Challenges Til Wedding!!

Well I have been looking to see what challenges I want to do and I have finally made the list. I have recruited Ron to do the challenges with me. Makes me feel better knowing that I have some to do them with. I have pictures with most of them that I will post in case any body wants to do it with us. There are a few where I don't have pictures. 2 of them are from a group on facebook and another one I found online for the Wedding. 

November- 
~ Tank Top Arm Challenge. 

December 3rd- 26th 
~Abs So Tightly Right Challenge 

 

January 1-30 
~Butt Challenge 

 

February 1-28 
~ Lose The Love Handles Challenge 

 

March1-30 
~Full Body Challenge 

 

April 1-30 
~Tank Top Arms Challenge 
(Sorry this is on the facebook group) 

May 1-30 
~Little Black Dress Challenge  

 

June 1-30 
~Burpee Challenge 

 

July 1-30 
~Ab & Squat Challenge 

 

July 27-Oct 9 
~ 75 Day Butt & leg Challenge (Sorry this one is also on facebook.) 

August 1-30 
~Plank challenge & Leg and Butt Challenge 

 

September 1-30 
~Wedding Prep Challenge (This is the one I found on a website so no pic.. ) 
~Butt & Leg Challenge 

October 1-9 
~Butt & Leg Challenge 


October 10th- Wedding Day!    

Self Sabotager

I am my own worse sabotager . (may not be a word but it works.) 

I had a revelation while I was in the shower. I happen to do my best thinking in the shower. It may be because it is alone time, may be because I take long showers because I like standing in the hot water and end up thinking about anything and everything, especially my problems. 

Well it hit me today that I sabotage myself. A lot . No matter how prepared I am for the journey, my mind always plays a big part. And once my mind starts thinking that something is wrong or I'm not doing something right, then my body reacts and does exactly what I don't want it to do. Then once started, it is so hard to stop. It is like a domino affect. 

I have come up with a plan to counteract this self sabotaging. I am going to enlist Ron's help. I plan to let him know what is going on, what I am thinking and ask to, when he starts to see me making poor choices, say something about it and help me get back on track. I am hoping this will help. I am confident that it will because I may not recognize making a poor choice until I have made more than one, where as he can recognize it right away and get me back on track. 

I may not have mentioned this before, but I have a goal in mind. My wedding is next October, I have about 11 months until it. I want to look great on my day. I want to feel good about myself and feel healthy. Right now my wedding dress is a size 18, and I just barely fit into it. My goal is to be at a size 12 dress for my wedding. I feel this is an attainable goal. 

To help me attain this goal, 1.) I am asking all my friends on here to lend me support and encouragement and motivation. (I am going to need it.) 2.) I have decided to do fitness challenges each month until then. I am going to come up with them and lay them out in a plan and will blog that plan later. and 3.) as I have I already mentioned, I plan on enlisting Rons help. 

Yes, all my best thinking and realizations happen in the shower. 

TankTop Arms

Long day again today..
I'm free to complain right? I mean, it is a Monday after all.

Woke up this morning and could barely talk... Saying bye and I love you to Ron was something that I can't even call a whisper. Of course after a few hours it got better, only to get worse again around mid afternoon... Right around 3 p.m. I was wishing I could go to bed and not wake up until tomorrow morning.. The real unfortunate part was that I couldn't even think about relaxing because I was at work...

However... even though I was feeling pretty miserable today, I didn't let it get the best of me. I will admit though that I did NOT want to work out tonight. I just wanted to relax and hopefully go to bed early. Well I didn't let myself relax and seeing as I'm still up typing this and it is already 10:37 p.m. I think I can safely say that I did not go to bed early.
The thing that motivated me to get my workout in was knowing that I have a 7 day streak going and I definitely wanted to keep it going! No only did I get my 10+ minutes of activity in, I decided to do a Tank Top Challenge that a friend of mine had made in April. I got Day 1 of 10 completed! My arms are definitely feeling it. But I feel very happy with what I did today even though I was feeling pretty icky. =) And it has me looking forward to tomorrow for Day 2! #SweatingForMyWedding

Sunday Funday

Today was definitely an awesome day... well, other than the fact that I woke up feeling completely lousy and my throat was killing me and I felt like I got ran over by an undersized semi. Other than all that, it was an awesome day. 
Of course it started off with Coffee!! =) And watching some Halloween shows with Madison (Rons daughter). Then of course we watched football. Had to start that early today. 9:30 a.m. to be exact. The Lions were playing in England so it was on earlier than normal and of course Ron wasn't about to miss them play.. Unfortunately for me, they won.. =( 
However, after the game is when the fun started. We all went to a little island that we have here in this little city of ours.. It's not very big, it is a little more than a mile all the way around but it is a very nice place to go and enjoy the outdoors. Especially in the Fall! We enjoyed walking around and of course I was taking pictures. 

After Madison went back home to her mom, Ron and I went for a walk along Lake Huron and it was very nice. Today was such a nice day. Lots of sunshine and it was in the 50's, couldn't ask for anything better for a late October day! 

But the best part of the day came when I was looking at my Spark Streaks and saw the I got 7 days in a row of meeting my 10 mins of activity a day! It doesn't seem like much but after reading about it in the book "The Spark," it meant a lot to me. I felt like I was on top of the world when I seen that and I am still really psyched about it. 

It really has motivated me this last week. Like today when we out and walking on the island, after we left, I told Ron, I can't wait to get home and see what my tracker says.. I just hope that we walked for 10 consecutive minutes! And of course when we got home and I saw it, I was ecstatic! 

I can definitely say, without a doubt, that it was a good Sunday! 

Back To Basics..

Today I woke up at 5:30 a.m... I know to some people that's about normal, but to me....well let's just say that that is a couple hours before I like to be up. What made it even worse was the fact that I didn't fall asleep to 12:30 or later so I've been working on about 5 hours of sleep today. Oddly enough I haven't really felt tired. However, it has made me not want to work out. 

I started my day with a plan. So actually today started last night for me because I was working on my plan for today. I went out and bought myself a food journal. I have started to keep track of everything I put into my mouth.. Back to basics right?? I am also using it to keep track of my fitness. I know that I can do all of that online but there is just something about writing it all done with pen on paper that makes it seem so real. Knowing that I need to write it in daily seems more real to me than hopping on my computer. Once I hop on here I get distracted and end up doing other things so I never really end up tracking my food or fitness. 

On another note, my book "The Spark" had arrived over the weekend while I was down state and Ron let me open it early! I opened it last night and I skimmed it a little but haven't actually started reading it yet. I am hoping to do some reading in it tonight before I go to bed. 

Small Steps

Well today was the first day of my fresh/new start.. again. But I am determined that this time is going to be different. When I first woke up this morning it was because Ron had to get up and get ready for work. After he left though, I decided that I was going to try and get another half hour of sleep in. I woke up 5 minutes before my alarm was to go off to the fresh smell of coffee! That was enough to get me out of bed!! No, I am not addicted. I just love the taste of coffee. I ate myself a nice healthy breakfast consisting of grapefruit, toast and some peanut butter. Oh and of course my coffee. It was a great start to my day.
Last night I had decided that if I was going to start being a healthier person then I was going to start walking to work. It's not even half a mile away so it's not a long walk and only takes a few minutes. Well while eating my breakfast this morning I looked at the forecast and it showed that we were suppose to get rain today. I decided to chance it and walk anyways.. even though it would have been way easier to drive and I had that little voice in my head telling me to drive, I didn't. Small accomplishment but definitely something to be proud about. And boy am I glad that I decided to walk. It was a bit chilly this morning but that was okay. The walk home around 5:30 though was absolutely amazing! It was a nice 56 degrees out and it smelled like Autumn! I just loved it and kept thinking how happy I was that I decided to walk and not drive.
However, my eating was 100% on the mark. If I had to rate it, I would give it an 8 out of 10. Not too bad. Definitely can't complain.
So all in all I am very proud of myself and think that I had a productive day as far as trying to be healthier goes.
The worst part about today was that it just dragged on and never felt like it was going to be even. It's not that it was a bad day, it just went by so slow. I am really looking forward to crawling into my bed and calling it a night.
Tomorrow is a new day. Hopefully I will do just as good with my goals!!

The Night Before

Tomorrow everything changes.. 

Recently I fell of the wagon.. Not only did I fall off but I got ran over. Figuratively speaking of course. Things happened in my life and it really knocked me down and got me depressed. With being depressed, I didn't want to work out and I didn't exactly eat healthy.. Well... ok.. I didn't eat healthy at all. It was almost like I was craving unhealthy food. I turned to food to forget about the stuff that was going on and used it to hide my pain and had myself a good ole' self pity party.. 
About a week ago I said enough was enough and told myself that things needed to change. That was that. It didn't go any further. Then October 1st came and I told my fiance "in 9 days it will be a year until we get married. I'm so excited!" And I was very excited. Then I got thinking of what I told myself when we first got engaged. I told myself that on our wedding day I wanted to be the healthiest, fittest me. By no means am I there. I knew that I needed to change things if I was going to keep my promise to myself. 
The past couple days I delved into research. I was looking for motivation, healthy recipes, anything I could get my hands on that would help me change and get to where I wanted to be. The more I looked, the more motivated I felt. 
I took my activity tracker off my shoe (it was good in thought leaving it on my shoe, but it only worked if I put my shoe on of course!!) and put it on my sock. It is going to be almost attached to me from now on. I use to wear it religiously. I felt naked with out it! 
I looked into things to help with portion control. I decided to buy a portion control tool to help me with portion control. I know that it's not for everyone but I believe that it will really help me. I have always had trouble with portion sizes (obviously so has most of America) and I know that this is what I need to help get my portions under control. 
Today we went out and bought some produce and a few other things to help me prepare for this week. Tomorrow I start with eating healthier and being more active. I feel very prepared for this coming week and I know it is because I took the measures to prepare myself mentally and physically. I have felt a shift that I have never felt before. I have found renewed faith in myself. 

I am ready! I am ready! I AM READY!! 

What I Think..

I'm taking this back to school days when you had to write about "what ___ means to me." I am doing that because it is simple and to the point..
What does fitness mean to me...
Well....
As we all know, everyone has different views on what fitness means.

 To me, being fit means that I am still going to be me, I'm just going to be a healthier version of me. 

When I first started my weight loss journey it was all about a certain number on the scale that I wanted to get to. I didn't really pay much attention to certain workouts that work certain parts of your body. Didn't think twice about strength training. My main thought was to eat less and do some sort of exercise and I would be all set.. Well... that does work. For a little bit. I didn't want it to work for just a little bit, I wanted it to work forever!
Now my thinking on what being fit is has changed. Now I think of healthier versions of food. I think of exercises that are going to work certain areas of my body.