Marilynn Larkin competed in the Hercules Pro/Am World Natural Bodybuilding Federation Saturday, June 22 in White Plains, N.Y., after a stage four breast cancer diagnosis at age 75.
Training for the Hercules Pro/Am World Natural Bodybuilding Federation
Asked her about her training, Larkin started her answer by expressing her love for weight training.
“I’ve had a trainer since the 1990’s. I just love it. I go to the gym usually three times a week,” Larkin said. She also talked about how her training is separated into phases that focus on different muscle groups for the competition.
Larken competed in a natural bodybuilding competition 22 years ago to challenge herself when she was also the oldest competitor. “One thing that stayed with me all these years was the diet and I’ve told people over and over it’s 75% diet. People want to look good. They come up to me and ask, ‘How do you look that way? What do you eat?’ And I say what I don’t eat.”
Larkin’s diet includes the following:
- Oatmeal for breakfast
- Nuts (which she has to weigh) for breakfast
- Blueberries for breakfast
- Whey protein with some milk
- Omelet with egg yolk with three egg whites and a slice of cheese or avocado for mid-morning snack
- Protein (chicken/turkey burger) with salad/ asparagus for lunch
- Fish with sweet potato, yogurt, apple, grapefruit juice
In accordance with her diet, she is only allowed one free meal per week. A free meal means any fattening junk food such as pizza or one of her favorites: Harvest cookies, chicken salad, muffins and bread.
Larkin said, “Because also with the cancer diagnosis, I shifted my whole diet so I was trying to eat healthily for the past year which is why this transition was not so major.”
Larkin’s other passions
For the past 10 to 20 years, Larkin has been in the medical journalism writing business, appearing in publications such as Reuter’s Health. She was a contributing editor for The Lancet, a medicine journal, while writing for consumers. Currently, she writes for physicians.
Larkin has also dabbled in musicianship. She took guitar lessons at the age of 10 and has been playing ever since as a hobby with the help of her medical expertise. It started when she was asked by a friend to speak during an open mic session, leading her to eventually buy her own guitar and release a song called “Just Do It.”
Get Unbent
Larkin is starting a platform called “Get Unbent.”
“I’m about taking action and it’s really two-fold. It’s a concept when you think of the idea of posture and getting unbent. It’s also about getting out of your comfort zone and the weight of the world where you can’t do what you want to be doing so because I’m practically orientated. I’m creating this platform for strategies and steps of how to [achieve your goals in a structured way],” Larkin said.
Larkin observes how others see her physique, such as her toned arms, yet people do not realize the amount of work needed to achieve those results.
Also, with her music gig, Larkin did not want to do any promotional work like marketing, starting a fan club and other self-promotion. Larkin’s mantra is: it’s a marathon and not a sprint, and the only way you can achieve your goals is to do it step-by-step and focus on the journey to get results.
This is why she started “Get Unbent.” The countless amount of people who tell her how inspiring she is and who praise her led Larkin to start this platform to help more people reach their goals.
Advocacy for posture
Next, her advocacy of posture started in her youth when she was one of the shortest students in her class, leading her to gradually understand viscerally that to stand out and gain recognition from her peers and students, she would have to acquire great posture.
As an adult, Larkin’s reading of the sociological study book “Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” by Erving Goffman taught her how you present yourself is critical in a corporate setting. She saw women whose postures weren’t good which made her reflect on the ill-effect of poor posture on their bodies in a functional way and a lack of connectivity to whoever they were speaking to.
Hunchback is one of the many stereotypes of old people. Having good posture “breaks an aging stereotype and your own perception of what you do which is very empowering. And it keeps reinforcing itself.”
Larkin stated, “Imagine someone is pouring a cold glass of water down your back and you sit back. If you sit back and just remind yourself to do that all the time, [it feels different, in terms of physical and mental body]…You are not going to like it at first because you are out of your comfort zone, but if you [keep doing the same thing then it will be your comfort zone].”
“I love challenging myself and giving myself permission to do what I actually want to do [which is a part of what GETUNBENT is].”
“It took me a long time to understand that I am not like everybody else but I can still help people to get to where they want to be, and so much of it is in your head, just like self-stereotyping, self-limiting. Ya know I’m (x) age, I can’t do anything and it’s like ‘who says’ and you tell me but no, you’re telling yourself that. You have to stop saying it.”
The way you see yourself causes people to see you the way you see yourself and vice versa. It starts with the acceptance of yourself by not casting judgment on yourself with insight into how people perceive you to understand yourself better.
Diagnosis of cancer
Larkin was diagnosed with cancer in October 2022, which left her in despair and distraught. “I’m convinced that physical activity and getting the body as strong as possible is a strong factor in this in the fact that I can be stable now, as I accepted it,” she says, referring to the discouragement of going through surgery twice.
Larkin revealed photos of herself at age of 75 after surviving cancer which proved to be a cathartic experience.
We talked about how you don’t have to put yourself or other people in categories because of what they are going through because it is a part of your or their journey at the end of the day. It is a part of the human experience and we should all treat our experiences like that.
“Wouldn’t it be great now to do the bodybuilding competition and push my body, but also for other people to see? I never had a story from being inspiring. Now I have a story and it’s a story that resonates with people and that’s part of why I want to get it out there and a way to deal with it that’s bigger than me.”
Editor’s note: The fourth to last paragraph has been corrected to accurately reflect Ms. Larkin’s medical procedure.
Featured image: Photo by Colynary Media on Unsplash
Edited by: James Sutton
