Bouncy Conspiracy

OK...since this cold has really put me down for a while (won't even be able to return to work for a couple more days, much less the gym), I thought it would be a good time to catch you up on some back story: my theory on bounciness (yes, I have a whole theory and have put a lot of thought into it. There are 2 kinds of bouncy: bouncy personality (which I readily admit to having) and bouncy body (never have been). A person should be one or the other, NOT both. If you are bouncy in both, you are then "over-hyper/over-happy" and I just want to slap you (think Richard Simmons), because being around you just makes me tired. With all due respect to those people (I am finding myself surrounded by them more and more), could you just tone it down a notch or two???

Now having said that, at my current weight/health, I worry about what bouncing will do to my knees. I do not have bad knees, and want to keep it that way. I am trying to be smart about this whole getting in shape thing. I don't want to cause an injury that will knock me out for a time because once momentum is in play, you don't want to break it. Miss one workout and it becomes easier to miss two...miss two and it is easy to say "oh, I'll get back to it next week". Before you know it, you are back to your old habits that got you so out of shape to start with. This is why being sick now is SO driving me crazy. I NEED MY GYM TIME!!!!!

I explained my whole "Bouncy Theory" to Chance when I first joined the gym. It amused him to the point that he now rates the classes on a Bouncy Scale (I love warping young minds). A few days later, he tells me, "One of my personal goals is to see you bounce." The Great Bouncy Conspiracy was born, and the universe has since conspired with him. I don't know how Chance has done it, but he has got all my friends on his side, friends he has never even met. Facebook friends are posting pictures of Tigger and trampolines on my wall. My niece and nephew invited me over to a picnic on the trampoline. It has become a HUGE thing. I realize that I am probably fighting a losing battle. As I get in better shape, I will have an urge to bounce, but don't tell Chance I said so. I am having too much fun with this. I will go down fighting. I promise, when I get there, I will try to tone it down when I'm around other people. Does anyone know if Richard is making any more videos that I could star in??

Holiday Weigh In

Just 2 days after Christmas, and it was time to weigh/measure again. Who gets on a scale this soon after a holiday??? Fat doesn't take a holiday, so neither does Kevin. I got mixed results this week. I lost 3.8 lbs bringing my total to 20.2. My waist stayed the same with my total loss there at 4.9 inches. I gained 0.5 % body fat making my total there 8.2% lost to date.  I have recently changed my work out. Maybe I'm losing in other areas at the moment. Who knows. Obviously I am doing something right if the weight came off DURING A HOLIDAY!!!! So I'm taking this one as a BIG win.

After weigh/measure, it was time for a serious work out. As I expected, Kevin showed no mercy, while Andrew heckled me from the side line. He's just jealous that he doesn't get to work with me ;) . Still a bit under the weather today, but I didn't let that stop me. I gave it my all. Think people on the other side of the gym could hear me trying to breathe while I did the rope work. Think Chance had a little talk with Kevin, because Kevin made me do this hop lunge thing....entirely too close to a bounce for my taste. Walking lunges while tapping a ball on the floor...passing another ball while sitting in a squat...slamming balls into the floor. There was a time in my life I LIKED playing with balls...sigh. Then of course there was the boxing. I think I'm in love. Last week it was jabs and crosses...this week we worked on hooks and upper cuts. I may have missed my calling in life. We finished up with some work with the kettle bells. Those are gonna take some getting used to, but I liked them. It will be nice to try all this again next week. I just hope I can breathe by then.

Back to work

Today is the day after Christmas and the gym is open again. Unfortunately, I've been under the weather. As much as I wanted to get back to pushing myself, common sense won out. I skipped my morning Bodyflow in order to get some much needed sleep. But I was determined that this cold was not going to rob me of a full day. After work, with a head full of snot, I walked in the doors of the gym. The guys took one look at me, and they were concerned. "What are you gonna do today?" "I don't know, but I've got to do SOMETHING. Three days without working out around a food intensive holiday, and tomorrow is weigh/measure day." "Jump on the treadmill. It will be enough for today. You've got this one." So that is what I did. There is a interval treadmill at the gym that automatically changes speed and angle as you do a 20 minute workout. I did that twice in a row. Thanks guys, it was nice seeing your concern and hearing that it was ok to take it easy...just for today. Saving my energy for tomorrow...tomorrow is a Kevin day. "Take it easy" isn't part of his vocabulary. And your right...I've got this weigh/measure thing beat this week.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

The gym is closed today and tomorrow for the holidays. While I am glad that the hard working staff get the time off to spend with their families, they need to leave me with a key. I promise to clean up after myself and not break anything. It is so not right for me to go trough a food intensive holiday with out being able to go to the gym!!!!!

I just want to extend this prayer to all my gym peeps and all my readers: may the hope we find in this holiday extend out to touch ever part of your life bringing joy to you in the coming year. 

In the words of the great Rich Mullins, "I hope there will be peace on earth. I know there is good will towards men, on account of that baby born in Bethlehem." 

Art of Strength (AOS)

So after my introduction to AOS with Andrew. Kevin came back into town. We made our first appointment to do AOS together. While I said earlier that Andrew killed me, it wasn't entirely true. Andrew, having never worked with me before, didn't know me well enough to be particularly hard on me. I have always been naturally strong. Don't ask me to run, but I can pick something up and carry it all day long. Andrew didn't know this. There were times in our work out that I thought "I can do more weight than this, but I'm not letting HIM know." Kevin on the other hand knows me and my strength all too well. This could be bad. Then on top of that, Andrew was going to be training someone else at the same time slot. I wondered, "do trainers get competitive with each other?" This could be VERY bad. I sent Kevin an e-mail "My husband says you can't kill me unless it looks like an accident". His reply was "We have chalk in the back to outline the body of a crime scene". This could be VERY VERY bad.

The day came for my first AOS with Kevin.  Once again, Andrew was there trash talking with me. After a bit of a warm up with Andrew (they were tag teaming me), Kevin pulled out the boxing gloves. I have never had so much fun in a gym!!! I chased him all over the floor.  We did a lot of things that day: walking lunges, work w/ medicine balls, step presses, squats, but the boxing had to be my favorite part. Brave, brave, brave Kevin. Just for fun, the next day we took this pic. He finally killed me.

Art of Strength (AOS)

Kevin recently decided that I am ready to move out of the Pilates Studio and into Art of Strength. It was a scary move for me. Pilates is low impact. AOS is anything but. I trust my trainer whole heartedly, so with my mind screaming at me, I agreed. Before we could schedule our first AOS session, Kevin had a family commitment to attend to that took him out of town the week we were going to start. Being the wonderful trainer that he is, always worried about my needs, he arranged for Andrew to introduce me to AOS in his absence. 

I believe all the trainers are well versed in all forms of torture. They know the human body well and can wring large amounts of pain from it. Andrew is one of the best at this "art of torture".  In the week leading up to my session with Andrew, there was large amount of trash talk exchanged between us (I talk good game at least). I was advised not to "poke that bear". I was told that I was "bringing a knife to a gun fight". What they didn't know was that I knew I was gonna die. I was just gonna have fun on the way down. The morning of The Great Work Out, I said my good-byes to my loved ones, promised Kevin that I would go down fighting and make him proud, willed my helmet to Chance and my sword to Blake. I sent Kevin and e-mail that said "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING??!? He is gonna kill me....then I will haunt you!" I showed up at the gym, ready for battle. Then, Andrew killed me!...I couldn't move for a couple of days. It was AWESOME! 

The next day, I sent Kevin another e-mail that said "I need to make you watch Toy Story again. Andy NEVER would have given one of his toys to the evil kid next door"

My Team

As I tell my story, there will be several key players mentioned, so I thought it might be important to list them here for reference. These people are my inspiration, my cheerleaders, my saviors, but most importantly, I believe they have become my friends.

Chance - This guy was my first point of contact at Hendrick Health Club. He is the one that gave me my first tour, and was the first person to show real interest in me as a person. His passion for health and the way it touches every part of a person's life is contagious. His dream is to become a doctor one day, and I believe he will make an awesome one. He is the one I go to when I want to talk about how my general health is changing (meds, blood sugar levels, blood pressure). He shares my excitement. Someone once said "you 2 seem to be cut from the same cloth", and I take that as a compliment. I look forward to his smile and humor each day as I walk through the door. 

Kevin - This is my trainer. He is in the trenches with me in my fight to get fit, and I couldn't ask for a better partner than him. He is always encouraging, always attentive, always believing I can do more. Over the past few months, I have seen more and more of the heart behind the "professional" face. I tell him he is mean all the time while we are working out, but he makes it a lot of fun. I truly trust him with my life. 

Blake - What can I say about Blake? He is an ex-marine, strong, honorable. He everything that makes our service men/women great. He has the heart of a warrior. You know, the kinda of guy you admire from afar. And yet, he sits with me, talks with me, is interested in how things are going for me. Laughter lives in his eyes. With him by your side, any battle can be won.

Bria - Bria did my fist interview when I joined the gym. We sat in her office and cried together as I talked about how frustrated I was with how things had been going. She helped me take the first steps on this journey. She is the one that so perfectly matched me up with Kevin. Once I was in his hands, she could have just let me go, but she didn't. She still checks in with me on a regular basis. She celebrates with me as I reach each milestone.

There are many others, staff and instructors alike that have made an impact on my journey. You will meet them along the way too, but these four are the pillars of my experience. Without them, it wouldn't be possible.

left to right

Chance, Bria, Me, Kevin, Blake

Here we go!

Ok. Several unrelated people have recently told me that I should start a blog about my fitness journey. Since that is one of the ways God tells me to do things, I figured I needed to give it a try. I am clueless about all of this, so please be patient and bear with me.

I have struggled with my weight my whole life. In a society that focuses so much on appearances, I didn't feel like I belonged. I gave up on trying to fit in and instead focus on the kind of person I wanted to become (open, honest, compassionate, encouraging, funny). A noble goal. The problem with doing that though is what good is compassion if you let yourself go to the point that you are dead? I was looking at a heart attack or stroke coming over the horizon. A few years ago I almost lost my right foot to an infection. It was at that point that I was diagnosed with Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, and High Cholesterol. This SHOULD have been a wake up call for me, but sadly it wasn't. I was in denial. I continued doing things the way I had always done them hoping somehow things would get better, but they only continued to get worse. 

A couple of years ago I started thinking that maybe it was time to make a change. I joined a gym. I went regularly, but things just weren't clicking for me. It was a nice facility, but something was just missing. I felt like they signed me up, gave me a tour, and cut me loose. I was just a number to them. I had no support. As a result, I wasn't seeing the changes I so desperately needed. The cycle began: go a couple months solid, not get any results, get frustrated, stop going for a month, feel guilty about not going, go back and start the cycle again. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. I was insane for the duration of my 2 year contract. Obviously I needed something more, but I was clueless as to what that was. 

Just over 4 months ago, I joined Hendrick Health Club. Instantly I discovered what had been missing: support. I could not tackle this giant alone. I needed people that would invest time and energy into fighting along side of me. I needed people that believed in me on the days that I didn't believe in myself, people that had knowledge about the things I was clueless about. With their help, I have armed myself with effective weapons in my "War on Fat." I have armed myself with knowledge (provided by my support team), determination (I have always been a fighter), and humor (which flavors every aspect of my life). In the past 4 months I have lost roughly 25 pounds, 5 inches to my waist, and almost 9% of my body fat. I have drastically reduced the dosages of the medications I am on, with an eye on totally eliminating them. I still have a ways to go, but at least now I'm on the right path.

In this blog, I plan to tell my story. Day to day observations of my continued battle, told with my brand of humor. If I am having fun and laughing, I will have the will to keep fighting. I do this to remain accountable and to chronicle the journey. There are many people you will meet in this story. God has blessed me richly with a great support team, each of which have played a large role in saving my life. My hope is that as I open up my life, that you will find some encouragement for yours. In that way, I will be faithfully passing on all that has been given to me, and bringing honor to those that have so touched my life.