Results of my 7 week challenge

If you have been reading my blog, you would have known that I challenged myself to a 7 week challenge that  lead up to my birthday.  This challenge included me eating as clean as possible along with working out 6 days/week.  Here is the full story if you would like to catch up regarding the 7 week challenge.

I just reread it myself and I love the fact that I seemed so confident, yet unsure if I would really be able to achieve this thing. Well I'm here to report to you that I finished it, and I would say I definitely succeeded. I started off doing Jillian Michael's Ripped in 30 DVD every morning during the week. That was a challenge within itself.  I would get up at 5am and head downstairs to workout in my townhouse. There were so many days that I just didn't feel like doing it. I was tired or super sore, but I pressed on! I had to do a lot of self-encouraging. Eventually, I started to continue to blog about my weekly progress and with the support and motivating words of all of you, I would find a new breath of energy to keep going.

So let's get down to it! I said I would post a progress pic, good or bad, so here it is!!

I posted this same picture on Facebook and Instagram with a caption that said something along the lines of I started working out and eating clean 7 weeks ago. I think there was a little confusion with this statement though.  The top picture was taken on December 15, 2012.  The bottom picture was taken on February 22, 2013.  Technically the pictures were taken 10 weeks apart.  I had always been working out.  As you can read from the post that started all of this, I was logging two hours at a time in the gym on a fairly consistent basis for 2 months. I have also always been the type to exercise at last 3 times/week here and there. I would sometimes get on my exercise grind hard, then fall off the wagon for a few weeks, then get back to it. Either way, my stomach has always been my biggest problem area so the top picture is pretty accurate for how I used to look on a regular basis. The shorts I'm wearing were given to me by a friend who had lost a lot of weight and couldn't fit them anymore. When she gave them to me, I told her "uhh these are way too small!" She told me to keep them and let them be "goal" shorts and to let them motivate me.  

On January 7, 2013, I finally started coupling my workouts WITH a healthier diet. These two things together have made this transformation so powerful!! And I'm not done yet! I am very pleased with my results, but I'm going for the gusto! I want more definition in my body so I am working on building muscle! So here are my 7 week challenge results! I'm learning more and more every day about clean eating and I'm so excited to see what kind of results I'll have by this time next year.

Here are a few words of encouragement for you: although 7 weeks doesn't seem like a long time, progress is truly a slow process!! Throughout this challenge, there were days when I would get so discouraged. I was taking pictures of myself almost every day!! I had to finally tell myself to stop because when I didn't feel like I saw enough of a change, I felt like I wasn't getting any results at all. People at work would ask me if I was losing weight, and that felt good, but I wanted to see more results faster! Oh how impatient us humans can be. Seeing these pictures lined up together definitely shows I've come a long way, but when you're looking at pictures of yourself every day and they all start to look the same, you feel like it's not happening fast enough.

I am committing myself to this lifestyle and along the way, I'm very passionate about helping other people! People have reached out to me and I have done my best to help them as much as I can. Here are some other things that might be encouraging to you:

1. I've been at this "I want to lose weight and have a defined body" for years. It's not going to happen until you decide "I'm ready to make changes and I'll do whatever it takes to get it"! I didn't just wake up one day and say I want to be healthier and have a better body and all of a sudden I started eating healthy food all the time. A lot of the foods I eat I used to not want to eat AT ALL!! I didn't like the taste, had no idea how to prepare it, or just had no idea what it was in general. This is a continuous process (lifestyle) and you will learn so much along the way if you're open to educating yourself about what works and doesn't work for your body.

2. Slow and steady wins the race. Now I'm not going to tell you what to do, but I strongly advice you to stay away from anything that promises results in "x" amount of days/weeks/months etc. This is a lifestyle change so the results will come if you stay consistent. I must admit, I've been very tempted to try different things that I've seen on Instagram, tv, heard about through the grapevine, etc., but I have also decided that I have to do stuff that will last me a lifetime. No more working out hard core because I'm going to the beach next month, no more eating right just to fit into a dress for a wedding I'm in, no more "special occasion" weight loss motivation for me! I told myself this, "if you can't do it consistently for 10 years, then don't do it now".  Now this is for me...so you don't have to take this on for yourself. But what I mean is, if I know I can't afford to take diet pills for the next 10 years to lose weight and keep it off, then I'm not taking them now. If I can't afford to take a line of cleansing/detox products consistently just to lose weight, then I'm not going to do it now. Now you might be saying "well what's wrong with doing these things to get a jump start on weight loss"? You're right, it's nothing wrong with it, but for me, I'm trying to get in the habit of doing this for myself and doing it consistently in a way that I can maintain and always stick with it. Old fashion good clean diets and exercise is something I know I can stick with.

3. Listen to your body and pay attention to it. When you're working out, push yourself, but don't push it until you get injured. That's no bueno! If something doesn't feel right, listen to your body and chill out.  Take some time and then get right back to it. And also remember, you can go as hard as you want in the gym, but if your diet is poor, then you're cancelling out all of your efforts! You can't out exercise a bad diet so no need to go hard, injure yourself, then on top of that eat a bad diet....you'll be right back at the start in no time. *thumbs down*

4. Be careful who you're taking advice from. I noticed that when I first started doing this, I was following a lot of people on Instagram who I viewed as really healthy and fit! I then started to notice that these people were taking all kinds of supplements and I just couldn't keep up with what I should be taking too. It then dawned on me that some of these people were body builders and were preparing for competitions.  I am not trying to be a body builder, I'm just trying to get healthy and fit. I then realized, I don't need to try to keep up with them because we have two different goals. I had to find out what was right for me and stop trying to keep up with the Buff Betty's and Bob's out there! Educating yourself on a lifestyle change can be super overwhelming! There are so many books out there, trainers giving advice, people giving advice, etc. so it's like what should you do?? Kind of like with Dr. Oz..it's like if you followed all of his advice (which I'm sure there is some great advice he's giving), it'd be almost impossible to keep up! I know that's how I feel every time I watch his show! 

5. If you fall off the wagon, just remember, there's always tomorrow to get back on! Every day isn't going to be perfect and there will be weeks when you feel like you are getting nowhere, but just keep going! The  key is consistency!!  Anybody who's successful at this will tell you, they kept going and that's when real results started to show and stay!! 

I am looking forward to sharing with you all more results to come and to keep blogging about this road to being fit for life!! 

...Stay tuned...