Toning My Midsection

So, toning my midsection has been way easier than I thought! I am already seeing definition and I've only started hitting the ab work outs harder for about 1 week.

(Before ab workout routines started, I had a small mommy pooch yet).

After ab workout routines started, and my pooch shrunk completely in one week. So I kept going).

Definition and getting a six pack pretty fast now! My abs are firm and lean and toned and I'm so happy with the results I am seeing!

I apologize that some of these pictures are blurry or have poor lighting but I've been taking them from my phone and they don't always turn out that great, plus I don't exactly have a steady hand sometimes! Haha

Anyway, I'm stoked! It's definitely been great motivation to keep at it and hopefully I will see the definition I am aiming for before the holidays roll around. :)

Fitness Update - I lost 4 more pounds! Woot!!

So I've been back in my normal eating habits, mainly because my metabolism is back up in high gear now and because I need more calories with breastfeeding more since my baby girl is growing bigger and needs more food.

Even with her eating solids now, I am still pumping and storing breast milk, so I need to eat better. I am also still taking prenatal vitamins, but I'm switching from the pills to the chewables on and off because the pills can get to be too much if taken too often.

My weight is 120, and I've toned my body and gained a lot of muscle! While I was not doing this fitness stuff necessarily for the superficial reasons, I was more so doing it to build stamina and endurance in order to keep up with two kids all day, but I've gained a toned body with lots of definition and have trimmed down to a weight I have not been in about 4 years (due to pregnancy).

Now, there is one problem with losing all this weight... My clothes no longer fit :(. I'm kind of depressed because I had just bought these clothes and am in love with them and cannot find them anywhere else.

I have had to purposely "shrink" my pants and shorts in the washer and dryer, in order to cheat so I don't have to buy new stuff with winter coming soon! I will definitely update on how to shrink your clothes just right so that they fit great after you lose weight ;).

I did recently go shopping for tops, though, so I'm glad I don't have to worry about shrinking sweaters because sweaters are tricky enough as it is. :)

However, I will need to shrink my tank tops and t-shirts yet.

I've been keeping on tabs with my dumbbell weights and ab crunches and walks. I haven't been doing as much walking, but I'm still keeping the weight off and it's been almost 3 weeks and I've actually lost 2 pounds, then 2 more, and have not been gaining. So for now I am just sticking to a pretty light routine, which I will post about when I get another chance, as far as work outs and eating plans go.

Rainy Day Fitness Routine

I thought I would write about my fitness routine for rainy days, as most of my fitness regime is walks and done outdoors. But today is nothing but rain and thunderstorms, so I'm stuck inside and pretty limited to work outs without any equipment. We used to own a treadmill, but I we got rid of it because it was never being used and just taking up too much space (it was a bigger model with every single gadget and feature imaginable). I am regretting that now, though, because there are times I would have been able to jump on it and get a good run in or two.

I do plan on buying another treadmill in the near future, hopefully before snow hits us. But until then this is my daily routine for those rainy days.

First, I eat the same in the morning, maybe just slightly lighter than normal. I try to fit in at least 1 hour of workouts that include abdominal workouts and glutes workout and stretches after breakfast.

I don't snack as much and if I do I snack very light, eating veggies or fruit or something very low in calories.

I eat a light lunch and have a salad or something light for dinner as well.

In between, I squeeze in more abdominal workouts and routines that give my legs and arms a good work out. Drinking plenty of water is key.

Once the rainy days are done I jump right back on to my normal regime. The key also is never to snack or eat anything after 6 PM or 7 PM. I have all my eating done by 5 PM, like any other day.

I plan on logging some yummy healthy recipes on here soon as well, in case anyone needs something for dinner ideas or anything. :)

My Fitness Story

Well it's about time I finally sat down like I promised months ago and talk about my weight loss and fitness routine. I haven't had time, as I said, to actually do this sort of thing, but things have been slowly falling back into place with Haylie getting bigger and going into a good sleep cycle now, so both kids are in bed no later than 7:30 every night and I am able to have some time to myself to finally do those things that have been waiting on my to-do list ;).

Well, I have tried to get as many pictures of my body along the way of this wonderful journey, but I have missed a month or two in between.

I just had 2 kids, in the last 2 years, and so I am not ashamed of my body at all or to share with you the awful truth of what my body looked like afterward before I lost all my weight and toned and tightened my core back into shape once again.

Pregnancy has always been very unkind to me. VERY unkind. And I mean that I bloat up, swell up, fatten up and my face changes and my legs look like tree stumps and the whole nine yards. I suffered all of this but my husband still woke up next to me every morning and told me I was beautiful. That's probably the only thing that kept me going on my worse days.

So, since I didn't waste my time or money on professional pictures and my picture taking skills rather suck, please excuse this haha. Here is a collection of before's:

This was me at 2 weeks postpartum. You can see my mommy pooch pretty good here, I look like I'm still 6 months pregnant. This is normal, a lot of if not most women have this postpartum.

I was actually pregnant with my son, Lukas, in this picture above. But I thought I'd share it with you since I had actually kept some of the weight on from my first pregnancy, which was probably good because I had severe morning sickness in both my first, half of my second and most of my third trimester, so I lost A LOT of weight that way as well, but I ended up packing on quite a bit of swelling and water weight and some extra pounds at the end of my third trimester, right before Haylie was born. I weighed 180 pounds when I went into the hospital.

I weighed 168 when I got out. Postpartum I maintained the weight of 165-164, and stayed like that for another 6 weeks while I healed up from my c-section. It sucked because I wanted to work out so badly and get moving but my doctor forbid me from even going on walks! Ugh. :(

In the above picture I weighed 164, that was in May and beginning of June.

So today, I weigh 144 and am still losing. My goal weight is 125, but to be honest my weight right now is pretty great! I can't complain and I feel energetic again and am very active and my high metabolism is back in gear :).

Here are some more recent pictures of the afters, which were taken a 1-2 months ago:

Above is me at 155, my legs are back in shape and I have my definition back. I've been eating more vegetables and fruits and whole grains in my diet, watching my caloric intake and going for walks every day. 

This is me at 148. 

So what I've been doing to drop so much weight is eating super healthy. I watch my caloric intake in spite of breastfeeding, and have been eating mostly fruits, vegetables and whole grains. I'll be honest, I do eat dairy and have carbs and sugar, but it's in moderation. I've "sabotaged" my diet and still manage to drop the pounds anwyay, so I refer to those times as my cheat days.

I've always eaten whatever I wanted, but that's because I do have a very high metabolism. So I don't have any miracle for weight loss, but I can defintiely say my husband does not have a high metabolism and he has been following my lead on this ehalth kick and his body is looking amazing! He packed on some extra weight like me while I was pregnant, and he has been dropping it rapidly just doing what I've been doing.

First and foremost, find some support. Whether it's online, at a gym or with friends or family. It will help you stay motivated! My motivators are my kids. They absolutely LOVE walks, and so they keep me going haha.

What I've been doing is taking long walks. I typically go for 5-8 mile walks a day, about 4 days a week. You can defintiely shorten these, as I am doing now and only going 3-4 miles a day and no more than 5 miles. In between I incorporate as many abdominal workouts as possible, and do light weights to tone my arms, as you can see above it is working wonderfully! I started out using 8 pound dumbbells, then switched to 10 pounds. I am seeing great results and definition in my arms already, and I don't do the weights every single day.

I eat a heavy breakfast, which takes up the majority of my calories, but that's exactly what I want because I will be burning all of thsoe calories off and then some throughout my day. I go for my fgirst long walk which is usually 2-2 1/2 miles. When I get back, I have some water. I snack between meals, but my snacks are normally no more than 70-90 calories, maybe 100 calories, or if they are more than I eat a light lunch. I snack after my light lunch if I am hungry, which I generally am not. I am not a big eater and do not crave anything or eat much by nature, I don't need a lot to keep me going, ironically, considering I do have a very high metabolism. I believe my metabolism and my need to constantly stay busy and be doing something must distract me from food haha.

One of the problems I ran into as a mom was that during the day I had no time whatsoever to eat regularly, so of course by the end of the day once the kids were in bed by 7 PM, I was starving. So I would eat a ton of food after 7 PM, and this wasn't necessarily keeping me from losing weight, but slowing the process all the same as well as sabotaging my toning work outs I had done previously during the day.

So I stopped eating after 5 PM. 

I've been losing around 2 pounds a week now. Since June I've dropped a total of 22 pounds just doing what I am doing.

I will defintiely keep updating this log and will post more recent pictures once I reach my next goal! :)