Long Time no Post!

So I suck, but I suck cause I've been in the planning stages of revamping my blog. I've got so many ideas but I wanted to check in and say hey and see how everyone has been doing and give some updates on how I've been doing.





Sooooooo I kinda hit a wall my weight loss dropped from 3 pounds a week to around one or two, this fall in comparison to the summer, so i decided the time had come to do something different. I joined a new gym and got a personal trainer. I've been doing it now for a month and the results are in! I lost 12 pounds, 1 inch in my chest, 1.5 inches in my waist, 2.5 inches in my hips, 3.5 inches in my thighs and 1 inch in my calves ( I gained an inch in my biceps, but I have have kinda thin arms so that's okay that's muscle!) for a total of 8.5 inches lost. The big shocker was my body fat percentage, it went from 45.3 % to 28.5% ( I made my trainer do it twice to make sure it was correct) I lost 16.8% body fat!

I am a happy girl right now, I worked hard this month. Pushed myself in ways I didn't think I could push myself and it was amazing! I'm even more excited for the next month, I found a kettlebell training place (kettlebells are something I am extremely passionate about) and in one evaluation session I learned so much of what i was doing incorrectly. So I'll also be doing that three days a week.

My goal for next month, is another 12 pounds, I'd like to lose at least 10 inches and another 2-4% body fat. Of course if it doesn't happen it's okay, as long as I tried my best I'm happy!

How is everyone doing this month? Are we keeping up with our goals? Are we working as hard as we did on January first? If not, get back on that horse, this weight is not gonna come off by itself, you've got to remember to go strong no matter what, even on your bad days!

Love you guys!

Progress Report Time (and other nifty stuff)

Hey guys so a friend of mine told me it was time to put a new picture, the one I have up is from August and I'm down about 30 pounds since then. The pic I'm gonna attach to this blog was actually about a month ago and I'm down another 13lbs since then. So it's me at 260 and I am actually down to 247! YAY I thought this was gonna be a bad week but I weighed myself Thursday and had lost three pounds. I try not to focus on pounds as much, because it fluctuates sooo much and I focus on inches and pant sizes and how I feel and how I look.

I think the most important thing when you're trying to lose weight the right way and change your lifestyle is focusing on the small goals and keeping your eye on the big picture. I found this great little book at Target for 20 bucks called a Fit Book. It's a book that is a three month plan and you break your work outs (and food) down by weeks then by days. You put your 3 months weight loss goal and your weekly weight loss goal and your rewards for reaching your goals. It also allows you to write down and plan your workouts. I love it. Last week I didn't reach my weight loss goal, so no reward right? Well not exactly, I did do all my workouts and I tried my best so I still gave myself a small treat. If I hadn't tried my best and done all my workouts I wouldn't have treated myself at all.

So see it can't all be about the weight loss. I'm slowly learning that (VERY SLOWLY) and I'm learning to appreciate my pants getting to big and buying size 14 and size 16 jeans, a size 14 pair of shorts from Kohl's last night (shorts in December?!?! Hey I live in South Texas it could totally be 90 degress on Christmas day!) and size large dresses from stores I've never been able to buy clothes in before.

There are a lot of things in life that are out of our control, mine in particular and I'm a control freak that really likes to have everything in a nifty(total word of the day!) little box but I can't put everything in a box like I would want. One thing I can control is my workouts and how well I do there. I run till my thighs and calves kill me, I lift till everything hurts and I do so much abs it hurts to even touch my stomach. I let my body get out of control when I let myself get so big, and I will never do that again.

So having trouble keeping yourself honest with your workouts or tracking how much you really do? Go get this fit book. It is great tool to keep you honest and in control and on top of everything. Always go strong no matter what, even when you don't feel all that strong in the end it's so all worth it.

*Fitbook on Amazon.com : http://www.amazon.com/fitbook-by-fitlosophy-fitbook001-nutrition/dp/B002LU3DFG

Turning I can't into I CAN

So a few weeks back a friend of mine posted this on Facebook and I instantly stole it, printed it, and put it up on my bedroom wall. I think we all have people in our lives that tell us we can't, and we tell ourselves so often we can't, when actually we can. There really is nothing your body can't do it is our minds that get in the way.

When you say to yourself "I can't work out today" turn around and then ask your self "okay why can't I?". Are you in pain? Is your pain just regular soreness or what I call super soreness, a kind of soreness that can lead to injury. Regular sore? Go to the gym, do what you did yesterday but don't push for more. Super sore, i think you can still go to the gym (I do) and just do less. On my super sore days, I've been known to only do 30 min of cardio and go home. Did i burn a pound of fat that day? Nope, but i still fed my routine and keeping that routine in the long run is more important than pushing for burning that pound of fat.

Let's back up and say your "I can't" is I can't work out period, I don't have time. I call bull on this. Everyone has time, you just might have to give something up. Unless you work 16 hours a day, you have time to exercise. I've said it once and I will say it over and over again. YOU CAN FIND 30 MINUETS A DAY, FIVE DAYS A WEEK to do some cardio. Cut out one show a night, there is your 30 minutes. Get up 30 minutes before your kids do. I have a friend who gets up a full hour before her baby does to use her treadmill, I would get up at 5am to have breakfast to be at the gym at 6am before my 9am classes. Does it suck? Sometimes yes, do you have to go to bed earlier? Yes. But it is worth it. This is me taking away your excuses, your I can'ts.

Is your I can't a health problem? Completely possible. I was lucky even at 430 pounds I didn't have any health issues, you might. But staying inactive on the couch is only gonna make these health issues worse. Most communities have a public pool. Swimming is a very low impact, great cardio exercise. If you are very morbidly obese it is so good to work out in a pool because it does not hurt your joints. Can't swim? That's okay stay in the shallow end and hold on to the wall and kick your feet. You won't go anywhere, you wont drown and you will burn a lot of calories. Have trouble getting into and out of the pool? Most pools have the handicapped stairs now, if your public pool doesn't go to the one at your local college I bet it does. Not a student there? Get some courage go to the people who maintain the pool and ask if you can still use it. It is great community outreach for the university to let community members use their stuff, exemptions can be made. It is not expensive to go to these pools, 2 -5 bucks each time and you may be able to buy a cheaper pass. You don't have the extra 15 bucks a week, I bet you do. Don't buy some junk food. Give up Internet for awhile, give up the smart phone and the smart phone plan. Your health is way more important than checking your Facebook at will.

You can't eat better? Your husband won't like the food? I get so TIRED of this excuse. My dad threw a temper tantrum one night when I fed him tofu stir fry but only after he ate it. In all honesty your husband will not leave you for changing his diet along with yours. He may grumble, throw a fit but he wont leave, and girl if he does, seriously you are better off and you need to sell that story to lifetime, because that would make a crazy lifetime movie just sayin. Your children wont eat it? This makes me angry, as a parent it is your job to teach them good eating habits, and saying oh my child will only eat MacDonald's chicken nuggets is your fault not the child's. You need to work harder on feeding them good food. Saying a child will only eat junk is YOUR excuse to eat junk. Again they may not like it at first but they will eventually begin to like it and you are doing them a favor teaching them to eat good young, this is a skill they will take into adulthood. This is not to say I am advocating never giving your child a Happy Meal. No, Happy Meals are fun treats, but should be treated as such, a treat, not a daily source of nutrients.

Now some of you may chew me out on the kid stuff by saying "Laura you don't have kids, you don't understand." This is true I don't have children, however I was one, and my mom tried (somewhat in vain) to teach me to eat right and I learned a lot from that nutritional foundation. I am scared to think what I would have been like if I hadn't known how bad particular foods were for me and how good others are. When I was a child I would demand the bad foods also, they taste so good, but my mom just got pretty good at figuring out how to make bad foods a little healthier, and you can too. Your kids will eat the good stuff, when they get hungry enough. ;)

I think these are some of the major I cant's we go through in our lets get healthier lives. It's said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well how about the road to a really big butt is paved with good work out intentions. The next time you say oh i just can't today, you need to turn to yourself and say watch me, and show your I cant's that you're gonna go strong no matter what.

Embracing who we are!

Heeeey strangers, long time no talk. I have had a crazy busy couple of weeks. Some stuff has been really cool and a week ago I decided to organize a charity 5k for March and I've spent the last week trying to get that all in order (not having much luck, the week flew by!) but I've missed blogging! I've had numerous ideas that I should blog about, but didn't have the time to blog about :(. But I'm back, and I kinda want to talk about embracing who we are.





I have a lot of friends that have lost weight, one that's lost a whole person and then some like me and several who've lost you know 50 or 60 lbs. Significant amounts of weight and I've noticed I'm the only one that embraces my fat photos. I don't understand it, I am so proud of the weight I've lost, it's like graduating from college proud or having a baby proud. This journey is so hard, it is hard to lose any kind of weight and keep it off. I don't understand why my friends are so ashamed of their fat photos. It's like a hidden secret that they never want to admit that it happened. That to me is kind of scary, in that if we don't learn from our past we are destined to repeat it kind of way. Maybe that's why I keep my fat photos on Facebook, they are a reminder of what I never want to be again. I never want to be that girl hiding behind the extra cushion and not living her life to the fullest, at 430 pounds there was so much in my life I could not do.



I actually think the problem is two fold, one is shame and the other is we focus way to much on how we look as a society. The shame is silly. There is nothing to be ashamed of if you're over weight, especially if you were overweight and are smaller now or are actively working to change your lifestyle. The only thing that is bad about being bigger is the detriment it has on your health, we should all want to lead healthy life styles because it allows us to lead fuller, longer lives.





Beauty is relative, and true beauty comes from within. I was talking with a friend of mine whose lost and kept off about fifty pounds for the last three years or so. Generally when we hang out we talk about men, fitness and shopping and for some reason these topics never get old. We started looking at old pictures of each other and her response to a picture of me at 430 pounds, was I never realized you were that big. Then I looked at an old picture of her and said the same basic thing, something along the lines of I always thought she was beautiful and she replied "I guess love is really blind." I don't think it is that love is blind, but instead we don't love the outer parts of people. Yes there is such a thing as attraction (especially in romantic love) but you don't LOVE attraction. A really beautiful person become super ugly super fast based on their personality and an average looking person will become more beautiful if they have an awesome spirit.


I think we forget this and are way to hard on ourselves. Like if we go out with our friends and have an awesome time, but feel like the pictures taken that night are blah it shouldn't matter, our friends, family all the people who love us love us FOR us. Life is about memories, not about how we look, when we are 80 looking at the photos from our 25th birthday party it won't be "look at hot fat i was" or "that dress was horrible" it will be "look at how young we were and how happy we were". I am constantly stressing about imaginary back fat ( I always ask does my back look fat in this, and it never does) but it doesn't matter. To the people who love me I am beautiful, my friends and loved ones are just as beautiful to me. Perfection is boring and overrated, true beauty lies in our flaws. So lets embrace our past, be proud of our accomplishments, know that our true beauty comes from the inside not the outside, be healthy and always go strong not matter what!