Weekend Warrior

For me keeping myself on track over the weekend is one of my biggest struggles. Making sure I keep the bad foods away and my exercise on track seems to be very difficult for me. Maybe it is because I have so much extra time on my hands where during the week that time is spent working and there is not much time left for me to get my hands on unhealthy food. This past weekend especially was a major struggle for me. I got my exercise in and was pretty careful about my food and I still managed to be up 3 lbs this morning. Before I let it get to me I am just going to be very careful and strict for the next few days and hope it drops back off and then some. Maybe I just had a lot of sodium and it is just extra water weight hanging on, my clothes don’t seem too tight and my tummy is still pretty flat in comparison to what I started at so I am trying to stay hopeful.

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Here is an example of what I am dealing with over the weekend….

With my friends and family everything revolves around eating and drinking and any little reason to celebrate anything results in food and drinks and fun. I sometimes wish that I had the family and friend group that celebrates with a 5k or a tennis match…but I don’t. On Saturday I had a birthday party with tons of carne asada tacos and chips and dip. I prepared for that by walking 7 miles and burning 1100 calories that morning to anticipate the TWO tacos I ate with some chips and dip…TWO all day and that was my only meal. I woke up Sunday 1.5 lbs up and slightly disappointed as I felt I did really well and should have been down honestly. Then on Sunday I had my monthly girls lunch which is celebrated with all of my friends and while I chose to eat half a salad and later one slice of a medium pizza for dinner and half a grapefruit they all indulged in burgers and fries covered in fried eggs and bacon and entire pieces of cheesecake. I woke up this morning with an additional 1.5 lbs on the scale putting me a total of 3 lbs up over the weekend.

Saying I am slightly bummed would be an understatement. I feel like a Aurelius having lost most of of my “scale” progress. However, I am going to look at the bright side. My jeans are still fitting better and I am feeling less pudgy. I am going to take this all as a learning experience and try even harder this week and weekend to make back my progress and go even further. Today I am going to get my butt into the gym and reward myself with one small meal of one leftover slice of pizza for dinner. Nutritious I know….and not at all what I am supposed to be doing but I find that sometimes when I treat with something small and special it seems to workout for me on the scale. For the rest of the week I am doing small nutritious meals and continuing my daily exercise.

The major change will come over the weekend. I am going to be going to the lake which typically includes drinking and binge eating all of my boyfriend’s grandmothers food. I will buy myself some spiked seltzers and allow myself to partake in the delicious eating in small amounts as we stay pretty active while we are there. Happy Monday and now I am off to the gym…wish me luck!

Yo-Yo No Mo

So here is something that I have been struggling with recently….the ill fated yo-yo. Gain 5 lose 3 gain 1 lose 6 up and down and up and down and up and down with an average of 0 pounds lost. I have come to find that the real root of this cause is lack of motivation and perseverance, two huge factors in weight loss and fitness health. I would crash diet for a few days and then blow it all over the weekend. Snacking, eating out, and being careless, I have now realized that has to stop.

The most important thing to have in your diet and fitness process is structure. It is totally ok to have a little give here and there, never be too strict on yourself. One of the biggest issues with the yo-yo is the toll it takes mentally and on your psyche. Just when you feel like you’re progressing you feel like a failure AGAIN, this makes it much harder to keep up your motivation.

It took me months to figure out that this yo-yo I was doing was not a healthy way to keep my lifestyle going, not just for my mentality but for my body as well. It is really difficult for your metabolism to stabilize and burn properly when you have it going haywire every other day. Routine, routine, routine, and plan, plan, plan. Know what you’re going to eat for every meal and plan out your exercise for the day before it even begins. Have that plan burned into your thought process when you start your day. It becomes really easy to blow off exercise or your healthy meal plan when it just sits in the back of your mind.

“DON’T STOP TRYING”

When you feel that you have failed or have gone back on your progress, keep trying and try harder. Maybe switch things up and try something new, but you have to TRY. If you keep trying and moving forward there is no failure. The only time you can say you have failed is if you give up completely. Boy do I know what it is like, I have gone from feeling like I’m on top of the world to feeling like my 8th grade pudgy self struggling with all of my might to climb that rope in P.E and not even being able to get my feet off of the floor. That is not who I am anymore, who I am now is someone who will work on my upper body strength every day and attempt that rope over and over and over until I finally ring that bell at the top. Try to be what you strive for and don’t give up until you get there. The only thing holding you back is you and nothing else. Start small and grow from there. If you get to the top and slide down the rope and fall on your ass, GET UP and try again….you are your biggest supporter and you can do it.

Cut the Crap….Wear the Crop

So I have chosen to add to my goal. Not only do I want to get back to my goal weight and fit back into my very cute button fly no stretch jeans but I would love to reach what sometimes feels like an unattainable goal…..wearing and pulling off a crop top. There is just something flirty, feminine, and freeing about the look of a crop top and I have since I was a little girl wished it was something I could wear.

Here is how I am going to do it: I’m gonna cut the crap….

By cut the crap I mean pretty much get rid of any unhealthy habits that I currently have in my lifestyle. For me that is cutting out:

Unnecessary snacking

Excessive pot smoking

Carbs, fats, and unhealthy foods such as: candy, fast food, processed food

Laziness and doing nothing

Wearing the crop…

Getting to crop top status is going to take more than just cutting the crap. I am going to have to keep myself motivated and goal oriented in the fitness department. I will start introducing a lot more core exercises and daily workouts to keep my fat burning and keep everything toned and tight. Currently I have kick started with the diet and introduced an exercise routine of switching off between weight lifting and walking 4-5 miles as my daily exercise. My tummy is my weakest point and I am going to have to really get working on it if I want to get anywhere close to having abs…or at least an ab

Stay tuned for my process, I will keep you all posted on how it works out for me. Hopefully it will end with a glorious photo of me in a crop top 🙂

It’s Been a While…(sings in creed voice)

” Sometimes life comes at you and gets in your way”- Me I guess you would call my time gone more of a sabbatical than a hiatus! I had gotten so into my fitness journey and myself that that was all my life had become, it was helping my confidence and how I felt about myself but in a way damaging it at the same time.I was 110 pounds down and loved the way I looked but I had become so judgmental of every little imperfection on my body and appearance. Nothing was good enough for me and I needed to strive for more, eating less working out more, hitting the tanning beds( because tan fat is better than white fat) I know… crazy. Then came Tyler….I became completely consumed with him and I fell hard, right off a cliff into a pool of love and happiness and I have never been happier. That being said I left all of my fitness and diet motivation at the top of the cliff and let it sit there for almost a year….gaining back 36 pounds while doing it. While I felt like a bit of a failure in the process, I have regained my motivation and realized that butterfly fun time is over and I need to get back to my goals and my healthy lifestyle. Him and I are working on it together and he is all of the support I need. Just this week I started watching my food intake and getting back into a daily exercise routine, and by only Wednesday I am down 5 pounds. Just 31 more to go!! Maybe more if I am feeling really inspired. I just need to keep myself inspired and keep it up! Stay tuned….

The Cleanse

Today 9/28/17 I start my very first cleanse! It is called the Purium 10 day Transformation cleanse and it is an all natural, unprocessed, vegan, gluten free, non GMO regimen that is supposed to completely detoxify and restart your system. It is made up of shakes, supplements, juices, and fresh veggies that flush out toxins and reboot your system by eliminating cravings for processed foods.

Today is 10/5/17 and I am on day 8 of my 10 day cleanse. I have dropped about 8 lbs and what seems to be by appearance quite a bit of body fat. I am feeling a lot leaner all around and my skin all over feels quite a bit tighter. My weight is currently the lowest it has ever been and I still have two more days to go. One positive thing that I noticed last night was I sat down to eat a very regularly sized salad that had no dairy and no meat and I was about 3/4 of the way through my salad and I was extremely full almost to the point of discomfort. When that happened I became very excited. I was excited because I knew that realizing that was the first step to watching my portion sizes and the types of foods that I put into my body. 

One of the most exciting things about this cleanse is waking up in the morning feeling very refreshed and very slimmed and fit. I looked in the mirror today and said to myself, “This is the best physical condition I have ever been in, in my entire life.” My arms were toned, along with my legs, and my stomach fat was greatly reduced and feeling very flat. I put on my purple lulus that I never wear because they are too tight and uncomfortable. I can’t wait to see what happens in the final days. 

Guess Who’s Back?!

Well that was quite the 6 month hiatus, but I am back and more motivated than ever! For the past 6 months I have been busy working on myself. I am currently about 170 but I am down to a size 6 and lost about 40 inches all over my body since my last post in March about hitting that 100 lb mark. It is proof that your weight number doesn’t matter as much as you think it does. I am much less scale obsessed and all about fitness and being strong. It is so easy to become obsessed with weight numbers and being “skinny” because that is what society wants you to strive for. It took a long time for me to get over that and work on my health and fitness rather than let my scale dictate my life and leave me consistently hungry all the time. I now fuel myself properly for that activities I do in a day. I have accepted myself so much more now that I got idea out of my head.

Left: 178lbs May 2017 Right: 172lbs August 2017

If anything is proof that numbers don’t matter these pictures are that exactly. I worked on feeding myself the nutrients I need while working out consistently 5-7 days a week. I stayed the same weight while completely changing my composition. I have been maintaining, tightening, and toning and it helps keep me motivated to continue working on my continued progress of my personal fitness. For the past year I have been working with a personal trainer but as of last week I am now on my own. I plan on working hard using the skills she has taught me to continue my journey of health and fitness. It is time to get back to my goals and my blog posts! 🙂

Hitting that Mark

Well the time has come…I have accomplished something that I personally didn’t think was going to be possible: I hit the 100 pound mark! It took me 410 days but I am so proud to say that I did it. There is a lot of physical and emotional ups and downs that come with an accomplishment like this but every single thing was worth it. I am so happy and comfortable with myself now, I really feel that I am in such a good place mentally, physically, and emotionally. One hundred pounds is a big accomplishment and puts me on the scale at 168 which is on the higher side of healthy for my frame but I don’t want my journey to be over yet.

I still have big plans for myself this year, I want to continue my physical transformation into being slim muscular and most of all fit. I want to be strong, I want to be able to go outdoors and be sporty. I want to be able to go on a strenuous hike or climb a tree. I want to have an athletic build for the first time in my life. Since I was a child I dreamed of having a sporty physique but I never pushed myself to try and get there. For me it was just easier to dream and hope that maybe one day I would wake up with one. Unfortunately that will never happen to anyone, but seeing myself now that dream just seems a little bit more reachable to me. By the end of this year I want to be between 145 and 150 pounds with an athletic build. I know I can get there, I just have to continue using my determination and my trainer to get there! Speaking of my trainer I need to give a special shout out to Megan at City Sports for continuing to work with me and help me meet and maintain my goals. She pushes me past the part of myself that wants to take the easy road. When I didn’t think I could do 50 lb hip thrusts she showed me that not only could I do one set but I could do 4 and super-set them with some hammer curls too! I know with my type of personality I need that push to help get me where I am going and where I want to be.

Tinder Transformation

I never would have thought that I could learn something about myself and grow from using tinder, but I can honestly say it helped me climb out from the shell of my insecurities little by little all thanks to one handsome fellow who was a gentleman and not a creep. I got my tinder sometime in July of 2016 I was 65 lbs down and feeling pretty good about myself. By August I had 150+ matches and would chat here and there but when anyone would become interested in more than just basic chatting or ask for my snapchat and/or phone number I would cut the conversation and stop responding. I think I was fearful that they wouldn’t approve of me in person or from snapchat pictures that weren’t meticulously chosen and perfected with filters that made me look just a little bit better. After a while tinder became a game I played with my friends, swiping left and right and judging profiles. That went on until February 2017, I was 90 lbs down when I hit my 312th match, a cute Australian boy in the states on holiday. He hit me with a, “Hey how are you today?”, and I decided to answer. We chatted a bit and I decided to give him my number and snapchat. Now you might think, Ok whats the big deal? To your average 25 year old girl nothing, but for me it was. I had never given my number to anyone, gone on a date, or “chatted” with anyone in all of my 25 years. Why? It was because I let my weight hold me back, I was tired of showing interest in guys and never having anything reciprocated other than them asking me for notes or my homework. I know it sounds pathetic but it was true. I had myself wrapped up so tight in my own little world of insecurities that it even showed in the clothing I wore. You could not catch me in a neckline lower than a crew neck, let alone sending any kind of body shot to anyone else. However, when I started talking to this guy I found myself not wanting to hide behind a ton of makeup and snapchat filters. I was curious to see his response to a no makeup unfiltered photo of myself, and the response that I received was positive and it really had an effect on me mentally and emotionally. I became more comfortable with my body than I had ever been before and  I had finally opened up to someone other than my really close friends.

Currently I’m about a week into consistently talking to and exchanging snapchats with this guy and what I am finding the most important thing about it is the changes that I see in myself and my mentality. I feel so much more confident in myself and my body, not saying that I don’t have insecurities, I just have a lot less of them now. I feel so much more empowered and full of self worth. I personally think that it is a bit unfortunate that it took some male attention to persuade myself to be a little more free and feel more worthy, but the human psyche is a fickle bitch. One thing that gave me some food for thought was that for some reason I didn’t feel that I was being pressured into something that I wasn’t completely comfortable with. There have been PLENTY of guys on tinder that were interested and wanted to talk…to an extent before reaching the netflix and chill question. I think the difference this time was that I started with the mindset of this guy is cool, I want to talk to him because why not? What do I have to lose? The answer is nothing, if I don’t ever meet him, so what? If we stop talking, so what? All that matters is that I feel liberated from the stupid insecurities that I let hold me back before. So thank you tinder guy for being a gentleman and not trying to send me dick pics right off the bat, because let’s be honest they’re not all that they’re cracked up to be, and thank you for helping me feel so much better about myself than I did before, even if you never know that you did.

The Holidays (My Celebratory Break)

My last post was in the end of November and I had made it through Thanksgiving. Between then and Christmas I managed to drop another 5lbs reaching a total of 90 lbs lost. 90 lbs down is a good place to be at the one year mark and for that I gave myself a break from mid December to January 15th, then it is back to the grind. I had all of the holiday treats and New Years fun that I wanted but I have set new goals for myself. My goal for this year is to drop another 40 lbs or so. I am thinking that will put me in a size 4/6 which is what I really would love to be. This year is really a new year and a new me.

The other half of my resolution this year is to have more fun. When I was overweight I would distance myself from participating in group activities that involved being in public and meeting new people. I never really noticed it at the time or realized why but I think a major part of it was fear of public ridicule of my size. I never really acknowledged that it was a thing that actually happened, but as I went back and thought of times where people said comments or rude things it was more than I expected. I never thought I let these things get to me but I was protecting myself by distancing without even realizing it. So this year I will do more, see more, and meet more people so that I can allow myself to have more fun. Come Monday morning the 15th my celebratory party is over. It is back to the gym back and back to stricter eating, bring on #Hardbody2017

Hiatus

Well I kind of went on a two month hiatus, not from my lifestyle change but from my documentation routine. I had a lot of up a few here and down a few here on the scale and at one point didn’t go to the gym for 3 weeks in a row! I know….terrible behavior. However, I think I needed it, I am currently 85 lbs down and feeling and looking better than ever. I had some true moments of happiness and bliss during that time that really helped me grow as an individual and a person emotionally. I feel more at peace with myself and my life at the moment. While my body is not where I want it to be as my final goal, at the moment I am very happy with my progress. I made it through the food holiday resulting in a 1.8 lb gain that I am fairly confident I can lose by tomorrow or the next day. I have come to the realization that I want to put myself out there more and do more things because I deserve it and I am actually quite a catch. I don’t need to sit at home in my pjs thinking about all the fun I could be having if I was just at my goal weight. I am happy with my body today and grateful to have made the changes I have made. These two pictures are a little under a year apart: I am thankful to feel wonderful when I wake up in the morning and to always look forward in my life changing endeavor. I wear less makeup now and often I am in a better mood. Food doesn’t have the same kind of hold over me as it used to, I don’t feel the need to have it or miss it. I look forward to the rest of my journey because in a way it has just begun.