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

Shopping Thinner!!!

So if you know me personally you know I love to shop. I am a girl, I love fashion, I like looking good and i LOVE finding bargains. At my biggest finding bargains was super hard to do, plus-size clothing just costs more and there is less of a selection, it is just a sad fact. Even though the woman in the United States (and western Europe and Australia) are getting bigger there is still not much of a selection out there for us curvy, bigger ladies and it sucks.









Shopping at 430lbs was a challenge, but I still loved it. I never got weepy or sad when I went shopping, there was just less of a selection. Don't get me wrong it sucked that the ONLY place I could buy jeans was Lane Bryant and only one style of those jeans AND they were getting tight. I always thought I looked good, and I liked to dress well. Dressing well when you are big is very expensive, I would do it but it made things difficult.









Now I'm no longer a size 30 jean (yes I said size 30, not the inches size, in inches i had a waist of of about 50 inches and hips of about 63 inches.) I'm a size 14 - a size 18 jean depending on where I buy them and I haven't been inside Lane Bryant in at least two months.









So like everything else in my life I'm having to learn how to shop thinner. Before if I tried on something cool and fashion forward if it fit i was ecstatic and I bought it. Nothing probably looked good on me per say, but if it didn't look horrible I got it. Now that I have a better selection I am more choosy in what I buy. Most shirts fit me now, I'm a size Large to Medium and I can pretty much walk into ANY store and find something that will fit, that I like, that I can buy and it is the most liberating feeling in the world.









Being thinner is also saving me money, the cheapest jeans at Lane Bryant are 50 bucks, now I can get a pair at most stores and I don't spend over 30 bucks now. I go shopping a lot with a friend of mine who is a size 4 and I am still amazed that we can both go into Macy's and find the same dress for both of us her in an XS and me in a Large. I had never been able to do that before. I love it! I am a fashionista at heart and it is nice to become more normal sized and being able to find clothes easier.









For me being able to buy smaller clothing is a huge motivator. No doubt in my mind at the end of this journey I am going to be a curvy girl, my boobs are still big (36 DD) and I have a big butt, the more I climb the StairMaster the rounder and higher and bigger it seems to get. I now have a 37 inch waist and 47 inch hips, which is a lot of inches down. I can't wait till my jeans aren't plus size at all ( I want to be a general size 8 pant) and I can buy EVERYTHING on sale.









Shopping is one of the things I take great pleasure in being smaller, it may not bring you the same kind of pleasure, the trick is to find what makes you happy and what you like to do smaller that you couldn't do heavier, maybe it's running or playing with your kids, or maybe it's bedroom time with you spouse. Whatever it is find it, embrace it, and don't let it go because it will help you maintain your healthier lifestyle and it will help keep you going strong no matter what!!!

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.

Starting a Work Out Plan

Hey y'all how's your Sunday treating you? Watching football??? Vegging on the couch while your team scores that amazing play (or gets the stuffing kicked out of them)? Either way I hope you are having a great day. So I was talking with a friend last night and she has decided she wants to get into shape, she's put on about 40 pounds since having her children and realizes it is only gonna get worse if she doesn't decide to do something about it now and she wanted some advice on starting. Should she get a trainer? What diet should she follow? How much should she work out? Stuff like that, stuff I wondered about before I started exercising.
Something I think I need to make very clear, is I am a broke college student. I work several jobs, pay for school and books and car payments and insurance all on my own, so I don't have funds available for bad ass trainers and expensive pre-planed meals and I for sure do not have tens of thousands of dollars for a radical weight loss surgery. So I taught myself all on my own.
Now before you start any weight loss program you should see your doctor, find out if you are healthy enough to actively loss weight, if you have any limitations the doctor will tell you and you can work around them.
So you want to loss weight, you've decided enough is enough I am gonna get active and get healthy! Awesome! Where do you start? I started slowly, I was lucky I had access to a gym on campus and I started going three times a week for about 30 min to an hour each time. I would do 30 - 45 minuets of cardio and then do so resistance work to start conditioning my muscles. But lets say you do not have access to a gym and you can't afford one. Well here are some easy tips to get you moving toward you work out goal.

1. Do not start a diet yet! Now I know I will take a lot of flack for this, but I think it's true. I was exercising for about two months before I changed my diet. I believe in "a the little bit at a time" approach and I also believe that getting physically active is more important than a diet. So lets change one thing at a time, lets get you moving first.

2. Start small, do not start going for an all out run five days a week. Firstly you run the chance of hurting yourself if you go from bam non-active to trying to train like an Olympic runner and also you will frustrate yourself when you can't complete something. Try walking, go to the high school in your area and walk around the track for 30 minuets. I recommend exercising in the morning, now if this means getting up at 5am to go for a walk before your kids get up do it. Working out in the morning puts your body in a burning mode all day long. So REALLY try to exercise in the morning, eat some oatmeal and go for a walk. IF you absolutely can't then do it in the evening, just do it and stick with it.

3. Give your self mini-goals. So my overall goal is to lose 210 pounds by July 2012 (when I turn 30!) but through out my journey i have had lots of mini goals. For example in the beginning I could only run 3 miles in an hour on the elliptical, i would give my self two weeks and in two weeks i would push my self to run 3.15, then 3.3. Stuff like that, very realistic, obtainable goals. And then i would reward myself in some small way, my reward to myself when I reached 4 miles in an hour was new work out clothes. Yours could be going to see that silly movie you're dying to see, don't go see it UNTIL you reach your goal however.

4. Once you've been working out for awhile (one or two months) start to work on your diet. Again START SLOW, I started by eliminating fast food restaurants one by one. Then I started eliminating excess fat from my diet (switched to 2% milk and low fat cheese) then tackled kicking out high fat proteins from my diet and figuring out recipes that included vegetarian proteins.

5. Now you're set, you're motivated, you're eating right, weight is dropping off like bees on a hive? Right? Well maybe it was and now it's slowed down a little? Now you have to work on keeping your workouts fresh, play with muscle confusion. Working out is not a place where you can be a creature of habit. Don't just run, run and do push ups, go swimming, go walking one day instead of running, keep adding weight to your resistance work out, do some yoga (this is all examples of stuff I do by the way). You have to keep your body guessing and working in different ways to burn existing fat.

If you can do those five things (and you can, because I did and there is absolutely nothing special or different about me and you) then I promise you will be on your way to a healthy life style.

Do you need a trainer? Nope do some research, get started on your own, get motivated ON YOUR OWN, you can do it. Do you need a dietitian? Nope do some research, the Internet is a great place to learn and if you learn how to do it on your own then it is much easier to follow. Now I'm not saying that trainers and dietitians aren't great resources, they are, and if you can afford it DO IT! I would have loved to have someone there in the gym telling me exactly how to work out, I may have lost even more weight in the beginning, but I could not afford one. If you can't afford one don't think you can't do it on your own, YOU CAN, it may be a little harder and a little slower, but really losing weight and get healthy all starts and ends with you. So go strong no matter what!

Holidays and Guilt

Yesterday was Labor Day! Yay! Everyone enjoy the last holiday of summer? I know I did, but for me a holiday meant the gym wasn't open (I utilize my campus gym so it's closed when the university is closed) so this meant light work out day. I work out 6 -7 days a week, missing one day for Labor day is not going to set back my goals at all. It's actually probably good for my body to have a rest day but it doesn't stop me from freaking out.
I have LOTS of personality flaws and probably the main one is I am a neurotic worry-wort. I over analyze, and i am just generally too cerebral for my own good. So for me missing a work out starts this chain reaction of thoughts, "oh my god, what did i eat today? I'm gonna put on a pound I know it and if i put on a pound I'm gonna put on ten." So I have had to learn how to deal with those thoughts.
First, I am not on The Biggest Loser, this is not a competition, i will not die if i only lose 2 pounds one week instead of 3.6 (my average weekly loss during the summer). Second, this is the real world, life gets in the way sometimes and I can't make it to the gym everyday, some days i NEED to sleep past 5:00am and I don't have time for my full four hour work out. Third, some days my body just won't do it, it will not run all the miles i want it too, or lift all the weight i want it too. I have to listen to my body, or i might end up with an injury that will put me out of the gym for a long time.
So this is kind of my guidelines for not freaking out. If I miss a day at the gym it's okay, even two as long as I'm there five days I will lose weight, and if I have a bad week where i feel i didn't work out enough i go hard the next week, but i don't punish myself, i push myself. If I'm missing 3 0r 4 days then I'm making excuses, because unless my appendix ruptures there is no reason in the world to miss four days at the gym, and i need to get back on my routine.
Not everyone can spend 6-7days a week in the gym for four hours a day. I'm lucky, i took the summer off of school and this fall semester also (family reasons, but it does allow me more gym time) so I feel like i don't want to waste this opportunity, and i want to try and get as fit as possible, but even when i go back to my full time schedule and my three jobs (only have two right now) I can still find 2 hours a day to be in the gym. I'm a girl whose body likes to be fat, I have to work harder to maintain a healthy weight, that's life and that's okay. I just need to not worry about it so much! I hope everyone had a great holiday and bring on the fall!!!

Abbreviated work out : So I should have gone to the track and ran with my best friend, she called, but my thighs were so sore (I've started the evil StairMaster at the gym and ugh talk about PAIN) so no running, i jumped rope for 20 min, did my ab workout and did some kettle bell work, kettle bell is amazing it's a mixture of cardio and resistance and i LOVE IT!. In the future I'll post some links to some YouTube videos i watch for kettle bell exercises.