Happy New Year!
As one year came to a close and another one was getting ready to start, I was reflecting back on the last year. I thought about what I have done for my weight loss goals. I thought about what goals I wanted for 2019 and what I would need to do to get there.
I started 2018 wanting to hit my goal weight. Then I listed to a Facebook Live by the Nicho’s about running, and I knew it was something I wanted to do. I registered for a half marathon in San Antonio in December with some Transform friends, and then decided to do one in October as well. I desperately tried to continue losing weight while running, but the reality was, I had no energy for my runs. I would get to my long run days and I would have no energy to keep going.
When I was selected to be on the Transform App beta team (and later chosen to be an ambassador), I was so excited but several of my fellow ambassadors told me to switch to a muscle gain plan in order to fuel my runs, when I was done running I could start losing weight again. This gave me the energy to complete my runs. I was also doing them fasted!
Because of the nutrition change, I gained some weight this year. It never even concerned me. I knew I was fueling my body with healthy food. I was eating the same healthy foods I was eating at a deficit but I was giving my body the fuel that it needed to get me through my runs.
My first half in October I finished in 3:15, my goal for December was originally to do better than 2:45 and I quickly changed to just doing better than I had done before. I finished in 2:58 in the December run. There were only 6 weeks between these two races.
As soon as I was done running, it was back to losing weight, back to the grind, back to a deficit. I also changed from At Home Body Sculpting to the Cross Training program on the app. I was getting a little bored and needed a change. This is something that has happened along my journey a few times and is always remedied by switching to another program.
My original starting weight in 2013, before I got serious about losing weight was 253.2. This is the number I use for my jumping off point. I lost about 10 pounds (diet only) before getting pregnant with my daughter, lost weight while pregnant, weighed in at 210 a week after delivery. Then over the next year I gained most of it back. In the picture below, my starting picture for my official fitness journey, I weigh 236.6. This was 10 months into breastfeeding. This is the day that changed my whole life. This is the day I got serious about losing weight through both diet and exercise.
At the beginning of 2018 I weighed in at 179.4. This is about 10 pounds above what my lowest weight for the year ended up at, in March, just before starting running.
And at the end of 2018 I weighed in at 183.4.
Overall, I am not up very far from what I was at the beginning of the year, these 4 pounds will come off quickly. And the best is yet to come for my fitness journey! It’s not important to the overall scheme of things that I gained 4 pounds over the course of a year. I did it the right way, with healthy foods, drinking all my water, and working out almost every day. What is important is from October 2013 until now I have lost 70.6 pounds. I have gained my health back.
I have had my blood pressure checked several times over the course of the last year and every time it has been perfect, pre-fitness journey I was always borderline or high blood pressure.
I had my blood glucose levels checked at the beginning of the year, they have gone from borderline diabetes (pre-baby), to gestational diabetes, to borderline (August 2015), to now being PERFECT.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you do for a couple of months, even if you go off the rails and eat every cookie in sight, what’s important is what you do over the course of your journey. Do you have more good days than bad days? Are you getting all of your workouts in? Are you getting most of your workouts in? Are you Confessing, Reassessing and Recommitting to yourself each and every time you slip up?
I cannot wait to see what 2019 has to bring!
