Ms Health & Fitness 2026

The dream started on a magazine rack, but the real story is what it took to get here—and why the goal matters. Lorayne opens up about growing from a cheer-loving teen into a coach on a mission to help women claim strength, health, and purpose without chasing gimmicks. The cover run for Miss Health and Fitness 2026 becomes more than a title; it’s a platform to show that longevity is built on muscle, recovery, and conviction.

We walk through the messy middle: seasons of numbing, a return to the gym for the wrong reasons, then a shift toward self-respect and sustainable training. Lorayne pulls back the curtain on physique competing—the highs, the mental toll, and the crucial difference between stage-ready and healthy. She shares how she programs now as a trainer and instructor, balancing clients, ranch work, and her own lifts with a recovery-first mindset. Steps are daily, strength is progressive, and rest is strategy, not guilt.

Nutrition gets a full reset too. Instead of rigid “bro diets,” Lorayne embraces functional nutrition with plenty of protein, fiber, and micronutrients. She works with providers on labs and food sensitivity testing, framing data as guidance rather than a cage. Expect myth-busting: cardio is not a fat-loss magic trick, and muscle is the organ of longevity. She also addresses common misconceptions about hormones, making a clear case for evidence-based therapy guided by labs when needed.

Underneath it all is faith and service. Confidence comes from integrity, showing up for your body, and aligning choices with values. For high achievers who shelved their health to build families or businesses, this conversation is a nudge—and a plan—to rebuild strength without burning out. Ready to rethink your training, your plate, and your purpose? Follow, share with a friend who needs this, and leave a review to help more people find the show.

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Transcript

A Childhood Dream Becomes A Goal

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the Armor Up Podcast. I'm your host, Lorraine Michaels, and I would like to talk to you today about my journey to becoming 2026 Miss Health and Fitness. Um, you may or may not know that I am in the running for being chosen to be on the cover of Mrs. Health and Miss. I always want to say Mrs. Ms. Health and Fitness. It is a pretty, I don't want to a prestigious magazine. I don't know, I don't know what I would call it. It is an honor for sure to be in the running, to be chosen to be on the cover of this magazine. This magazine has been around for years, years and years. And when I was a teenager in the peak of my athleticism, I always wanted to be on the cover. The little, the little girl in me always looked up to fit women. And I started out, I wasn't, I wasn't an athlete per se, as in playing sports like basketball, baseball, all those traditional sports. No, I was a cheerleader. And I started in junior high. And it was the love of dance and the love of entertaining. Um, I absolutely loved it. If you ask anyone in my family, they would tell you that I was a ham growing up. I was always trying to make people laugh, and I loved singing and dancing and performing. It was just so fun. So I started out in cheerleading in junior high and in high school, did it, and then I did competition cheerleading, and I was asked to be on two national teams. There was NCAA and USA. Both times that I went to cheerleading camp, I was approached and asked to be a part of the team. Unfortunately, I couldn't due to financial reasons. I wasn't able to. Nonetheless, I still loved the sport. I loved doing it. And I would see this magazine, this health and fitness magazine, and I would just be in awe of um how these girls, these women got on it. And I I always said, one day I'll be on that. Oh, I don't know why this is getting emotional. And now I have the opportunity, and I am so grateful. It's not by by luck or by chance. It has been by hard work. And if you've known me for any length of time, you would know that I am a very determined woman. And when I put my mind to something and I set a goal, I'll be damn if I don't achieve it. Come hell or high water. I definitely know that, you know, anything worth fighting for is not going to come easy. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about this journey. I wanted to kind of shine a little bit of light on it. It's not just for fame and fortune. It's not just because, oh, I want to be famous and I want to be on a magazine. No, it is more than that. It is hard work, dedication, showing women that you can be an ordinary person and accomplish these things. You can set your mind to achieve something, whatever it may be, fitness, financial, career, whatever it is, if you set your mind to something and you have a goal and you do whatever it takes to get there, you can do it. And I have been so passionate about health and fitness ever since I was young. It was always very important to me, my health. I saw so many people got sick with cancer or, you know, different ailments, different, we'll call them comorbidities, which is like, you know, high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, all these things that are a hundred percent preventable and treatable without medication. You can reverse these things through health and fitness. And that is a hill I will die on. And that's another reason why this is so important to me, this competition and being on this magazine, because I am a personal trainer. I am a health coach. And I it is my mission to teach people, women especially, how to achieve this, that it is doable and that you can be healthy and vibrant in your 40s, 50s, and above. You don't have to have medication, you don't have to have, you know, peptides and all these things that that are coming out now. You can achieve this through fitness and nutrition. And so I just wanted to maybe shine a little light on who I am and and how I got here. So um, a question that has come up was what was the turning point that made you decide to pursue fitness seriously? Whether it was a specific moment or experience that sparked my commitment to health and wellness, or was it a gradual evolution? And to be honest, it's a little bit of both. So, yes, it was a gradual evolution, I guess you can say, because I have always been in some sort of fitness. There was a period in time in my 20s where um I was very unhealthy mentally as well as physically. I was abusing my body because there was a lot of pain that I hadn't healed through or healed from. And so I was using things like alcohol and relationships to numb the pain. And so there was a period in time where I was using a very unhealthy outlet, and eventually it led me to fitness. I was in a marriage where my husband was addicted to pornography and smoking weed. And rather than working through that, I turned to fitness because I wanted to change my body. I wanted to change the way I looked so that my husband would be attracted to me. So that was how I fell back into fitness. So I guess that would be the turning point, if you will, that really sparked the love of fitness for myself. And then that led to competing because I got into fitness to change the way I looked, fell in love with it. And then some friends and trainers at the gym were like, hey, you should compete. You'd be really good at it because I was dedicated and because um I was I set a goal and I was achieving it. And so therefore, they said you should compete. That is a whole nother story that led me down a different path in fitness. And to kind of rabbit tail or uh dovetail off of that, as it pertains to competing, I would strongly suggest that you do not compete unless if you are mentally prepared, because it is very, very difficult. You put your body through an um a lot of stress, and you're also up on stage competing with the best of the best. And so if you're not okay mentally and confident in yourself and who you are and the work that you've put in, and you have maybe a propensity to compare yourself, I would not recommend it because I was not ready for it and I went into it and I beat myself up because I wasn't ready for it and I wanted to win and I wanted to be the best. I was top 10 plenty of times. Every time I competed, never took first or second. It was very difficult for me because I thought that I looked great. And lo and behold, you know, if you don't take first, then you're like, well, maybe I didn't look as good as I thought. And then afterwards, you know, it's the whole thing you're wanting to maintain that physique, but that being stage ready is not uh a healthy physique to maintain every day. So competing is something that I would ease into. If it's something that you've thought about or you want to do, great. Make sure that you are working with a coach who one has prepped people, clients to do it and they know what they're doing, and they're able to prepare you before and also work with you afterwards because afterwards is probably just as hard as preparing for it. Because, like I said, your physique changes right after, and you have to be able to, what it's called reverse diet, and you need to be able to slowly go back to what you should be eating. And then your body doesn't change as dramatically. So if done right, it could be great. It could be a great experience, but don't jump into it like I did. I definitely wasn't prepared and the coach that I had wasn't didn't do me justice. Another question can you walk me through a typical day of training and what that looks like? Um, so structure and routine, a typical day right now, currently, because I train other clients. I train other clients in person and online, and I also train myself, and I'm also an instructor at Burn Boot Camp. And so it takes a lot of balance. I know that's so cliche, right? So a typical day, it depends on if I'm training or not. It depends on, I also volunteer at a ranch, and so that is physical labor as well, like a lot. So, but that's something that I absolutely love. So structuring your week, I would highly recommend if you are going into this journey, this health and fitness journey, getting a coach. Because nine times out of 10, my clients overtrain and under-eat. And so my week is very active, but it's not always in the gym. So it depends if it's the day that I'm training clients. Sometimes I don't train myself on those days because of time. And so I'll use that as a rest day. If there is days where I do have a lot of time and I am fully recovered, I will train. So I am not so regimented where every Monday is this, every Tuesday is this, every Wednesday is this. I'm not that regimented right now because that's the season I'm in. So it looks like a training day. I'll get up, I'll train clients. If I don't have a lot to do that day, then I'll go train myself again if I'm fully recovered. If not, I'll take it easy. I'm walking, I'm getting my steps in every day. That's a non-negotiable. Somehow I'm getting my steps in. Um, and just knowing what my my day looks like. So if it's a day that I'm on the ranch, then that is my workout for the day because that takes a lot of effort. But one thing that I am very adamant about is doing things throughout the day, throughout my week that I enjoy and listening to my body. And it has taken me years to get to this point because I am, like I said, so determined, so focused. If I have a goal, I have to do it, I would be regimented and I would be so strict and I'd have to work out and it would not do me justice because my body wouldn't respond the way that I wanted it to. So if I was, you know, trying to have a certain physique, a certain look, and I was so determined to do that. If I didn't rest and I was so focused on that, my body wouldn't be fully recovered and I would continue to work out. So I would be overtraining. And therefore, my body wasn't responding and doing what I want it to do because I was overtraining. So that's something that I'm very vocal about with my clients is that you have to rest. If you are doing too much, your body is not gonna respond appropriately to what you eat, how you're working out. It's not gonna work. You really have to listen to your body and you really have to be in tune to your body. I wear something called a whoop, a whoop band, and it tracks everything. It tracks steps, it tracks your sleep, it tracks stress, it tells you when you're recovered, when you're not recovered, it monitors your heart rate, your heart rate variability. So it's all these things. And yet, sometimes I become hyper-fixated on certain numbers and I'm not listening to my body and I push myself. So you really have to learn to listen to your body and to listen to your coach because you have to rest and recover, because that is such an imperative part of it. And also nutrition. So making sure that you get in your protein. That is another hill I will die on. Eating enough protein, I can't stress that enough. All right, what's another question here? This competition involves both physical preparation and a public voting component. How did you navigate the mental and emotional challenges of putting yourself out there? I've been doing it for so long. I've been putting myself out there in the public eye for so long, I really don't care. I'm confident in who I am and what I stand for that I don't care what other people think of me. I answer to one, and that's Jesus. And so as long as I am living an honest life and I'm operating in integrity, that's all I care about. And it reflects in my my life, you know, in my actions, in my words, and people that know me. So the only thing that I will say that has been um an obstacle maybe that I've had to get over is asking, asking for help. So this competition is a hundred percent based on votes and getting votes. And so before a couple of years ago, I had a lot of followers on social media and my um accounts were much, much larger than they are now. And I went through a period where I just deleted everything and I totally detoxed from social media and I was thinking about quitting my businesses and kind of just walking away from everything. So I deleted everything. So I say all that to say that the thing that I've had to get over is asking for help and putting myself out there in that sense of can you vote for me? Like I literally have gone through my entire contact list. And if you're listening to this and you are on my contact list and you've gotten text messages from me, know that those are personal messages. It's not a blast text message. I send them individually to everybody. And so asking for help has been something that I've had to get over. So yeah, that's been an interesting one for me. What is another question? What's one popular fitness trend or piece of advice that you actually disagree with? Cardio. That's an easy one. A popular fitness trend. And it might, I think it's kind of turning around now, but we have been conditioned for so long that cardio is the way to lose weight and the way to lose fat. And that is not true. In fact, it's a good way to lose muscle. Yes, you will lose weight. I'm gonna post a picture. I found a picture of when I was competing and lifting, and a picture, I made sure I wore the same outfit, did the same pose. So a picture of me when I was competing and lifting, and then a picture of me when I was training for a marathon. I think it might have been like right before it or right after it. And you can dramatically see the difference of yes, I looked smaller, but I lost so much weight and I lost so much muscle. And so muscle is the organ of longevity. So if you want to live longer and be healthier and you don't want osteoporosis, I mean, there's other factors that contribute to osteoporosis, but having a good amount of muscle and building muscle and maintaining muscle is going to keep you healthier longer. Your bones are going to be stronger. There's just so much benefit to that. And I love that more and more people are talking about that right now, which is great. I've been saying it for years. So now I'm kind of like, ha ha ha ha, told you. But so that's something that I disagree with is that cardio is the way to lose weight. And although you may, you're losing the wrong kind of weight. You're losing something that's very vital and important to your longevity, and that is muscle. All right, what's the next one? How has your relationship with food evolved throughout your fitness journey? Oh my gosh, this is a good one. So I used to have a contentious relationship with food, I guess. I went through, I think we all do when we're in our teens and 20s. We eat what we want when we want, and it doesn't really phase us. At least that was with me. I have relatively been thin my whole life. But again, there was a period of time where I wasn't fat, but my muscle mass to fat mass ratio was way off. And I mean, I was very unhealthy. I was overweight for my frame and for my height and age, and it was not good. And so my relationship with food was eat what I want, when I want. And then when I started competing, it was very strict and limited. Again, I did not do it in a healthy way, and I would not recommend. They call it the bro diet. So it was chicken and rice, chicken, rice, and asparagus, or it was just very, very basic. It did not have a variety, so I was lacking in minerals and um micronutrients. Because I went through that phase of restriction, I binged after I competed. So it went from food, it was very strict for me. And I did not see food as fuel. It was something that I had to eat, and this is what I had to eat so that I could look like this. So it wasn't healthy at all. And then fast forward to let's say the last six years, six to eight years, I'm more on the side of functional medicine. And so I'm more now I am definitely food is fuel, and learning what foods and nutrients you need for your body, right? So different things like cinnamon, chia seeds, flax, psilium husk, like different dandelion roots. So, like all these things, all these natural foods and supplements and what they do and how they help you. Um, certain foods that cause inflammation, certain foods that help inflammation, so they help eliminate inflammation. So learning that now I am very science-backed in um knowing what food does to your body. Another thing, so I work with providers that do lab testing and oh my gosh, food sensitivity testing. So you do testing. If you're working with me and we're doing, you know, after our um consultation and we're working together and things aren't really, you're not seeing the results and you haven't done labs. I will recommend you to a provider to get your labs checked. And they're not just your regular Western medicine labs, they're extensive because I work with functional medicine providers. Um, and if you're in the North Carolina, South Carolina area, please reach out to me. I have an excellent group of providers that I work with. So, anyways, we check labs and we'll do food sensitivity testing. So we'll find out, you know, broccoli is very inflammatory for you, or you have a high sensitivity to broccoli or whatever it may be because it tests everything food, environment. So we know what is working for you and what is working against you. So my relationship with food now is very healthy. I am not restrictive. If I want to enjoy a sweet treat, I do. I just limit it. And I am very like, I am so, I don't want to say anal retentive. I'm very strict on portion control. Because I'm not restrictive on no, you cannot have this, this food is bad, this food is good. I do not believe in that because food is food, food is fuel, and it just depends on what you want to fuel your body with. Do you want to fuel it with crap, or do you want to fuel it with something that is very nutrient dense and you can enjoy it, but just enjoy it in an intelligent way? Do it smart. Do it smart. That's a huge thing for me because I hate being restricted and being told what I can't have. All good things, right? What's another thing? What's the biggest misconception people have of About competitors in fitness, huh? That they're on steroids. That is probably the biggest misconception people have about people in fitness is that they're on steroids or they're taking peptides or it's not natural. I know so many people that look phenomenal. And it's because they have learned, they've done the testing, they do lab work and they know what they need. And also, hormone replacement therapy is not steroids, and it is not, it's not cheating. If you do your lab work and you're low in testosterone, you need a supplement or you need to start taking replacement hormone replacement therapy because naturally, as we age, our hormones change and they decrease, and we don't produce the way we used to. So we need that supplementation, we need that added boost. So I am all for that. I am 10% for getting your labs done and finding out where you're lacking and where you need support and doing that. So what's one more? Beyond the physical transformation, how has this journey changed you mentally or emotionally? That's a good one to end on. How has this journey changed me mentally and emotionally? I don't necessarily think that this journey to being on Miss Health and Fitness, the cover of Miss Health and Fitness. I don't think this journey has changed me. If anything, it has encouraged me. Um, it has given me a microphone, if you will, to just really amplify what I have been singing about for years. And I am so excited of this opportunity and what it's gonna bring and how it's helping people, how it's helping women across the world because that's been my ultimate mission for years is to help women um step into their calling, to help women get back that confidence to realize their beauty and their worth. And it's not in a physical appearance, it's not in how they look. That's a byproduct of getting your health back. So working with me is um a whole journey in and of itself because I don't just train your body, I help train your mind. I bring in the faith aspect of it because I'm rooted in Christ. And you don't have to be um a Christ follower or believer to work with me. That's just the bones of who I am. And I bring that in my training and in my coaching. I definitely remind you and tell you that you are divinely created for a divine purpose and God did not make a mistake in you and that you were created for greatness. And so I absolutely love working with, you know, high high achievers because they have this level of determination and grit and they want to do what's right and they have the tenacity. I love that. But I also love working with them because they have put their health and their self off on the back burner to raise a family, to build a business, to become an entrepreneur, right? And they have neglected their health and their fitness. And so I love working with those type of clients because I remind them that their health is their wealth and that you're not going to be the best version of yourself. You're not gonna be the best mom, the best wife, the best business owner, boss, what have you, if you are not healthy. And so um, I love reminding you of that and I love teaching you that and helping you get your mind right because it's mind, body, spirit. It's the whole package that we have to work on. And your body is not gonna follow what your mind doesn't know and believe. And so I'm here to tell you that you can do it, you are worth it. Jesus loves you and created you for abundance and a purpose. And if we can get you healthy mentally and physically and emotionally, then you are going to be the best version of yourself. And that is going to ripple out into the world. Your kids will see it, your spouse will see it, your neighbors, your friends, your family, everyone will see it. And they'll want to do that too. We're gonna end on that note today, friends. I love you and I'm so excited. If you haven't voted, go vote. Miss Health and Fitness 2026.