Thank goodness the sun is shining today and the temperature made it into the 60’s. After last winter’s absolutely offensive cold complete with tons of snow, frigid ice and wind chill records, I really couldn’t take much more from this year’s version of winter. Could we please just move along to spring and call it a wrap?
One thing I did to ring in the new year and try to break up the monotony of winter? Accept the Advocare 24-Day Challenge. To make a 24-day story short, I lost a little over 10 pounds and over 17.5 inches.
This side-by-side is from my Day 0 [left] and my Day 11 [right]. On the left, I’m wearing jersey knit black pants and an EXTREMELY roomy XL cotton tank. But, neither of them feel very forgiving or roomy. I was willing to give the Advocare a go, but wasn’t willing to take true “before” photos where you could see everything in all its flubbery detail. Day 11? I’m wearing jeans and a size L shirt. And breathing just fine in both, thank you very much.
The challenge has been over for more than a month and I have not regained any of the weight. My little challenge group at work still faithfully meets for lunch almost every day. We encourage each other, try to share good food with each other at lunch, and have even taken on some interesting exercise opportunities thanks to our interest in burning calories.
One such exercise endeavor? An hour-long trampoline aerobics class at our local SkyZone trampoline park. My teenager joined in the fun as did the teen of one of my Advocare challenge buddies. Toss in a few more adults from our group and you have yourself a regular party. It was an amazing workout. I can’t honestly say I did it all, because I didn’t. I had to modify some things [maybe I can still do a seat drop on a trampoline, but I’m not going to give that a whirl in public any time soon] and take a potty break [jumping is hard on a 40-something bladder], but at the end, I was glad to have done it and I want to go again sometime.
I had told myself that once the weather warmed up, it would be time to hit the streets and start my C25k program with earnest. I’ve done that and have been keeping track of my efforts on RunKeeper. I sorely wish that I could have a RunKeeper widget on my sidebar because even if I’m the only person looking at the sidebar [or the blog, for that matter], seeing my activity log somewhere other than RunKeeper motivates me to keep it moving. But, none of the widgets seem to offer a simple html version, so for now, you’ll just have to trust me when I say that I laced up and took my shoes for a run.
My Vitamix and I have reignited our love for early morning rendezvous. It fires right up to make my Spark-infused green smoothies.
Not sure what kind of trouble I’ll find this week, but I do know a few things: 1) The weather is supposed to be gorgeous, at least early in the week; 2) I have First Four tickets and my beloved Dayton Flyers will be playing the equivalent of a home game in the first round of March Madness; and 3) We’re closing in on my busiest time at work and it will be great to have these new lifestyle choices even more firmly embedded before things really go nutty.
