Its been a week and a half since I started my training sessions with Ben. He works out of town for many days straight so right now I am working on my own doing the cardio workouts twice a week. I can not begin to explain how great I am feeling! After the first week I was down another 4.4lb!! This makes my total loss 25 lbs! I am so excited about that. I am about to hit a gigantic milestone. The most weight I have ever lost at one time is 30 lbs. I felt great, stopped what I was doing to lose and gained it all back plus some. I can not wait to reach that 31 lb lost mark. It will be a huge moment for me. This time losing weight is becoming a lifestyle. I am eating better and exercising and I am loving how I feel on a daily basis. There is always something new that I notice. Something smaller on my body, the way my clothes fit or how much easier it is to do things. Yesterday I tried on some pants, one of them being my goal pants, and they fit! They are 3 sizes smaller than the pants I was wearing on January 1st! Instead of having 2 pairs of pants that I rotate through, I now have 7 or 8 pair that fit. I can not wait to go clothes shopping! I used to dread shopping so much because I couldn't find stuff to fit but not I will be able to walk into a store and not have to go to a specialty size section. I am so excited for the future and what it holds for me. My weight has held me back for so long and I am ready to release it and get on with what I really want!

Yesterday after my friend and I met to plan out my cardio workouts he invited me to go on a hike with him and his girlfriend (who is also my neighbor). The trail head is at the north end of Vallecito Lake. They both told me it was a good workout and a difficult hike but I was not prepared for how difficult it actually was. It was 2 miles of uphill zig zag hiking. There were a couple times that I wanted to give up but I knew I couldn't do that. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. I also thought I might faint a couple times. It took about an hour and a half to get to the top but I made it. Let me tell you that the whole difficult hike was worth it. At the top there is a small lake that is just beautiful. Here are a few pics of the place.

Ashley, Ben and I at the finish!

can you see the lake under those lily pads?

half the lake was covered in lily pads with these really pretty yellow flowers. 

I made it!!!

Holy fat pants batman!

I took this picture a few weeks ago. I tried on my biggest pair of capri pants that I wore last summer. These were starting to get a little snug on me.

I would like to start out by apologizing to you for slacking off and not updating this blog like I should. I have had a slow month so I didn't feel like sharing my struggles. That is not why I started this blog so I will try to keep updated as much as possible.

After my 5k I felt lost. I didn't know what to do anymore or what to train for. I guess I felt like the race was done so now what? I continued to eat fairly well but I would only walk a few times or ride my bike. (Which I got at a garage sale for a great price!) I quit waking up early and no longer did the JM workouts. I could see myself slowly reverting into my old self that I had been trying so hard to change. I realized about a week ago that  I can't do this alone. I don't know what I am doing and I need help. I turned to a friend of mine that is a trainer and decided to bite the bullet and see if he would train me. It was the best decision I have made in a long time. He is going to train me hard core for a month and we will see where I am and how things are going.  We met yesterday and he set out a 2 week cardio plan for me to follow along with 3 main guidelines.

1. Don't eat after 7 at night -
2. drink water all day long
3. Don't drink your calories.

They seem pretty basic but if you stop to think about it, not as easy to do as you would think. I  joined Weight Watchers as well to get me on track with food. If I'm paying for this trainer I want to make sure that I am on point with food and I know that WW can help with that.

As far as the cardio plan goes, he gave me three different exercises to do each morning. Each lasts only about 30 minutes and I rotate them throughout the week.

Monday & Thursday - Treadmill interval training - 5 minute warm up then I do 20 minutes switching every minute from walking at 3.5 at an incline to 3.0 at no incline.

Tuesday & Friday - I call it the hill of health. There is a small hill by my house that I have to do three different exercises to get to the top and I do that 3 times. This should be nice and embarrassing in front of my neighbors. ha!

Wednesday & Saturday - Walk up the trail behind my house to the top of the hill

At night he wants me to do what he calls "mindless cardio". That will be 30 minutes of stationary bike, walking or anything simple.

I started this morning and I am really excited for this next month. I will make sure to keep you posted on how I am doing. :)