Week One Update

Week One Update

Today I celebrate and embrace the loss of 8 pounds.

On my frame, with the amount of weight I have to lose (over 150 pounds), 8 pounds doesn’t seem like a lot and you can’t see it when you look at me. But that’s ok, because this weight loss journey is about me and my body. Do you know what kind of impact just 8 pounds can have? For every pound over weight we are, that’s 4 pounds of pressure on our joints. I just eliminated 32 added pounds of pressure on my joints! That’s fabulous!

I also made progress on my goals. Progress is part of what fuels our passion to keep going. When I can look back and see how far I’ve gone, that’s what’s going to help me get through those tough times when I feel like nothing is happening and I’ll NEVER meet my goal weight.

So how did I kick those pounds to the curb? I joined a challenge group hosted by my awesome BeachBody coach. It started last Monday and every day I earn points by being accountable and supporting the other people in the group. The group doesn’t teach extreme weight loss or how to starve myself to get fast results that will come back later (and bring friends). No the group teaches me small healthy daily habits to work on and supports me through the fitness program that meets me at my level and provides a little challenge.

What are those small changes? Things like drinking my water each day. Checking in for my daily work out, even on rest days (and actually taking my rest days). They help me in making healthier food choices and getting in my recommended amount of protein and vegetables. When I have a rough day, that group has my back. They’re the ones reminding me that I can do this and that it takes one small step at a time. They lift and encourage me and when I need to, they give me that quick kick in the rear to get moving.

Challenge groups have done wonders for my personal life as well. I started posting ‘sweaty mug photos’ that’s the selfie you take after you’ve worked out when your hair is a mess and there’s sweat dripping down your face, you’re breathing hard and your face is red. Who celebrates photos like that?!? My awesome group of fellow challengers do! We all take those photos. There’s no priming or adding make up or trying to look “sexy”. This is the real thing. I swear it’s almost more of a “who can look worse after working out” competition and its awesome! No one judges me for how I look. They congratulate me for looking happy or exhausted or like a royal mess. They congratulate me for taking another step along my journey to a healthier, happier me. How amazing is that!?! Talk about a confidence booster. I even find myself feeling more confident about taking and posting photos of myself. Something I’ve never been able to do. I look in the mirror now and find good things to say instead of degrading self-talk.

I still have a long way to go. With my weight loss and my health. I struggle with getting the right portion sizes and eating enough of the right things. I struggle with emotional eating and binge eating. I struggle with getting that daily exercise in and feeling like I matter. But every day I get one step closer to being able to do the things I dream of. And this January Challenge group is really helping me take the steps I need.

The 3 month challenge

Tomorrow a friend and I start a 3 month challenge against each other. If I win I get 2 round-trip tickets on Alaska Airlines. Which, being the only airline the flys in and out of this place is a pretty big deal. The ticket has stipulations like we have to fly standby but still this is a pretty sweet incentive to me!

My friend is a guy. I understand that guys can loose weight quicker and easier then woman. I still intend to win! We are having weekly check-ins/meetings/weigh-ins and monthly winners who get dinner or a movie bought by the looser. I'm pretty excited. We want to do another one starting in March depending on how successful this one is.

My friend is helping me set realistic goals. This is a problem I have. I like to set goals that are astronomical and completely unrealistic and then I don't understand why I don't meet and surpass them. Yes I understand that sounds crazy. On a logical level I can see that the goals are unrealistic but I really feel like if I work hard enough I should be able to meet them. We have set a goal together to loose a total of 30 pounds each during this 3 months. That's just 10 pounds a month, 2.5 pounds a week. Totally do-able right? I feel like the number is way way waaay to low.

Tomorrow we do our initial weigh in. We'll also make a list of why we want to lose weight, what we hope to accomplish out of this and stuff like that. That way we can look at the list daily and hopefully it'll help motivate us to make the right choices. Also having a buddy to do this with and meet with helps to keep each other accountable.

I'm really nervous about telling people how much I currently weigh. I haven't even told my husband how much I weigh. Although if he looks on the calendar by the bathroom and can figure out what all my little daily numbers mean, then he could easily figure it out. But I don't think my weight matters to him.

Part of the reason why I'm doing this:
I went in to get steroid injections into my hips today. They hurt like hell, the injections and my hips. Well hours after sleeping off the "traumatic event" I feel much better. My back is still really painful but I can walk and the pain going down my legs and the numbness in my toes is gone!  Hurraaay! However there is still the back thing, the reason why I've now missed almost 3 weeks of work.

My back specialist pointed something out to me today. All my health issues have been going on for a little over a year. Literally 1 year and a month. That's when I hit this high weight. The highest I've been in my life. I gained 87 pounds in a year and a few months. Stress and a lot of crap happened in my life and so I stopped working out, stopped seeing friends, stopped doing pretty much anything fun that I enjoyed, lost all confidence in myself and emotionally ate myself sick on a weekly (sometimes daily) basis. He doesn't know all of that, just the weight gain part. He said that if I lost even just 20-30 pounds a lot of the problems I've been experiencing this last year would go away. 6 months ago, a different doctor who was seeing me about the stomach ulcers and hiatal hernias and all the other crap pretty much said the same thing.

Maybe they're right? I sure never had this much problems before in my life. Ever. My tolerance to physical pain used to be a lot higher too. So I need to do this. I think having a buddy to be weekly accountable to or being able to talk to about it daily, will really help me get started. Plus I have sparkpeople.com to really help with support and to find an amazing amount of good stuff to help me along the way. I'm hoping to get my friend on SparkPeople too.

I've tried challenges before, hoping they'll help me get out of my rut and get going but with the online challenges its hard for me when I can't see or talk to the other people like on the phone and stuff. I don't have the option to pick up the phone when I'm struggling and talk to someone. I also don't get the chance to meet up and have a work out buddy or weekly meetings and stuff so I'm really excited about that.

Overall I'm just really excited about this whole thing. I've wanted to do something like this but just never really gotten around to it. The idea of sharing weight stuff with people I see every day, that takes some trust and that's an area I've really been struggling with over the last couple years. But my friend was like "I have an idea" and I'm like "oh hell yeah let's do it" hopefully everything works out really well and next time we'll have more people doing it.