I am not you. You are not him.

In the fitness world, we are like snowflakes.  No two people trying to lose weight, build muscle, eat healthy are exactly alike.  We have different bodies, different goals, different loves (and hatred) for various forms of exercise and eating.

I love taking walks. I love fun 5k runs (except I walk them).  I’m learning to love lifting.  I love dance fitness DVDs, some of the P90x videos and I now tolerate Brazil Butt Lift about twice a year….for a few days.

I have friends who absolutely do NOT want to weight lift.  For some, they fall under the “I don’t want to look like Arnold” misconception but for many, they just don’t wanna.  I have friends who have to go to the gym and they LOVE to go to the gym.  Some of them can run on the treadmill for an hour.  Some love the different classes.  Some love the weights.

I have friends who hate any form of cardio.  Some of them love to lift weights, some just don’t exercise at all- in any form.

We are all different and I respect each of my friends, their goals, likes, dislikes and opinions.  I even respect the ones who choose to lead unhealthy lifestyles.  They know how I feel.  If they want to jump on the bandwagon, I’ll pull them along myself.

Our fitness movement is growing every day.  Let’s not allow social media to start a war within ourselves- “they” love to do that.  Look what they’ve done to moms and politics.  Let’s band together, learn to love each other, learn from each other, support each other no matter how we choose to get fit and healthy.

Don’t break down others because they don’t share your opinion.  Share your love, share your passion, share your tips and share your advice.  You might just change someone’s perception.

Whacky Jacks….a mom’s best friend

I’ve given birth to 5 babies (no c-sections).  Five vaginal births can make doing exercises like jumping jacks, running, sneezing a little challenging.  It doesn’t matter how many times I go to the bathroom before I workout, or how many times I stop the DVD to go in the middle.  Some of these exercises are just not bladder friendly for millions of moms.

God bless whoever created Whacky Jacks.  I saw them on Tim Horton’s P90x several years ago and was so happy to finally have an alternative to jumping jacks.  I was even more grateful when I started working out again after being rear ended since I’m banned from jarring exercises.  Do you look stupid doing them?  Yup.  But it beats peeing in your pants!

These aren’t just a great cardio exercise but it trims up your obliques as well.  Any time I’m doing a workout that calls for jumping jacks, I replace them with Whacky Jacks.

Thank you Whacky Jacks creator!!!

Another exercise that can help, Kegel exercises!  More on those later.

Do You, Be You

My youngest daughter and I came up with “do you, be you” one day before she went on stage to dance.  She uses the hashtag often on her Instagram pictures.  I’m raising her to dance for herself and to not compare herself to other dancers.

I shared the phrase with my fitness moms, too.  We just started a new fitness challenge on Tampa Bay Moms Group called Relentless*.  These women fit the word to a “T”.  They are determined, motivated, passionate and goal-oriented.  They support each other and don’t care about the prizes they can win (although they do get excited when I dangle some goodies in front of them).  Each of them has a different body type and different goals.  One will have a great day and another will have a crummy one.  But so far they come back each morning rearing and ready to go!  They are there for them, to make themselves healthier.

The phrase  is mine as well.  Last night I posted on Facebook that I was thinking about becoming a Beachbody Coach.  I have three of their programs and love them even though I’ve yet to complete any of them.  With this newest challenge, I’m hoping to finally complete Brazil Butt Lift and P90x3 (P90x will be for the next challenge).  I had some friends tell me to go for it, some offered other choices but one stuck out the most.  I’ve only met T a few times but she already gets me- “Keep doing you!! Either way you’ll be successful. Who knows maybe you will start your own chain or franchise..”

I chose “Real Fit Mom” very carefully.  I know it makes it sound like I’m already a fit mom but that wasn’t why I chose it- because I wasn’t…and am still not.  I’ll admit, I’ve seen other moms create franchises from their little beginnings and I thought maybe that could be me.  But I know nothing about that part so I’ve just kept working on myself and continuing with my goal to just inspire one person.  I started doing fitness challenges to hold myself accountable.  I saw other moms struggling to keep their goals and figured, what the hell?  Many were failures- the challenges not the moms.  Although we failed a lot.  But many of the moms have stuck with me and kept asking for another challenge.

Things changed when I began the Healthy and Fit Challenge back in June.  I wanted to focus more on health than just on “losing weight.”  Moms walked away with some great goodies and even though we didn’t meet our goals, we were all still there in the end (they even voted to add 30 more days at the end of the 90 day challenge because they knew they could do more). And they started leading healthier lives.  The Hot For Halloween was kind of a dud and a lot of that was me.  I had some personal issues going on and slacked off on motivating the moms.  But they slacked off, too.  I left it up to them if they wanted another challenge and they wanted to start right then!  #nevergiveup #noexcuses

I just realized I got off track about talking about me…which is rare.  Haha!  Soooo, after a lot of thought since last night, and some motivational words from a new friend and more from my motivational half-brother, I’ve decided to just keep being me.  It’s working, for the most part, so far.  I have some big plans for my fitness moms and the challenges for the future.  If RFM becomes a household name- fabulous.  But if it’s just in a few homes in the Tampa Bay area, I’m perfectly fine with that.

You are your first priority.  #doyoubeyou

*Totally unrelated and a waste of time for you to read, but Relentless was the name of first alliance I was in while playing the time-wasting game, Kingdoms of Camelot on Facebook (I gained some forever friends on there, though).  Before we went to war we’d go in the game chat box and yell, “RELENTLESS!!!”  It seemed like a good title for a fitness challenge.  😉

Day 7/Day 124

I’m giving myself 1 week to eat what is on my food plan and do at least the P90x workout daily. If I screw up at all I’m going to have to put off my plans to enter the WBFF and try to do it next year. It’s crunch time. Put up or shut up time. No more excuses time.

Either way, I will continue to eat better and workout and slowly whither away Slacker Fattie. I have no room for her in my life. Fit Bitch is here to stay!!

Breakfast this morning-

Yes, I ate a whole egg. Right now, I just can’t stomach egg whites anymore. I will get back to them next week.

Here goes nothing!!

Day 3/Day 128 P90x wbff

Whew! Day 3. I did much better with food and stuck even closer to my meal plan than yesterday.  I was proud of myself for not eating waffles for dinner and enjoyed my fish taco instead.

Yum!!

So I skipped Plyometrics yesterday so I tried it today.  I made it halfway through!

I got busted with a McDonald’s iced Carmel Mocha with no fat milk. Gina told me I was better off eating a burger- but a burger doesn’t have caffine! It sucks because I’ve gone 41 years hating coffee and just recently fell in love with it. But, I’m in a severe time crunch. If I want to do the WBFF, I need to stop screwing around. It’s time to start digging the hole for Slacker Fattie.

I didn’t want to do it but after my yummy banana, peanut butter, chocolate protein shake, I sucked it up and made it halfway through Day 3- shoulders. I went with the smallest weights I have and did better than I thought I would. Next week I’ll get through the whole thing.

In one of the fitness Facebook groups I’m in, we are doing a photo a day. Today’s theme was Reflection. This was my picture

The girls loved it! I think this is going to be a fun project.

Day 2/Day 129 P90x WBFF

I was in a lot of pain from the chest and shoulder workout so I skipped doing Plyometrics.  I did stick a bit closer to my meal plan, though.

I walked with the dance moms for about 30 minutes but still fell short of my 10,000 steps for the day.

Every day is a new day!!

Day 1/day 130 WBFF goal

In August of 2013 I made a huge goal for myself- to be in a fitness competition.  A month later I was rear ended and suffered severe pain in my neck and back. I was laid out flat for a month and was not able to do much for the next 2 months. I gained a lot of weight and topped out at 153 lbs, which at 5’4″ was a lot for my small frame.

It’s been 18 months and I’ve made that goal for myself again. I’ve gotten down to 141 lbs since December but still have a lot of work to do. I’ve started a meal plan, 12 Weeks to a Competition Body, I started P90x and will be signing up for the WBFF in Tampa very soon.

I have my dream board and countdown stickies ready.

One of my goals is to do 10,000 steps a day which I did today!

My food wasn’t that good because I had leftovers from Acropolis and I muddled through P90x but it’s a start!

Thanks for joining my journey!

A fitness challenge within a challenge

Guess who’s back?????  I had an incredibly uplifting phone call from my friend Michelle who has been a loyal RFM follower for a while.  She called to ask me a few questions and the more we talked the more I was inspired and motivated by her even though she told me that I was motivating and inspiring her!  She told me about a time three years ago when she saw me for the first time at a Moms Night Out event and pointed out to our friend Sabrina that she liked my outfit.  Sabrina told her I’d recently lost some weight and won a weight loss contest and said, “…doesn’t she look great?”  <insert proud smile here>  Michelle started losing weight back in November and posted on her Facebook yesterday that she’d lost almost 40 pounds!!!! She’s suffered through some family losses, had two children and deals with some medical issues.  She finally hit her breaking point and decided to get up and do something about her weight.  I shared her story with Hubby last night and told him that I felt bad because she followed my blog  and I haven’t done a very good job at keeping up with it or exercising.  He nodded his head in that annoying “Mmmmhhhmmm, told you so!” kind of way (He told me once that I can’t write a fitness blog if I never work out.  I challenged him by saying, “Can too!  I write about how hard it is to try to work out!”)

Michelle and a group of other moms joined a Fit and Healthy by Summer challenge that I started on Tampa Bay Moms Group.  Moms have 30 days to get fit and healthy.  We took measurements at the beginning and check in weekly to share our progress, tips, and of course bad days and wagon crashes (we all have them!).  I think we’ve lost some moms along the way but I’m hoping they’ll pop back in for the last six weeks.  One mom has lost 10 pounds and another is almost under 150 pounds!

This is the motivational picture I posted with their weekly check in:

Me and my ADD brain don’t do well with long goals.  I realized today that I need to break it down into smaller goals (duh).  So I’ve decided to make a small goal of one week.  Starting today I’m drinking my Body by Vi shakes and EXERCISING!!!!!!!  I had a yummy Orange Creamsicle shake this morning, did P90x Cardio X then ate German noodles with not so healthy gravy on it but it was a small serving!

I took a picture of my muffin top for my Visalus Tuesday Challenge and we’ll see what it looks like by Tuesday of next week.  I’ll take some other full body ones but I’m sure they’ll look like all my other “before” pictures.  I really want to change my lifestyle and make sure I’m exercising at least three times a week once I get down to where I want to be.  I’m tired of being a yo yo.  Bye bye belly!!!

Slacker Fattie is about to be trumped by Skinny Bitch again!!!

Ugh to the illness

Of course as soon as I decide to start training for Tough Mudder I get sick.  It’s been a three week struggle but I’m finally 95% better.  Now I have to muster up the motivation to get back into exercising 2-3 times a day!  That’s the hard part.

I’m armed with a new P90x Plyometrics DVD after losing my first one and am excited to try out the more advanced belly dancing ones a friend gave me (no, there’s no dancing in Tough Mudder but I gotta keep things fun for me!).

I have an appointment with my doctor on Monday to make sure I’m physically fit to do this intense competition and am hoping for a clean bill of health despite my hip issues and arthritic dancer’s knees.  Even if he suggests against it, I am still determined to get through the whole three month P90x schedule.  I’ve had it for almost two years and it’s time to just dive in and hit it.

I’ve taken so much time off from doing a regular exercise schedule that I’m having trouble getting up and pushing the “play” button.  I struggle within myself on when (as in what time of day) to get my groove on.  I think the easiest will be to lay out workout clothes the night before, put them on while the kids are getting ready for school and head straight to the fitness room as soon as I come back home.  It’s so tempting to simply crawl in bed but that’s not where the cool fit moms hang out!

Tomorrow I’ll start with a great workout in the morning with my dance moms then come home and pop in that first P90x DVD.  I’ll already be amped up from dancing so I might as well use that energy as a starting point.  Here we go!

Ack! I’ve kept you all in suspense!

I just realized I never posted my “after” pictures for my 3 month long weight loss challenge with Erica (which ended 3 months ago- whoopsie!).  I posted them on my Facebook and thought I’d put them here, too, but when I went to look for them……they weren’t there!

I’m so sorry!

Ok, so here is my before and middle picture (Slacker Fattie’s not looking so hot):

The one on the left was taken on 9/25/11 and the one on the right was taken on 10/10/11.  Pretty good, huh?

Here’s my after picture taken on 11/23/11:

The return of Skinny Bitch! Muahahahahaha!  I was very proud of myself! 🙂

Unfortunately I’ve gained some of the weight back (which is typical for most normal women) but I’m gearing up for the Tough Mudder in December and my 20th high school reunion in June so have a lot of work to do.  I’ve been sick the past two weeks and am looking forward to setting some new goals as soon as I’m back to feeling 100%.

I’m not completely shallow, my main focus is to feel and be healthier more so than looking hot (although the looking hot part will be a nice bonus LOL).  I know this next journey will be filled with all the regular ups and downs that go along with me and my lovely goals but I will continue this fight as long as I’m alive- and I’ll do it with great joy and passion!  Yes, I know that sounded incredibly corny but it’s true.   Here we go again!