Starting a New Path

One day out of the blue a friend suggested that we should take some kickboxing classes...Wait! What? Was she being serious? I was fifty to sixty pounds overweight. You know when your only supposed to gain thirty pounds while being pregnant...well that definitely wasn't me or my body...I didn't have any medical conditions to explain why this happened trust me I was tested at first for a thyroid problem then for a sugar problem...everything kept coming back normal. Let's just say my normal was gaining eighty pounds with my second child and around seventy five with my first...Thank Goodness the weight came off the first time but I wasn't that lucky with the second...My youngest daughter was already a year old and I wasn't getting any skinnier on my own so I decided to leap back into the workout world. Why not? What did I have to lose? Hopefully sixty pounds and not my dignity. I wasn't exactly thrilled to be in a room of skinny fit people...not to mention walls of mirrors honestly I was scared. I just knew I was going to pass out worse trip and the whole room would be staring...possibly chuckling at me. In order to prevent harsh stares from all the skinny athletic girls we picked out the perfect spot last row in the wayyyy back.


They always start class off with a five minute warm up...did I say warm up? that felt like the workout...I thought I was dying. My heart was beating out of my chest. How was I going to survive the actual workout?  Needless to say we trudged through the next 45 minutes looking at each other in disbelief, exchanging WTF's, and checking to see if we had to perform CPR on the other.  It would have been real easy to give up but we didn't. This was harder than anything we had ever done before and with the sixty pounds extra that I was carrying around it just made everything that much harder. After class we kind of panted, laughed and panted and laughed over and over again. Did we just do that? Are we going to do it again? Amazingly the answer would be yes. We just kept going and seemed to be getting stronger. We starting seeing results. Little by little we would drop one size then another. Eventually we would even get through the warm up without breaking a sweat.

Unfortunately half way through our journey my friend started having back issues and decided to take different classes. I missed my workout buddy but was still totally committed to working out...It's changed my life so much so that if I miss a few workouts I really feel absolutely crummy. Currently I take 3 classes a week in weight training and 1-2 classes a week in cardio.  And I owe it all to my friend's suggestion and commitment. I've started a new path...a healthy path...a strong path. Now If I could just make an appointment with the dietitian to lose the last 15 pounds.

 

My personal suggestions that worked for me. (by no way am I an expert please consult your doctor for personalized advice) 

-Take it slow. It takes only a second to twist an ankle or tweak your back.  I like to take classes that offer levels.  Level one is beginner, Level two intermediate, Level three advanced. I like to stay at the Level two with bursts at Level three.
-Diversify your workouts and Change it up every once in a while. Try a Spin class, Zumba, Workout Outdoors, Wii Fit can be awesome too.
-I know what your thinking times are hard and a membership is out of the question...Just walk...this is an amazing workout within itself...Push yourself try to keep increasing your distances. Me and my sister in law would walk and talk and walk and talk and before we knew it our legs were hurting we were logging in over 6 miles.  Step it up to a level two and add a minute of walking lunges.  In one of my workout classes the instructor loves to take us outside where we hop over parking lot lines, do step up on benches, perform squats and burpees. What is a burpee you ask. I'll provide a link as it is an entire blog post within itself. In Summary what I do know about them is that it is a total body workout and I cringe when I have to do them.
-Always use correct form in any exercise that you do. Workout should be taxing but never painful.
-When using weights start light and then gradually increase.
-Make sure to warm up prior to starting and stretch following. 
-Drink plenty of water.
-Be patient it took me years to lose the weight...seven years to be exact.

Walking Lunge

Burpee

Squats