Guess who's back?!

    So it has come up in conversation more than once in the last few weeks, that people miss reading this blog. This is equal parts thrilling and sad news because it has been SO long since I have written anything here. You wouldn't believe how much has changed around these parts in a year.
Daniel and I took a semi spontaneous trip to Cayo Santa Maria, Cuba last September. It was on that trip that we decided that we were going to start trying for a second baby. Those who know me best know that anything of that magnitude in my life is met with a "science project" type of mind set. Away went the blog and out came the charts and basal body thermometer's. We are absolutely blessed enough to have conceived a healthy baby and found out we were expecting in late September.

 
  Well, a healthy pregnancy has come and gone (with the exception of a complication free round of gestational diabetes) and we welcomed a healthy daughter via scheduled c-section on September 19th, she is now nearly 8 weeks old and an absolute gem.

    Life has been quite the adjustment but all things considered we fared the earliest days quite well. As you know I survived post partum depression after my son was born in 2010 and I was quite terrified that it would repeat. My husband was adamant that all would be OK this time for many reasons, but above all because the culture shock of bringing home an infant was long gone; were now equipped and no longer saw the world of parenthood through rose coloured glasses. I am thrilled to say, so far, he is correct. Our daughter has just slipped right into the folds of our lives as if she has always been here. In some strange way she almost hit the reset button on my heart and mind and erased some of the damage PPD caused. That being said I will always be changed, still, I am now the mother I wished I could have been in the first year of my sons life. That does foster a bit of guilt. But guilt to me is a useless emotion, so I choose to learn from it and devote my heart as the best version of myself to him now.
  All of that being said, here I am once again looking at losing a substantial amount of weight. I only gained 41lbs with this pregnancy, which was a lot yes, but far less than my 70lbs with my son. In the last 8 weeks I have been eating fairly well and haven't had more than a moment to sit down so the first half of the weight came off quickly. Now that the dust has settled I am looking at 25 pounds to go to get to my pre-pregnancy weight, and 101 pounds to get to my healthiest weight goal. I have one year to do it to lower my risk of Type 2 diabetes and any other weight related complications that to the potential risks of having had GD.

    More importantly, I know find myself looking into the eyes of a little girl who's emotional health I am now responsible for (not to mention every other aspect of her mind body and psyche), and having been a big girl most of my life it is not a fate I would chose for my children, especially a daughter. We all know the only way to lead is by example. That leaves me with no option but to get as healthy as possible in a reasonable amount of time. The snow is just starting to fall and finding time to work out and eat clean and properly portioned food is significantly harder than I expected. This will take work. Much more work than the last round.

   I have rejoined weight watchers and I have received the go ahead to start working out as I see fit. I am excited about walking this road again, especially with you guys. I am looking forward to starting up the blog again and finally having a bit of time to dedicate to it. I have tonight to try and choose a quick but effective workout schedule because tomorrow is D day. I have a feeling the tried and true 30 Day Shred may be the best choice for a kick start.

I'll let you know ;)

Celebrating The Bigger Picture.

Anyone who has attempted to lose a considerable amount of weight has reached a point of impasse. It feels like your body isn't responding any more, you start to add to your cheat days, the scale isn't moving but your clothes still fit. You have days when you feel thin and days where you feel puffy again. We all know it isn't all about the numbers on the scale. There are many factors that contribute to good health, and you owe it to yourself to know these factors and where you're at.

We have had a few challenges the last few weeks which have made eating clean and making workout time a bit of an issue. James came into contact with chicken pox at school after a solid month of congestion and a runny nose. He didn't end up with full on pox but it was a bit dicey there for a week or so. Immediately after that was dealt with, I got a lovely dose of poison ivy all over my lower legs. This alone made workouts hell with socks rubbing against the rash, I wanted to hack my legs off just to avoid the burning itch. At one point I was laying on the living room floor in frustrated tears, just rubbing my legs against the carpet in the middle of a workout. They are much better though, it's been almost 3 week and I ended up seeing two Dr's and the Naturopath (ND.) The ND loaded me up with remedies and it's slowly working. What worked best was a plant from the wild bush near a close friends home, Jewel Weed. It is amazing! I will write a separate post about the poison ivy because it ended up being a journey through natural remedies, some worked and some didn't.

That being said, I needed some motivation. So while I was at the ND for the poison ivy, I asked if I could also re-test my body to see where we are at internally. I am so very happy I did.

Without getting into a long winded speech about what happened, I will simply lay out the numbers for you.

January 2012              September 2012          Change

Weight  - 238.4            Weight - 213.1             - 25.3Lbs
Body Fat - 53.6%           Body Fat - 47.5%          - 6.1%
BMI - 42.2                  BMI - 36.7                 - 5.5
Visceral Fat - 10             Visceral Fat - 9              - 1
Muscle Mass - 21.1%         Muscle Mass 23.9%         + 2.8%

Weight is obviously the weight of your entire body. The normal weight for my age and height is 117-151 pounds. I weight myself first thing in the morning before food and after a bowl movement (You know you wanted to hear that!), as I find this is the most reliable number. Body Fat simply put, is the ratio of fat on your body in proportion to everything else. This is essential fat as well as storage fat. In non athletic women the normal to acceptable range of body fat is 21-31% (20-21% being ideal for fit women). BMI is your weight in relation to your height. By now most people know that this isn't a very reliable number due to the fact that many factors can contribute to the outcome (i.e, muscle, pregnancy). However, the normal BMI is 18.5-25. In this instance, I am very proud that I moved down almost 2 classes of obesity in terms of BMI. This is a huge deal to me. Visceral Fat is the fat in the body that is packed around the organs. The low risk ranges for Visceral fat is 1-12. I have always been surprisingly low in the visceral fat department, which is typical of women with bigger thighs and bums. Visceral fat is a very dangerous type of fat. You can read up on it here. Muscle Mass is something that varies from person to person and the best way to judge your Muscle Mass is directly related to your Body Fat percentage.

I am completely overjoyed with these numbers! It means that while I still have a lot of work to do, it is paying off in the best ways possible.

Yay!

A Quick Recap

Wow, it has been a lot longer than I thought it had! My apologies to you guys who look forward to reading these blogs. It had been a very busy few months for us prepping James for Montessori and Daniel getting ready for his trip home to Poland.

As I am sure you have figured out Insanity was a bust this time around. It was near impossible for us to get it together enough for me to have the time to workout so hard. I hope to start back up when Daniel gets home. In the meantime I have been doing the 30 Day Shred again and loving it. I figured I would stick to what I know works while I am waiting to start a new program.

In the few weeks since I last posted, I had in fact reached my 10 % goal!! I wish I had taken the time to blog about it because it was a huge deal in this house. I am now below that goal and so thrilled. In fact, I have lost 27 pounds and 22 inches total!! I am 12 pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight!! I can't even begin to tell you how that feels!!


Here is my latest progress comparison picture!

Before 

Midway

I sit here and stare at these pictures completely blown away by all I have accomplished in 4.5 months and it motivates me so much to keep busting ass. I have lost a few pounds while D was in Europe, and so I went out and bought a new dress and heels to surprise him with at the airport. I absolutely can't wait to see his face! 

Well that's it for now, I just wanted to bring you up to speed and let you know I am back to regular blogging. 

Dig Deeper

I didn't want to workout today after work. In fact, when Daniel and James went to the store I was only going to do the Insanity warm up which is a short but serious cardio workout in itself. Halfway through the warm up I realised two things.

1) If I didn't do it, it's just going to take so much longer in the end. As much as I hated getting started it is always easier than starting over.

2) I no longer feel like I have an elephant sitting on my chest. I have shed enough body fat that I can breathe deeply in almost any position, instead of feeling like I might vomit from the vice around my neck.

I have hit a place in my weight loss journey. When the first round of measurable and satisfying body changes are starting to reveal themselves. In a nutshell it's paying off. I am sleeping better, have a much more pleasant demeanour, I am happier outside the house than inside, I am starting to enjoy exercising again and look forward to being finished each day, I am motivated about my life and I am starting to step outside the box. Physically, I can see changes in every area of my body from my jawline all the way down to my feet. Everything feels different, tighter, lighter. I am most excited about the significant changes in my arms. I have the genetic predisposition to huge weight gain in the upper arms. It's tragic really. I carry a great deal of weight there and I was quite worried it would take years to come off, but the difference in size between January and today (June 2nd) is striking.

After much searching I have found the perfect video link to show you exactly what the workouts are really like. Insanity Workout Montage is a 10 minute video of a woman kicking ass at the workouts. I have done all of these and I can honestly say she is incredible. So if you're interested check it out, let me know what you think of this video!

I am pumped about Mondays weigh in!

This is the Insanity trainer. Shaun T. I do what he says. 

So Long Mini Plateau.

I am back on track friends. I weighed myself this morning and I was down 1.5 pounds, and I am thrilled. I had hoped that I would be much further into the Insanity program by now and down a good five to seven pounds but I have to be realistic. I had big set backs last week with not finding the time to workout and it was a serious challenge to get through the Pure Cardio DVD. I did it 3 times this weekend and it is bananas! Even the people in the workout with Shawn T were grunting and drooling and tapping out for water and to catch their breath, it was a beautiful thing! Ha.


There is a warm up which is vicious, I can't even get through the warm up without having to take a few 5 second breaks, by the time the stretching after the warm up is done, I am too! But nooooo, it's time for  the workout. 17 minutes of torture! There are 17 exercises and each interval is one minute long. Suicides, power jumps, football drills, push up jacks, power jacks, power knees, switch kicks, level 2 drills...and on and on with no break until you're ready to cry. And let me tell you, it feels glorious when you're done! It shocks me how much I cannot complete and how out of shape I am and will be for a while. But if that isn't motivation I don't know what is. 


I read a Jillian Michaels quote today that said "The biggest mistake people make is to look outside themselves for inspiration. Here's the key, if you have a why to live for you can tolerate any “how”. Identify all the reasons you want to be motivated in the first place and let that drive you towards success." It's so true. Why do you want to be motivated? For me it was simple, I want to be motivated so that I can work hard and become healthy to become a better mother, wife and friend to myself. With that in mind, I gave the fit test a shot again today as I should be two weeks in and ready to take the fit test again anyway. I improved on seven out of eight exercises and I completed 22 more reps of the last exercise. All in all I was pretty impressed with the results from a half assed attempt! Imagine how well I will do going full out! 


I am technically starting over with day one today. I don't have it in me to say I quit because I wont and haven't, so lets call the last two weeks a settling in period. Daniel will not be travelling again until July and I have some amazing people in my life who have already agreed to help me out with workouts as much as possible, while he is away next time. I am so grateful for the support around me and for you guys, knowing people read and enjoy this blog as much as I enjoy writing it, keeps me motivated and accountable. I will never come here and a write a post that says I quit. So really, I couldn't do it without any of you!

And Around We Go.

These are the times that you have to stay focused, when life gets in the way and days pass a little too quickly. I haven't worked out properly in 7 days and I felt like a bag of crap! Last Friday I developed a boil on the inside of my leg. It's not quite as gross as it sounds but it hurts like you wouldn't believe. Just my clothing rubbing against the inflamed skin made me want to cry, so I had to drop the workouts for almost 4 days. On Monday I managed to get half a workout in. This better than nothing but not enough. I did, however, eat well and do a fair amount of walking and running around with James. Daniel was in Virginia for work for 3 days and it became very clear that I cannot workout with James around. I would have put the DVDs on the laptop and workout out in the backyard while he slept, but Daniel had the laptop with him also. 

So, I am pretty annoyed that I haven't gotten very far with the Insanity program right now. That being said, I do not accept defeat. So this morning I threw on the Pure Cardio DVD and partway through I said that I will not miss any more than one workout at a time because the climb back in awful. That DVD damn near killed me let me tell you. It's 15 minutes of non stop hardcore cardio. 15 minutes doesn't sound like a very long time until you're doing "suicides, push up jacks, and level 2 drills" with no intended break. You know you're in for an ass kicking when there is 3 full minutes of stretching after the warm up, which almost kills you to begin with.

I will be doing the Pure Cardio workout until Monday to get my endurance black up, blast out some last minute fat and get focused for Monday. Because this program is so specific, I like to stick to it as literally as possible.

I was down 0.8 pounds as of Mondays weigh in, and I am perfectly happy with that. They can't all be 5 pound losses, and as long as it's moving down then I am happy! I am a little over 7 pounds away from my 2nd goal of 10% body fat lost. I have accepted that I have plateaued, but I do not accept staying here! 

Bring on the cardio!