I'll start with my beginning, I wasn't a very active child. I never liked participating in sports, I did do an aerobic gymnastics and a couple years of softball, but I never really pushed myself to be an active person. That changed when my father had a stroke a few years ago. He has always had heart issues, he has atrial fibrillation, it's a condition where a part of his heart doesn't beat, instead it quivers. This lead to him having a couple heart attacks at just 34 years old, and landed him with a pacemaker. I wish he would have continued to have his pacemaker checked, but with the economy the way it was and our lack of insurance he just wasn't able to afford to have regular checkups. This eventually led to his pacemaker stopping and him getting a new one a couple times. Eventually it stopped working again but this time blood pooled in his heart clotted and went to his brain. I still remember getting to the hospital and the doctors asking me what his final arrangements were. It was quite overwhelming for a college student who up to this point didn't have a care in the world. Well, everything changed, we have had a complete roll reversal, I am now responsible for our well being.
Because of everything that happened I decided to make a complete lifestyle change. I slowly began buying healthy food, making dinner instead of ordering a pizza. Even my snacking changed, from chips and soda to apples and water. After a year or so of eating a little bit better I decided it was time to get some assistance with it. I downloaded my fitness pal on my phone, ordered Jillian Michaels yoga and it was all downhill from there. I feel about a hundred times better, I'm happier I have more energy, I can walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded, the list goes on. Before I began yoga I was around 148 pounds, I am now 130. Im not planning to try to lose more, but I want to be more toned.
So I decided to try something new and in Jillian's words "get out of that comfort zone". I started the 30 day shred today. I decided to start with 5 pound weights and I'm kicking myself for not getting the three, the workout kicked my butt. I always follow my workouts with some sort of protein, I was eating the pure protein bars for awhile there, but they were getting expensive so I got some whey protein and a magic bullet. Today was the first day I experimented with a shake, strawberries and banana. It was pretty good, I'm definitely going to experiment with different concoctions until I find something I will crave. It's easy for me to keep up with a workout if I have something to look forward to afterward.
Tomorrow will be day 2 of the 30 day shred and I'm quite excited to do this. Is there anyone else working on the shred? If so, how far into it are you?
Thanks for hanging around through this long post.
Chelsea
