Oh my how time flies!
When I started this blog it was with the intention of keeping track of my journey in weight loss and my movement toward health and fitness.
In January when I started all of this, I took a before picture of myself. It is not a pretty picture but depicts honestly where I was at the time.
Interestingly enough I just looked at that picture and realized that although subtle, my body has changed. I have firmed up some and lost some inches. Nice!
Today marks a new path on my journey.
I begin with a holistic nutritionist and life coach.
In all that I have done, I have come to a great realization and that is that my outsides will not change unless I nourish and love my insides into a new way of thinking and being.
So much of my issues around my body are controlled by my internal thoughts and recently I have noticed an old behavior which I do not like very much and that is that any opportunity I get I mention my perceived unattractiveness. It is an inner and outer thing.
My boyfriend Dan made a very astute observation the other day. He told me that in my life if I am faced with an obstacle I visualize something different and make that happen or I put a positive spin on it but I always shift into a place of acceptance and forward positive movement...except with my body.
He's right.
We all know someone who is constantly saying "Do I look fat in this?" Look at the size of my butt!" etc. Although I empathize with that type of person, I grow weary of hearing their diatribe and self loathing.
Guess what? I'm that person.
Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I believe that I will get fit, lose weight, be a perfect size 6 or 8 and then I'll magically be done! Poof, I'm perfect, I can now eat a bag of chips!
Aaaarggh! It's not true! It's just not true!
And so another layer of the onion is peeled back and I get the gift of moving forward in my journey of healing.
Just for today I am going to love myself and nurture that part of me that feels so lost and wounded.
Today, I choose to post that before picture of me because it is apart of my journey and I must love those parts of me that I find so unloveable.
I hope to keep up on my posts and I hope that this helps someone else who is struggling inside with their outsides!
Here goes...wheeee!
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
A New Day!
So I made a big decision after the Win to Lose challenge ended and that was that I needed a break.
Between the early morning workout and my long hours at work and a few other factors, I was feeling completely discouraged and defeated.
In truth the first week after the challenge I worked out 3 times instead of 5 and last week I chose to sleep in and nurture my tired self. It helped a lot.
While many would not recommend this, it was exactly what I needed.
Tomorrow I start a new team training at the gym for 6 weeks. 2 days a week from 5:30 a.m. to 6:30 a.m.
Today I woke up ready to get started again. I grabbed the pooch and we went for a 3 mile walk in the 23 degree weather and it felt really good. I feel good about me!
I weighed in this morning buck naked at 163 lbs. And that's a good starting point I'm thinking!
I am going to focus on my food intake and the "getting fit" part this time.
If I do those things I will lose weight but I really messed myself up by making my weight loss the center of my universe during the 9 week program.
I declare here and now that I'm dumping that! WooHoo!
My ultimate goal in this next 6 weeks is to lose fat off my body and be able to see my leg and arm muscles clearly...as in defined and I deeply desire to lose more of my belly!
Wish me luck. I am officially back on board to continue sharing the journey, so I hope you will come on along for the ride. Weeeeeeeeeee!
Hugs,
Linda
Between the early morning workout and my long hours at work and a few other factors, I was feeling completely discouraged and defeated.
In truth the first week after the challenge I worked out 3 times instead of 5 and last week I chose to sleep in and nurture my tired self. It helped a lot.
While many would not recommend this, it was exactly what I needed.
Tomorrow I start a new team training at the gym for 6 weeks. 2 days a week from 5:30 a.m. to 6:30 a.m.
Today I woke up ready to get started again. I grabbed the pooch and we went for a 3 mile walk in the 23 degree weather and it felt really good. I feel good about me!
I weighed in this morning buck naked at 163 lbs. And that's a good starting point I'm thinking!
I am going to focus on my food intake and the "getting fit" part this time.
If I do those things I will lose weight but I really messed myself up by making my weight loss the center of my universe during the 9 week program.
I declare here and now that I'm dumping that! WooHoo!
My ultimate goal in this next 6 weeks is to lose fat off my body and be able to see my leg and arm muscles clearly...as in defined and I deeply desire to lose more of my belly!
Wish me luck. I am officially back on board to continue sharing the journey, so I hope you will come on along for the ride. Weeeeeeeeeee!
Hugs,
Linda
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Observation
Over the past few days I noticed a change but was unsure. Is it the light, am I mistaken? But no, I was not mistaken my legs are takin on a new shape!
Now, I must mention that I still cannot fully see my leg muscles but the new forming at the top of my thighs appears to be the driftwood I've been looking for on the horizon!
In laymens terms that means I am well on the way to having visible muscles in my body again!
WooHoo!
Red letter day for Linda!
Now, I must mention that I still cannot fully see my leg muscles but the new forming at the top of my thighs appears to be the driftwood I've been looking for on the horizon!
In laymens terms that means I am well on the way to having visible muscles in my body again!
WooHoo!
Red letter day for Linda!
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Win to Lose party time!
So this evening capped off the 9 week program that I joined at the gym.
It was a lovely experience to see my trainer Amy and give her a hug and to sit with my team mates whom I have grown so fond of.
I asked one teammate what he got out of all of this. He's lost weight and looks so much more fit and healthy but what he told me he got overall was motivation. He WANTS this now and he's going for it!
That's so cool.
I am humbled by the people in that room celebrating. Every one of us with different goals, all of them vital and important.
I am excited to continue.
I can make this as easy or as difficult as I choose. I choose to relax and enjoy this next leg of my journey.
I choose to ease up on myself and forget about the weight. God if I do anything THAT's what I really want to accomplish!
It was a lovely experience to see my trainer Amy and give her a hug and to sit with my team mates whom I have grown so fond of.
I asked one teammate what he got out of all of this. He's lost weight and looks so much more fit and healthy but what he told me he got overall was motivation. He WANTS this now and he's going for it!
That's so cool.
I am humbled by the people in that room celebrating. Every one of us with different goals, all of them vital and important.
I am excited to continue.
I can make this as easy or as difficult as I choose. I choose to relax and enjoy this next leg of my journey.
I choose to ease up on myself and forget about the weight. God if I do anything THAT's what I really want to accomplish!
Sunday, March 22, 2009
The Big Shift
It has been quite some time since I've been on my site and chronicled my thoughts.
Often I am on the fly and think "Oh yes, THAT's what I'm going to blog about next." and then one day goes by and yet another and here I am a month later! Yikes!
The idea of starting this blog was to expose my honest and sometimes painful journey of weight loss, health and fitness.
This has been a lovely journey full of life lessons that I haven't always wanted. I regret that i did not write more this past month as many shifts have happened.
You may recall that when I started my bootcamps at the gym I had difficulty with what I considered the simplest of physical tasks ie: jumping jacks and skipping and running. How simple could that be, right? Well truthfully, for me, it was tough and I beat the crap out of myself for not being able to accomplish these small tasks without burning out quickly or just quitting because it was too hard.
I had a goal to lose 26 pounds (I think). Initially I started out with a bang and lost over 5 lbs. and was really proud of myself. Something interesting happened then...I became fearful of weighing myself and a shift happened where I began to stress and focus on my weight loss instead of what I had originally vowed to concentrate on, which was getting healthy.
I could go on and on about the variety of things that happened but here's the bottom line. In focusing on the numbers my body stopped dropping weight. Call it emotional, or the lack of my spiritual core but the end result was the same. I not only stopped losing weight, I gained it again.
This past Thursday I went into the gym for my final weigh in. When I started I was at 167.6 lbs. and this past week I weighed 165.4. We're talking 2 lbs. that's it! That's all I lost in 9 flipping weeks!
I want you to know that i cried, I ranted, I kicked and I screamed and after I got tired of feeling desolate and completely bereft, I was reminded by the people I love a few pertinent things.
1. I showed up for every work out!
2. I tried my best to meet the challenges that were presented to me every time I worked out.
3. I made healthier choices.
4. I exercised 5 days a week! Can you believe it?
5. I started taking Yoga classes.
6. I can now skip to my hearts content and I can do SOME jumping jacks.
7. My enthusiasm encouraged half of my group at the gym to sign up with our trainer for another 6 weeks! Am I crazy or what?!
8. I lost 1 pant size.
9. I lost 2 inches in my belly.
10.I gained self confidence, endurance and strength AND I moved closer to having a fit and healthy body.
Phew! All that happened in 9 weeks and NONE of those accomplishments had anything to do with weight loss!
I was told a few very important thinks when I embarked on this journey...
1. I am not a number.
2. It took 50 miles to walk into the woods, it will take 50 miles to walk out.
As a youth I did a lot of damage to my body with crash diets, diet pills and starvation. Eating healthy and working towards a fit body was never even a consideration.
I am 49 years old now and the damage I created many years ago are a part of the many injustices I inflicted on my body and more deeply in my soul.
Somewhere along the line I got the idea that I was defective. That who I was and how I presented just wasn't good enough. I believe that that was when I began punishing myself and making incredibly poor choices.
Here is the gift (and as you get to know me, you will know that I ALWAYS find one.) I have the great opportunity to correct the past poor choices I made by replacing them with loving, healthy choices!
At the end of the day, as I've said before, it all comes down to loving yourself enough to make the changes.
How do I do that?
Well, I start by putting the big stick down that I've been beating myself up with all these years and then I put my big girl panties on and THEN I start my luscious journey by putting one foot in front of the other and remembering to breathe in and breathe out!
Sounds simple right? LOL!
We'll see.
What started for me as a 9 week adventure has now shifted to a lifelong commitment.
Just for today I chose to love every part of Linda. And just for today I really will put the big stick down.
I think that this experience was exactly what I needed to continue on down the path that I've begun to blaze for myself. As in all unchartered territories there are many unknowns ahead.
I hope you will join me in discovering all the layers of Linda. I promise to continue to share them with you as openly and honestly as I can.
Welcome to my luscious journey!
With love,
Linda
Often I am on the fly and think "Oh yes, THAT's what I'm going to blog about next." and then one day goes by and yet another and here I am a month later! Yikes!
The idea of starting this blog was to expose my honest and sometimes painful journey of weight loss, health and fitness.
This has been a lovely journey full of life lessons that I haven't always wanted. I regret that i did not write more this past month as many shifts have happened.
You may recall that when I started my bootcamps at the gym I had difficulty with what I considered the simplest of physical tasks ie: jumping jacks and skipping and running. How simple could that be, right? Well truthfully, for me, it was tough and I beat the crap out of myself for not being able to accomplish these small tasks without burning out quickly or just quitting because it was too hard.
I had a goal to lose 26 pounds (I think). Initially I started out with a bang and lost over 5 lbs. and was really proud of myself. Something interesting happened then...I became fearful of weighing myself and a shift happened where I began to stress and focus on my weight loss instead of what I had originally vowed to concentrate on, which was getting healthy.
I could go on and on about the variety of things that happened but here's the bottom line. In focusing on the numbers my body stopped dropping weight. Call it emotional, or the lack of my spiritual core but the end result was the same. I not only stopped losing weight, I gained it again.
This past Thursday I went into the gym for my final weigh in. When I started I was at 167.6 lbs. and this past week I weighed 165.4. We're talking 2 lbs. that's it! That's all I lost in 9 flipping weeks!
I want you to know that i cried, I ranted, I kicked and I screamed and after I got tired of feeling desolate and completely bereft, I was reminded by the people I love a few pertinent things.
1. I showed up for every work out!
2. I tried my best to meet the challenges that were presented to me every time I worked out.
3. I made healthier choices.
4. I exercised 5 days a week! Can you believe it?
5. I started taking Yoga classes.
6. I can now skip to my hearts content and I can do SOME jumping jacks.
7. My enthusiasm encouraged half of my group at the gym to sign up with our trainer for another 6 weeks! Am I crazy or what?!
8. I lost 1 pant size.
9. I lost 2 inches in my belly.
10.I gained self confidence, endurance and strength AND I moved closer to having a fit and healthy body.
Phew! All that happened in 9 weeks and NONE of those accomplishments had anything to do with weight loss!
I was told a few very important thinks when I embarked on this journey...
1. I am not a number.
2. It took 50 miles to walk into the woods, it will take 50 miles to walk out.
As a youth I did a lot of damage to my body with crash diets, diet pills and starvation. Eating healthy and working towards a fit body was never even a consideration.
I am 49 years old now and the damage I created many years ago are a part of the many injustices I inflicted on my body and more deeply in my soul.
Somewhere along the line I got the idea that I was defective. That who I was and how I presented just wasn't good enough. I believe that that was when I began punishing myself and making incredibly poor choices.
Here is the gift (and as you get to know me, you will know that I ALWAYS find one.) I have the great opportunity to correct the past poor choices I made by replacing them with loving, healthy choices!
At the end of the day, as I've said before, it all comes down to loving yourself enough to make the changes.
How do I do that?
Well, I start by putting the big stick down that I've been beating myself up with all these years and then I put my big girl panties on and THEN I start my luscious journey by putting one foot in front of the other and remembering to breathe in and breathe out!
Sounds simple right? LOL!
We'll see.
What started for me as a 9 week adventure has now shifted to a lifelong commitment.
Just for today I chose to love every part of Linda. And just for today I really will put the big stick down.
I think that this experience was exactly what I needed to continue on down the path that I've begun to blaze for myself. As in all unchartered territories there are many unknowns ahead.
I hope you will join me in discovering all the layers of Linda. I promise to continue to share them with you as openly and honestly as I can.
Welcome to my luscious journey!
With love,
Linda
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
A Mind is a terrible thing to waste!
You know, I marvel at the crap that my mind throws at me some days. Big old curve balls that seemingly come out of nowhere.
My goal here is to get healthy, lose weight and hopefully have enough strength and endurance to some day do jumping jacks for at least 1 minute consecutively! Did you think I was going to say run a marathon? Hell no, I just want to master the art of jumping rope with out smacking myself to death with the darn thing AND maybe, just maybe skip around the track 1 whole time.
I know, I know, they're lofty aspirations but good Lord the desire is there.
OK, back to my twisted little brain for a moment...
Before starting this program I had stopped exercising almost completely. In other words I was walking MAYBE 2 times a month. In the "Win to Lose" program I joined, I am doing 2 very sweaty and challenging bootcamps a week as well as 2 extra cardio workout and 1 weight training work out.
Now let me just say that at a minimum I'm getting in 4 workouts a week. That's fantastic and yet because I didn't get the 5th workout in the little voice in my head is literally chanting "This is never going to happen!" "You'll never get to your goal weight" etc. etc. Ugh, it's exhausting!
Now here's the truth. I can't help but lose weight and get in shape with the amount of working out that I'm doing. It's impossible not to!
So here's a little message for my brain..."I love you and you're wrong!" "Not only is this going to happen, it's HAPPENING!" YESSSSSSSSSSSS! I am a force to be reckoned with baby! I am an amazing manifester. I can create anything in my life and right now I choose to create a beautiful and healthy Linda.
It's no secret that I want my boyfriend to see me as beautiful, with a beautiful bod and more importantly be really proud of me and my accomplishments. But more importantly, I want to feel those things for myself as well.
I have carried around certain sayings, here's one I try to live by:
"You become esteemable when you commit esteemable acts"
This encapsulates what I am DOING for myself right now. I am loving myself into a new way of being! I am growing mentally, emoitionally and spiritually into me, the authentic me that has been there all the time but whom I've been too fearful of allowing out of the shadows.
Hush my little brain.
Welcome Home Linda!
My goal here is to get healthy, lose weight and hopefully have enough strength and endurance to some day do jumping jacks for at least 1 minute consecutively! Did you think I was going to say run a marathon? Hell no, I just want to master the art of jumping rope with out smacking myself to death with the darn thing AND maybe, just maybe skip around the track 1 whole time.
I know, I know, they're lofty aspirations but good Lord the desire is there.
OK, back to my twisted little brain for a moment...
Before starting this program I had stopped exercising almost completely. In other words I was walking MAYBE 2 times a month. In the "Win to Lose" program I joined, I am doing 2 very sweaty and challenging bootcamps a week as well as 2 extra cardio workout and 1 weight training work out.
Now let me just say that at a minimum I'm getting in 4 workouts a week. That's fantastic and yet because I didn't get the 5th workout in the little voice in my head is literally chanting "This is never going to happen!" "You'll never get to your goal weight" etc. etc. Ugh, it's exhausting!
Now here's the truth. I can't help but lose weight and get in shape with the amount of working out that I'm doing. It's impossible not to!
So here's a little message for my brain..."I love you and you're wrong!" "Not only is this going to happen, it's HAPPENING!" YESSSSSSSSSSSS! I am a force to be reckoned with baby! I am an amazing manifester. I can create anything in my life and right now I choose to create a beautiful and healthy Linda.
It's no secret that I want my boyfriend to see me as beautiful, with a beautiful bod and more importantly be really proud of me and my accomplishments. But more importantly, I want to feel those things for myself as well.
I have carried around certain sayings, here's one I try to live by:
"You become esteemable when you commit esteemable acts"
This encapsulates what I am DOING for myself right now. I am loving myself into a new way of being! I am growing mentally, emoitionally and spiritually into me, the authentic me that has been there all the time but whom I've been too fearful of allowing out of the shadows.
Hush my little brain.
Welcome Home Linda!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The big weigh in!
OK, so I'm off to work in a few minutes but today is a noteworthy day because it was the first official weigh in for my "Lose to Win" program.
My trainer suggested that I weigh in last week just to see where I'm at and buck nekked I had lost 3.8 pounds. Fully clothes today I had "offically" lost 4 lbs. but I do prefer the naked in the morning weigh in which is now a whopping 5.2 lbs.!
WooHoo!
Listen I had a girlfriend in over the weekend and although we ate vegetarian, we had vegetarian chocolate cake and enough trial mix to choke on, so the fact that I lost anything is a coupe for me.
And interestingly enough, my drive to be able to skip around the track and jumprope like a pro are much greater than my desire for big number weight loss. There is a balance here and I'm sure it will all find it's place but for right now, I am proud of my accomplishments.
OK, maybe not the jumproping or jumping jacks but that is a yet for me.
Who knew when I started this that I'd actually be considering buyin a jump rope so I could practice my skills!?
Huh!
Wonders never cease.
Watch out world, I'm on a roll.
My trainer suggested that I weigh in last week just to see where I'm at and buck nekked I had lost 3.8 pounds. Fully clothes today I had "offically" lost 4 lbs. but I do prefer the naked in the morning weigh in which is now a whopping 5.2 lbs.!
WooHoo!
Listen I had a girlfriend in over the weekend and although we ate vegetarian, we had vegetarian chocolate cake and enough trial mix to choke on, so the fact that I lost anything is a coupe for me.
And interestingly enough, my drive to be able to skip around the track and jumprope like a pro are much greater than my desire for big number weight loss. There is a balance here and I'm sure it will all find it's place but for right now, I am proud of my accomplishments.
OK, maybe not the jumproping or jumping jacks but that is a yet for me.
Who knew when I started this that I'd actually be considering buyin a jump rope so I could practice my skills!?
Huh!
Wonders never cease.
Watch out world, I'm on a roll.
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