a women's body can be as strong as a man, if not more, but still have it's feminine side - sad all the myths you hear!

I am definitely proud of myself and sometimes I need to see where I came from to keep going forward.

'HUGS TO BOTH OF YOU'
@fitoverforty & @bossman!
Your support is what kept me going.

[Boss Man]

Keep trying to do what is best for you, because that is all you can ask or expect of yourself.