(Source: knitten, via snack-tastic)
As I was cleaning my room the other day, I found this shirt. I totally forgot I even still owned it. Most of my “fat” clothes I threw away or gave away. I immediately thought about this one picture I took with it a few years ago. I thought it would be a good idea to try it on now to see how different it fit. It seriously felt like a night gown on me and I remember when I first bought it how it fit on me. When I put the two pictures side by side I was blown away…
“A baby’s gotta do what a baby’s gotta do.” ;)
It’s OFFICIAL, you guys. I’ve lost exactly 120lbs today. I lost 2lbs this week which is HUGE for me this stage in the game. My hard work is seriously paying off. Each pound I lose now, I can literally see it in the mirror. I feel so different. It’s crazy. I’m about 7lbs away from my first goal weight and 12lbs away from my ultimate one. Then that’s where the maintaining/toning comes into play (which is totally a whole new ballgame). I’m so ridiculously excited.
It’s crazy because this morning as I was putting on my gym attire, I picked out a shirt I haven’t worn in about a month or so. I put it on and noticed right away how much looser it was. Progress. My best friend noticed that I tend to lose weight in inches before it actually shows on the scale. She noticed it very early into my journey. It can be so discouraging when you don’t see those numbers on the scale. Trust me, I know. So when I put on this shirt today, it lifted my mood a bit. But for some reason, I was still not excited for the scale… and then BAM! 2lbs down from last week. Success. Success. Success. :)
My sister took this candid photo of my boyfriend and me on Monday which was our 6th month anniversary. Oddly enough, I really like how it came out :)
Success, Sweat, Cheesecake?
Hey guys! It’s been a bit since I’ve last updated, and it’s really because I’ve had a lot going on right now. This weight loss journey of mine has been so crazy. It’s ridiculous to me that I’m even able to say that I’ve had a “journey” in life. Before this, there was no journey. I was just simply floating. To quote my man Jack Johnson, “A lot of people spend their time just floating. We were victims; together but lonely.” So true and accurate to my best friend and I.
Bottom line is, I have a goal weight to get to. I’ve gained a lot of self confidence through all of this, but there’s still more to be found. Yes, I’ve lost somewhere around 120lbs, but I’m not finished. I never will be. Success is an every day attitude. Success is a way of life. But, success is not a clear road. Success does not just get handed to you. This explains it perfectly:
And that’s sincerely how it goes. It’d be unrealistic for me to sit here and say that it’s been easy street and I’ve been eating perfectly and exercising 7 days a week. No. I’ve been giving myself excuses, and often finding myself saying something along the lines of:
I would have days where I ate so well and healthy, and then days of continuous binging. It was just not consistent at all. The key is consistency. I would find myself killing myself at the gym and then binging. What kind of productivity is that? None. So insanely counter-productive. How the hell do I ever expect to get to my goal that way?
Well, no more.
Recently, I’ve been cranking it up a notch. I’ve been pushing myself SO hard at the gym. Constantly leaving drenched from head to toe in sweat. Really feeling like I earned my work out. My best friend is home for the summer and we initially started this together, and we are finishing this. Finishing this strong. I’ve been eating really well, and in fact I’m going to the Cheesecake Factory tonight with my boyfriend because it’s our 6 month anniversary. I’m not getting cheesecake. You don’t have to always associate food with special outings. It’s a huge misconception, and it’s one of many reasons why there are so many obese people in the world. Food is fuel, not comfort. “You’re not a dog, don’t reward yourself with food.”
My best friend and I are weighing ourselves now twice a week. Wednesdays and Saturdays. This is the first time we are ever doing it this way, so I’m a bit nervous and excited for Wednesday. I feel like this is a really good idea and a good way to help us keep on track. I have a really good feeling about this summer, you guys. I’m getting there. Just watch ;)
(Source: fuckyeahmovieclub)
(Source: 091days, via fitsparrow)
Just bought this today and I’m already diggin’ it. I love Bob Harper. He seems like a genuine, intelligent, and warmhearted soul. He also knows his shit. I love educating myself on nutrition any way I can, and I definitely don’t mind it being in the form of Bob Harper ;)
I just really want those pants. Oh and I definitely wouldn’t mind being able to do that move as well…
(Source: b4rbie-worldwide, via weight-a-second)
No more groin pain!!!!
After the Broad Street 10 mile run, I decided to take off running for a week to rest my groin muscle. I could tell it was in the healing process so I really wanted to rest it despite the fact that it kills me not to run.
Today, I decided to run 3 miles outside to test it since I haven’t felt pain in about 5-6 days. I’m happy to state that I felt NO pain after my run!!! I am beyond stoked about this. I was really upset for a long time when I injured it about 5 weeks ago. I let it really consume my thoughts, and I am so glad I toughed it out and it’s gone!
Work has been getting to me lately, and since I stand for 8 hours at a time my groin would hurt while I worked. Lately though, it hasn’t been hurting and I was focusing more on the other aspects going on at work; rather than celebrating the little successes like this. I walk around pain free now! Just a few short weeks ago it was really irritating me while I worked. I need to appreciate the fact that I can move around just fine. Appreciation is so important in life. We as humans tend to look over things that matter most. Health matters. It matters a lot. I’m very fortunate that it wasn’t a serious injury.
I’m so ready to kick this weight loss into HIGH gear. My best friend is home and she’s my partner in this and we are ready to kill it this summer. Get ready, folks. ;)
"I think that one of these days you’re going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you’ve got to start going there."
(Source: teddoyle, via runningtoescapethetruth)
Broad Street 10 Miler Recap:
Let me first start out with saying I’m VERY pleased with how I did. I initially wanted to finish it under an hour and 40 minutes, but 1:47:11 I can totally live with. Like I’ve been posting for the past month or so, I hurt my groin muscle and it’s still not fully healed… to be able to make a time like that while injured is very excellent in my book :). I want to share with you guys my biggest proud moment though: I didn’t STOP once during the race. I ran the whole thing straight through!! I’m so proud of myself for that. Also, the longest I’ve ever ran was 8 miles, so I was really happy with that time.
I had a lot of fun during this race! I’ve never sweat so much in my entire life haha and it wasn’t even hot out! Anyway, we got up at 5am, left at 6, and met up with my friend Ryan and her boyfriend around 6:30am to take the subway. I pee’d before we left, which was around 6am, and that was the only time I did. So, after having my cliff bar, banana, and bottles of water, it was no doubt that by the time the race was about to begin (8:30am) I had to pee. We got to the starting line around 8:15am and there was no way I was going to pee then. So I stuck it out.
As I was racing, I got to Mile 2 and for some reason I thought to myself, “OMG it’s only Mile 2?” and I couldn’t see myself making it through all 10 even though I’ve ran longer distances than 2 miles PLEANTY of times. It just seemed longer. I think it was because I really had to pee haha. Anyway, I kept on running along. I got to Mile 3 and was still in disbelief of what was going on. I don’t think it really hit me. It’s weird because I had my ipod on the whole time, but half the time I wasn’t even paying attention to the music that was on. It was just so crazy. I was running with over 40,000 people. It was such a thrilling and neat experience.
What was really cool was all the people cheering everybody on at the sidelines. There were some really funny signs too. I think my favorite one was, “Hurry, I heard there’s free beer at the finish line.” Hahaha.
At mile 7, I kept telling myself, “okay Michelle you only have 5K left.. about a half hour.. you’ve done 5k’s a million times… get it done.” And that’s exactly what I did. At mile 8, I was really feeling the urge of my full bladder, and really wanted to stop, but I kept telling myself that it’s all in my mind. If I wanted to, I could hold that pee in for another 12 hours. It’s all a mind game. I’ve held pee on 6 hour plane rides before, so I kept telling myself to stop thinking about it and just finish the damn race haha. Also, I wanted to be able to say that I didn’t stop once, so I made it appoint to do just that. I will say I “stopped” to grab a cup of water at each water stop, but I don’t count that.
After I finished, I had a really hard time finding my boyfriend and the girl I ran with’s boyfriend. The girl I ran with finished about a half hour or so after me so she was nowhere to be found. We didn’t carry our cell phones during the run so we said we’d meet up at a certain place. Yeah well, I couldn’t find that certain place. They weren’t really too specific about it. So anyway, I was all by myself looking for them amongst thousands of people. I couldn’t even really take in the fact that I just ran 10 miles without stopping because I was too busy being lost and looking for my boyfriend. After about 40 minutes or so, I was getting frustrated and actually on the verge of crying, but I held it together and I decided to just head back to where we parked and hoped they all would be there. It’s scary being around SO many people and feeling so alone.
But then, something really weird happened. As I was walking the good MILE OR SO to the parking lot, I saw a dude that I’ve talked to a few times that goes to my gym. I actually had a semi-crush on him at one point haha. ANYWAY, I see him and I’m like “HEY!” and give him this huge high five. We then start walking and talking for a good 10 minutes and he made me feel better because I found somebody that I actually knew haha. But let me just say HOW WEIRD IS IT THAT OUT OF 40,000+ people, I run into this guy. It’s hard to explain but this was sort of my reaction afterward:
Just so weird. I used to have such a dumb high school-esque crush on him haha.
A landmark moment happened while we were talking. So, I’m walking with him and we see this black gate. It’s about an inch or two off the ground and it’s locked. People start crawling underneath it as a short-cut to get to the parking lot instead of walking all the way around (I know, you can run 10 miles but not walk all the way around, haha. Yeah, pretty sure everybody was exhausted). But anyway, we’re walking and seeing people crawl underneath and he turns to me and goes, “Hey, isn’t this the area you parked around? You look like you could fit under the gate. Let’s go.” So we both crawl underneath this LITTLE TINY SPACE between the ground and the gate. Let me just tell you what kind of feat that was for me. To hear somebody just casually say that I can fit under there and for me to not even hesitate when doing so is such a beautiful thing. To most people, it’s a simple task. But to me, it meant a lot. After I crawled underneath and got up, I was like this:
And then I thanked my gym bud for his help and we parted ways.
I got to the parking lot and my boyfriend and the 2 others were nowhere to be found. At this point, I was so tired and just getting so frustrated. I saw a group of dudes and girls in mid 20’s tailgating and I decided to approach them. I thought of the idea to ask one of them if they had an iPhone I could borrow. Since I didn’t know my boyfriend’s number by heart (this is what technology does now that we can just save contacts), I had the clever idea of going on facebook and looking up old messages from when he first gave me his number, HAHA. The guy I asked to borrow his phone was extremely friendly and understood. So, I got my bf’s number and called him and about 20-30 minutes later they finally came to the lot.
So, let’s just say it was quite the adventure. I didn’t even realize how much of an adventure it really was until later when I got a chance to reflect on the day haha. I didn’t get sore until a couple hours afterward, but man did I feel it.
To sum it all up, I had a really great time and I hope to do it again next year. It honestly still blows my mind to this day where I’m at in this point of my life. Where I’ve come from, how I got here… I can still vividly envision running 2 years ago and being winded after 20 seconds. Bitch, you just ran 10 miles without stopping. “What else in your life are you half-assing?”
So, I finally complied my playlist for the 10 Mile Run tomorrow! I think it’s a good mix of songs and I’m even more pumped to run now knowing that I have a solid playlist to listen to while I run with 30,000+ people (OH MY GOD).
Carbo loading the day before my 10 mile run! Nothing like guilt free pancakes for one day haha. I seriously can’t feel bad about this. I haven’t had pancakes in I can’t even remember when. Plan is to eat these babies early and eat clean the rest of the day. So nervous for tomorrow, guys!!!
