The hubs' results

Today is day 24 for my husband and he is doing amazing! He is down 12" and 12 pounds. This journey has been incredible for us and we are so excited to keep going. 

Are you ready for your challenge? 

BE THE BEST YOU. 

Life has a purpose - Get after it!

Have you ever looked back on your college days and wondered why you chose the area of study that you chose? Every time I have to pay a student loan bill, I feel like I am throwing money out the window because I'm not in a profession that relates to my degree. It gets frustrating. And then I remember that I met my husband by going to that college. So now am I paying a loan so that I can have a husband? :) kidding. I have been struggling with my career path for a while now. Well...since I graduated college. I really wanted to be a life coach so I went to graduate school and took the coaching courses there and earned my Graduate Certificate in Life Coaching. But I never found a path to plug in my education. So I did what most people do, and went to work to pay the bills. I have been at my current job for almost 5 years and I love the company, the people, the atmosphere.....but it's not in align with where I thought I wanted to take my career path. 

I went on maternity leave with my second baby and towards the end of the leave I felt very conflicted with going back to work and putting my baby into daycare. We had a blessing in disguise at the time as my husband was laid off from his job the 2nd day he returned to work from paternity leave. So here we are, it's fall...we have a newborn, Christmas is coming, my son's birthday is coming, it's football season and we cannot go to a Duck game, and we felt like our lives were falling apart. I started looking into professions that would allow me to work from home or work part time hours with similar pay to what I was getting already. It all came down to the fact that I wanted to go back to school to be a Physical Therapy Assistant. I spent 25 hours in clinics observing the job, took courses online to be able to apply to the program for 2014 and prepared myself for something new and exciting. In April, I found out that I did not have enough points on my application due to a couple "B" grade courses and therefore did not get chosen to be 1 of the 24 students to enter into the 2014 PTA class. I was devastated. I wanted to throw in the towel and settle for being complacent in life. My dreams were smashed. My husband was having no luck on the job front and we felt stuck. But as we were in this frustration of losing 1/2 our income, we were also able to keep our baby home. 9 months, lots of interviews, a trip to Arizona for a face to face interview, state & city police testing and many unemployment checks later and my husband lands a job. Woohoo!! We realized pretty quickly how lucky we were that he was able to stay home with our baby for the first 9 months of her life. We cannot get that time back. So although we struggled financially, we grew closer as a family. 

This journey we have been on, trying to sort out our dreams for our family and our careers, has been a roller coaster of emotions, but it has been good. A few days before my husband started this new job, AdvoCare was introduced to us. A light went on in my head and I knew right away that this was going to be the vehicle that lifts us up and out of debt. I had to go to work on this. So with little to no money, I invested in my challenge. During my challenge I fell in love with the products, my mood changed, I felt better on the inside and I saw a passion ignite to help others feel better as well. 

Last night I had an epiphany. As I am trying to decide if I want to re-apply for the PTA program this winter for 2015, I realized how all of my interests and my passion is tying together. As we build our team in AdvoCare, I will be COACHING. I will be coaching team members and product users. My entire goal with AdvoCare is to help people reach their health and business goals so that they can enrich their own lives. This is perfect! Now I understand why way back in 2007, I had a dream to be a coach. And although I haven't seen the avenue since then, I see it now. And PTA fits perfectly into that mold. I desire to learn more and more about how the human body works so that I can help people feel better, recover from injuries, condition their bodies and teach them how to fill their bodies with good nutrition. 

If you feel lost in your career like I did, keep revisiting your dreams. What is stopping you from reaching them? If you are living your dream life, how can you make it better? There is always room to grow in each of us. Write your goals down on paper and put a date next to them. 

By this time next year, I will be ________ 

and YOU fill in the blank. And then....go after it! 

  

BE THE BEST YOU.

Day 44 - Leave the grease out!

One of my goals with this journey is to learn to live in the light about what I eat and how I feel (emotionally and physically). On Friday I had both kids all day while the hubs was at work. What I learned is that I do not have a routine to stay home with my kids and therefore we were all off on our schedules and I became grumpy. Neither kid took an afternoon nap and I was stressed. Those nap times are my chance to have some mommy time. So I buckled up the kids and headed to the YMCA. I let them play in the kids room while I hit the gym for a little stress reliever. I just got Advocare's O2 Gold which is a supplement that helps your breathing during exercise like running. So I was pretty excited to try it out. People rave about being able to run 5K's better than ever with the O2 Gold and while I am a little ways away from being able to run 3 miles straight, I ran 3 minutes straight without wheezing and gasping for air. So that's a good sign. I had a great workout and the hubs met me at the Y to pick up the kids, so my day began to lift. The weekend was great until we got to the end...{insert confession here}. We decided that having a cheat night for dinner would be ok. Just one little cheat was all....So we ate pizza. And it was tasty. But not tasty enough to feel like junk the rest of the night as a reward. Lesson learned....You can't eat clean and then jump right into pizza. But I did get to go buy a pair of jeans 1 size down and they are already too big. I also bought 2 shirts that are Size L which I have not done in YEARS! Feeling confident that I will be able to fit into my old jeans that are another size down by the fall. I will also be able to wear a lot of my good jackets that were way too small for me last winter. I barely zipped up 90% of my jackets which is never fun and impossible to wear layers. This year, I will be able to wear layers and comfortably zip those babies up. Yee-Haw!

Here comes a progress picture: 

I currently have several challenges sitting in my house waiting to come to your house. If you would like to kick start your journey to a healthier you, contact me and we will get this challenge into your hands asap. 

NOW IS THE TIME TO TAKE BACK CONTROL! What are you waiting for?

BE THE BEST YOU. 

A little brag on the hubs

I'm sure I have shared with you before how I feel about men losing weight so much faster than women. We have to carry the babies and work harder to lose the weight. Pft! Despite my jealousy, I love hearing my husband get excited over his health. When I met him, he was a skinny cute college boy. We got pregnant with our first born and we both gained the "pregnancy weight" or sympathy weight as he would say. After our first was born we jumped on Weight Watchers. It didn't take more than 3 months before we were on vacation in Texas visiting some wonderful friends of ours when the Texas BBQ sent us off the WW track....for a long long time. 

Fast forward 1.5 years and we have had another baby (and more pregnancy weight). We jumped back on the WW train for about...another 3 months. And fell off again. I'm sorry but making 3 different dinners (baby approved, toddler approved & WW approved), changing diapers, potty training, working & trying with all of our might to do so many other things, AND counting points was just not happening. That's when we found AdvoCare. Ahhh a sigh of relief. NO COUNTING!!! Just good ol' healthy foods & supplements that are on a schedule so I do not have to *THINK* about when to take them. Ok back to my husband...

He is training to be in law enforcement. So a few months back he started working out again to get in shape for the physical fitness tests/requirements to be in law enforcement. I honestly think that is when reality set in that we as a household needed to take back our health! We both started running...and then quickly stopped. Can we say WINDED!!! come on now! But it was so great for him to test his strengths and see where he needed to get stronger. He is in the Max Phase of his 24-Day Challenge right now and is doing great! He feels better about himself. I love seeing the smile on his face when he sees his clothes fitting better. It really does motivate you to keep doing what you are doing when you start to SEE your hard work paying off.

After the cleanse phase of his challenge, he was down 9 pounds & 6". He is less than 10 pounds from his first goal weight. I believe his law enforcement requirements are about to get a lot easier for him. Anyway, he asked me if I notice a difference in him & I showed him this: 

AdvoCare works and it is changing lives. I say it all of the time because I truly believe it. 

So, 

BE THE BEST YOU.

Get Fit - What does that really mean?

If there is something I am learning about this 24 day challenge that I completed, it's this: It doesn't end after 24 days! That is just the beginning. And this is a lifestyle change, not a diet. Very important distinction. Since the challenge, I lost an additional 3 pounds (as of 4 days ago). Clothes are fitting better and I am getting a little adventurous in pulling out clothes that I know were in the "too small for comfort" pile. The other night I pulled out a giant tub of clothes that I stashed away in our garage. It was like shopping! I forgot about a lot of the clothes in there. I pulled out a pair of jeans that are 1 size smaller than what I have been wearing and THEY FIT! So I kept going. I pulled out a pair of jeans that are 2 sizes smaller (my goal size for this fall) and THEY BUTTONED! Notice the difference. While they buttoned, I am not ready to wear them comfortably in public. But the change in my body is feeling great! 

My belt from before I had baby #1. First time I am able to buckle up

These pants are 1 size smaller!

My husband is on day 7 of his challenge. He is powering through like nobody's business. Men and their ability to lose faster than women. ugh! He stepped on the scale the morning of day 1 and was already down 3 pounds from the last time he weighed himself. He says it has to be from eating so well while I was on the challenge. He stepped on the scale this morning and down another 7 pounds I believe. He is already 10 pounds from his first goal weight. Crazy! Again...men and their ability to lose faster. But I am very excited for him. The meal plan that we follow has us cut out grains and complex carbs but he was just a little too hungry so we have added them back in, in moderation. So much better than allowing yourself to get so hungry that you just want to eat whatever you can find. That's where trouble come a-knocking. 

Hot hubby on the first days of the challenge

While we are in the midst of gaining our health back and getting fit, we are also working on getting our finances fit. It feels great! The first thing that helps with fit finances is CLEAN EATING! Because...clean eating means you are buying all of your ingredients fresh from the store and NOT EATING OUT! This is HUGE for us. We have been suckered into restaurants and fast food like you wouldn't believe. Our money kept slipping out of our bank account and into the hands of all of these restaurants. It's amazing the difference your checkbook feels when you quit all of the eating out. Now don't get me wrong, we have eaten out since we started this journey. But it's not 3-4 times in 1 weekend. We love to go to Pita Pit and Chipotle as our go-to eat out joints. We can build healthy meals full of veggies and meat. 

EAT FRESH!

The other part of our get-fit-finances is building and sticking to a budget. I don't know how many times I have built a budget and then the month begins and we fail to stick to the budget. It looks great on paper but the budget has to become reality if it is going to work. We have been listening to Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University on disc and it has been a great eye opener for us. I encourage everyone to find a way to build a budget and live within the budget. We have been able to pay off debt and consolidate payments and it feels great. It's what getting fit is all about! Financially and physically.

I believe finances and physical fitness are the 2 greatest things in people's lives that play into mood, motivation, action and lifestyle.

What is your level of fitness financially and physically? How can you make it a little better today? What's stopping you from being fit? 

Just because...

BE THE BEST YOU.