Let me introduce myself.
The picture on my blog was taken in Hawaii in November of 2007 while I was on my honeymoon. I was on top of the world! In some ways, that was. A beautiful wedding, married to the man of my dreams and happy with the way I looked for the first time in many years.
But the shape and size of my body was being created from not eating breakfast (and during most of the week - lunch, too) because I was so stressed out all the time, drinking energy drinks to keep myself "energized", eating dinners out most nights of the week because I was too exhausted to wait until I got home to eat, let alone cook dinner at home, and sleeping every spare second I had. You see - I hated my job. With a passion. I cried a lot and I let my frustrations consume me. And thus, it took over my eating and fitness habits as well.
A look back before the years of the dreaded awful first-job-out-of-college days:
In high school I was a swimmer. In true high school fashion, I wanted to be like the best kids on my team, so I mimicked their workouts and eating habits. Because I was swimming year - round, I was always active and never really paid attention to my body type. I wasn't tiny, I wasn't huge. I was just me and that was fine.
In college I was a rower and I was a decent athlete. I made the Varsity team my Freshman year and the next year was in the head position of the boat. We were a "heavyweight" team (versus "lightweight" rowers who have to have a combined body weight of all 8 rowers under the allotted weight in order to compete). All the emphasis in my 3 years of rowing was on gaining muscle and increasing the power of the boat. There was little, to no emphasis on healthy eating. So I just ate whatever, whenever!
After the wedding I finally got my wits about me, left the dreaded first job and went into "new wife" mode. I cooked all the time. Big, hearty meals. And it wasn't until a year after I was married that I realized how my portion control was way off. My husband eats more than I do, as he should since he is bigger than me. When we ate meals together I would serve myself as much as my husband and when he got seconds, I did too. This is going to sound crazy but I found that if I stopped eating, he would too and then I thought that he would still be hungry on my account! Who knows where this came from. Anyway, it took a long time for me to change these habits. Years. And let's not even get started on the quantity and frequency that dessert was consumed in those first few years of marriage either....
Fast forward 3 years - I'm pregnant! My lifelong goal was to be a mother and it was finally happening! But I wasn't going to let the weight creep up me. I was going to walk the dog every day! And do prenatal yoga! And I did : ) You see - the problem was that my exercise to food intake ratio was SO off that I was literally tricking myself into thinking I had burned more calories than I actually had. An average walk for me was 2 - 3 miles - not too shabby for a wobbly pregnant lady! Now when I say walk, I mean a leisurely stroll. No increase in heart rate (might stress out the baby!). And prenatal yoga was merely stretching. But after one of these "vigorous workouts" I would treat myself to a second sandwich for lunch (no kidding!) or a huge slice of apple pie after dinner. There was just no method to the madness. And so I gained 40 pounds in the pregnancy and was seriously anxious to get it off the day after my son was born.
As soon I had the doctor's clearance to start working out again, I started in on a 90 day DVD workout program. 6 days a week I did my workout which varied from cardio to an upper body weight workout to yoga to a martial arts type workout. It felt great to get my blood moving again, but at the end of the 90 days I had only lost about half of the weight I gained. I still had 20 pounds to go and was at a loss. I thought for SURE this extensive (and expensive) DVD system would be the key to getting back to "normal" and it only took me half way.
Then one day I was drowning my sorrows on Facebook, and I saw a post from Gina that she was offering a complimentary class that night for her BalletFIT class. I had seen many similar postings before. In fact, I had already "liked" DanceFIT Studio on Facebook and was so envious of Gina's tiny figure and her ability to bounce back into shape after having kids. So I gave it a shot. I have zero dance background and zero coordination but if it worked for her and so many other strong supporters of the studio, I wanted to give it my best shot.
And I LOVED every minute of that class! There are three reasons why virtual workout classes with DanceFIT studio are so amazingly awesome:
1. You don't have to leave your home which means you can throw your workout clothes on 4 minutes before class starts and still be early :)
2. Unlike DVD workouts, the instructors of the virtual classes give you feedback and you can ask questions or ask for clarifications (such as "should I feel this in (this body area)"? "that hurts my (body part) - can you offer a modification?", etc). This is invaluable in a workout - and saves you from injuries and giving up on a workout because it doesn't feel right or hurts you.
3. You are part of a team. You can choose to see the other members in your class or not, via Skype settings. You can see that others are pushing themselves too and not giving up, and that just might be what keeps you going for that last set of 20 reps.
Every week I look forward to my Sunday and Wednesday evening virtual class. It's 45 minutes of "me" time where I don't have to think about my to-do list, work, family, or anything other than giving my body the exercise it needs to keep me healthy. My son is 10 months old now and we live in California, so we walk outside often. Most weeks we get out at least 3 mornings along with our 4 year old German Shepherd. One morning a week I hike around the foothills of Palo Alto with some other mommy friends and their babes in strollers as well. Hiking with friends makes the hilly 1.5 hour workout fly by (more on this later)!
I am also happy to report that my eating habits have improved drastically thanks to Gina's 6FIT program. This 6 week program focus on eating 6 fruits and veggies per day, increasing your water intake to at least 60 ounces a day, working out 6 days a week with 6 teammates to motivate you. Since I am a "remote" danceFITTER (DanceFIT Studio is located in Brookline, MA) I obviously did not meet my teammates, but I was still encouraged and motivated by them through our daily charting of food intake and exercise. This is a point based system, so for those who don't like to lose, the better you eat and the more you exercise the more points you get! There are weekly prizes and an overall prize for the winning team. 6FIT starts up again next week and I am SO excited! More on that later :) Specific changes to my diet from this program include:
- a better awareness for incorporating different types of vegetables into each meal.
- eating fruit as a dessert (because it is naturally sweet this can be really satisfying if you give it some time to let your body adjust from artificial sweeteners!)
- eating more naturally, such as quinoa or beans as protein instead of red meat or chicken.
- drinking water as a means to wake up each day, hold off that '30 minutes before dinner snack', or wind down from an intense workout.
Through this blog I plan to keep the past struggles and mistakes in the past. I was intimately honest with you about my fitness and eating history and will reference it often to help keep myself on track to a healthy lifestyle. Maybe you share some of the same situations, or maybe not. Either way, it would help me tremendously if you would follow along in my journey. Please leave comments or suggestions in the comments box - I welcome them with open arms.
Thanks for stopping by!
(For more information on DanceFIT Studio, 6FIT or virtual classes, check out the website at www.dancefitstudio.com)
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