Why Take Progress Pictures?

Because you'll regret NOT taking them. That's why. I do. When I first started trying to lose weight, truthfully, I didn't have enough faith in myself to think I would ever get even remotely close to my goal. Taking progress pictures, or "Before" pictures never entered my mind because I didn't believe I would ever make it to the "After" pictures. And while I'm still not what I would call an "After" (I'll explain later), I've learned throughout my journey the importance of taking these pictures, no matter how goofy you feel doing it. 

I should preface what I'm about to show you with a confession: I am a recovering scale addict. No exaggeration needed for dramatic effect here. I, quite literally, used to step on the scale at least a dozen times a day. And whatever that number said dictated what state of mind I was in for the remainder of the day. The problem with this lies in the fact that those numbers can fluctuate dramatically and not in any way, shape, or form reflect your true progress. Water weight will make that scale do some pretty crazy things at times - and it's particularly a problem for women, who tend to retain water like the Hoover Dam, depending on the time of month. Something you should also consider when relying on the scale is that muscle is more dense than fat, which means that if you are building muscle, your weight may stay the same or even go up.

You can rely on the mirror to tell you if you are making progress, or how tight or loose your clothing feel, but this can often be subjective depending on how you feel that day.

Measurements are a great way to track your progress - yet another thing I regret not taking when I started out. They tend to be a pretty accurate account of how far you've come - just be sure to take them at the same time everyday for consistency.

But the saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" says it best. Progress pictures really tell your whole story if you are consistent with them. Giving up my obsessive weigh-ins and taking pictures to document my progress was really the turning point for me when it came to re-claiming a healthy perspective on my clean lifestyle. Sometimes you become so fixated on where you are headed, that you forget to look back and see where you came from, as well as look around at the present and appreciate how far you've come.

After getting several requests to post "Before" and "After" photos, I've done my best to compile a few pictures that illustrate my journey for you.  This wasn't easy for me to do, because quite honestly, who wants to post pictures of themselves looking their worst for the whole world to see? But I reminded myself that seeing other people's transformations was such a big motivator for me, and I would feel silly not posting them out of insecurity if there is the possibility that it might motivate someone else. Therefore, I present to you my "Before" and "During" pictures. As I mentioned earlier, I hate the idea of calling them "Before" and "After". "After" implies that the transformation is done. But the truth is, we're never really the "After" because we're constantly growing, changing, and striving for new things. So while I may never be the "After" picture, I'm enjoying being the "During" because I love the process of change and growth. So here is a brief documentation of my changes! Hope it motivates you to make your own "Before" and "During" album!  ;)

September 2010 -
A week past my due date, VERY
uncomfortable, and officially the
heaviest I have ever been.

March 2012 -
Couldn't find any pics, but
about a month after this, I
reached the lowest weight I've
 been since high school!

                         

                                 To all the moms who think they will never see their abs again -
                                  it's not impossible, I promise you that! It just takes time,
                           hard work and a good diet.

Absolutely HATED having
my picture taken!

I never felt comfortable wearing
a bathing suit - now for the first time
I don't even mind being
photographed in one! 
This Pic ^^^ was the first bikini
I had bought in years, and this was
 the first progress 
picture I decided to take!

      






    

                  My latest progress...my goals have
             evolved as I have grown and
              learned new things... 

Instead of trying to be "skinny", 
I increased my calories slightly,
 and started lifting heavier and 
with more intensity to grow muscle...
"Strong is the new skinny."  :)

Like I said earlier, if I hadn't taken progress pictures, I'd still be obsessing over the silly numbers on the scale! It's so important to take a step back and look at your progress from a distance to really gain some perspective on it! Even if you feel funny taking them, I encourage anyone who is trying to change their body to do this - and no, you don't have to make a blog and post them for everyone to see! Use them as a tool to learn about yourself and about how you grow and change. I promise, you won't regret it!  :)

Why I Do What I Do

As I've mentioned in previous posts, the one question I tend to get asked pretty often is "How'd you lose all that weight?" People always want to know what "diet" I'm on, or if I even eat at all.  I notice this particularly among many of my clients, because to them, my weight loss seems pretty drastic, I would imagine.  When you only see your hairstylist every 6 weeks and every time you see them they shrink a size, I suppose it does seem like it's happening overnight.  I can't blame them.

The truth is that it isn't happening overnight - it's been a long, sometimes difficult journey of dedication and hard work.  And I've loved every minute of it.  No, really.  Everyone needs to have that one thing that moves them - something they're passionate about.  For some people it's religion, or politics or in my hubby's case, anything with a motor!  For me, this has been it.  And if you've known me a long time or if you've followed my previous blogs, you'll know that this wasn't always the case - I didn't grow up with any appreciation for healthy living or an active lifestyle.  I grew up in front of a TV, eating fast food and mac n' cheese.  So if I was able to fall in love with a life of fitness and clean eating, I'm pretty sure anything's possible! 

I get a multitude of different reactions when I answer the question, "How'd you do it?" with an enthusiastic "I eat healthy and I exercise...a lot."  Some people shake their heads and I'm sure they are thinking I've gone off the deep end and I'm one of those "health nuts".  They wouldn't be caught dead giving up their favorite foods or their time to go to the gym. Don't get me wrong - that's completely fine, as long as they are happy with where they are at - I'm not judging.  But others often say they wish they could be like that - to have so much discipline, but they're just not that kind of person, or they don't have the time, etc. What I wish to say to those people is that you can be like that if you truly want it - but you have to go about it in the right mindset.  If you go into it thinking of it as a chore, you're only setting yourself up for failure.  It's always a little awkward at first, starting anything new, but the trick is to learn to truly APPRECIATE the process.

When I first set out on my health/fitness journey, I'll admit, for me it was only a means to an end.  I wanted to be skinny and this was the way to do it.  But along the way, I've realized that it has become about so much more than just fitting into a smaller size. It's become an entirely new way of life. I have come to love it - and not only because it has provided results.  I genuinely look forward to my workouts and to eating healthy, balanced meals. If you're reading this and you still think I'm nuts, just hear me out.  These are just 3 of the things you stand to gain from living a healthy lifestyle - aside from a smaller waistline!  ;)  This is why I do what I do:

1. It feels good knowing you have a healthy body.  A few months ago - right around the time I found myself struggling with finding a healthy balance in this lifestyle - I took a pretty hard spill at work and went right down on my booty in a pair of shoes I probably shouldn't have been wearing!  When you're a kid, falling is a natural part of life - you get right back up, put a band-aid on it and go along your merry way.  As an adult though, your body doesn't always handle it as well and it becomes a bigger deal - and truthfully it shook me a little.  I knew that I would likely wake up in agony the next day from the "trauma" of wrenching my whole body around to try and catch myself.  Well, the next morning I was surprised to find that, while my butt didn't feel so great, the rest of me managed to escape unscathed.  Later that day, my dad commented that it was a good thing I was in such great shape, or I would have really been hurting.  That's when it hit me.  While my mind had been so focused on eating and exercising to LOOK good, I had managed to build myself a body that could take a little bit of a beating.  I had always been sort of a weakling in that way, and it made me proud to say that I had toughened myself up a little bit.

2. Empowerment.  Nothing feels worse than being helpless.  I know.  I've been there - that desperate feeling that you have no control over your life or your surroundings.  Living a fit life has given me a sense of empowerment that nothing else ever has.  Feeling empowered to make healthy choices, even when they may not always be the easiest ones to make, is a character builder like no other.  Just the other day, I came across this blog post by Electra over at Vanilla Bean Lean and she put very eloquently into words exactly what I was thinking while writing this post.  She said, basically that you ALWAYS have a choice, and any time is a good time to choose.  It's not something someone needs to twist your arm to get you to do - it IS in every one of us to make the decision to lead a healthy life, and to truly learn to love and appreciate the process.  It's just a matter of realizing that the power to choose is all you! 

3. A more positive outlook. This is not to say that there are not some very fit people with bad attitudes out there - if you've ever watched an episode of Jersey Shore you can attest to this!  But if you research fitness and health, one of the things you'll find is that a lot of the people who live this lifestyle tend to be pretty positive people.  My guess is that the first 2 reasons above have something to do with it.  If you have a healthy body and a healthy mind, even the hardships in life don't seem as bad.  It's much easier to keep a positive attitude if you FEEL good.  And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that a little positivity goes a LOOOOONNNNGGG way!  Energy, whether positive or negative, tends to build momentum.  It's like that Liberty Mutual commercial where one person does a nice thing and then they pass it on and so on and so on.  Do one nice thing for someone for no reason and you want to do it again and again and before you know it you're a positive ball of energy doing all kinds of nice things for people just because it feels good!  Similarly, if you wake up and stub your toe on the bed, and drop your toothbrush in the toilet, and burn your breakfast, and catch every stoplight on the way to work, it can be pretty easy to let that negativity build up and then you take it with you all day and the next day and so on. And before you know it, you're a miserable, negative person who makes everyone around you miserable!  Ok, now I'm really rambling, but my point is: it's much better to be the 1st type of person, and if living a healthy life will make me into that person, I'd say all of those hours at the gym were well-spent!

As I said earlier, if someone is happy without fitness in their life, more power to them!  Except a lot of people nowadays are not happy with how they look or feel but they see fitness and healthy eating as too much of an inconvenience to be for them.  All I'm saying is that it doesn't NEED to be.  If you take the time to really learn to appreciate what your body can do if you hold it accountable and push it beyond it's limits, you may find out that you get more than you bargained for - in a REALLY good way!  


     

5 Must-Haves To Get The Body You Want No Matter Who You Are!

Did you ever notice that the more you learn about something, the more aware you become of just how much you actually don't know about it?  Take fitness and nutrition, for example.  Over the past year, I have learned so much more than I ever knew, and yet the more I learn, the more I realize how in-depth these topics can get.  It's truly mind-boggling.

There are a few things, however, that no matter what stage you are at in your journey - whether you are a rookie starting a new diet/exercise program, a seasoned fitness enthusiast or somewhere in between - that are just basic principles that will help you to reach your goals.  Easy to understand, but also easy to forget about, once you start trying to cram all that other, more complex information into your brain.  So these are a few things that you NEED in order to get where you want to be:

1. A Positive Attitude - It sounds corny, but you would be surprised how far this will get you in life.  Ever notice how draining it is to be around someone who's a Negative Nancy ALL THE TIME???  You can accomplish so much more if you channel your energy into having a more positive outlook.  If you start a task expecting to fail, chances are: you're going to.  But if you go into it with an open mind and the ability to see the brighter side of things, you're increasing your chances for success, exponentially.  This will also ensure that, should you experience a setback (notice I didn't say failure!), you can get right back on track and keep going!  

2. A Good Support System - I have been fortunate enough to have this right from the start.  Once they realized that this was something that was important to me, my hubby, family, and friends have been there for everything from moral support, to offering baby-sitting services so I can get to the gym, to stock-piling green tea just for me (thanks Dad!). I do understand what it's like, however, to have people in your life who form sort of an "anti-support" system - the nay-sayers who seem to secretly (or not so secretly!) want you to fail and always turn their nose up at your healthy lifestyle choices.  It is hard to get past this - especially if these are people that are important to you - but it can be done.  This just means you will have to actively seek out positive, like-minded people to be your personal cheerleaders. Whether it be through the internet (as I've mentioned before Facebook and MyFitnessPal are great resources for this) or someone you know from the gym, look for people who have similar goals so that you can support & motivate eachother.  Once you do this and continue pushing through to reach your goals you may even notice a funny thing happens: those nay-sayers will sometimes have a change of heart and become your biggest supporters!

3. Knowledge - With all of the information available to us through TV and the web, this can actually be harder to obtain than you would think! There are tons of myths and misconceptions floating around when it comes to weight loss, muscle-building and general nutrition/fitness, and it can be a full-time job trying to filter through it all to get to the truth.  But if you make a real effort to become knowledgeable about what you are trying to achieve and how to go about it, it will make all the difference!  The best and most relate-able example I can think of is abs.  If you are like I was a year ago and go by infomercials or what celebrity personal trainers tell TMZ, you believe you either have to pay 42 payments of $19.95 (plus shipping/handling!) or do 10,000 crunches a day to get flat abs.  Do a little more research though, and you'll actually find that those washboard abs everyone's after are more likely to pop up with a few tweaks to your diet than from killing yourself doing every belly busting fad workout imaginable. Yep, the truth is that no matter how much you build up your abdominal muscles, you won't see any of that hard work if there is still a layer of bodyfat covering it.  Having this information enabled me to change my approach and saved me from hours of very frustrating and fruitless labor.  They weren't kidding when they said knowledge is power!  :)

4. Hydration - So, if you are a human being residing on the planet Earth, chances are, at some point in your life you've been lectured on proper hydration.  I have too.  It wasn't until recently, though that I finally listened - and I mean, very recently. Even with my exercise and diet in check, my downfall has always been not getting enough water - mostly out of forgetfulness, or sometimes just laziness.  I would have 1 or 2 cups of green tea and call it a day.  I didn't realize just how detrimental this was until I unknowingly fixed the problem.  I was suffering from symptoms of chronic dehydration without even realizing that there was such a thing.  To me, dehydration meant that you got a dry mouth and a headache, and if it was bad enough you would die.  Well clearly, I wasn't dead, so I thought nothing of it.  What I didn't realize is that if your organs, muscles, brain, etc. aren't getting enough water, you can also suffer from symptoms such as fatigue, anxiety/depression, forgetfulness, inability to concentrate, water retention, achy joints, weight gain, excessive hunger and cravings for sugar and carbs - all of which can obviously have negative affects on your health and fitness goals, as well as other aspects of your life.  It wasn't until I got my mental clarity back from correcting this that I put it all together.  There are tons of opinions out there about how much water is the proper amount, but here are a couple of resources to check out if you suspect you are in need of a little more H20, too! 
 ---> BeWellWithMichelle: Stressed and depressed or dehydrated?
 --->  MattyFusaro: How Much Water Should I Drink A Day?
 --->  Human Water Requirement Calculator

5. Realistic Expectations - When I say this, I mean it more in terms of time frame than actual goals.  Too often, we place limitations on ourselves because we think that if we set our sights too high, we're only setting ourselves up for disappointment.  So, yes, while it may be true that not everyone has the genetics to look like a Victoria Secret model or Arnold Schwarzenegger, I would be hesitant to say don't shoot for it if that's what you truly want.  I have seen people make amazing transformations with a little hard work and determination!  What you should be aware of, though, is that these transformations don't happen overnight - at least the long-term kinds.  Be sure to set up a realistic time frame that you hope to achieve your goals in.  While this may be frustrating sometimes (because obviously, who wouldn't want to wake up tomorrow morning with their ideal body???) it is imperative that you realize that it will take time.  Setting up some short-term goals is always helpful because it will give you a sense of pride in what you've accomplished on the way to that long-term goal.  If your goal, for example, is to lose 50 lbs., set short-term goals at 5 lb. increments, so you can have a little congratulatory party for yourself when you meet them!  And don't beat yourself up if you do experience a setback - because REALISTICALLY, no one is going to be 100% perfect 100% of the time.

Hopefully, this has shed some light on some of the most key elements to helping you meet your goals, whatever they may be.  They are things that have been instrumental in me reaching mine and will continue to be so as I change and strive for new things.  So obviously, I would love to hear if this has helped you in any way, because that's the purpose of this blog, of course, but if I am being completely honest, I am also writing this for myself.  Because let's face it - sometimes life gets hard and everyone needs a little reminder that all you need to do is go back to the basics!