Current Pull up Progress (needs work)

Well I haven't been focusing on my pull ups and they are getting ugly.  When I did my 10 in March they were a lot more controlled and I could keep my legs together the whole time.  So now I just need to start working on them again :)  But I have my starting point again!  Something to work towards.

6 Months can make a big difference!

I can't believe it's been 6 months since I blogged last!  But wow,  it's been a blessing to look back and see how God has worked in my life over the past few months.  First of all, I was going through a major rut with my eating last year.   I've said before that it is something I will always have to work at!  I am an emotional eater and if I start to turn to food instead of God, it can get ugly.  I was really struggling with some weight that I had put on and just couldn't find the desire or will power to make the changes I needed to.  Of course, I still worked out, was strong, ate good food too, but I was stress eating too.  I also was running a lot, and I've found that for ME, I gain weight when I run too much or try to train for too many things.  

I'm so thankful to say that right now I'm in a much much better place with my eating.  I still have good days and bad, or maybe I should say good weeks and bad weeks :)  But I don't feel like I'm in a place that I feel desperate or out of control.

So the picture on the left was January 1st of this year.  I weighed about 147.  Now I have to say, that people that have seen these two pics did not even believe that that was me on the left a few months ago, because they've been with me and said I NEVER looked like that!  I have to admit, that is just a very bad pic.  It was right after all the holidays obviously, I ate whatever I wanted New Year's Eve, because everyone starts a diet on New Year's Day, right?!   And I was letting it all hang out!  BUT, I was in the place I had been for quite a while where I knew I could be doing better and I was uncomfortable with myself.  

So, when my team started Choose To Lose (weight loss competition), I had one long time client in the group that knew I wanted to focus on some of my own goals, and she kept me accountable.  That gave me the motivation I needed and things started to click for me again.  So I lost 10 pounds, met my goal of doing 10 pull ups and feel more in control now.  My workouts still aren't as regimented as I'd like them to be, but I have a busy schedule so I try to be flexible.  I get plenty of workouts in, I just don't have a consistent weight training plan for example, like I used to when I was competing.  Which is ok, because really I'm just training for life right now, and it's nice constantly mixing things up.  I kind of just go with the flow :)

So  That's what's been going on in my fitness life!  The rest of my life the last few months would take a LONG time to sit here and talk about.  I've learned so much and our family has grown a lot.  We still have a LOT of growing to do, which kind of scares me, what is God going to throw at us next ;) , but I'm confident that He will see us through it.  

Looking back at the few posts I made last year, they seemed to be focused a lot on my kids.  I was really feeling like I needed God's guidance with raising my kids (duh!).  That is still my prayer.  I've learned that there really is no progress without struggle, so I'm thankful for some of the struggles that we've had.  I know that there are people going through a LOT worse things.  But I'm thankful because without them I would just go on doing what I was doing.  Struggles cause you to stop and reach out and grow and seek God even more.  I probably shouldn't even call this a struggle, but more of a challenge.  And actually what we are going through I should call an opportunity.  It's been an opportunity to communicate, educate and reevaluate some of the things in our life!

Anyways, I probably won't blog a whole lot.  Instagram is so much easier because I do a lot of that while I'm sitting at my kids practices and things.  But I do enjoy putting my thoughts out here for me to look back on later or possibly even help or encourage someone else that my come across it.  

Leave me a comment if you'd like and let me know you were here!

Leg workout

What an emotional week!  Even though I didn't realize it until it was over, the election really got to me! But it's just a reminder to put all of my faith in God.    He is in control like always and I don't have to worry and shouldn't worry about anything!  I'm so thankful for my family who loves the Lord and the few Christian friends that I have.  I will continue to seek Him, Love Him, abide in His will and rely on His grace and mercy and let Him take care of the rest!  I'm SO very thankful to be able to truly cast my burdens on Him and know that He DOES  care about me!!!

 On Wednesday, the day following the election, I woke up not feeling well.  Headache, a little nauseous and decided not to go into work.  I RARELY do that!  But I felt kind of mopey and unsettled.  I took some time and prayed and poured out my heart to God and I felt better.  What also helped me feel better was walking into my youngest son's room and finding the above!!  He had set his dinosaur in the middle of his room, with some pillows around it.  Put sunglasses and a Michigan State necklace on it, put a bone and a bag of chips in it's mouth!  That is so typical of Luke. He loves his stuffed animals and always has.  When he makes his bed, he sets them up differently every time.  Sometimes they are playing a baseball game (according to him) or they are at school (according to him)!    But this brought a smile to my face for sure.  Man, I love that kid!


Fitness goal, well, I just don't feel like I'm making a whole lot of progress!  I was down 2 pounds last Monday, so we will see what happens this week.  My pull ups are the same.  I lifted back and biceps today and I could still only do 2 pull ups.  But I will keep plugging away.  Today I ran for the first time since the Detroit half.  I did 3 miles with some of the girls I run with.  It's supposed to be beautiful weather this weekend :)  I also lifted legs yesterday and I am SO sore today!!  I will post my leg workout at the bottom.  So I just think it's going to take some time.  Honestly, I'm not used to that.  Usually if I gain a little weight, I can diet for a week and at least get to 140 and feel comfortable.  I guess I just really over did it this summer and gained more than just water weight and really put on some pounds!  If I give up though, I will just regret it later.

Below is something I put together for a post workout meal this last week and it was really good!  It's 8 Ounces of Plain Greek Yogurt, 1 scoop of chocolate protein powder, 2 TBS of PB2 (powdered peanut butter if you are not familiar) and 2 packets of stevia.  Then because it was for post workout, I ate it with 2 chocolate graham cracker!  It tasted so much like chocolate peanut butter cheesecake!  And cheesecake is my all time favorite dessert!  It had 38 grams of protein!!!  Next time I think I will cut it in half!

Now below is what I had for lunch today!  I was super hungry when I got home, I had lifted back and biceps, then ran 3 miles and then taught a yoga for runners class.  So i ate an apple and starting preparing this.   I used the fold it flat outs, green peppers, onions, tomatoes, black olives, pizza sauce and super thin cheese.  I should have cooked up a chicken breast to add, but didn't want to take the time.  I LOVE veggie pizzas!  The green peppers and onions make it oh so good!  And this was only about 200 calories!!  (and very filling)

Here's the leg workout I did yesterday:

Superset #1:  Smith machine reverse lunges - 20 reps

                      Dumbell forward lunges onto step - 20 reps

Superset #2:  Step downs off of step (these work the glutes so well) - 15 each leg

                      Glute kickbacks with tubing - 15 each leg

Superset #3:  Leg extensions - 15

                      Single leg walking Deadlifts - 10 each leg

Superset #4:  Adduction - inner thigh machine - 15 reps

                      Side steps with tubing around ankles - 20 each way

Have a great weekend!

Girls of Grace

The Girls of Grace conference was awesome!  I felt so blessed and renewed after this great day of being ministered to by some great speakers and singers!  Below is Naomi and I ready for a fun day ahead!

 Here I am with the other "moms" :)  

 Naomi and her friends we came with.  Yes she is the same age as them, she's just little :)  She takes after my husband's side of the family.

 Here we are with the Sidewalk Prophets.  They were the best part of the day for me.  I love all of their songs.  The first time I ever heard, The Words I Would Say, I cried and told my kids I was dedicating that song to them.  It still makes me cry every time I hear it, and they opened up with that song.  You could see how much they love the Lord when they sing and it was amazing to be able to sing along with them in worship.  They have a powerful testimony and I felt so blessed to be able to hear them sing live.

 Below is Meredith Andrews.  I fell in love with her.  SO genuine, such a passion for serving Christ!  She lead the worship music throughout the day and lead most of the prayers.  I would LOVE to meet her in person.  She is someone who I just wish I could be real life friends with!  She inspired me in a lot of ways, but I guess the biggest thing was to also be genuine!  You could tell she was just being herself and that she loved what she does and does it for the glory of God and not men!

 Below is Annie Downs.  She was one of the speakers.  She is funny!!  She talked about using our words to glorify God.  She has a blog, it is annieblogs.com, check her out, I think you will like her!

 And here is Britt Nicole!  She's kind of like my Naomi, tiny, lol!!  She's just a little thing but sure has a big voice!  She wasn't my favorite only because it was almost like a rock star concert.  All the younger girls went to the front and were trying to touch her and stuff.  The music was LOUD and you couldn't really hear the words.  I know most of her songs, so I knew the words, but it was hard to worship along with her.  But that was just MY opinion!   She was definitely a hit for the younger girls, and that was really what this day was for!

 And below are all of the speakers and artists from the day.  The first 3 from the left are Point of Grace! They are the MC's and they did sing a few of their songs too.  I couldn't help but think of everything they must sacrifice to fulfill this ministry.  They all have kids, and they must have to leave them on weekends that they do their conferences.  They did say that their kids sometimes come with them, but mostly not.  I think about how busy our weekends are and how much stuff my kids are involved in and wonder like I very often do, if it's too much!  Are my priorities out of balance?   Am I putting God first?Am I teaching my kids that God comes first?  

Lastly I want to share for myself mostly, what I took home from this conference!  I got two things out of this.  The first one is that I really need and want to keep praying for my kids!  I want to relax and pray and let God work in their lives.  I very often think and stress about their future.  My kids are smart and very athletic!  I feel pressure for them to be very successful as adults, either in athletics or in career choice!  I feel like they have to be on the best sports team, the best classes, can't miss an important sports camp for fear they may get behind, or if they don't do well on one assignment they may lower their grade!!  I KNOW that is wrong!  I realized this weekend after listening to some of the struggles that some of these speakers have had and God's seen them through, that GOD is IN CONTROL!  I KNOW that, but I'm so guilty of still worrying and trying to control things myself!  I found some peace, that God has a plan for them, and it may not be anything that I ever could have dreamed up.  My job as the parent is to PRAY, discipline, disciple, encourage and LOVE them!  I need God's help to do all of that, but HE will take care of the rest!

Secondly, it's probably not surprising after what I just said about my kids, that I put all of those same expectations on MYSELF!  I always blamed it on being a first born!  I don't like to do things that I'm not good at.  I stick to things I am good at, but even those things, I often get burnt out on because the newness or the feeling of being good at it wears off.  For example, being a personal trainer!  God's given me a passion for it.  But, there has been several times over the years, and I have to admit, just recently, that I have wanted to quit.  I feel like I'm not as good at it as I should be, or there are other trainers just starting at our gym who are better, look better, or they are male and many women want a male trainer.  But it has hit me recently that it DOESN'T MATTER IF I'M NOT GOOD AT IT!  God has given me a passion for it and has CALLED me to do it!  Therefore if I do it for his Glory and do it the best I can for HIM, then I'm PERFECT at it and I'm the best personal trainer out there!!  You know what I mean?  Satan wants me to believe I'm not good at it.  He wants me to ONLY see the negative!  But, there is a lot more positive then negative.  If I open my eyes, I see that over the years I have had so many clients that have stuck with me, I've had several write ups in the local papers about me and what I'm doing with my teams and clients, and I hear people say all the time, oh, I've heard about you!  And it's all positive.  SO, I'm NOT saying this to toot my own horn, but I'm realizing that I need to wake up everyday and say, ok God, what are we going to do today?  How are you going to use me today as I get the opportunity to engage one on one, or in groups, or in front of a whole group of people?  HE gave me this passion!  I went into the gym today with some new found confidence!  Not in me, but in Christ who lives through me!  I felt a little bolder, a little kinder, a little more patient, gentle, compassionate, a little more humble!  Thank you God!

Back in Action

It's Friday, yea!!  I'm super excited because Naomi and I are going to the Girls of Grace conference tomorrow.  If you are not familiar, it is a christian conference for teenage girls.  There will be speakers and Christian song artists there.  One of my favorite bands are Sidewalk Prophets and they will be there.  They sing the song Live Like That.  I have it as my ring tone on my phone.  I posted it below with the words if you've never heard it.  

As far as my fitness goals go..........  I did really well sticking to my goals the week after my 1/2 marathon.  BUT, then the weekend came and I blew it!  That completely ruined all my work from the week and I weighed in .2 pounds heavier than I had the week before!  UGH!  So I cleaned it up again Monday and so far this week I've been doing good.  My goal is to follow through THIS WEEKEND!!!    I also lifted FOUR days this week!!  That was a huge accomplishment!  I have not been lifting consistently for about a year.  I went through a phase where I thought it was making me bulky, lol!  (it couldn't have been all the calories I was consuming).  I also am just recovering from a strained transverse ligament in my shoulder caused from my poor swimming form this summer, so I was trying to rest that.  

Pull ups!!!!  I'm recording them on a separate page and eventually I will add videos of them.  I did 2 on Monday and I did them again today.  I could only do 2 again today, but the 2 that I did seemed a little easier, I just couldn't squeeze out that 3rd one though.  So my goal is to add one a week until I get back to 6-7, and then hopefully I will be able to add 1 every other week.  

Below was my dinner tonight!  YUM!  I love the thin frozen chicken breast from Sam's club.  I keep some thawed in the fridge and then it's so easy to throw one in a pan with some salt, pepper and garlic and it's done in 5 minutes and so tasty.  My broccoli is left over from my guiltless chicken platter from lunch at Chili's today with a friend.  And the grapefruit I picked up today because Naomi and I love them!  

 I also threw some raw almonds in the oven and roasted them.  They have such a good flavor roasted and I love the extra crunch!  One of my favorite evening snacks is almonds (sometimes dipped in peanut butter, weird I know!) and scrambled egg whites!

So hopefully on Monday I will be able to post a lower weight in my weigh in pages!

What are your fitness goals?

Got any fun plans for the weekend?

Detroit Half Marathon Recap

The Detroit Half Marathon was SO. MUCH. FUN.!!!  I think there were 13 of us that ran.  We met in Detroit on Saturday and went to the expo.  I finally bought a marathon stick!  I Love it!  I'd been using my pampered chef rolling pin but this is even better.  

 Above is Jeannell and I.  This was the sign we made for our room.  It says No Down Dog Zone, lol!  It was kind of a private joke we had going on within the group.

 This is some of us at the expo.  Everyone in this picture except me was getting ready to do their first 1/2 marathon.  There was so much nervous excitement going around, it was awesome!

We had reservations at an Italian restaurant that was in the hotel.  I had Lasagna!  The picture looks kind of gross, but it was really good.

Later that night we made sure to all lay on our backs with our feet up in the air for 15 minutes!  I tell you what, that seems to help me so much!  It is supposed to help with lactic acid build up during your run.  Maybe it's just mental, but it really helps me!

The morning of the race was perfect.  The weather was so good that day.  Running the bridge right at sunset is amazing!  I spent the first 3 miles just giving God thanks and praising him for my health, friends and the beauty He has given us all around!

Anyway, the important stuff, I missed a PR by NINE seconds!!!!  I was bummed about that, but I beat my time from last month and this was a much tougher course.  My time was 1:59:33.  I have ran 5 1/2 marathons now and 4 of them have been in 1:59 something!  I want so badly to break that!  A big part of it will be to lose some weight.  I have a hunch that if I can get down 20 pounds that I could probably run a 1:55 1/2 marathon!  That has always been my ultimate goal!  

On a sadder note, my husbands Grandpa passed away Sunday evening.  His Dad flew in from Arizona that afternoon and they decided to take him off the ventilator.  He never even took a breath on his own. So this week we had the visitation and the funeral was yesterday.  Grandma is at peace, we know without a doubt that we will see him again someday.  It is still hard though, they were married 62 years, so I'm just praying that God will give her the strength she needs to get through everyday.  The message at the funeral was very positive and the gospel was given!  

I started dieting on Monday.  Now that the race is over, diet will be my top priority.  I don't have to worry about energy levels and performance.  I am counting my calories and eating as clean and healthy as I can.  I'm teaching 3 yoga classes a week, 1 circuit class and I'm going to start lifting regularly again.  I would like to start focusing on the goals that I've had forever:  

10 Pull Ups

21 something 5K

1:55 half marathon

Weight between 129-133

Getting ready for Half Marathon and focusing on things above!

3 days until the Detroit half!  This pic was taken before one of our group runs this week.  It should be a fun weekend!  My friend Jeannell came over on Tuesday and we made a sign for each hotel room door!  We put some funny stuff on them.  I will have to take pics and post them later.  I also printed 80 something pictures from over the past year of the green team at different races and events.  I'm going to crop them and put them on a board to hang up so that we can have fun looking back and reminiscing over the hard work they put in this past year.

I've still been following along with the Good Morning Girls devotion in Colossians.  The video that was posted on Monday went right along with my life this week.  I had my whole family watch it with me and had my kids memorize colossians 3:2 Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things.  I've been thinking about heaven a lot this week.  My husband's Grandpa was diagnosed with lung cancer in June.  His health started to decline rapidly and this past week he was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia.  Well yesterday my husband called me and asked me if I could go and get the kids out of school and all come up to the hospital.  He just felt like it was a good time for us to all be there together with him at the same time.  We all walked in the door and the first thing he did was look each one of us in the eyes, one at a time, and say I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you  and I love you!!  Later last night he stopped breathing on his own and he is now on a ventilator.  I know he will be with the Lord real soon.  It makes me sad, but it also makes me dream and ponder of what heaven will be like.  It gives me goosebumps to think that soon he will meet his creator!  Even though he is in his 80's and has lived a long life, it REALLY IS just such a short short little blip of time!  God, please help me to set my mind on things above, NOT on earthly things!

The Lord placed on my heart to write Grandpa and Grandma Davis a letter last night.  I told them how thankful I was for the Godly example they have been in our lives and how much their hugs, encouragement, and sacrifices have meant to me over the years.  I told them that I was praying for strength and peace for them.  Well, you know what?  Chris (my husband) took that letter up with him at midnight when he got the call that he had stopped breathing, and Grandpa never got to read it.  Grandma read it, and Chris said she eventually laid down and fell asleep with that letter still in her hand.  But, God has given ME such a peace and a joy in my heart because I feel so good that I was able to express that to them!  I was the one who got the blessing from it.  I think part of it was because I listened to what God placed on my heart.  So many times I feel little nudges and I ignore them.  Like call this person, see what you can do for that person, etc.  It's so easy to ignore them and carry on with my own life.  But I want to start following through with the things God places on my heart.  I know there are boundaries and not all "good" things are what God wants me to necessarily do, so I pray that God will help me know when I need to act!