Closing Out 2012

Well it's New Year's Eve and another year is coming to an end.  2012 has been a roller coaster ride for Steven and I.  Our lives together started out with lots of bumps and we are ending on such a high.  It's hard to even figure out where to start...

Our year started with us struggling financially and living two separate lives in the same house.  We hadn't quite made the one year mark of marriage.  Many friends told us the first year would be the hardest.  Not because we weren't meant to be married but because we were both older when we got married (lets face it, when you get married and your both in your thirties your "older").  We were both pretty much set in our ways as individuals and we struggled with communication as a couple.  Then reality hit us in the face at the beginning of February.  Our dear friends Steve and Jen Martin told us that Steve had stage 4 melanoma.  Talk about kick you in your face!  Here we were arguing over leaving a dirty bowl in the sink for someone else to clean-up and they were dealing with the reality of STAGE 4 CANCER!  Funny thing is that they didn't dwell on the negative and sadness of the cancer, instead they started a war against cancer which has lead to Steve still being here 12 months later!  Here's a link to Jen's blog http://martinfamilyjourney.blogspot.com

Our one year anniversary arrived in March and we celebrated with an amazing dinner at Damian's in downtown Houston!  Probably in my top 5 awesome moments in life.  I got to cook like a real chef!

I'm even wearing high heels while I cook my master piece!  

Steven and I had overcome a lot of our issues by March.  We were plowing through the first part of the year and creating memories along the way!  In May we took a wonderful trip to New Mexico for some great hiking and relaxation!  It was fantastic!

I was goofing off during this photo and nearly fell backwards down the cliff.  Lesson learned...don't goof off while at the edge!

So the first half of our year was pretty exciting and we had overcome our bumps in our marriage!  The second half of 2012 was very busy and lots of fun!

My Mary Kay business was having it's own success!  I was the first runner up in the Rockstar unit for court of sales.  My good friend Lori was the queen!  Steven and I went to our very first Mary Kay Seminar in August.  It was lots of training and we got to play fancy dress-up a couple of nights for awards.  It's always fun dressing up for events!  My success in Mary Kay allowed me to donate $450 to the Martin Family's AIM for Melanoma walk in September as well!

Steven decided to leave 24 Hour Fitness where we had been kind of working out together and joined Crossfit Champions.  I stayed at 24 Hour since I had a personal trainer.  Our weight loss was up and down all summer long.  Not really seeing any progress because every time we lost weight we had a bad weekend or week(s) and gained it back.

In last August I took the plunge and joined Crossfit Champions.  I thought it was the dumbest decision I made at the time but whatever I was giving it a try.  Immediately after I joined Steven left on an out of town trip for the ENTIRE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER!  Oh great, I joined this new place and my husband left!  In September the gym had an AdvoCare 24 Day Challenge which I participated in and didn't have much success.  The only real improvement was that I took 2 minutes off my workout.  I will stay the unsuccessful challenge was COMPLETELY MY FAULT!  I quit the last 2 weeks of the challenge and the results suffered because of it.

October was about the same.  We were working out and taking our AdvoCare supplements but not really eating clean and healthy.  In November we took our annual trip to San Antonio to watch the lights come on the Friday after Thanksgiving on the River Walk.  We had a great time!

After Thanksgiving we decided to do a 24 Day Challenge together. This my friends was the turning point in our weight-loss and life that Steven and I both needed!  We had amazing results with weight and inches lost.  We both felt great and had energy that we had never had before.  We didn't eat out for 24 days!  Our checking account was gratefully for that!  At this point I had figured out that Crossfit was EXACTLY what I needed!  It was a giant family and I loved it!

So now the end of the year is here and what's next?  2013 is going to be full of greatness and lots of success!  We will continue to get healthy together and we will also start helping others.  There are so many people out there that want to get healthy but just need help from real people who have been through the same struggles!  We're hoping to do just that!

Happy New Year to everyone and may your 2013 be a great one as well!

What's a 24 Day Challenge?

Cheris and I recently did the AdvoCare 24 Day Challenge.  I've never done one before even thought Crossfit Champions has done a couple of them since I have been a member there.  Cheris has done a couple without success and follow thru.

The first ten days are a herbal cleanse.  Don't worry it's not a make you have the poops cleanse.  That is the first question I got when I told people what I was doing.  Most people say that the first ten days is the hardest.  To me its just the first couple minutes of the day that were hard.  You take a fiber drink in the mornings on days 1-3 and 8-10.  The taste of the drink is not bad but the texture is a little on the blah side.  I did learn a good way to drink it is to take a big breath of air and drink as much as you can and then repeat.  So really you just have to muster a minute or two of courage and its over.  Through out the first ten days I only experienced one day of carvings/hunger but i said on course I would just eat my snack earlier than I plan that day.  my first ten days consisted with having fruit for breakfast, turkey jerky for a snack during the day.  Thankfully we went to San Antonio the day after Thanksgiving and we got to load up on turkey jerky from Buc-ee's.  For lunch I usually had a protein and veggies.  Dinner was a protein and a veggie also.  No processed foods nothing came out of a box or from a restaurant.    Its easy to control what goes in your body when you are the one making the food.

For the next 14 days is the fat burn stage.  You have a meal replacement shake for breakfast.  I decided to have vanilla shakes.  They were very good a little thick but it tasted like vanilla cake batter.  It reminded me of my childhood days of licking the mixer blades when my mom was finished making a cake.  As far as food, it was basically the same as the cleanse but I did add a couple of foods back into my diet like eggs and bacon.  I did not go overboard on them but it was nice to have them again.  During this time I got a new boss that was a tech in my crew in the past. Right away he noticed that I was looking thinner since the last time he had seen me.  This is always a cool feeling when you are working towards something and someone else notices it.  I will not lie I did have once bad day while on the 24 day challenge.  It happened on a Sunday there was some dark chocolate morsels that Cheris uses when she makes her paleo cookies.  I had a couple hand fulls of them which after eating them I felt like pooh.

All in all the challenge was a complete success!  I would recommend this to anyone to get jump start on your weight loss, healthy eating habits, need to drop a quick 10 pounds or whatever your reason might be!  

So what's next??  We are continuing on with the the healthy/clean eating habits and taking our supplements.  Why change something that is working?!

Cheris and I are kicking off another group 24 Day Challenge, Monday 1/7/13.  Join us as we all work towards living longer, looking better, feeling better and just finishing our goals! 

Little scale humor for Thursday...

 

24 Day Challenge Results

Recently Cheris and I took the AdvoCare 24 Day Challenge.  It combines clean eating with wellness and weight loss supplements.  The challenge is broken into a ten day herbal cleanse and a 14 day fat burn process.  We will post a more detailed blog about our experiences on the challenge in the up coming days.  But we are so excited by our results that we wanted to post a short results blog.

BEFORE PICTURES:

AFTER PICTURES:

Cheris lost 3/4" off her flexed arm measurement, four inches off of her waist, and three and  1/4 inches off her hips.  That is a total of 8 inches lost in 24 days.  She also lost 8 pounds too.  Cheris is able to wear clothes that she has not been able to wear in three years!!! Truly amazing results.

I lost 1/2' off my arm flexed measurement, 3 and 1/4 inches off the my waist and gain 3/4" in his shoulders for a total of 3 inches lost.  I also lost 13 pounds in 24 days.  Some people might wonder about the gain in the shoulders but it's OK because remember part of my success is CrossFit workouts and I've set some serious PR's in the last 24 days as well.

These results are by far the best we have seen in our dieting over the last 2 years!  Our challenge isn't over though.  We took a small 5 day break for Christmas and are right back on track today!  Success isn't easy to achieve unless you work hard at it which is exactly what we did.

We are kicking off another challenge Monday, January 7, 2013.  Let us work with you to help achieve your goals!

www.advancedadvocare.com

Whose the bomb?!?!?!

For the first time ever, I pretty much felt like a bad ass tonight during my workout!  I'm normally not one to toot my horn quite so loud but I pretty much rocked my workout!

Let's see...Back Squat 145lbs (PR) and Shoulder Press 90lbs (PR)

What I did learn tonight is that I'm a strong person who has come a very long way in a short amount of time. I started Crossfit just a short 3 months ago a very weak and broken woman.  I had little self-confidence that I could actually succeed at Crossfit.  I thought I would have quit by now actually.

I haven't quit though and it's because of the Crossfit family environment.  Everyone supports each other through everything.  You could be the fastest but also be the weakest, you could be the weakest but be the fastest it doesn't really matter because we all support each other.

Black Friday WOD

The gym that we train at was closed the week of Thanksgiving but our trainers had "special" Thanksgiving WOD's and we were able to get in a free workout for the week!  Friday morning happen to be when Pam and Matt had their Black Friday WOD.

I now know that anytime the word "excited" is used with WOD, it really means...Get ready for a killer workout that will make you never want to eat carbs or pie AGAIN!  Seriously folks, it was probably the hardest workout I've ever done!

Black Friday WOD (partner workout):

Run 600M (200M each round)
45 Burpees (15 each round)

180 Jump Rope (60 each round)
45 Pull-Ups (15 each round, jumping pull-ups)

Rowing 600M (200M each round)
45 Box Jumps (15 each round, 20" box)

Steven and I actually completed the WOD!

So what did I learn on Friday?  I'M AN EXTREMELY STRONG WOMAN!  3 months ago I would have probably taken an entire hour to complete this workout but it took just a short 29 minutes (my time, combined it was 34 minutes) to complete the entire thing!  I'm sure their are people that did it faster but I don't really care because this was a huge milestone for me personally!  I'm not saying I need this type of WOD every week but it's good to have something that challenges you beyond your comfort zone.  If you stay in your comfort zone all the time then how to you measure progress?

My personal challenge going forward is to always push myself out of the comfort zone!  If I can complete this hard cardio workout, then I can complete anything that I put my mind to!

Small Things

This weekend Steven and I celebrated "Steven's Day".  It's a completely made up day obviously but we had so much fun with it! We created a day built of doing that that Steven wanted to do.  It was nothing special or fancy just a day of being together.  Here's a run down of what we did:

*Shopping at Old Navy, Michael's, Barnes-N-Noble, Gander Mtn

*Dinner at Salt Grass while sitting at the bar watching football

*Grocery shopping at the new Fairfield HEB (it was awesome)

While this doesn't seem like anything special, it meant a lot to Steven.  THAT'S WHAT MATTERED THE MOST!  It wasn't about how much money we could spend or what kind of adventure we went on; it was about doing things he wanted to do for the day (I must admit Michael's was my idea but he found a great treasure).

His Christmas guy he bought from Michael's below.

Back at it: "Murph"

For those of you who have not had the pleasure to experience the joy that is Crossfit let me give you some knowledge.  There are certain workouts called "Hero WODs".  They are workouts that honor servicemen, police officers, and firemen that have lost their lives in the line of duty.  These WODs are very challenging since they are made to honor these men and women.  On Monday I had the pleasure of being introduced to "Murph".  The prescribed workout is one mile run, 100 pull ups, 200 push ups, 300 squats, and to finish it off one mile run.  Oh yea almost forgot you are doing this while wearing a weighted vest.  The workout is in honor of Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy , 29, of Patchogue, N.Y., who was killed in Afghanistan June 28th, 2005.   This was his favorite workout.

Well since I am not close to being an elite athlete yet and struggle with cardio based workouts I did a half Murph.  So my runs were 800m instead of the full mile.  I started out strong I was able to run first 800m leg without stopping.  I am very proud of this because that is the farthest I have ran without stopping in years.  My plan for the movements was just do as many as I can and then move to the next one and so on and so on until I had finished all of my push up and pull ups and squats.  Then came the last leg of 800 meters. 

I was tired and my arms were dead.  I would run/jog as much as I could and then fast walk.  While fast walking I would think about Murphy and what he and his fellow brothers went through and it would give me the drive to start running again.  Now I am not saying that my struggles compare to his but sometimes you need to focus on something to get you through the wall.  To realize what you are going through is not that terrible at all that it is just a short inconvenience.  I finished strong and completed my WOD in 31 minutes. 

But for me the WOD is not done.  I want to learn more about this man and his fellow brothers.  There is a book that was written about his unit called "Lone Survivor".  I plan on reading it this weekend.  So thank you Murphy for your sacrifice for this country and thank you for making me a better person.