My story!

Okay, so I have put myself out there for everyone to see!  

To me, posting the last 4 blog entries was kind of like standing up in front a group of 500 of my closest friends naked!!!  But, I am glad I got that white elephant out of the way so now I can truly use this blog to help myself and hopefully some of you to grow and continue to strive every day to be the best we can be!!!

As you can see from my struggles with the 3 Day Refresh I have some work to do, but I am so proud of where I have come from!  In case you don't know my back story, here is a quick snapshot.  I was pretty healthy throughout life, I am terrible at dieting but I like to run so if I ever got off track I could start running and get back on track pretty quickly.  Then in August 2012, I found out I was pregnant!  I was over the moon excited to experience what pregnancy was all about, so throughout the 9 months I ended up gaining 60 pounds....yes that says 60 pounds, I think I literally ate for two adult humans instead of one adult and one baby!

Me Post Baby July 2013

I had my beautiful daughter, Lily, in April 2013.  After she was born, I was under the impression that I would be able to breastfeed her and the weight would just work its way off of me.  Then my milk supply never came in and I had to switch Lily to formula.  But that was okay because I was on maternity leave for 3 months so I would have plenty of time to get back into running when my husband got home from work.  Then I ended up having a c-section so I wasn't cleared to workout until 6 weeks after having Lily and by then, as any new mother will tell you, I had 0 energy or time to go on a run with a baby who was barely sleeping and regular life duties piling up!

The picture above is from one of the last weeks of my maternity leave.  I was still 20 pounds heavier than I wanted to be and I didn't really have much hope for a way to get rid of the extra pounds.  But I worked and worked and worked for a year to rid myself of about 10 pounds, I did some dieting (17 day diet, it did work but wasn't sustainable for me) and I fit in running when I could, thank goodness for living with my parent in laws while we had a our house built nice to have a live in babysitters! But by the time July 2014 came, I was just beyond frustrated, getting up at 530am to go running before my daughter got up and still wasn't seeing any real results on the scale or on the measuring tape!!

 So I gave in, one of my husbands friends from high school was always bragging on facebook about how great she was feeling and how much weight she had lost using BeachBody and Shakeology.  I decided to give it a try for myself, it took a while of going back and forth in my mind before I committed.  I am very much an instant gratification person, if I am putting in effort I want results immediately, so I told myself I would give this my full effort for the full 30 days (you have a 30 day money back guarantee) no matter what before I decided to quit. 

I started with Focus T25, one of the main reasons is because my husband wanted to support me and do the workouts with me and getting him to do PiYo or anything like that was definitely not going to happen.  From the first workout, I LOVED IT! Shaun T is very motivational, the workouts are only 25 minutes so the light at the end of the tunnel is always reachable, the pace makes the workout go by very fast and it is just fun to do the moves!  Another important component to the program is Shakeology, you are asked to replace one meal a day with it.  That was easy for me because I have always struggled to find a healthy breakfast option that is fast and i can eat on the way to work, Shakeology solves both those problems and a bonus it tastes amazing (and I mean it really does, it has been my breakfast for the last 5 months and I still love it!!!!)!!! 

August 2014

Fast forward a month, I was down 5 pounds and 9 inches!!!!  I was hooked, I couldn't believe in 1 month I could lose 5 pounds and 9 inches...I mean it took me a whole year to lose that many inches!! The significance of the above picture is those shorts are the shorts I wore on my honeymoon, before BeachBody I couldn't button them let alone wear them for a picture.

I decided in August 2014, I couldn't keep this secret to myself and I joined BeachBody as a coach.  I  get to continue to work on my own fitness journey and now I get to help others start theirs and feel as amazing as I do!  So I finished T25 Alpha and Beta cycles, down another 4 pounds and 2 more inches.  Continued onto T25 Gamma and PiYo, adding in a 3 Day Refresh, and I am now down a total of 11 pounds and 12 inches......in 5 months, more results in 5 months than a whole year on my own!!!

December 2014

Above was taken yesterday, not the best picture of myself.  BUT, the you see that shirt I am wearing...it's a small, I couldn't comfortably wear a small 5 months ago.  You see those pants I am wearing, they are size 6 and they are too big!

I started this journey so I could fit back into my pre-pregnancy clothes because I didn't want to have to spend money on new clothes.  I am now at the point where I might need to go and buy new clothes because my pre-pregnancy ones are getting too big....if only you could see the grin on my face right now its ear to ear, that is a sentence I never thought I would be able to say!!!!!

The best part, hands down, isn't the weight i have lost or that my pants are getting too big it's that I feel amazing from head to toe!  I have so much more energy, I crave healthy foods, I crave exercise....things that the old me wouldn't believe were possible.  To me, this feeling I wake up with every morning is priceless..I would pay 10 times what I did for T25 if I knew in 5 months it would make me set new goals because I have crushed every fitness goal I set for myself when I started it.

So new goals, I am so excited to get Insanity Max:30 started January 5 2015.  It should be arriving at my door any day now, but I am going to wait to start it because I want to finish this year with focusing on mastering some moves in T25 Gamma to prepare myself for it.  

July 2011

The picture above is me and one of my amazing friends at my bachelorette party.  My new goal is to have the ab definition I have in this picture by May 2015.  I don't want to set out a weight loss goal because for me I don't know if I want to lose any more weight, I am mainly interested in toning up.  I am not sure who said it but some told me once "you should be more worried about building muscle than losing weight, only you see the scale but the whole world sees you".

So, here's the real question, you wanna join me?  I would love to have some accountability partners on this journey!  You can start with Insanity Max:30, I will post later this week why i am choosing it.  Or you can be like me and start with Focus T25 or you really you can start with any fitness program, the important part is you have to start! I would love to hear from you if you are deciding you want to start and you want some support, message me!