Big things happening over here in LiimuLand. Huge.
I was working out with the world's greatest online trainer, Tony DiCostanzo of Dreambodies, again beginning last October. That's what got me to my all time best post-baby body and I will always believe that he has an excellent program that gets huge results. The problem for me is that I just couldn't get my mind in it again. It's one thing when you don't know where you're going. It's another thing all together when you do know what you're getting yourself into and you're not able to get your mind to come along for the ride. So, I quit. I know, I know...that's what Tony said, too.
Of course, I quit leading into the holidays, which I can't say has been one of my best decisions to date, but I went through the holidays with an in-person trainer who began taking me on a very gentle journey out of the realm of dieting and punitive exercise. See, the thing is that I've been dieting since I was about 8 years old. And as much as Tony wanted me to see his program as a lifestyle, I could never really see it as anything other than a diet. Even the "cheat" days fed into my idea of it as something I would go "off" when I was rewarding myself. It's an ass-backwards way of thinking if you want to live a healthy lifestyle. But that's the way I thought most of my life, and as a result I was usually either dieting or bingeing.
After working with my new trainer, Chrissy of HealthyFitGirl, I have begun to learn how to ADD good foods into my diet, rather than take foods I like out. There are only so many calories in the day, so as a result many of the less healthy foods have been eliminated. I'm quite amazed at my progress, when I think about it. I juice green vegetables regularly, if not daily since the beginning of the year. My family cupboards are no high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oil free. I bake kale chips and healthy cookies made with things like chia seeds and ground flax to have for a snack when I'm hungry. I have smoothies with glutamine and wheatgrass!
But here's the thing - I wasn't losing weight. Because I'm carrying around quite a bit more than I need (about 50 pounds more than I need), my joints started to really suffer and honestly, that scared me more than anything. So a few weeks ago, I decided to do what all the magazines said - I started walking. Four and a half miles at first, including some pretty steep trails, and just about every day. This was more of a meditative thing than anything else, but as I kept doing it, I started getting really into it and even started adding some jogging intervals. My joints still hurt, but the pain wasn't getting any worse. I still wasn't losing weight, but I was getting tighter and I was definitely starting to have a more positive attitude about it all.
I also began a couple months ago (at my trainer's suggestion) logging my food in MyFitnessPal. I have used a lot of websites and apps for logging my food and of all of them, MyFitnessPal is definitely the best. It gives an accurate count of exercise calories burned along with the extensive database of foods for calories consumed. You can even scan in foods using a barcode! And it has this cute thing at the end of the day where when you're finished logging it will tell you how much you would weigh if you ate that same way every day. Best of all, perhaps, is the extensive nutritional breakdown it gives you, including not only the basics of fiber, protein, fat, and carbs, but also sugars, trans fats, sodium, etc. I learned that my sugars and bad fats were inordinately high. Also, I was eating back a lot of the calories I was burning.
So, this week I tried something new. First, I upped my activity - I started kickboxing twice a week (which I LURVLURVLURV!!!) and even went spinning on Friday. Second, I ordered Shakeology and reintroduced smoothies into my plan. Third, I finally got on the bandwagon of slowing down my eating come the afternoon. I realized that I was getting a lot of my calories from 2 to 7 and sabotaging my efforts. So, I really start to slow down now around 2 pm and it seems to really be helping.
That's where we are as of today. I'm going to be very diligent about posting my results here, especially because I definitely plan to weave P90X and INSANITY into this, along with Shakeology, and I'm determined to have one of those amazingly successful before/after stories that they use on their site or goes viral or something.
If you have suggestions or questions along the way, please comment. I fully intend to have one of those bodies that makes people ask - how do you have a body like that with four kids? What do you do to workout? And then when I tell them, say to themselves "Oh, hell, no...I couldn't do that." But here's the thing....it's been a gradual journey for me to get to where I am and become an athlete. I'm there already and my body is simply catching up with me. But anyone can get there...in their mind. And once your mind gets there, the body is bound to follow.
Until next time!!
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