Out of the 300 Club!!

I reached my heaviest weight recently of nearly 310 pounds.  However, I am happy to say that I am now 299 pounds and have met one of my short term goals of getting out of the 300s!

I am so proud of myself, yet so ashamed at the same time.  I want to be happy, but I really am having conflicted feelings.  I want to shout it from the roof top that I am no longer 300+ pounds, but that would also involve admitting that I did once weigh that much.  I want to be happy that I've lost 11 pounds, but it's also very daunting to think that I have so far to go before I reach my goal weight.  I've lost nearly 6% of the weight that I want to, but that still leaves 94+% that I have left to lose.

When I was 21 years old, I had reached my then-heaviest weight of 240 pounds.  I was in a very complicated and abusive relationship and was very unhappy.  I picked up his bad habits of eating horribly, not exercising, and not getting good sleep due to his instabilities.  Once I dumped him, I ate better, exercised more, and got better sleep.  In 10 months, from these small changes, I lost 120 pounds!

People would tell me how great I looked, yet there was also this implication that I once looked horrible.  When I would tell people how much weight I lost, they would be happy for me, but also kinda grossed out that I was once so big.  I heard more than once, "well, you shouldn't have let yourself get so big in the first place, then you wouldn't have had to lose so much weight."  For every compliment, there seemed to be at least 10 criticisms or at least implied criticisms.

I had hoped to never get so big again, but I now weigh much more than I did back then.  At least when I was 21, I gained weight from simple and easy to correct issues.  My issues now are hormonal and way harder to correct.  I didn't gain weight during my pregnancies.  In fact, with my pregnancy with my daughter, I actually lost weight.  However, I gained 100 pounds with each kid.  I think a lot of it was the lack of sleep once again.  Breast feeding is supposed to help with combating weight gain, but I nursed both of my kids and still gained tons of weight.  My kids are now nearly-6- and nearly-8-years old, so I have more freedom to do things for myself and don't have babies and toddlers that need me 100% of the time.  Don't get me wrong, I loved having babies and loved nursing despite the weight gain.  The health was more important than my own, but I now know that I need to take care of myself in order to be there for them in the long run.

I know I need to just take it one day at a time, but I'm a long-term planner, so it's hard to focus and be proud of today.

Thanks for reading!

 ~Hot-Mommy

Sparkpeople's Biggest Loser Challenge Week 1

I started Spartpeople's 25th Biggest Loser Challenge this week.  I did pretty well.  I could have done a lot better, but life really got in the way right now.  Luckily, the kids' activities are starting to wind down.

They are currently doing:

• karate 3x per week
• baseball 3x per week
• hula dancing 1x per week
• Girl Scouts 1x per week
• Cub Scouts 3x per month

I try to do Zumba and swimming once a week and am in a book club once per month for myself.  This is the last week of baseball and karate, so life will settle down quite a bit after this and I'll have more time for myself and my goals.

Here is the scorecard for the mandatory challenge for the first week:

I learned a lot about my teammates for this challenge and found that I had quite a bit in common with people.  Probably the most challenging part of the challenge was the Freggies portion.  I had to try a new fruit or veggie or prepare them in a different way.  With sharing a car with my husband and how busy we are, it was tough finding time to go to the store to purchase new freggies.  It was surprisingly tough to pamper myself daily, too.  It definitely reinforced that I need to make myself a priority.

I did the fitness test with my kids and a neighbor girl.  For the fitness test, I was able to do 14 push-ups in one minute, 20 crunches in one minute, and my pulse was 132 after the 3 minute step test.

For the scorecard, I scored 1050 out of the possible 1200.  I didn't get a perfect score as I didn't get in the maximum amount of fitness minutes.  This was only week one, though, and I will continue to improve throughout the rest of the challenge.

This challenge and especially the fitness test has inspired me to start some sort of challenge for my Girl Scouts over this summer.  We meet tomorrow, so I will run it past them and see what they think.  I will definitely emphasize that it will be an individual challenge where they are only competing against themselves.  Every girl is at a different fitness level.

Thanks for reading!

 ~Hot-Mommy

Layering up for Zumba

I treated myself to a Zumba class tonight.  With being a SAHM/college student that shares a car with my husband, going anywhere alone is a treat.  So, I went to the gym to take a Zumba class.

The instructor of tonight's class is really into twerking and jumping.  I don't have much of a butt, so there's little that I can do about that issue, lol.  However, I am large chested.  So that I could participate fully in tonight's class, I wore a sports bra, a tank top with a built-in bra, and a looser tank top over the top.  Zumba was a lot less painful tonight, though it was more cumbersome wearing so many layers.

The instructor noticed that I kept up with the jumping a lot more tonight and complimented me a couple of times.  The slight annoyance of so many layers is worth being able to get more exercise and not be in pain.

Thanks for reading!

 ~Hot-Mommy