My personal fitness challenge - Week 1

Hi there! Welcome to my personal 50 days of fitness challenge journal. I started doing this challenge to get myself into better physical shape for myself, my kids, my husband, and most importantly to look good naked 
again! ;] 

About Me:

My name is Bree and I'm 25 years young old. I have 2 children, Savanah -4 and Mason - 7 months. Being pregnant at 20 years old was certainly not a goal in life and was most certainly one of the greatest challenges I've faced in my life thus far. The only, and I mean ONLY, benefit from having a baby so young is that my body bounced back in a very short time with very minimal effort. I was back in a bikini in no time without being self conscious or wearing a cover-up. This last time was quite a bit different. With Mason I was sick constantly! I was down 11 lbs by 5 months because I was so sick I could hardly eat more than 2 bites at a time. I felt great about my weight during his pregnancy, until about 7 1/2 months. I started packing on lbs like crazy, seemingly out of nowhere! By delivery time I had gained 50 lbs! I started my pregnancy at 133 lbs and ended up topping out at 183 lbs! That's the normal weight for for a woman who is carrying twins. I have no idea how it happened or why, but it did. I was hopeful that the weight would just fall off of me again, but 7 months later it is still hanging on for dear life. I am 5"8 and have never weighed more than 138 lbs. I don't starve myself, I'm not anorexic, that's just how my body type has always been. Tall & slender. I've always worn a size 2-4 without really following a diet or exercise plan. So needless to say when I couldn't fit into any of my clothes post-pregnancy, I was left feeling sorry for myself, hopeless, and depressed. If I was going to be fat then why not just go all out and really be fat!

My "diet" consisted of cake, brownies, soda, fast food every day, and absolutely no exercise. I paid $30/mo for a gym membership for 12 months and used it probably less than 10 times. I felt good telling people I had a gym membership, even though I had never stepped foot in there.

This is me Nov. 3rd. To someone who has never met me, this looks normal. But this is about 40 lbs over my normal weight. I hated how fat and jiggly my arms looked in all of our wedding photos. I had a double chin, chicken wing arms, and that weird armpit fat roll. 

This is me just a year before our wedding. I was a promo girl for Miller/Coors. I ate what I wanted and worked out almost never. I have always been skinny, so carrying 30-40 extra lbs arounds for 7 months has been quite an experience.

I started Weight Watchers Online in November after I saw how fat I really was in our wedding photos. I was ready for a change and wanted to be thin again. Weight Watchers is a great program that's easy to follow, and it works! I ate all of my normal food, just in much smaller portions. The program worked great for me, I lost 9 lbs in November, and another 8 or so in December. I still couldn't fit into my jeans, but I felt great. I looked forward to my weekly weigh in to see how much I had lost. After those first few pounds came off, I started to feel confident again and slowly started to stray from my diet. I got content with my weight and being out of shape. My husband was always encouraging, supportive and always told me I looked great, so I stopped following my points program and quickly fell back into a sugary, sweet eating binge.  I gained back about 4 lbs, but so long as I could have my brownies I was OK with it.  I was content with my meager weight loss, at least I could say I had lost anything.

So after months of being content with my weight, I started to feel those negative, self loathing, feelings coming back again. I looked fat in the mirror, I was tired after walking up a flight up of stairs, and my fast food habit was getting expensive. One day at lunch I went to Wendy's and ordered a full size spicy chicken salad, french fries, 2 baked potatoes with cheese, a small frosty, and a large soda. I think my total was like $16! It wasn't the amount of food that I had just ordered that made my say "holy sh-t", it was the price! Spending $16 for one person to eat at a fast food place is like spending $500 at Forever 21 - you got WAY too much sh-t that you didn't need! So as soon as I got back to work I hopped online and looked for a new gym. I decided to join Lifetime Fitness. It was close to my house, had great kids club hours, tons of classes and clubs to join, and it's super nice!

So fast forward to last week - Week 1 - of my fitness journey. I ordered 2 products from Max Muscle. Emerge and Cleanse & Lean. 

Emerge is a drink mix that is designed to aid in fat loss, decrease appetite, enhance your mood, and energize you before workouts. Its supposed to do this awesome thing called fuel partitioning - essentially turn fat into fuel. 
Cleanse & Lean is a digestive & diuretic cleanse. It's supposed to keep you regular and flush out excess water weight (and well, extra poop) Gross. I've been using these products for about 2-3 weeks now. I can't say that I have experienced weight loss yet - but there has definitely been some changes I've noticed. Emerge does give me the energy I need to keep up with my husband in the gym. I do feel a difference in the gym when I've taken Emerge v. not taking it.  Cleanse & Lean has been a hit or miss. One week it keeps me beyond regular, anything I eat doesn't stand a chance to even be partially digested before it's on the tarmac waiting for departure. Yet the next week, nothing...... So I don't know how I feel about Cleanse & Lean just yet. I ordered a new product yesterday called OxyElite Pro. I know, I know, fat burners are not good for you, but I've got 50 days to lose 15 lbs before we go on vacation. At this point it's not even about weight loss - I've seen how much better my body can look by transforming that fat into muscle, and not just losing weight.  So let me share with you my accomplishments from week 1.

Week 1:

I started out working out 4-5 times a week with my husband Sean. I started out doing 45 minutes of weight training with him and then 30 minutes of cardio. I was trying to incorporate the C25K program into my training but my chins and hips are so bad from years of competitive cheerleading, I ultimately decided that running was not for me. My chins felt like they were breaking in half and burning on fire at the same time. So I switched to doing 90 minutes of weight training with 10 minutes on the stair stepper. Day 1 I could barely bench press the 45 lb bar. It was wobbling everywhere, I couldn't control it or lift it. I bet people thought I was an idiot - but I really could barely lift it. By then end of week 1, I was able to control the bar and actually able to finish a set of reps. I didn't have any weight loss this week, but that's ok. I cut out soda and a lot of sugar from my diet. I bought a water bottle and drink at least 80 ozs of water each day. There are no more snacks in my desk at work (well no sugary snacks). I pack my lunch every day. I make a weeks worth of meals every week and take them to work all week. My favorite is broccoli & chicken. Sometimes I add rice, but I'm not a huge fan of rice. I don't eat red meat so I'm really limited on protein options. It's either chicken or beans. I'm also allergic to about 90% of fruit so I can't just really incorporate that into my meals either. I can have apples, oranges, grapes, and pineapple. Everything else sends me into anaphylaxis  I'm not trying to eat to become a body builder or bikini model, I just want to know what I'm putting in my body. I've swapped salt for Mrs. Dash salt free blends. I like the extra spicy & southwest chipotle ones the best. I have an unhealthy relationship with salt, so trying to cut out salt was the most difficult part. So my lunch typically consists of my main lunch meal, and a few snacks. I eat apples & peanut butter mid-morning, my lunch, and then either string cheese in the afternoon or unsalted rice cakes. Definitely not my ideal days worth of food, but I'm getting used to it.  

Food prep day. Cook all my chicken and broccolli, then separate it out into 4oz of chicken & 1 cup of broccolli. Thats what I eat all week. Yumm. I do add salsa for flavor.

Here is my week 1 photo. Not a HUGE difference, but I know this is going to be a slow process. The best advice I've been given is to track your weekly progress with photos. Even if you don't think you see a difference, you will when you look back at them later. So every Monday, I strip down and torture your eyes with a photo of me in a bikini. You're welcome.

I know what you're thinking, theres no difference. And there's not. 














I'm always so proud of myself when I finish my reps. My husband thinks I'm crazy cause I get so excited when I am actually able to add weight or finish a set. Definitely noticing more strength, you just can't see it yet.