What I've Been Doing

My goal for this post is to create a brief overview of what I've been doing to lose weight, increase cardiac health and tone up!  I have another blog that I plan to begin writing regularly, if I can discipline myself to do it.

I will be having another fitness reassessment in a few weeks.  At that time, I am going to post my original measurements and test results along with my current ones.  In the mean time, I have some numbers to share.

I started at a size 16, which was my personal biggest ever.  I actually gained weight after Charlie was born.  I allowed myself to shamelessly eat over 3000 calories a day because of all the stressors in my life at the time - money, travel, children, sickness, death, moving (twice in six months), new baby, etc.  I think that's enough to justify it for a bit.  lol.

I finally couldn't stand it anymore.  I've wanted to have a gym membership again for years.  I always viewed it as a luxury and we don't usually have any "extra" funds to spend on luxuries on a regular basis.  But I was living in a tiny, one-bedroom attic on top of an elderly lady's house, was getting no sleep at all (literally) because we all shared a room and woke each other up all through the night over and over.  I was responsible to get everyone back to sleep so that the money-maker could get some sleep and keep us fed.  I was mentally slow, emotionally uncontrolled (more than usual for me - which is saying a lot), unhappy, tired and eating out of control.  So, when I was at the Booster Juice (Ontario's version of Jamba Juice) and a gym employee approached me with a special scratch card and I "won" a free 1 month membership, fitness assessment, and 2 free personal training sessions, I thought, "YES!  YES!  YES!  Gimmee!!"

Since I was so desperate and David was visibly anxious about my state of health and fitness, it was easy to get him to agree to my getting a membership.  I also paid for a small 6-session group of personal training sessions.  We broke them up into 30-minute sessions to make them last longer.  I was very fortunate to be put with a trainer who is a real athlete.  She's been competing in ice skating for ten years or more.  She's so great!  I'm hoping to get her to let me take a picture so I can post it.

At first my only real goal was to get more oxygen pumping to my brain.  I couldn't think straight and my brain is my most precious possession.  I wasn't aware of just what I really looked like until I went into a pilates class and saw I was the biggest person in there.  I kept seeing other people that I thought were heavy and then seeing us next to each other in the mirror and realizing I was bigger than they were!!

Once I started doing the intense cardio a couple days a week, I was more motivated to eat better.  So, I reduced my calorie intake.  I started eating unsweetened whey protein shakes with unsweetened almond milk and fruit, whole grain and multi-grain bread, lots of veggies sticks, a little cheese, lean meat.  I continued to eat about 6 small meals a day (cause I seem to need to - my blood sugar fluctuates too much).  I stopped allowing myself to gorge myself on sugary snack foods into the wee hours of the night, which was probably the biggest difference.  I started taking greens again, being more regular with supplementing my EFAs and high-potency B-vitamins, drinking water heavily.

After about 4-5 months, I was down to a size 10 and decided it was time to add strength training.  I am currently working out 4-5 days a week - cardio and weights.  My body is changing on a weekly basis!  It feels so great!

Hope this wasn't monstrously long.  I'll be more detailed as to work out routines, meals and supplements in my fitness blog.  I'm hoping to try different things, express my experience with them, etc.  Don't know how interesting it will be to the population at large, but it'll probably be pretty therapeutic for me. 

Thanks for caring!  More soon!