New Year, New Me?

The answer is yes, and no. Yes, it is a new year and I know it is the time of year that people go crazy making new promises to eat right, exercise more and fix all the problems that they have let pass for so many years in a row. No, I will not be taking part in any resolution making. I seemed to find it best to focus on what I can do daily to make myself a better me instead of setting unrealistic goals that don’t need to be accomplished until the end of next year.
So what will I be focusing on for this year? Well, last year was a year of big changes in my life. This time last year I had moved from California to Oregon with the BF and Emma. We were just settling in to a whole new routine and I was already missing my friends and co-workers from Cali. I was feeling down from having left not only all of my friends and family so far away from me, but also having lost a lot of my independence from having sold my car to make the move a little easier on us. Stuck in an apartment in the snow and rain without anyone to talk to and no real way of getting around I started to rely on two things, my blog and my exercise.
I began my fitness journey with the goal of just firming up my rear a bit, but once I saw my before pic I knew I was going to have to make big changes in my life. I had always had a bit of a rocky relationship with food, in the past, but now I was realizing that as I got older there was no way that I could continue these on-again, off-again diets and expect any real change. Daily exercise was going to have to become part of my lifestyle. I picked up a copy of Brazilian Butt Lift and followed the plan. By the time we moved to Nashville in May I had lost a few pounds and several inches, but was starting to plateau. It was then that I had decided to take this to the next level and decided to kill to birds with one stone. This is when I took on the P90X challenge. For real this time and not just three times a week doing Kenpo that I had done a few years earlier.
After 90 days I had made big changes. I mean, serious changes to both my body and my diet. However, I found that once I began working part-time again it was difficult for me to balance work, taking care of everything at home and finding time to do my two hours at the gym everyday. I needed to find a more balanced approach and since I follow the Beachbody community pretty closely, and have several friends that are coaches I jumped at the opportunity to buy TurboFire when it went on sale for over half off.
This was a huge change-up from P90X! Basically I went from cardio two times a week, core work four times a week and strength training three times a week to cardio six days a week with some core and strength training a few days a week. I tried it the way it was meant to be done for the first eight weeks, but seeing very little result and feeling like I have had a loss of muscle tone, I have started to add in my P90X strength training routines to my HIIT training.
Let me tell you my legs are SORE! I am due to workout in the next hour and I don’t know how I am going to make it through without tears. (Don’t worry, I made it happen.) It is going to get done though, because at the end of the day I miss my strength training and lifting. It is what made big changes to my body and it is what made me feel powerful and brought me to the highest self-esteem I had ever had in my life. Not to say that I was basing my esteem solely on my looks; it wasn’t really based on that. I just felt like the higher my PRs got the better I felt. I knew I was making a difference and I saw that difference, but more importantly I felt that difference.
This year I am going to focus on being the best me I can be. I’d love to promise myself that I will exercise six days a week, every week and hit new PRs all the time, but I know that isn’t realistic. I will hit walls, I will have sick days and need recovery time or go out-of-town. I am going to do the best that I can for myself and take the best care of me that I can. I will do the work and I will reward myself on occasion.
So where am I now? Well, thanks to the BF who went against every instinct in his body and bought me my special scale that I asked for as a Christmas gift, I can say that I am at 16.4% body fat, 42% muscle and have high bone density for my height and weight. My goal is to keep my body fat somewhere between 15-16% while increasing my muscle mass. This means that I will weigh more, but I really don’t care so much about those numbers when I know my percentages are in the healthy range.
I am still having a lot of trouble toning my lower body. It doesn’t seem to matter what I do from weighted squats and lunges to plyometric work, nothing seems to want to work. I guess I will just keep looking for that perfect blend that will tell my thighs and butt to either shape up or ship out. After speaking with my mom, I have realized that we are genetically predisposed to those bigger butts and thighs. She has done some hard-core physical work and has told me that the only time she ever saw her lower body start to really tone was when she was physically building a log cabin in the middle of the Colorado wilderness, while working full-time night shifts as a NICU RN and living with my Dad and their dog in a little one room trailer all year. She was down to a size 0 and was nothing but muscle from doing all that manual labor. Now I’d love me some firmer thighs, but I don’t think that I want to do that diet, exercise and stress plan EVER!
As for my diet, now that the holidays are over it is time to get back on track. Don’t get me wrong, I kept a close eye on what I was eating over the last few months and have only swayed between 122#s and 127#s, but I was also working a lot more than I am now and had less time to cook and organize meals. Now that the massive retail push is over I will have a more relaxed schedule and will be able to plan my meals ahead again. Plus, we are almost done eating all the candies and goodies that were sent for Christmas and then the house will be back to healthy snacking only rules.
I will hopefully have some progress pics soon. It is tough to take them on an iPad for so many reasons and my phone pics are not the quality I am looking for, but soon my friends I will find a way.
I hope that your holidays and New Year was wonderful and I look forward to sharing more time with you all very soon.
Thanks for reading!