My current weight is 194 pounds. Jiminy Crickets, that's strange, yet exhilarating to say! In fact, when I just typed the number, I put a two instead of the one, which shows how foreign it is to me! I surpassed two major hurdles this week. I broke the 200 pound barrier and I lost 90 pounds. Great news after my disappointing week last week. I came back from Utah with renewed energy and focus. I am glad to be back in the swing of things! Also, here's a picture of just how ugly my legs are right now. Good gravy!
How does one celebrate such a momentous occasion as losing 90 pounds? Well, I did it Saturday morning. For my gym's Saturday class, we all met at Thunderbird Conservation Park to do a hike. The trail was roughly 3.5 miles long. Jose, the gym's owner, decided to divide everyone up in to three groups; a group of walkers, a group of joggers/walkers, and a group of runners. Most of the people decided to walk, so he had them all start off first. I debated about joining that group. After all, the last time I went hiking was back in college when we went down one of the lava tubes for FHE. I decided that I'd try the jogging/walking group. Turns out, I was the only person interested in that group! I did it anyway. So off I went on my merry way. I ended up jogging about two miles of the trail, most of it on the uphill part. The downhill was the most difficult for me, for a couple of reasons. Reason one, the sunblock I wore ran in to my eyes, and it drove me crazy! I couldn't stop blinking or wiping my eyes. That made it difficult to see where my feet were going. Second, once the sunblock was all wiped off my face, sweat kept running in to my eyes to take it's place. Frustrating! Blah. I turned my ankle and in that process got a palm full of tiny little cactus needles. Jeepers! My ankle was ok to walk/jog on still, so phew!
The end of the story is that I made it up and down in one piece, and was the first person to make it in after Jose and two of the trainers. :c) I was so happy! One of the trainers was Issac. He trains me once a week and is pretty much one of my favorite people right now. He ran ahead of me for the downhill part and kept calling back to me, encouraging me on. At one point, I came up to a group of women and they each said, "Good job Sarah! Keep it up!" I was like, uh, I don't know these women! I said, "Thanks so much!" I realized that Issac had stopped and told them to cheer me on. He really is a great trainer. He pushes me pretty hard, which is exactly what I like!
This week for our training session, we did these awesome crab walks with the big red ball. What you do is lay on the ball, walk out so that your toes are on top of the ball, then lift your tooshie up into a jackknife position, then go back down and reverse it. I had a hard time getting it down, but it was so cool when I got it! I felt like a real athlete this week.
Anyway, after my 90 pound celebration, I left the park and drove to the first grocery store I came across and bought 20lbs of ice, which upon arriving home I dumped into the bathtub, filled it with cold water, and took a well-deserved ice bath. Not fun for the first few seconds, but so worth it!
Whitney (my roommate) thinks I'm completely nuts, but that's ok! I think I am going to do that trail (or others, who knows?) one day a week. I never (EVER) thought I would enjoy running, much less up and down hills. I just can't believe what I am doing. If you had told me 5 months ago that I would be doing what I did this week, I would definitely not believe you. Heck, if you told me last week that I would run most of the hike, I would call you crazy. It really is amazing what someone can do when they put their mind to it.
I read a great quote this week. It's now on my mirror. It says, "The extent to which we accept responsibility for something, is the extent to which we control it." I think this could be a great title for the first chapter of my book, if there ever is one. :c)
Well, this week has been a bit, well, I don't even know how to succinctly describe it. I have been both successful and unsuccessful. Let's dive in, shall we?
First, the good news. I am now fitting in to size 14's. Pretty darn exciting. It keeps Mom busy and the Goodwill in business. :c) I am wearing mostly size large shirts. That is weird for me. I truly don't think of myself that way. I think probably most people have a distorted view of themselves. For example, whenever I've seen a picture of myself, I've never thought it has looked like me. I think that all goes down to self-perception. Now, instead of thinking I'm smaller than I really am, I think I'm larger than I really am. I'm sure I'll get used to it!
One of my goals for the week was to run longer than one mile. On Monday, I ran a mile and a half in 14.45 minutes. That was really exciting. Then, on Thursday, Scott and I went running at the cemetery. We ran two miles without stopping. It took us about 23 minutes. We were both pretty jazzed. There's this part of the route that slopes downward. We call it the "Superhero Part". It was very awesome!
I have been up visiting my sister since Wednesday. I planned and prepared to try to stay on track as much as possible, with varying degrees of success and failure. Let's discuss exercise, shall we? There's a community rec center near Nell's house that I found I could go to. I went both Thursday and Friday. On Friday they had a boot camp class, which was interesting. It was different than what I am used to. It was more of an aerobics class, which was fine, but I like a bit more of a challenge. There's also one tomorrow morning, so I'll go to that.
Now, the bad exercise news. I went to the grocery store yesterday afternoon to get ingredients for Trevor's celebratory dinner (he did the Ragnar Relay ultra-style. I totally want to do that relay next year, but NOT ultra). While approaching the building, I tripped over the curb and biffed it in the parking lot. Besides being completely embarrassing (people got out of their cars and ran over and everything), it hurt! I scraped up both of my knees and gave one of my knees a hard enough knock that it's now swollen. Bleh. Scott and I had to cancel our run last night. I have been praying that it heals quickly!
Ah, food. Here's where most of my struggle has been. The best way to test someone on whether they've learned something or not is to take them out of the controlled environment and try them in the real world. Let's just say I've not passed that test up here out of my tightly controlled world at home. I packed food with the intention to maintain as normal an eating regimen as possible. That pretty much went out the window when we decided to go a restaurant called "5 Guys". It's a burger joint. YUMMY. That's where it began. Has it stopped, nope. I have been eating my virtuous breakfast and lunch, but by dinner it's all out the door. Last night we had burritos and chips with queso dip. I so did not resist temptation last night. Nor did I say no to the rootbeer float on Friday. I feel like the old Sarah is back in charge. Kindof a Jekyll and Hyde sort of deal. Needless to say, I didn't reach 200 pounds this week.
I know that you can't be on 100% of the time. Heaven knows that I know that. I feel like I failed this weekend though. My sister says that I've just been normal, but normal for me is not ok. The "normal" Sarah is the one who ate her way to nearly 300 pounds. I am ready to move on. It's scary to have that Sarah back in my life. I am ready to get rid of that mentality completely. I feel like an alcoholic that's been on a bender. Time to get back to reality...
This week started out a bit rough. I kinda felt like Lightning McQueen on Cars; like I had two blown tires and was trying to get to the finish line. I was exhausted and it was only Monday, so my trainer and I decided that now is the time to back off the two-a-days a bit. I've cut them back to only three a week. It was difficult. I sometimes feel like if I let go of anything, it will all come crashing down, you know? Well, my world didn't end when I cut back the two-a-days. I feel cautiously optimistic that I will survive the coming week as well. I'll pick back up a full schedule when the next fitness challenge happens.
I ended this week on a much better note. On Friday, I hit 201 pounds. So very close to my goal! Only two more days and I hope to be at or below 200. I am looking forward to it! The next hurdle I hope to leap over is the 100 pound mark. Right now, that is 15 pounds away. I want to be there by the end of July. I am fairly certain there will be a party involved in marking that momentous occasion. I'll keep you posted!
Also on Friday, I ran my mile in 8 minutes and 57 seconds. Yay! I can't believe that I've come that far. Just one month ago, I was celebrating hitting the 10 minute mark. I am starting to feel like a runner. This week I'm heading north to Janelle's. While there, I am going to start working on running multiple miles. Maybe Trevor will help me out. I'm excited to see my niece and nephew again. So much fun!
I hope the people at Pure Fitness won't miss me too much when I'm away this week. :c) Yesterday at the gym, several of the trainers went up to my mom and said, "You're Sarah's mom, right?" She said she was proud that she could be "Sarah's Mom". I'm proud of my parents and sister. All three have been going to the gym regularly for the past couple of weeks. It's great that my family is moving towards being more healthy!
So, it was an up and down week. Looking forward to the next!
Not a whole lot to report on this week, but that's ok! They can't all be event-filled. :c) Last Friday was the boot camp competition. I'll cut the suspense right now and tell you that I didn't win. :c( I know! I know! But, I beat all the women who were competing and tied for first with one, which I think was a bit of a victory.
We started with walking on the treadmill at 3 miles per hour at an incline of 15, which is the highest the mills will go. We got a point per minute we could do it without holding on up to ten minutes. I did the whole ten without hands, but so did almost everyone else. That's ok, though. Then we did the leg press 2x our body weight. I was the third person to go, and ended up having to press 415 pounds. The people before me each did about 15 presses each. I ended up doing 50. I thought that would be good enough to beat Cameron the trainer, but he ended up doing 62. Man, I could have done more! Oh well! I did way more of those than the other women did. Then we went on to the trainer-haters. Those I only managed to do 16 of in one minute, I messed up the first one so it didn't count. Blah. Then we did push-ups for a minute, and I wiped the floor with everyone else and did 43 of them. I wasn't enough to pull me out of my deficit behind Cameron. He brought it home with the sit-ups. I think I was too tired at that point and only managed 32. 32! Geez. I have done so much better on those in the past. I think because they were the last thing we did, I just didn't have enough energy left for them. Ah well!
I am proud that I did as well as I did. All the other women were much much smaller than me, and it made me feel really strong to do as many leg presses as I did. I am going to buy Cameron an energy drink to make up for all the taunting I directed at him in the weeks leading up to the contest. I hope he does one again! I'll really take him on then!
Today at church a guy in the ward, who I went out on a date with once, came up to my friend Natalie and I and wanted to ask her to say one of the prayers. I said "Hi Paul!" He just cast a sidelong look at me and said "Hi." Then he stopped, and said, "Sarah? Oh, Sarah? Is that you?" It was the funniest thing! Natalie and I couldn't stop laughing. I thanked him for making my day. It was amazing! We laughed so hard! It was a great feeling.
Can I just say that I am addicted to the following: almond butter on Sprouts multi-grain bread with a half of a banana cut up on top. Yummmmmm. So very delicious. I'm not really a banana person, but I've been in the mood this week for some reason. I'll just go with it! The Sprouts bread is so good. It has whole sunflower seeds on top and is wonderfully moist and delicious. Only 75 calories a slice! Great to eat. Love it!
On the subject of Sprouts, I pretty much spend most of my food money there. They have great prices on produce and of course I love the bread. I really like the store. The produce department is the biggest thing there. I get my grains like quinoa and lentils there too. They have a great bulk section as well. They're a great store if you have access to them.
Kinda a slow week weight-loss wise. Only down a pound this week. It's ok! I have nine days until the 15th, so I'm kicking it in to overdrive this week to make my goal. Looking forward to it!
