Hi again everyone. Before I start I want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to all of you for your incredible response to my site. I have just been totally overwhelmed with the outpouring of wonderful comments I've gotten in the 10 months I've had this site up and running. Please do keep the comments coming...just as my story may motivate you, your comments keep me motivated to keep on plugging with my daily struggles too. I do want to apologize though, I just can't possibly answer all of your signings or questions individually because of the incredible numbers. If you have a question please see my FAQ page and if the answer is not there ask away and check back to my site again at a later date, you may see your question and the answer added to that page.
As of October 18th, 2001 I have been at my goal for 1 year. I wanted to put an update page on my site to let you all know where I stand today. I'm sure alot of you wonder..."did she keep it off and if so how?" Well, that's what I'm about to reveal...
Yes, I have managed to keep the weight off throughout this first year. Although it hasn't come without my own personal daily struggles. My life is so far away from where I thought it would be at this time a year ago, it has really taken every bit of determination I have in me to keep plugging with the struggles every day. Let me elaborate a little....
The whole year I was loosing my weight I had one major goal in mind. That was to amaze my husband when he came home from Korea. As you all read in my story I did do that when he came home on leave for 3 weeks last December. Well, he came home at the end of his year long tour in May and I was already to have the most incredible life with him. With my new body I was ready to improve on what I thought was already an incredibly wonderful thing. To make a long story short and in order to not have to go into too much detail lets just say there were other ideas out there. After only a month of him being home we separated in mid-June and are on our way to making it all official. This threw me into an emotional spiral. I wasn't sure which way to turn or how I was going to pick up my life, never mind how I was going to keep off the weight I had just lost. I felt like everything I had just worked so hard for was all for nothing. I fell into a three month funk where I didn't give a darn what went into my mouth at all and didn't even care if I ever turned on another exercise tape. I just had absolutely no motivation to do anything, I felt like I had lost my whole reason for my efforts. Then one day I put on a pair of my jeans and I almost couldn't button them. I was fooling myself for those three months. I was still getting on the scale on a weeky basis and it wasn't going up so I thought I was OK. But in reality what was happening was that I was loosing all that muscle I had worked so hard to build and replacing it with looser, fattier tissue again. And because muscle weighs more than fat the scale wasn't moving upwards, but where as fat takes up more room in your body than muscle does my clothes were starting to get snug. I sat down and cried. What the heck was I doing??? Was I going to let him get to me like that and waste all that hard work I put in to reaching my goals?? NO WAY!!!! I had worked WAY to hard to get where I was, there was no way I was going back to square one. With or without him I was going to keep on keeping on with my program and stay at my goal. The next day I dusted off my Taebo tapes and popped in one of my Advanced workouts. Let me tell you, it was a struggle...I had lost so much stamina over those three months, I couldn't believe how much trouble I had getting through that tape. But...I didn't quit, I made it through that tape and started working my way towards getting back my routine again. I went out and found myself some strength training videos too so I could start rebuilding some of that muscle I lost. Getting my routine back hasn't been easy, I have gone from a being full-time mom who could get my workout in anytime during the day to a single mom who works full time. In order to get my workout in everyday it means getting up at 4:30am M-F to workout before the kids get up for school. Those type of hours took a little getting used to but what was my other alternative?? So now I am back to my 6 day/week workout routine and going strong. I alternate days between strength training and Taebo. Usually strenth training gets done M/W/F and Taebo gets done T/T/S. Its a tough schedule, but so far it seems to be working for me.
Now we get to the food issues. That is still a HUGE daily struggle. There are days I do absolutely wonderful and other days that I eat everyting in sight that is bad for me. I am working hard at trying to get my healthy eating habits back 100% but its not easy. And now with the holidays upon us again it makes it even more difficult. What I need to do is go back to the basics that I lost all the weight with and reform those habits again. And that's exactly what I'm planning to do...I'm going to pull out all the information from LAWL that I have and follow the plan to the letter for a couple of weeks just to get me back into the swing of things again.
I guess the main reason I wanted to do this update page was to let all of you know that I'm not perfect. That just because you reach a goal you can't just stop those new habits you've formed while you were loosing the weight. The other thing I wanted to put out there was that we are all thrown wrenches into our lives that we don't expect, some bigger than others. But if you stay true to yourself and keep yourself focused on the big picture you can make it through those hard times without packing all the weight back on. Is it easy? No, of course not, but it can be done.
THANK YOU for all the letters of support. I just want to leave you with a few words of advice...
1. Figure out why you want to start and finish this journey (everyone has a different reason)
2. Set a realistic goal(even if it is a small one then set another if you need to)
3. Find a work out plan that YOU ENJOY and that fits your physical abilities, you might not be able to start exercising right away, I didn't. But as soon as I felt able and ready I was off and running.
4. Find an EATING plan that works for YOU and STICK TO IT!! The one I used is very strict and I stuck to it to the letter!!! Only takes 1 or 2 small cheats a day and that adds up to quickly over the week.
5. Be honest with yourself.
6. Stick to it! the results will amaze you and everyone around you!
I LEAVE YOU WITH THIS...
YOU CAN DO IT!!!
Please check back for new "1 year later" weight and measurements. I need to go out and buy a new tape measure first.
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