My one fear is failure and that's one fear I have to face all the time. Yes, it's uncomfortable to be scared but I'm finally comfortable being uncomfortable.

I respect Georges St. Pierre as a businessman and an athlete. I don't have anything against him personally. But he's not the kind of fighter I like watching.

I knew that I liked what I was doing, that it was what I wanted to do for a living, and that the profession didn't really exist so much. So I had to create it.?

When you shoot nude, you always find a way to, like, cover yourself up in a way. So you really don't feel like you're truly naked because you're still covering yourself.

The bigger my chest is, the more it gets in the way. It just creates space. It makes me much more efficient if I don't have so much in the way between me and my opponent.

My life is so active, and I'm fighting the whole day that I don't have any aggressiveness or any energy outside of fighting. I'm the most chill couch potato you could ever meet.

Every chick I try to intimidate in a different way. You have to think about their personality. You have to think about what would get under that particular person's skin the most.

I've coached doing judo, but I've never coached MMA. I'll have my own coach with me to help me along the way and I can't really fail with him by my side, but I'm a little nervous.

The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue really sets the social standard for what people expect the perfect woman's body to look like, and a lot of those bodies usually look the same.

To be a fighter, you have to be passionate. I have so much passion, it's hard to hold it all in. That passion escapes as tears from my eyes, sweat from my pores, blood from my veins.

My first injury ever was a broken toe, and my mother made me run laps around the mat for the rest of the night. She said she wanted me to know that even if I was hurt, I was still fine.

I got a lot of body paint on me in a short period of time. I would definitely do it again because Joann Gair is so brilliant, but I would definitely need, like, a good long break for it.

At home, I watch fights and documentaries - that's it. If it's not about the birth and death of stars, 'Frozen Planet,' or someone getting punched in the face, I'm probably not watching it.

I don't feel the need to be the hot chick every second of the day. I like to be able to surprise people when I turn it on. I want it to be like the movie 'She's All That' when they unveil her.

I love waking up to Sunday morning pancakes. The whole process of making them, just out in the kitchen together making pancakes on a Sunday morning; that's an experience every girl should have.

I thought that I was mutant somehow. I eventually realized that I have a very natural look, and that's what God gave me, and I'm proud of it. It was kind of a way for me to get past that as well.

You have to fight because you can't count on anyone else fighting for you. And you have to fight for people who can't fight for themselves. To get anything of real value, you have to fight for it.

A belt does nothing but hold your gi together. A belt has assigned significance, a belt is someone else saying you're good, you don't need other people saying that you're good in order to be good.

To be honest, in 2012, I was against both candidates, and so I just picked any third party because I thought if more people voted for third parties then they'd have to take third parties seriously.

When women say that going on publications directed at men is somehow demeaning, I don't think that's true. I think that's one really effective way to change the societal standard women are held to.

That's the thing I'm worst at: resting. I have to be forced to do it. Sometimes I think of loopholes. 'Oh, I'm just going for a walk, up a dune that's 45 degrees, but I'm walking, so it's not a workout.'

When you're doing something like body paint or a nude shoot, you're making yourself very vulnerable, and you're really trusting people to really take care of you and make sure everything is very professional.

What I'm really looking to do is retire undefeated; I'm not sure when the right time to retire will be, but I know that I'm not done yet. Something still feels unfinished, and that's why I'm going to keep going.

People say to me all the time, 'You have no fear.' I tell them, 'No, that's not true. I'm scared all the time. You have to have fear in order to have courage. I'm a courageous person because I'm a scared person.'

I think that going on any reality show is not good for your mental health because you behave differently when you are being watched, and you constantly have an extra bit of awareness of what's going on all the time.

Whenever people call me the first female this or that, it doesn't make it more special because no one in front of me wanted the same job. I've always wanted weird stuff and enjoyed things differently than other girls.

I grew up with a lot of body image issues - not just about my weight, but I would always see these perfect orb, domed boobs on television, and think, "Mine don't look like that." I thought there was something wrong with me.

I go mainly by the Dolce diet. It is a little hard to describe: it's not really a diet but more of a lifestyle. I eat throughout the day; I have three meals and two snacks, and it changes according to what I need at the time.

I'm scared of failure so much more than any of the other girls I compete against that I work so much harder than they possibly could. I'm totally down with spiders and frogs and heights and snakes - everything; I'm cool with it.

I don't shy away from any questions. I'm not scared of any question. I'll give you an answer. A lot of people are scared of having actual opinions out there. People are so scared of criticism I'm not scared of people disliking me.

You go through every single inch of the emotional spectrum on fight week. You're the most stressed out you've ever been, you're the most pressured you've ever been, you're the happiest you've ever been - it's hard. It's exhausting.

Everyone wants to win. But to truly succeed - whether it is at a sport or at your job or in life - you have to be willing to do the hard work, overcome the challenges, and make the sacrifices it takes to be the best at what you do.

Do I ever get tired of being the first female everything? Not really, I just happened to be in a position where the job that I wanted was not really there for me. I had to create an opportunity instead of waiting for an opportunity.

I don't shy away from any questions. I'm not scared of any question. I'll give you an answer. A lot of people are scared of having actual opinions out there. People are so scared of criticism... I'm not scared of people disliking me.

The Olympics is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I was lucky enough to go twice, but most people only get one chance. And in judo you can train your whole life and it'll come down to a split second: You can lose everything or win anything.

The Olympics is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I was lucky enough to go twice, but most people only get one chance. And in judo you can train your whole life and it’ll come down to a split second: You can lose everything or win anything.

I get asked that a lot and I always go back to my mom's, 'No one has the right to beat you.' I take that to every venue that I'm in. She would say, 'Someone has to be the best in the world, why not you?' I always try to keep that in mind.

In MMA it's a lot less intimidating because it's not like you get one shot at a title every four years. You get a title shot every couple of months... With the Olympics, you don't always have this, so there is so much more pressure involved.

I was in a weight-cutting sport, in judo, so I had to be a certain weight on a deadline. It kind of pushed me into having a really unhealthy relationship with food in my teens. I felt like if I wasn't exactly on weight, I wasn't good-looking.

In MMA it’s a lot less intimidating because it’s not like you get one shot at a title every four years. You get a title shot every couple of months ... With the Olympics, you don’t always have this, so there is so much more pressure involved.

I make fractals. They're like mathematical pictures. My stepdad is actually a rocket scientist, so in his free time, he gave me a fractal program for fun. He showed me how to use it when I was about nine or 10, and I made thousands of fractals.

I had a lot of trouble speaking as a kid. I didn't really speak in coherent sentences until I was, like, 6 years old. There was a long time where everybody was very worried, because my sisters were so advanced for their age, and I would barely talk.

If you're unwilling to leave someplace you've outgrown, you will never reach your full potential. To be the best, you have to constantly be challenging yourself, raising the bar, pushing the limits of what you can do. Don't stand still, leap forward.

For girls it raises your testosterone, so I try to have as much sex as possible before I fight actually. Not with like everybody, I don't put out like a Craigslist ad or anything, but if I got a steady I'm going to be like 'yo, fight time's coming up.

The reaction has been amazing because there is no woman that could look at these covers and not be like, 'That's what I could look like,' or, 'I pretty much already look like one of these chicks.' It really makes beauty seem so much more attainable to people.

I was always pushed to do that much more, and in the long run that made me more of an MMA fighter. My mom always told me that if I let it go to the judges, I'd lost. There was no way I was going to win a decision, so I had to find ways to finish the fight fast.

If I could have had everything exactly the way I wanted, this is how I would have written it down. Win all my fights in the first round, then go to the UFC and headline a show, and have it as a pay-per-view and at home. People's dreams don't come true like that.

Even though I was painted, even though I had on seven layers of paint - to the point that I got a tan, it was as thick as a fabric - I think I felt the most naked because I couldn't cover myself at all. I didn't have to, so I had to be much more open and relaxed.

People say this all the time and everyone, like, nods their head and is like, 'Oh yeah, totally,' but no one ever does it, including myself. I can do better at it, is just drinking a lot of water, like a gallon and a half, two gallons a day, like, straight water all day.

For me, MMA is like speed chess. It's like I'm herding a person into a certain position. Say my endgame is an arm bar. I'm not gonna actually take you and put you there. What I'm going to do is convince you that it's a good idea to move in the direction I want you to go.

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